I mean, can you have this much stuff? Surrounded I was. Walls coming down on me. The smells of her and dust and filth. Uncluttered I am now after disposing of… so much. Yes, it’s freeing. I’m pondering, releasing, transitioning more every day. Write a play, some say. It’s too soon… feels hinky. Or is it? I do feel the stuff zooming, hiding when I turn to peer around at it, skirting my subconscious. God dammit. I know there will come a day when I sit down in the freshly laundered purple pjs she bought me from Bloomies, my first, but where she spent her young professional years shopping. Sitting in a newly painted room with slide guitar playing in the bg to cut the unnatural silence of me not yelling because she was hard of hearing. It feels usury to think about it now. The wound is too deep. It’s too soon. But i know, someday, I’ll write. And it pains me now because it means I am that much farther away, removed, which makes me madder — even as I know I’ll be cherishing, paying homage to her… It’ll be from a distance.

Charlotte, as she preferred to be called, died peacefully on March 18th at the tender age of 84. It is not my intention to be flippant in the use of “tender age” rather than “ripe old age”. My dearest friend didn’t want anything to do with old people and became as if five-years-old again in her later years. In fact, I was wont to call her Baby Charlotte, a nickname she had when she was a much younger woman, before I knew her.

Charlotte said, “I’m not going to die tonight” and I’m guessing through the sheer force of her indomitable spirit, she did survive until 12:35am on the 18th. I am devastated. Once the shock wore off that first day, I felt as if a rocket launcher sent a missile through my chest. The wound was both gaping and terrible.

She got mad at me when I got fat and grew my hair out, as I was no longer “chic”. But, in general, to her, I moved the sun and the stars. I was the smartest kid on the block. Who is going to ever think that of me again, I wonder… Who am I, if not seen through Charlotte’s eyes?

We joined households seven years ago and she was the first person I spoke to in the morning and the last person I said “sleep well” to every night. Charlotte was my best friend. She was also the person to whom I read scenes and dialogue and talked about conflict and action and plays and life and politics and animals and controversial issues in the news.

Charlotte studied at the Pasadena Playhouse back in the day, did summer stock, and moved to New York where she wore a mink hat with a black ribbon, high heels, red lipstick, gloves, and worked for an esteemed theatrical producer. Later, in Los Angeles, she worked as a casting assistant on many recognizable films and television shows.

While I mourn my friend and find myself surrounded by silence, I wonder, now who is going to read my work? Who is going to be my sounding board, my confidant, my champion, my best friend, my muse? I wonder if I’m strong enough to stand alone. I am certain she was prepping me for this day. God, I miss her.

Late last year I remember blogging about how much I look forward to January, when I am able to start a new play. I finished one yesterday. That isn’t, in itself, remarkable, but what was eye-opening to me was the experience of writing the first fourteen pages of the third act.

To explain, I was intent on writing three stand-alone one-acts that if performed together, could be an evening. I wrote the first act, first as an exercise in regional dialect, and then got serious. I struggled through the second act… I took myself out to dinner a week or so ago and outlined it and the third act, so what I found difficult was writing toward a determined end, and not just free associating.

I wasn’t supposed to write on Friday. I was supposed to take a break and do housework. However, I sat down at lunch, transcribed the bits I’d written on the back of envelopes and scratch paper and before the evening was out, I had fourteen pages.

I’ve never experienced a fourteen page day before. I don’t know what to think about it, except, maybe, those pages needed to be written. I’d elaborate, but I would just be putting words on a feeling that don’t need explaining. It’s enough that I wrote them and I’m glad the laundry could wait.

I’ve got a piece in rehearsal. I was asked several days ago to submit another, longer piece for consideration for production, based upon my query, which I did. I’m currently working on a trio of pieces that follow the same three female characters and have a well-revised draft of acts one and two. I’m moving into the third tomorrow. I have actors scheduled to come over and read them next Thursday and a reading in front of colleagues the first Saturday of February…

I was going to concentrate my posts this week on the piece I have in rehearsal, but that was until I realized that this writing period of mine ends in exactly two weeks. It ends abruptly, willy-nilly, until the next potentially uninterrupted period of time arrives at the end of the school year in June, the fifth month from now. I would add, I’m sad, but truth is, I’m relieved. I’ve been going at a pace…

I had cancer exactly thirteen years ago. Since then, due to my adverse reaction to one of the chemotherapy drugs, I’ve experienced one or two pneumonias a year. That is, until October of 2011 when my doctors sent me to UCLA after another week-long hospital stay on massive doses of Prednisone and intravenous antibiotics. Surprisingly, even to me, I’ve been pneumonia-free for fifteen months. Even as much as I’d like to say, it’s because I eat, exercise, and sleep well, it’s really because of the legal pharmaceuticals I take to stay well. I am grateful for them.

