a simple game

step 1.
put on a helmet

step 2.
turn your face expectantly up to the sky

step 3.
wait for it

step 4.
don’t flinch

step 5.
keep waiting / observe the practice shot

step 6.
get pegged in the face with a hard rubber ball

repeat.
until you feel the fun slip through your fingers and it’s time to move on to better things.

 

like a daisy waiting to drink in the sun,
like a baby reaching for her mother’s arms,
like a girl in a helmet waiting to get pegged in the face,
she’s on her way up, up, up.

with a sense of purpose,
with no sense of self preservation,
with an astronaut’s gear and a heroic wave,
she’s on her way up, up, up.

dressed for success,
dressed to kill,
dressed for the ride of her life,
she’s on her way up, up, up.

Move to Maine

Back from Maine and the imagery, the movement and the vibrant Summer shades still pulse through my brain. Wooden boats sail seamlessly out to sea. I skim, skittering on rocks, just birds and me. Oh, yes. It’s enough to inspire endlessly clumsy rhyming couplets.

Observe.

“The Starry Night”? Or my backyard last week.

Rocks, rough-hewn and beautifully ravaged by tides. Views of van Gogh at every turn. Sea grass holds on fiercely to the pebbled shore.

The tide, some shade and a few gnarled, tree-like knots make rocky waves.

Mini mountain ranges peek out into the sun. Little lakes dry out in high tide.

The majestic cliffs of Acadia, on a teeny tiny scale. And about an hour West. It’s shocking how something so sturdy and seemingly immobile can look and feel so vibrantly alive, teeming with movement. And it is. Each day, twice a day, the tide swishes in and takes over. Snails, crabs and other creatures lurk and squirm and groove about in an aqua frenzy. Just under the surface. All that’s left, when it all rushes out, are shells; little mollusks and crustaceans march on and on and on.  

Seaweed dances differently with each touch of the tide. Untying knots held tightly in my head.

Unearthly green escapes quietly down a three-inch mountain. Off to who-knows-where.

These words feel too grand here, but they’re not nearly even barely close enough to hint at a bit of the raw, rugged beauty I saw. 

And then there was this. A seal kiss. Painted lovingly on a staircase that was mine for a week. Each step is a different sea scene by Elizabeth Coakley, a local artist. Her husband, Richard is an architect and Elizabeth often paints the stairs inside his homes—to the delight, I’m sure, of all who enter.

Again on the stairs, E.Z. Coakley’s take on a seaside home. Blue brush strokes have my equilibrium floating off to the right and out of frame. Simple, whimsical and clearly warm-hearted, her images have me collaborating with her on world-renowned children’s books (all in the dreamy delirious recesses of my imagination). Coakley’s work pairs perfectly with the honest, exposed wood beams of her husband’s interiors. Both the architecture and the paintings set the home gently, yet decidedly in the Maine coast. Everything is functional, yet bright, open and human. I felt like I knew them immediately. 

Outside the back door and into the wild yellow yonder, the black-eyed susans, the sunflowers and all other sun-colored blossoms surge urgently upward. Hello! We’re here! You’re here, too! That’s good! Wake up! Good morning! Hello!

More coolly, these purple beauties ease themselves delicately, regally into being.

And the wind. Oh the wind. The wind was everything. The constant influx of hair-twirling, skirt-twisting wind. Simply eating breakfast out in the wind can be life changing. 

The day takes you anywhere with a little wind. And a boat.  

animate this

Floyd, the cowboy, under construction

Alice fell down the rabbit hole. The Beatles found psychedelics. And I found puppets.

I had the honor of being a part of a series called Puppet Playlist produced by Sinking Ship Productions at The Tank in NYC. I was not, a week prior to the show, a puppeteer. But thanks to playwright Ed Valentine, I now know the sheer joy of operating Pokey, Miss Polly Otis, some giant feathers and two cardboard feet in Ed’s play, Cowboy Kabuki. Together with Ed and fellow puppet newbie (and an exceptional actor/director in her own right), Jenn O’Donnell, I stumbled through a thrilling puppet ride. 

Puppets in Progress: Pokey & Double D

In helping to build and operate the puppets and by watching other incredible puppeteers I had the chance to work alongside, I discovered the magic of bringing life to inanimate objects. Literally giving them breath. Making them cry, laugh, struggle, dance…all through a heightened attention to movement details, patience and an intimate connection to breath. Giving them a heartbeat.

As a four-year-old, I knew the power of the Muppets. They are still a strong and magical force in my life, and I am the proud owner of my own Muppet puppet, Figgy Pudds. And this new puppet performing experience reenergized my belief in the immediacy of theater and the idea that big ideas can be conveyed simply in small ways—with well-crafted syntax and a wine bottle with cardboard arms. These creatures come to life and make us care. Deeply. Make us laugh. Profoundly.

Pokey contemplates the mesa (complete with cacti and twine tumbleweeds)

Puppets help us dream. Imagine. And examine the human potential and possibilities hiding in every single thing. It opens the door to all the possibility inherent in simple objects. A fork. An old skirt. The ever-magical refrigerator box. Look around at all the potential of your “things.” They can be so much more, if you let them.

