Category Archives: travel

poetry, rhyme, travel

“Travel”

The railroad track is miles away,
And the day is loud with voices speaking,
Yet there isn’t a train goes by all day
But I hear its whistle shrieking.

All night there isn’t a train goes by,
Though the night is still for sleep and dreaming,
But I see its cinders red on the sky,
And hear its engine steaming.

My heart is warm with friends I make,
And better friends I’ll not be knowing;
Yet there isn’t a train I’d rather take,
No matter where it’s going.

– Edna St. Vincent Millay

There was a time when I thought that to write poetry in the rhythm, form, and shape shown above was not only my highest ambition, it was my only one. I was so prolific in it – I wrote 365 poems (ANIMA’S DAYS) plus a bunch more, three plays (FAUST adaptation, GILGAMESH, CLYTEMNESTRA SPEAKS) , and a 200-page thesis (TIME TO RHYME) in that exact poetic form. And that’s only what I remember. I was the monotonous and versatile balladeer. I still have a lot of affection for that structure, if only because we’ve traveled so far together – but these days, to make myself write like that now, I have to, well, make myself write like that.

There isn’t even a category for “rhyme” on this blog. I’ll create one, for old time’s sake, but I don’t know how much it’ll get used. I have been trying to write a tetrameter sonnet lately, and it’s killing me. Not that I can’t do it – I can do it easily – but I can’t do it WELL. I used to use that form so thoughtlessly, but it was like using a blender to brush your hair.

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a propos of nothing, travel

The Federalist Crosswalks

One of the good things about moving around the US like this is that you get to see the best features of many different cities. Denver has diagonal crosswalks in its downtown streets. Portland has a Free Square within which all the public transportation costs nothing. In Ashland, drivers, including truck drivers, stop for all pedestrians, even at green lights. In Austin, I lost my preconceptions about Texas driving, when I saw several pickups back out of driveways like they were putting babies to bed.

And the air and water are different, too. If I’d never gone to Ithaca, I’d never know how curly my hair could be, and if I’d never come to Denver, I’d never know the true meaning of dry skin.

I moved into my new apartment yesterday, with all the cast, which is why I’m musing on the nature of travel. I have a Murphy bed which folds down out of the wall, three closets, and a view of downtown. It took me about twenty minutes to figure out where the bed was. When it’s unfolded, I sleep on a slight rake, with my feet lower than my head. It makes me feel like I’m camped out on the slopes of some mountain with the Fellowship. This may also be because I’m on the sixth floor, which is the highest up I’ve ever lived.

My brother just arrived in Atlanta, and left me a message saying so – and wishing me well in “Denver, or wherever you are.”

Theater, or Wherever You Are.

By the way, my friend Alex, who I’ve known since I was 14, is tied with me for the number of cities we’ve both been in in 2008. (He’s a lawyer.) I knew there was a correlation between our professions.

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poetry, travel

My Uncle Travelin’ Sonnet, Deux

Another woes-of-the-road sonnet, from Will “Complaining” Shakespeare. Honestly, I wish he’d stop ripping off Bob Seger.

CXIII.

Since I left you, mine eye is in my mind;
And that which governs me to go about
Doth part his function and is partly blind,
Seems seeing, but effectually is out;
For it no form delivers to the heart
Of bird of flower, or shape, which it doth latch:
Of his quick objects hath the mind no part,
Nor his own vision holds what it doth catch:
For if it see the rudest or gentlest sight,
The most sweet favour or deformed’st creature,
The mountain or the sea, the day or night,
The crow or dove, it shapes them to your feature:
Incapable of more, replete with you,
My most true mind thus makes mine eye untrue.

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politics, travel

In the continued series of blogging about the war on Iraq from the nation’s bars,

I was in Golden, Colorado over the Christmas break. Golden is the home of the Coors Brewery, and also the home of Kersti, a friend from Ashland. We were at the Buffalo Rose – a biker bar with dollar bills with tacks in them stuck all over the ceiling – if you throw the dollar up and it sticks, you get a free drink.

And I talked to a veteran of the first Iraq war. He enlisted to get an education and to travel, and served for two years. His politics had now shifted to the point of being against this conflict.

