Seven Impossible Things

This marvelous book blog has been interviewing all the Blue Rose Girls as part of their series, Seven Impossible Interviews Before Breakfast, and today was my turn. The wonderful profile Jules and Eisha wrote is of a person so exciting and adventurous sounding that I wish I was half so interesting. A thousand thanks to them, and to Grace who hooked us up! Be sure to read the other articles, they are fascinating.

http://blaine.org/sevenimpossiblethings/?p=602

the Tropicana

On Thursday we return to the Tropicana showroom.







The large portion of the stage which is the load in elevator takes us up from the basement












and onto the stage, which turns out to be the second largest in the country





with a house of a couple thousand seats.








The Tropicana crew quickly begins to put our set together.





I work on setting up the dressing rooms and repairing costumes.







The mountain of dancers' tights.









I repair the rubber butt costume for Floyd, the plumber who is not "crack- free".




Upstairs on stage the set goes together in just a few hours. Projected illustrations are by our friend Tony Baloney.







The cast hurries for a last run through of the show. Matt, the musical arranger, keyboardist, and "Floyd".







Karl "the Crack-Free Handyman" naturally strikes the title pose even when he's stressing out.










I have to pull cables on stage right, I watch the show on the backstage monitors. It goes off terrifically.


We are all relieved when it's over. I celebrate by watching the sunset from a comfy bed in the hotel room. Then I sleep for 12 hours.

Atlantic City

On Wednesday we drove to the Tropicana, moved into the hotel, and unloaded the show onto a giant elevator to be taken up to the stage and set up the next day. Afterwards, a walk on the rainy boardwalk.

loading out

Packing up our set, loading it out the back door of the Garde stage and into a 16 foot Budget truck.

the Garde

The Garde in New London. Karl's production company opened his latest original musical, The Crack-Free Handyman, here last week. I love this quirky theater. I filled in as a stage hand on stage right.

Dr. Youtube

Though it came out of a practical need, I realize how ridiculous it is to have videos of one's hand all over the internet. But it turns out I'm far from the only one showing off injuries, filming pin removals, and uploading clips of my recovery. Injured bodies all over the world are doing the same thing. The interesting part is people watch these things, and find each other because of it. I now have friends with broken hands to share information and sympathy with in multiple countries thanks to Youtube. Here is my latest. Sorry about the dreadful death rattle of my camera.

hand

This was my hand on 4-9-07, and it looks about the same today. The scars faded fast, though they are still tough, sore, and thick like leather. I have to keep moving it all the time so it doesn't freeze into a claw. Drawing is getting close to feeling normal, with only mild limitations in subtle movements, and I can do it for longer periods of time without pain and numbness.

The Big Read

The drummers of the Hill School marching band after some raucous fanfare to kick off The Big Read.

This year the New Haven International Festival of Arts and Ideas is sponsoring this NEA project to "restore reading to the center of American culture". They've invited Connecticut children's book authors and illustrators like me to read their books on the opening weekend of the Festival on June 9-10. Yesterday they began giving out hundreds of copies of To Kill a Mockingbird on the New Haven Green.

5th graders rock

This morning I did my picture book presen- tation for 3 classes of 5th graders at the Betsy Ross Arts Magnet School. It was incredible. The library was decorated with big prints of my paintings. The students had read my books and came prepared with the best questions I've ever been asked by anyone, young or old.

I went through the steps of illustrating from manuscript to printed book. I showed the endless notes and revisions. I drew animals based on my audiences descriptions. I threw in a little baton twirling, and surprised them with the fact The Pig of the Pig took 2 1/2 years to illustrate. They are an unbelievably attentive crowd. They give me their own drawings they hope will inspire me, and beautiful thank you letters.

And in the end, I got donuts to boot! Many thanks to Erik Brown, and Steph Kelly who has been helping me develop and organize this program (and took the photos!), as well as Mr. Naples and the awesome teachers of BRAMS, and especially the students. More pictures here.

Easter eggs

I made these for the Blue Rose Girls' Easter party on Sunday. It's been a long time since I dyed eggs, I almost forgot how. Hiding them for the Blue Roses in Libby's Mystic garden was even more enjoyable.

It was all in childish fun, but I take to heart the symbolism as I look for the first steps out of my wintery hibernation.

interlude

My hand is doing great. I still have to tend to it constantly, and it hurts more as it heals more, so I continue to be under the spell of pain medication. I'm having a lot of trouble remembering things, keeping a train of thought going for more then a minute, following directions, or making it to appointments at the right place and the right time. I apologize to everyone and beg your patience a while longer.

But slowly but surely I'm making my first steps back into the world of the functioning. With it comes a lot of reorganizing, catching up and making decisions. I am relearning how to write and draw, and how to speak again, which strangely I couldn't do while my hand was stuck. The blog is taking a backseat while I figure all this out. Please stand by.

blue roses

I've been hanging with my Blue Roses a lot lately since I can drive again. Four of us gathered in Mystic at Libby's bright new yellow apartment right after my surgery. Here is Alvina, Libby, and Anna on the Mystic bridge.

I am very lucky to have these women in my life. I'm ever amazed by the support, inspiration and friendship that is shared among these six very different people. The Blue Rose roots started in children's book publishing but have grown much deeper then any group or club.

