In Edmonton where the winters are very cold and can last into early April the lilacs bloom heartily and they are sweet smelling. A childhood memory is cutting down the tall stalks from the ancient bushes across the street from my home. I made leis and crowns of the little blossoms that I plucked from the frond, like pinching bits of cotton candy from the cone.
The common name of lilac is derived from the Persian word for blue. Here is why:
Where they grow native, a lilac bush will appear in ordinary spaces making them extra-ordinary for a short period of time. I’ve seen a single bush soften the harshness of concrete and metal with the wanton splay of branches, laden with French white lilac blooms. Syrina Vulgaris is native to the Balkan Peninsula where it grows on rocky slopes. Perhaps it is the lilacs’ nature after all.
T.S. Eliot used lilac in two of his poems: “Portrait of a Lady” and “The Waste Land”. In the latter he recognizes the lilacs by…
April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
a little further on…
What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water.
This lilac that has captured my imagination since childhood is more than sweet and heady.
Can I just be honest and admit that sometimes I feel envy…
It’s a hard knock to realize that some dreams aren’t meant for me. This struck me not long after my husband died so suddenly. We spent years building towards a dream. We wanted a farm with our animals and to live simply on love, song and wine. We were getting so close to it, then poof!! All that disappeared one crazy day three years ago.
Sometimes you just want to say ~#$@0WTF!%8*
After convalescing for three years I’ve learned to breathe again. I had jobs to keep things going. I made new friends while some dropped off, and those who stayed have sustained me. Thank you. I learned new skills. I became an urban chicken farmer and a yoga teacher. My three dogs and I, along with sixteen chickens, are generally doing pretty good: there’s space to grow in our little home in South LA, I haven’t caught COVID, there’s internet, there’s food in the fridge and the ‘bestest’ is plumbing! I can turn on the taps and there’s cold water and hot water, and I can mix the two to a perfect temperature, under which I can luxuriate for a decent amount of time. I also have a boyfriend now who keeps me grounded when my head is in the clouds, or lifts me up when I am blue or feeling Holly Golightly’s “mean reds”.
I still beat myself up when I catch myself thinking, “Hmmmm. I wonder what it’s like to drive a new car, especially that sleek Tesla”, or that I’m working at some kind of artsy project. I can even envy a dog with its head out the window of a car while its floppy ears and gorgeous fur is blowing in the wind like some 70’s TV commercial for shampoo. I wish I was like that dog being taken out for a drive to the beach. “Rover” is beautiful and carefree.
I try to practice what I teach in my yoga classes to “Allow and accept where you are today”.
I recently finished reading “Advice on Dying and Living a Better Life” (authored by HRH, 14th Dalai Lama and edited by Jeffrey Hopkins). Rather than focus on what I don’t have, appreciate what I have, because life is short.
Another imagery that brings it home for me are these lyrics from “Time” by Pink Floyd.
So you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it’s sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in a relative way but you’re older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death
Every year is getting shorter never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over
Thought I’d something more to say
“time” by Pink Floyd
One form of happy is to keep my envy in check. Next time I witness something that stimulates my sense of lack, I pause and tell myself, “Some dreams aren’t meant for me”, then keep calm and ride on, hangin on in quiet desperation.
Sometime today, a man calls his doctor to say he’s running a little late. He is literally five minutes away, and that he’s already in the parking lot and he’s awfully sorry. He’s at the lobby where there are elevators to choose from – one side leads to the West Wing while the other goes to the East Wing.
An elderly man approaches the elevators. He is confused as to which elevator to take. Meanwhile, the other man, already late for his appointment, realizes he’s in the wrong building. He had transposed the building address of 2634 to 2143. The other building is another ten minutes away. Then there’s also the problem of finding parking. The elderly man looks to the left then to the right and then at the address written on a piece of paper. He shoots a helpless expression to the other guy.
Anxious that he is already late, and his doctor had arranged for a technician to come specifically to give him an EEG test, he asks the man where he needs to go. He verifies the name in the directory listing and escorts him to the correct elevator.
Driving to building 2634, he considers calling the office again to let them know he’s running later than he said earlier. He reconsiders. It wouldn’t make sense, because he had already said he was ‘only 5 minutes away’. That was twenty minutes ago.
When he walks into the doctor’s office, the EEG Technician named Melinda is clearly unimpressed. She is due at another location for more EEG exams after his appointment. The receptionist is uncomfortable. He attempts to ease the tension by first offering a box of See’s chocolates to her. She smiles generously with a warm ‘Thank you.’ Then he draws a second box of the same for Melinda, but her trite ‘Thank You’ and tense expression only deflates the mood. She marches him to an examination room.