We talked about union politics in the merger between Coors and Miller – Miller is unionized, apparently, but Coors isn’t, and the Coors employees don’t want the union because their benefits already exceed what the union guarantees – and then we talked about Iraq.

I told him that wherever I had gone in the US for the past six months, people started talking about the war, and he agreed that it was on everyone’s mind. His perspective was that the only people who weren’t willing to consider that the war might be a mistake, or its continuation might be a mistake, were those whose conviction in it came from religious beliefs.

The next day, as Kersti and I were driving back to Denver to have breakfast with the Millans, under falling snow, we heard the news about the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, and mourned the death of another moderate political leader.

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quotes, travel

The dream is forming into a chain.

“…Memory becomes a cataract that threatens to drown her, and Inez Prada wakes with a cry. She isn’t in a cave. She’s in a suite at the Savoy in London. She casts a sideways glance at the telephone, the hotel notepad and pencils, to reassure herself. Where am I? An opera singer often doesn’t know where she is or where she’s just come from.”
– from INEZ, (Carlos Fuentes)

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theater, travel

Destination Theater

I met a woman from Maryland in the lobby of P&P last night, who had flown in from out of town just for a few vacation days to see shows at the DCTC. I shared this with some of the house staff and they were pleasantly surprised. But Denver has enough shows going on in rep right now that, like Ashland, it can be a real destination.

You can’t see eight plays in four days, and they don’t go to OSF’s extent of changing over shows on different stages – here, one play plays on one stage till it closes – but you can still make quite a weekend of it. Denver also has the attractions of natural outdoor activities. If they can maintain an audience from out of town as well as their local community, they’re in great shape.

“I love this town,” the woman said. “I come back all the time.”

I think that’s pretty impressive for a regional theater with the weather and transportation problems this airport must have, especially now.

Come to think of it, I remember Stephen flying to see 1001 here, from LA. But that was when he was looking at it for NOTE. This woman wasn’t a theater person – she was just a working professional on vacation. That’s even better.

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Lydia, theater, travel

Colorado Dreamin’

I don’t know what to say first about Denver, Colorado. It’s been almost exactly 24 hours.
Keywords:

What do you mean “The mile-high city?” – Isn’t that just an expression? – does that mean you join the mile-high club just by…in the environs? – altitude sickness: being so light-headed I couldn’t stand up – going to St. Mark’s and The Thin Man with Sarah Rose and not needing to drink a thing to act weird because I was so dizzy – having a hot chocolate miraculously cure all my symptoms – meeting a Moroccan businessman who assured me he had stayed in all the cities of the US and Europe and preferred Denver to all of them “because you can live a relaxed life-” heatedly discussing civic policy and smoking bans – talking about Judaism and Islam and what it means to be religious – faith, doubt – I can’t go anywhere in this country without bringing up Israel – sleeping on S.R’s red loveseat in her apartment on St. Paul Street –

And today: riding heated buses down Colfax Avenue, which Sarah Rose says used to be the old road all the way to the coast, yes, my coast, passing bars and clubs and coffeehouses, all independent – downtown and the 16th Street Mall – tea and nervousness – walking through the archway of glass of the performing arts complex and realizing I was getting closer to the “theater” end when I saw a folding table propped up against a wall – there’s never anywhere to store all those folding tables! – S.R. dropping me off like my first day of kindergarten –

-and the whirlwind tour of the actual DCTC, in two levels, from administrative offices to scene shops, paint rooms and costume props – meeting new people in every shop, in every department, all so friendly and welcoming, all shaking my hand. And the ROOMS. The Rooms of Rehearsal.

Beautiful, naturally lit rehearsal rooms, color-coded by door (we’ll be staying in the Yellow Room) enormous, unfathomably large, clean, white and brick loft-rooms like eyries, like artists’ studios, like chapels, like the Room of Requirement in Harry Potter, the walls banked with pianos. I said to the stage manager, “I think I’m going to have a heart attack.”

I’m one of the few assistant directors this company has ever hired and I really want to do a good job so that they’ll feel interested in bringing future ADs back for outside directors. I know how lucky I am to be here.

Really lucky.