I saw this meme appear on my Facebook News Feed yesterday. It is attributed to Buddha:

“The trouble is, you think you’ve got time.”

I don’t. Do you?

Read one of the questions that make you go, hmm, last night. Words to the effect, why does anybody with taste care about what happens on an awards show?

I care because sometimes there is that perfect illuminating moment that reminds me who I am and why I do it.

I watched the 2013 Golden Globes. And then came Jodie Foster. And I wept. And I wondered at her unique intelligence. At her way of putting words together and her love, love, love. How she glowed with it.

“But it will be my writing on the wall: Jodie Foster was here, I still am, and I want to be seen, to be understood, deeply, and to be not so very lonely.”

“To be not so very lonely.” Oh. When I first started writing for the theater I was certainly not ready to be read, but I did feel like I was coming home. Where I would be accepted, embraced, invited in.

My how things have changed since I was a young actress and first read Moss Hart’s Act One. Who knew the home I longed for was 1930s Broadway?

For even as I pine, I am deeply alone in my writing space with canned classical softly playing in the background.

For I live today and today is not stuff made from my youthful dreams of theater. Yet, I will continue to write.

For even if there is nobody to who can see or understand me, Nobody can take away my longing to be not so very lonely.

Reflecting this morning after the Thanksgiving I enjoyed with my family yesterday, I realize November is my favorite month of the year. I love the colors, the scents, the food, the California weather, and coming together.

November feels different than other months to me. I love the symbolism of the coming winter solstice. For although I wish the days lasted forever, I feel an ache of anticipation for new beginnings.

New beginnings, November leads to December. Then, because my school calendar breaks for winter, I look forward to being at home writing the rough beginnings of a new play. Other months do not seem to gift me the same opportunity.

New beginnings, as I realize I’ve got a 10-minute play selected for publication and a second short in consideration for another. I’ve got a musical (or play with music) in consideration for a 2013 production. Another play is being read by two theater companies.

Many of my bounties are dreams and will remain there of this I am quite aware. However, I have been writing plays for over ten years now, and I’m getting better at it. My themes are expanding beyond myself and beginning to take on a global scope.

I haven’t met up with most of you for a while due to time, distance, and disability. However, I always look forward to my turn as blogger so I can in some small way communicate with you. I write this post with the hope that your Thanksgiving is as quietly joyful, reflective, and filled with a million bounties.

Somewhere Over The Rainbow performed by Carly Rose Sonenclar, X Factor 2012

It’s been four years since I last directed a stage production, not counting working with students. While I received excellent reviews back in 2008, the experience itself was questionable. Since then, I have been fortunate to participate in the process of several staged readings of my works and I am eternally grateful to the directors, Tam Warner and Cyndy Marion, for those wonderful experiences.

After pronouncing I would dedicate myself to writing only full-length plays, I wrote a 10-minute play, “A Waffle Doesn’t Cure Insomnia”, in the summer/fall of 2011, and promptly forgot about it. I did remember it in time to revise it and submit it around this fall.

I recently received an email soliciting for plays; a networking kind of “form” email. Apparently, the producer found my name on a website. Which one, I don’t know; haven’t asked… I wrote back, curious, and turns out we know people in common. We got to chatting via email. I pitched a couple of plays. The producer expressed interest in one and requested a “package”.

Now, if only I had a play. Well I have a play but it was written in 2008 and revised in 2010 and 2011. Neither rewrite was complete or satisfactory to me. I am within days of finishing my latest rewrite and am happy. I met with my director and we are close to submitting “the package”.

This play is different than my usual, “It takes place in somebody’s mind” and it isn’t a psychological drama. It is actually a “straight” drama, or as somebody who has read my recent draft said, “It is my most accessible play.” Of course, it’s set to music in the public domain, so, really, it’s a play with music. But it’s accessible. Apparently.

I liked hearing that.