Inside, she asks him to roll up the sleeve of his left arm, and as he does this he exposes a bruised and swollen forearm. ‘Where did you get that?’, she asks him. ‘At the Endocrinologist’s office when they tried to draw blood.’ he says. That was less than a week ago. Her left eyebrow lifts. ‘Really. Which one?’ Upon giving his answer she says, ‘My husband and I go to his office. He is an excellent doctor, but I never let them take my blood there.” She pauses. ‘They just don’t know how to draw blood over there. Someone should tell them.’
Having something in common between with them, he senses a softening of her eyes and her lips. She assures him the bruising and swelling will clear up. After an hour of running tests, before he leaves, she tells him that she has a sweet tooth and the chocolates are perfect.
A writer friend recently had a zoom performance of her play, a lovely piece about the power of grief and recovery. The last scene is a reprise of the top of the play, flashed back in time, full of the ugly and raw emotion of loss. Several “critics” urged her to expunge the scene. “It isn’t needed,” said one. “Anticlimactic,” said another. What they were saying was that the script didn’t follow the classic Greek model of rising action, climax, and denouement. Or, the penis model, as I like to call it.
Instead, the writer used a circular structure for the play. Which, some argue, is a more organic way of writing for the female storyteller. Yes, you start at point A and return there, but the protagonist hasn’t necessarily “learned something” or “changed,” which are requirements for the official “circular” plot. The writer just finished the story. Period.
The writer rejected the criticism, by the way.
Sticking to the Aristotelian structure has become even more formulaic in recent decades, something I call the “Save the Cat” effect. The popular book by Blake Snyder has become a template for most movies and far too many plays. It’s gotten to a point that I can pretty much predict exactly what will happen next – something I do, by the way, that drives my husband crazy.
It’s a South Korean episodic drama about a poor little rich girl out paragliding and gets blown across the DMZ to North Korea. It’s wonderful – funny, not too scary, full of social and political commentary, but mostly a love story. It’s also incredibly well written by veteran screenwriter Park Ji-Eun.
The show is a worldwide hit. Viewers in India are reportedly learning Korean. A fan in the Phillipines has written a song about the show. Even Chicago Cubs Manager David Ross is a fan.
And here’s the thing: I could never predict what happens next. I was continuously surprised and delighted. As a writer, I kept asking myself, “how did she do that?”
It’s not just me. A playwriting pal had exactly the same reaction. Neither of us can figure out the structure of the story, yet we couldn’t stop watching. What magic is Park Ji-Eun using? And more importantly: can we steal it?
My playwright pal and I have decided to make a formal study of the series, each of us taking one episode and dissecting it, then comparing notes. We’ll likely be applying whatever structure secrets Ji-Eun uses in our next plays.
And here’s the good news: there’s rumors of a second season!
Are you a circular writer? Have you rejected Aristotle’s triangle of plot structure? Have you gotten pushback? Is there a better way to tell a story?
And can you figure out the structure in “Crash Landing on You” on Netflix?
Kitty Felde is a playwright, podcaster, and children’s mystery writer. Her second book in The Fina Mendoza Mysteries series State of the Union comes out this summer.
I love a good monologue. My first full length play, 99 Impossible Things, was FULL of them. Too many, in fact. Far too many. I directed and produced that play in January and February of 2011, and at the time I was working at Garry Marshall’s theatre in the Valley. He read the play, and, in a few margin notes, reminded me that while monologues are great, don’t underestimate the power of a look or a gesture or silence to express everything a half page monologue can, almost always more succinctly, and sometimes in a way that words can never reach.
I’ve tried to keep that in mind when approaching each new play; though I never write a play without that ONE monologue. I have to have ONE somewhere. Maybe it’s a bad habit.
Harold and the Sea Monkey in 99 Impossible Things.
It’s now been 10 years since 99, the first thing I directed and produced and wrote in LA. The first thing that was unequivocally mine. There was nowhere for me to hide. Even though I had amazing collaborators, designers, and actors, there was no doubt that this THING you were seeing would be blamed on me.
Let’s be clear that it wasn’t a particularly good play. It was probably too long. It probably had too many characters and storylines. The monologues, as much as I still love them, were a bit on the nose. Playwright me NOW would rip it apart.
A sea monkey was a character. And it was about a group of people processing grief.