Getting my picture put on a badge. Memorizing codes and numbers. Getting keys cut. (The director and I have our own office that we share with the other visiting directors.) Being warned by an ex-cop about the dangers of walking down Colfax Avenue at night – being told Wild Denver stories about a beggar punching a car at an intersection and a gun being pulled – walking a mile in the cold to find a BofA ATM only to find it doesn’t take deposits – walking a mile back to Leela’s on 15th and waiting here, writing, to see Pride and Prejudice, if I can get walked in tonight.

High school students are drinking enormous mugs of hot chocolate. One says to another, “Just because it makes your teeth bleed to look at me doesn’t mean you can’t give me a hug.”

I love this town.

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a propos of nothing, travel

Dispatches from the San Antonio Airport

(being delayedly posted from Denver, CO)

At Gervin’s Sports Bar at the San Antonio Airport, which has the soutitre “The Iceman Cometh,” you can Have Your Cake And Drink It Too, with a chocolate Tennessee/Jack Daniels Torte. This has to be my most favorite thing in all the airports of all this country.

The woman behind me is on a conference call. “How are you?” she asks, in a British accent.

“I’m fine,” I answer.

And it’s true. I feel great. I’m sad to leave Sari and Monica (who plays tonight at Luna, by the way) – sad to leave this great local music scene – but I got really excited strapping on my enormous Dakine backpack again.
I love to be going somewhere. And the uncertainty which used to terrify me is now part of the excitement. I’ve never seen or met the woman I’ll be staying with.

Sarah Rose asked me how to identify me at the Denver airport. I couldn’t think of what distinguishes me from the rest of the other girls wearing all black, but it’s definitely the backpack.

I walked into the Frontier terminal with a smile on my face like I’d just been handed the keys to the country. And now I’m eavesdropping on a conversation about international waste management. Or I think I am.

“I don’t understand,” the British woman says, ignoring me. “All the tasks are completed, the status is updated – what’s the holdup?”

She needs to start drinking some cake.

A family walks by, four football-fan kids and a dad, the two oldest boys wearing sweatshirts with flashing red lights on them.

A woman walks by, shrouded in a sweatshirt like she’s covering the severed head of her enemy beneath it.

A man walks by. He looks damn pleased with himself. I couldn’t say why, but he looks…pleased.

“Waste Management Process, page 2,” the woman says. “At the top you have headers for the different environments, right?”

I need a header for all my different environments. Modified from Zeppelin: Going to Colorado with an aching in my heart.

I write poetry furiously until it’s time to board.

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a propos of nothing, travel

“My bags are packed, I’m ready to go…”

As James Taylor says, “I don’t know when I’ll be back again.”

Some thoughts on wandering:

Packing is too easy now. I just zip up the backpack, put my computer away, and leave.

Sari and I were looking at ceramic pots in a shop in Austin and I was wondering if I would ever again be in a place to own ceramics. Jewelry boxes made out of cinnamon bark. Helicopters carved out of soda cans. And big green ceramic pots with matched lids. Moroccan leather wallets. Blue and white flowered tiles. I have to look at those things, take their beauty in, and just remember them. I don’t get to own them.

I don’t feel like I own anything any more. Even the possessions I thought I treasured don’t matter. I thought I had lost my watch in Los Angeles. This is a watch I bought with the first money I ever made from directing, in Germany, to remind myself that I could make a living at this job. It was expensive, a big black Fossil with an enormous leather strap.

Anyway, I didn’t care one way or the other about it being gone. Before I started all this traveling, before I had to leave behind all my books, and friends and family, I would have been really upset to lose it. But now, the fact that I am traveling around like this is proof of being a working theater artist – and with or without the watch, that can’t be lost.

I found it a few days later, at the bottom of my backpack, in San Antonio.

“Oh,” I said, “there’s my watch.”

I like feeling this way. I like knowing that I can’t really lose anything, or be lost. I like not having any keys on my keyring – just a red Cornell University bottle opener.

LaCona felt bad that I hadn’t unpacked my clothes into drawers the whole time I was there. But if you unpack, you have to pack. If you never unpack, you’re always ready to go.

As I was writing this, Kersti just called me, from her OSF educational tour with Todd – they’re wandering the San Juan islands of the coast of Victoria and Washington State, doing a two-person version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Another wanderer.

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