 

 

 

duet

When I finally get around to making my coffee table book, it will be a photo journal series of shopping carts in abnormal places. Upside down in the median of a highway. Grazing among the geese. Abandoned, alone, out of context. Separated from their regular 500-cart pileup at the supermarket, these loners are somehow endowed with human traits.

I was stuck by this duet in particular—two carts locked in a lift. The potential to roll into the sea hangs in the air, yet here they sit inert, exhausted by the sheer mechanics of their relationship. Maybe it was my state of mind, but their precarious, yet unmoving state (paired with the sun rapidly falling behind the city) was a big old exhale of ennui.

And, hey, if I don’t get around to the coffee table book before you do, it’s all yours. Make it pretty. Make me proud.

Like a Dancing Bear

Casual Bear Friday

An annual block party is coming up. One that features a locally famous, recurring bear suit. It is in the spirit of this bear that I write.

123. Block party 2009. I make two wishes. One…glow sticks. Can we have them? Two…wouldn’t I love to hear “Total Eclipse of the Heart”? Yes. Why? Doesn’t matter. Wishes magically granted by block party gods. Everywhere kids on bikes. Kids running. Rascals. Watermelon. Watching the street go by. Watching the neighbor bust some moves with Stef.

And then, the bear. Usually Jay is the bear. Or Eric. They are not here and the bear must go on. Tonight, I am the bear. Bear slippers. Giant bear head. Little red bear neckerchief. All dolled up and waiting for the perfect song for the perfect bear entrance. It’s never comes. What would it even be? Nothing is worthy. I enter anyway. Look everyone, a bear! I want to do some mock breakdance moves. But 1) I can’t see and 2) the head is extremely heavy and prone to wobbling (nothing’s more disturbing than a bear losing her head).

I bounce. I bob. I sit and kick. Pump, pump, pump it up. I hope to not to clobber anyone. I can’t see, you see. Someone takes me by the bear hand and leads me to the DJ stand—about 100 steps and an eternity to go for a bear who can’t see. I have never been so hot and sweaty. Through the hot fog of the bear head, I understand that children want to dance with the bear.

I can barely lift my bear legs, but I reach out my hands, hoping to find kids reaching for the bear. I’m bouncing, waving, slowly as to not knock them over. My hand holds a toddler’s hand. A mom holds the toddler and we all dance. All of us happy, one of us an overheated bear.

Another little one runs away from me. The best always do. I barely see him shy
away. I kneel down for a friendly wave, but he’s gone already.

Stef and Tim lead me on the bear tour. Tim grabs my hand. We move into some kind of sexy bear ballroom. No one knows it’s a girl bear. I could be any bear. And good for that. Our moves teach the world that bears love everyone. Our kind of love is just that. A kind of love. Who can get mad at a bear in love?

Bopping. Bouncing. I crash into something. Someone. Frightened, frozen bear. I clobbered a child. I can’t believe it. I’ve clobbered a child. I reach out my blind bear hand to help.

I don’t hear the cries, “It’s not Jay! It’s not Jay.” (The bear, as you’ll remember, is usually Jay. Sometimes Eric.). It’s too late. I’ve been kicked in the nuts by Mike. Who kicks a bear in the nuts? Mike. Luckily, there is bear padding. And a heap of bear forgiveness. I mean…a bear getting kicked in the nuts. Funny. Okay, not a real bear. But a block party bear. Funny.

More bouncing, bopping. Sweatin’ and a-rockin’ to the oldies. I think I am dancing with Tim. But now it’s a new drunken friend, full of drunken bear love, and his drunken, bear-lovin’ friends. Everyone loves a bear. And a bear loves them back.
I pose for photos with kids. I can’t see the kids or the cameras, but I reach out a bear arm to love the whole street. In these strangers’ family photos, I am the aloof bear with the askew head.

I did a jig, Tim said.
“Let’s skip!” he said.

Everyone loves a skipping bear. Sweltering, swooning on the inside. I press on. Must lift bear legs. I skip. Laugh. Only a little. A bear doesn’t laugh. Or say she’s tired. Can’t tear down the 4th bear wall. Tim and Stef ask if I’m alright. I just wave and shake my bear hips.

“Yes!” my hips say, “yes, this bear is A-Okay!”
Bears don’t talk.

They lead me home. Well, to John and Jeremy and Stef’s home. Which is also this bear’s home. I go waving, dancing, until I reach bear freedom. Stef, laughing, thanks me. The bear has made another appearance, and everyone loves you, when you’re a bear. I am soaking wet, hair plastered, elated. A post-performance high, if you will. It was the performance of a lifetime. Perfect in it’s spontaneity and anonymity. And I knocked ‘em dead.

Break a Leg, Bear of 2010.


This story goes out to Bear. It’s also for Stef Bear, Jer Bear, John Bear, Er Bear, Jay Bear, Jo Bear, Amy Bear and D, Protector of Bears.

Bear Down Time