Susanna, Audrey, Alicia and me
My daughters arrived by plane and the laughter, stories, and excitement have been palpable to all around. The dynamic of being with three lovely young women is so enlivening. I don’t want to go to bed, I am so awake, who wants to sleep? I don’t want to miss a moment. So I sit up and write while they sleep. Continue reading
Ms. Sparkle is back. The moon has changed or something because I’m back on track, feeling positive, happy and being productive. As I was coming out of the Shakespeare & Company office I saw three people in the lobby looking lost and curious and I asked if they needed any help. We chatted for a while, they were tourists and had been to Lenox years ago and saw the company perform when they resided at the Mount. I told them about the shows in performance now, waved my arms in direction of the theaters, mentioned that I was on my way for a walk to the Mount and fluttered a cheery good-bye. 
Is there a difference between meandering and wandering? Without looking it up in a dictionary I am finding myself defining them in my own terms. Wandering seems to be stumbling about without purpose, seeking and lost. Meandering, as I have been experiencing it since last April, has become an exploration of sorts, not from a place of being lost, but from a place of new adventure. Those are my definitions anyway as I am struggling this week to not feel lost. Some change has come over my days in that I am no longer feeling “meanderest” but astray and wandering about blindly. I am hoping this is a temporary condition and am combatting the aura with writing, reading, walking and mundane tasks that need to get accomplished like taxes and bills. There is an unsettled rest about my week, as I am recovering from an intense two weeks of teacher training in the Shakespeare & Company Month-Long Intensive here is Massachusetts.
I flew back into Seattle for the holidays with an email from an acting friend burning a hole in my inbox. He sent me a list of wonderful, wacky things we could do if I had time to hang out. I can’t tell you how unusual this is! To have a man ask me to do anything other than go out for food and drink is unique and so refreshing. No, this wasn’t a “date” but I do wish more men were like Robert to have this creativity in their dealings with me. And he even gave me choices! I have lived in the Seattle area for 17 years and yet only a few of the places on his list had I been to previously. Extraordinary! Continue reading
As this year ends, my heart is bursting with thanks for the amazing journey I have enjoyed and shared with you all. There has been an incredible 7500 views (from 79 different countries) of my 87 blog posts. I have fallen in love, with my country and Canada, the mountains, the sea, the National Parks, so many people who are now irreplaceable friends, country music, dancing, writing, sharing Shakespeare with youth, acting with open honest people, a canyon, a pond, mountain tops, fringe boots and above all myself. I go into 2013 a braver, more empowered, confident, sassy, flirty, fabulous female. Here are just a few photo memories to relive but there are so many, many more that I could include of the amazing world that has embraced me this past year. May our 2013 bring more love, more encounters, more adventure, compassion and peace. Happy New Year my friends!
Yosemite NP, California in April 2012…the beginning. Continue reading
I have been rehearsing a play, called the Caucasian Chalk Circle, at the Austin Riggs Center in Stockbridge, MA. This is a recovery/therapeutic center that helps individuals struggling to live productive lives in our society. Patients live in an open community and share their difficult life experiences, and work together for solutions. Two times a year Kevin Coleman (see Meet Kevin) is hired to direct a play with them and he asked me to get involved when one of the patients needed to drop out. Continue reading
I am awash in a dream. I have spent this weekend with a gaggle of high school kids hooting, hissing, yelling, pounding fists in the air, leaping up, cheering and shouting at the top of their lungs. Sounds like I am at a basketball game, right? No, this is all happening here at Shakespeare & Company during the Fall Festival. Ten high schools from the area have descended and each perform one of 37 Shakespearian plays that they have been creating with directors in a residency program that started 9 weeks ago. Continue reading
I feel beautiful. I know from my acting training that “beautiful” is not a feeling, so I guess I should say that I imagine myself to be beautiful. This comes upon me when I spend time being out in nature. There are days I feel stared at everywhere I go. This sounds vain, but stay with me a minute and I will explain. Usually I feel this sensation when I am full of exhilaration from being outdoors, and I wonder does nature feed my beauty and is it like that Cinderella song “Do I love you because you’re beautiful or are you beautiful because I love you?” Do I think I’m beautiful because people notice me, or do people notice me because I think I’m beautiful. What comes first the chicken or the egg? Continue reading
Right after I wrote my last blog post I was inundated with negative events. This was just after I received the go ahead to be a teacher trainee here at Shakespeare and Company and do what I could to get a festival going for taking Shakespeare into high schools in the Lenox area next spring. I met with people who didn’t want to have anything to do with helping me get the information I needed, people resentful of the idea of having more work to do, I upset the apple cart and unknowingly offended people, hurt people’s feelings and ended up in tears thinking I had made a HUGE mistake in taking all of this on. My identity that I joyously found in my travels across the United States was all of a sudden bombarded, and tested, with large personalities taking up my space, sharing my bathroom, and helping me to feel insignificant. Continue reading
I’m hanging out in Lenox, MA waiting for an answer to a proposal I made yesterday to Shakespeare and Company’s Director of Education and Director of Training. They both said yes, but as is common they have people to answer to as well. The General Manager is where the buck stops and we will see if my offer is met with an eye roll. Continue reading
meanderest 