The critics as a whole did not enjoy this play. And I got a lot of crap for being 25 and having the gall to both write AND direct a play while being a woman. I had to process the feeling of working very hard and putting my own money and all this time into something that could be so easily dismissed. But it was an exercise in gratitude.
People were coming and watching and having thoughts about the play, after all. Writing things about it. Spending their time on it. It’s really the most a writer ever wants. I made a lot of people cry at the end of the play. Always my goal. I did have a lot of people personally tell me how much they connected to it, enjoyed it, were touched by it. So while I didn’t get a critic’s choice in the LA Times, I got encouragement to keep going, and a lesson in the importance of and sticky art of criticism.
One of the best notes I got was from a professional psychologist, a family friend, who told me how truthful it was, to the process, to grieving specifically, and how could I already know those things?
My answer right now is that I think most of us already know these things in our bones. Some of us are forced to confront things sooner than some. And some spend their whole lives avoiding the silence that will make them have to face, well…anything uncomfortable.
In the play, the most uncomfortable character comes in the form of a Sea Monkey, who silently haunts the character of Harold, and whose silence and final lines of the play speak volumes more than many of the monologues. A Sea Monkey who represents something that was lost, something that will never return, no matter how much you want it.
This is a piece of a monologue from the play that feels most resonant right now to me:
“There’s this spot on the wall in my kitchen – I have this awful olive green paisley wall paper from the ‘60s that was there when I moved in – and there’s this spot where the seam is, where they ran outta paper and patched it, and the design doesn’t quite match up, the little dots and twirls just end abruptly, sorta lost to the infinite void all of a sudden. That’s how things are usually – there’s no smooth exit, no gradient shading us out. So whenever I feel like I might explode, I sit on the counter and I stare at that spot in the kitchen, and I try forget.” – Harold, 99 Impossible Things
I feel like I’m living in that weird patched up wallpaper right now. And, unlike my character Harold, I’m trying not to forget.
To make sure I don’t forget, I decided to create and produce a play again on my own. Well, a kind of play. A play through the mail. A play made up of interactive fiction, audio drama, found objects, and phone calls. A “play” of disparate voices, alone, trying to find what is lost.
An image from Spite & Malice, the postal play.
I’m a little bit terrified of putting this into the world. It’s deeply personal, I’m processing things as I’m creating, and it’s a kind of thing I haven’t really created before. It doesn’t feel particularly safe. I can’t promise anything when it comes to the outcome.
But when I did 99, it was also new to me. I’d written it as a final project in college and my little theatre group and I put up our college production. That was scary, but it was a safe space. I could easily dismiss it as a thesis, as a work in progress. Producing it as a main stage show in 2011 seemed to be saying: hey all, come look, this is finished, come have thoughts.
And so, here I am again.
And yeah, there will be monologues.
Perhaps, though we need a reminder from the Great himself:
I had a reviewer friend come see 99 and wrote me an email comparing it to The Time of Your Life by Saroyan. I still have not read that play, but I offer this quote, to those who could use it. It is a cousin in sentiment to a the Mary Oliver poem “When Death Comes” by Mary Oliver, which I read at my grandmother’s funeral on December 23, 2020:
In the time of your life, live—so that in that good time there shall be no ugliness or death for yourself or for any life your life touches…Have no shame in being kindly and gentle but if the time comes in the time of your life to kill, kill and have no regret…In the time of your life, live—so that in that wondrous time you shall not add to the misery and sorrow of the world, but shall smile to the infinite delight and mystery of it.” ― The Time Of Your Life
I have no concluding thought for this. This monologue has already been long enough. There is, perhaps, no conclusion to draw from the moment we’re all in except to keep creating, keep living, keep doing and being the best you can.
Yesterday, I attended a wonderful webinar hosted by Hedgebrook, “Exit Strategies: How to End a Poem” with Chet’la Sebree, author of Mistress, Field Study. Ms. Sebree generously shared her jewels and knowledge with us. The atmosphere was inviting. Community in Hedgebrook webinars is really comforting and uplifting. To write together is nice once in a while. We learned more than “endings”. The webinars are recorded and there is always a “holding space” segment after the webinar where the participants who can stay have more time to discuss the art or any other things with the instructors. This is the part that makes the community so comforting and inspiring.
We worked on exercises using poetry that we had already written or new pieces. Below is a new piece that I started in the webinar but seems to be evolving. Poetry has been something that I have written and read all my life; something I make a point to continue to study – it never hurts to work on craft.