Alvina posted about me and my secret scarabs on the Blue Rose Blog. I was wondering why this discreet blog suddenly got so popular. Anyone who knows Alvina can imagine how especially flattering it is to be written about by her.

a stitch in time

On Wednesday Lisa took out half of my stitches, and on Thursday morning I took out the rest myself. Yes, me! Who previously would pass out at a drop of blood at the drop of a hat.

On the same day I found an elderly woman who had fallen badly on the side walk and broken her teeth. I was able to help her without passing out, too. This makes me really really happy.

My hand, two weeks after the surgery, with one stitch left to go.

voila!

A chalk board door, that holds magnets. Because you just can't not have one.

door

Layer three: a special sort of black paint...

winter and spring

Saturday was the strangest day. It was the very first real snow of the winter, and my first robin sighting of the spring.

My neighbors Angel and Gio made a snowman. In 7 years I've never seen a snowman on our block. It's a really good one, too.

door

Layer two: iron imbued paint.

scars can be useful

Here's why I love blogs-- I might not have noticed my scar's similarity to Harry Potter's lightning bolt scar had a couple readers not pointed it out.

A little googling brings up a gold mine of mythological references, and makes me love my scar even more. Yes, I love my scar.

I like the Harry Potter connection. His scar is proof of his extraodinary survival skills. It warns him of danger. It's probably what makes him able to talk to snakes. And it's a bigger part of the story then is yet known- Rowling has said that the last word of the series will be "scar".

Snips from an article I found cached, by mythologist Maggie Macary:

Harry’s scar is the great symbol of the series.... The scar is his metaphor, his most noticeable feature, the one thing he likes best about his appearance, and the one thing that makes him recognizable... A mark that reveals Harry has been opened to the world, diverted in his predictable life path, bringing complexity and a diversity of meaning into his life... The lightening bolt has deep mythological and symbolic relevance in all cultures, representing power and strength and the fertile creativity of masculine energy as well as inward, meditative power and vision.

The scar is a body’s permanent memory of its breaching, a mark of violation and yet also an endurable mark of transformation. The etymology of the word scar comes from the Greek, eschara meaning hearth. In ancient Greece, the eschara was a portable hearth that stood on graves and allowed burnt offerings to the Earth-gods and to the Underworld deities. In associating scar with eschara, a wound becomes an offering to the Underworld, a sacrificial act to placate and purify demons, ghosts and chthonic forces. The scar becomes the mark of that offering, a never-disappearing symbol of one’s sacrifice. Harry enters the story scarred. It is the essence of who he is, and it means that he is never innocent. Innocence in this sense means unmarked, untouched, whole. Harry is not whole.

Harry’s scar is the mark of a deep sacrificial darkness, the death of his parents and a childhood of despair and abuse. The wise wizard Dumbledore knows better than to heal and remove Harry’s scar. “Scars can be useful,” he remarks sagely as he compares one of his own scars to a map. In fact, Harry’s scar turns out to be a quite handy map as it ties Harry to Voldemort in a deep intimacy that exists only between the twin hero and villain in the fairy tale world.

Thanks clever blog readers!

(drawing by Mary Grand Pre, of course)

zag zig

I've had this Oxalis plant for 17 years. It's followed me to all but one of the 9 places I've lived in that time. I've had hundreds of plants, but this one is a trooper and can take all the draught and starvation I inflict upon it. Because it's basically a weed, but that doesn't matter to me. I love how it opens its leaves in the day, and folds them up like umbrellas at night, and how when I've been especially good to it, it thanks me with a few white flowers.

Joseph Campbell, quoting some other great man, said that when you are near the end of your life and look back over it, it appears as if it was planned, like a work of art that fits beautifully together, made by a master craftsman who knew the outcome from the beginning.

When I was seven living in suburban New Jersey, I never would have believed that I would be a teenager living on a horse farm in Vermont. When I was selling gourmet fruit to skiers, I never would have believed I would be lucky enough to go to RISD. When I flew away to spend my junior year in Rome I never would have believed the boyfriend I left behind would still be my boyfriend 12 years later. When I walked into a New Haven head shop 2 years ago to buy a tiny silver hand pendant in commemoration of my first performance as a fire spinner, I never would have believed I would break my hand playing roller derby and end up working in that shop.

But it all happened.

Soon after I began wearing the hand of Fatima, I added to it a tiny snake charm, because I'd learned that "Linda" is derivative of the German word for serpent, and I liked that so much better then the Spanish "pretty".

I met an actor who was wearing the same snake charm. I asked him why he wore his, and he said it represented the unexpected twists and turns of life. I liked that too.

I still wear these two, though the hand lost its tiny red stone somewhere in the time after I had the pins taken out of my hand. I keep looking at the pattern of them together, and consider how many of the most important life changing transitions come not from deliberate decisions we fret over and painfully make, but the tiny, minuscule daily choices we barely notice. A particular word spoken to a particular person at a particular time gets you a new job, leaving a place one minute late gets you on the train your future best friend is on, stepping to the right rather then the left puts you into a pile of fallen skaters and you break your hand.

A person could stress about this, or feel great relief. So much of our lives isn't controlled by us, so there is no need to worry about always making the right decisions.

"Fate doesn't hang on a wrong or right choice. Fortune depends on the tone of your voice." So says Divine Comedy.