Portland!

Where do I even start? How do I explain what it feels like to smell these smells, feel this air? I first came to the Pacific Northwest in the summer of 1986, the smell of the morning haunted me from the start. The dried out grasses, baked all day in the sun, cooled over night, releasing fragrance from the moisture of the chilly night. It has always been this heady aroma for me, full of the romance of my first time here (I was at Evergreen State, studying Ecological Agriculture, which mostly meant I worked on an organic farm and learned how to graft fruit trees, which was very cool.) One whiff of this, and I feel at home. It's not the cute stores or the bike lanes that break my heart, it's the stuff that grows out of the ground, and the ways it smells.

Then put some of my deepest friendships on top of that, and, well, I cried from happiness a few times my first day here.  Some snapshots. James in Forest Park. 

Our first Portlandia moment. Just as I was about to explain what, in fact, Portland was, we arrived upon a white lady doing an interpretive dance photo shoot in a creek.

We met up with Kronda and Diane for ice cream at the new bougie place that opened after I left. Kronda and I have been friends since the early 90s and Diane and I were across the street neighbors and very close friends for many years. These are two of the best people on the planet. Weirdly (because I used to have a lot of parties where my friends met each other) they hadn't met each other til we got ice cream together.

Another shot with Kronda.

Rupert and James have been getting to know each other on the phone some leading up to this trip. They meet in person! My son has a fairy grandmother!

Jensi and Carmen (Carmen came home later; we didn't get a photo) bought a house! I got to see it! James and Jensi got to meet!

By the end of the day, we had all been up for 21 hours or so, and I was not even tired. Just happy.

Free book! Matilda!

As I was doing errands to get ready for my trip to Portland, I dashed into the Community Bookstore to pick up a copy of Matilda, because James and I are going to see it on Broadway in a couple weeks. What a delight that store is, even without the extra delight that followed once I found they had a copy. When I brought it to the register, and the woman who works there looked me up in the Buyer's Club, she smiled, handed me the book, and said, "It's free!"

The other customers looked a little envious, and Matilda and I pranced out. La la.

I stopped writing and weeded

I just spent four days writing a screenplay for Ripfest, and came out with a completely successful green card gay marriage Shakespearean comedic romp, and really really really missed seeing my family, and when I got done, they were at work, and I looked around at my life to see what it was I wanted to do, and what I wanted to do was weed my garden. Which might not look like much in this photo, but I should have taken a "before" shot, so you could see the magnitude of change.

Anyhow, no big thing, but after sitting at the computer steadily, it was a actually avery big thing. And there were a few blueberries. And I made pesto.

That's all.

Papi Prancercising

This.

Garlic at midnight

I got home at 11:55 PM, wired wired wired. I had just been at the first cold read through of the first draft of our screenplay (very successful, got lots of laughs, needs more work) and then had a long story session afterwards—much longer than I had anticipated—and got a little more scared about the rewrites ahead, and a little scared about being up and wired. But I did get home, and it was almost midnight, and I almost came right inside, and then on a whim I decided to cross the street and look at the night garden. On a second whim, I decided to dig up some my first ever head of garlic. And then I took a look at the tomatoes, and there were tons of almost ripe ones, and as I gave one a little squeeze, it came off in my hand, and so then I had a head of garlic and a tomato, and it was midnight in Brooklyn, so I went inside and saw my family for the first time in what feels like days.

No joy on this day

It's not actually true that there was no joy, but I decided not to pursue my own selfish joy on the day that our city and our country took to the streets to honor Trayvon Martin and protest the unjust trial that Zimmerman received. 

Making a movie part 1

Met my actors (Talented! Beautiful!) Met my director (Talented! Interesting! Communicative!) Saw my locations (Beautiful, but not so inspiring....) and spent the night trying to come up with something that will hold together. I got lots of great ideas, none are the real deal yet, but several are probably the ones that will lead to the real one.

I'm not feeling the selfish part of the joy, because it's all about the team—Steve and I have the first job, to come up with a script and make it really great, in service to the actors, directors, location, etc. So I don't mind forgoing the selfish part of my practice for a couple days, because I absolutely feel the joy of engaging in the work I most love to do.

I took notes on note cards all day. I wrote down things people said, things I thought of, things I saw. I came home at night and spread them out and started to free associate these into movie plot ideas. Trying to use the specific talents of the actors I have, and the specific gifts of the locations.

OK, enough blogging. I need to write this movie.