Dying Continents
The earth shook ferociously Tsunamis terrorized the coastlines Whole towns destroyed Whole futures washed away in an instant
When things shift There is no time to steady yourself against the moving tectonic plates forcing new terrain Or time to gather the energy to do more than stand
I am bound to the memory Of the theft Of things that cannot be restored Or salvaged Of organs failing Of bleeding out damned spot
We wait for endings, songs and measured grace Grace to cover Grace to continue Did we forget Or simply let it go
They say there is a new continent Built on the scars They say there is new contentment In unchartered lands New content In place of what had been
Literary Partners is doing a marathon reading of Toni Morrison’s book “Song of Solomon” on YouTube. You can hear it read live if you sign up for the free event and you can also donate to Literary Partners when you register. Tomorrow, 2/28/2021, Part Three will also be read live. You must register to attend the live event at https://litpartners2020.org/toni-morrison/ .
A group of writers are reading it; it’s quite captivating and wonderful. The reading has such a flow to it. I have binge-watched television shows but this is a whole new way to experience the reading of a book. I am loving the difference in each reader yet the singular magnificence of Ms. Morrison’s work.
Readers: Brit Bennett, Edwidge Danticat, Hilton Als, Jacqueline Woodson, Jason Reynolds, Jennifer Egan, Jesmyn Ward, Lorrie Moore, Louise Erdrich, Margaret Atwood, Ocean Vuong, Robin Coste Lewis, Tayari Jones, Tommy Orange and Yaa Gyasi.
Introductions by: Kevin Young, Andrea Davis Pinkney and Lisa Lucas.
There is always discussion on the right or wrong/ness of other ethnicities writing stories outside of their ethnicity. As writers, we all know that you have to write the stories that want to be told through you. Not long ago, black stories were only allowed to be told through white writers as black writers were considered “less than able” to tell our own stories. A classic black story is Sounder which garnered both Golden Globe and Academy Award Nominations for the late Cicely Tyson, an extraordinary actress who lived with purpose. Had the story not been written, she would have never had the opportunity. The white author of Sounder admits the story came from his black school teacher.
“But one night at the great center table after he had told the story of Argus, the faithful dog of Odysseus, he told the story of Sounder, a coon dog. It is a black man’s story, not mine. It was not from Aesop, the Old Testament, or Homer. It was history – his history.” – Sounder by William H. Armstrong
The unfortunate thing was that author couldn’t seem to remember his teacher’s name to give him actual “story by” credit. Undoubtedly, the story of Sounder was to be shared, had to be shared… And, we are grateful for this sharing.
Serendipitously, I caught a Close/Up with the Hollywood Reporter Writers Roundtable on YouTube hosted by Scott Feinberg with: Aaron Sorkin (The Trial of the Chicago 7), Emerald Fennell (Promising Young Woman), Radha Blank (The Forty-Year-Old Version), Sam Levinson (Malcolm & Marie), and Kemp Powers (One Night in Miami*, Soul), the segment discussed some interesting insights on working through the Pandemic safely, directing their own screenplays (*One Night in Miami is directed by Regina King), the change in how the work is seen by the audience and the question of who should write what. The writers are very candid.
The challenges will not go away over night or over decades- it has seemed -but we must try to do our best in telling our stories and pushing to not limit ourselves or the work. Being Black can mean, in a lot of cases, that we are mixed with other things; we have the right to write those stories too.
As a people, we are affected by the mutation of Eugenics and how that has wounded us – from our ancestors to ourselves and to our sons and daughters. Sterilization / castration without consent is something that still happens.
“Then he grabbed stuff, this and that and that and this and this and that and that and those – Scissors. He inserted them and CLIPPED!!Babies, I thought of babies. I looked him in the eye, this white man who was raping me with stuff made of steal. He looked at me. An expression. A small detectable grin. ‘Oops!’ he said.” – Oops! by Robin Byrd
Some of these stories are hard to tell; we wonder why it’s still happening. Fighting for equality promised to us by law is exhausting…
“but bein alive & bein a woman & bein colored is a metaphysical dilemma/ i havent conquered yet/ do you see the point my spirit is too ancient to understand the separation of soul & gender/” – For Colored Girls who have Considered Suicide when the Rainbow is Enuf by Ntozake Shange
We have the right to tell the truths of our people and to write about how we are surviving more things than being shot in the streets, in our homes… We have the right to be awake without apology…
We also have the right to walk in love without that being mistaken as a pass for more abuse…
