Tag Archives: Normandie

Further Along the Road Less Traveled

May 1, 2018playwritingAngeles Mesa, Angelique Cafe, Bruno, Bruno Hervé Commereuc, Charcutier, motorcycle accident, Normandie, Saint AmourAnalyn Revilla

By: Analyn Revilla

I am self-conscious in my new outfit, a widow of a tragic accident, but my self-awareness is still intact. I will shush the self-conscious one and let the self-aware wise woman on the hill write so that I can get on with the task of living authentically.

The last three and half months has been an inward and outward journey. I feel I’ve exploded and imploded at the same time. To make sense of death the way it came upon Bruno and our life is still beyond making sense to me. Maybe someone else has the answers so I talk to others who’ve been through this and I read a lot. I found a copy of “Further Along The Road Less Traveled” by psychiatrist and educator M. Scott Peck. The third chapter, “The Issue of Death and Meaning”, speaks how society has a tendency to turn away from the reality of death. He observed, “Of course, most people have very little taste for struggling with the idea of their death. They do not even want to think about it. They want to exclude it from their awareness thereby limiting their consciousness.”

Yesterday, Monday morning, I racked my head for what to blog about. I struggled with not writing from the shoes I’m wearing; one who has just lost a dear loved one, my husband. But nothing else has occupied my mind other than that loss. What can I contribute from my perspective? I asked myself. At this moment I can share that the pain, suffering and sorrow have expanded my consciousness. It is a loss of innocence, not unlike losing one’s virginity that opens a new dimension to living and dying. Losing sexual innocence is not just the ecstasy of a sexual relationship but the wholeness of losing oneself in a relationship – the whole gamut of sharing inner and outer space together with someone you’ve chosen and whose chosen you.

There was supreme joy in finding that special one, Bruno, who loved me for who I am and not what I am. His joie de vivre and compassion attracted all kinds of people and he accepted them all. We were enthralled by his burning bright flame till one day that light was snuffed out. The pain of the loss is confounded by the suffering of the suddenness and unexpected death; and deepened by a hit and run accident on his motorcycle, only five minutes away from home. All that is a tape that plays over and over. I get relief by meditating, gardening, eating, drinking and trying to get on with life again.

Death is a shadow on my shoulder, but I don’t carry it in a morbid sense. I appreciate the circle of support I’ve received from friends and family. I encounter loving and caring words and gestures from strangers whose heard about it, or with whom I’ve shared the news with directly.

In Elizabeth Kubler Ross’ book, “On Death and Dying” she identifies the stages a person who is dying can experience and these are: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance. These stages are also the same process that a person experiences in steps towards psychological or spiritual growth.

I cannot say it better than how M. Scott Peck ends the third chapter other than to quote him directly:

It is not an easy journey. The tentacles of narcissism are subtle and penetrating and have to be hacked away day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, decade after decade. Forty years after first recognizing my own narcissism, I am still hacking.

It is not an easy journey (he repeats), but what a worthwhile journey it is. Because the further we proceed in diminishing our narcissism, our self-centeredness and sense of self-importance the more we discover ourselves becoming not only less fearful of death, but also less fearful of life. And we become more loving. No longer burdened by the need to protect ourselves, we are able to lift our eyes off ourselves and to truly recognize others. And we begin to experience a sustained, underlying kind of happiness that we’ve never experienced before as we become progressively more self-forgetful and hence more able to remember God.

I hack away at the weeds daily, throughout the day and the night, hoping and hoping that light will pour in through the crack.

Order in the Face of Chaos

February 16, 2018LAFPI, PlaywrightAngeles Mesa, Angelique Cafe, Bruno, Bruno Hervé Commereuc, chaos, Charcutier, Hit and Run, light traveller, Normandie, order, re-centering, Saint AmourAnalyn Revilla

By Analyn Revilla

Upon Bruno’s sudden and unexpected accidental death on his Yamaha, the world changed in varying degrees. Like a Google Map I am faced with re-centering my life. It’s not our life as a married couple, but my singular life.

‘dBruno Hervé CommereucMy mom gives me a well meaning advice this morning. Remove his clothes from the drawers to make room for yours. I bit my lip and clamped off the Mt. Vesuvius inside of me. If you have an opinion just keep it to yourself I wanted to scream.

People say, “He’d want you to be happy. You have to move on.” My intellect gets it but my heart doesn’t. Better to keep your opinions for later because right now I only need your presence and not your judgments. Be one of my dogs and just sit with me. It’s times like this when there are no words.

As a writer I write to make sense of what’s happening. I want to write but I can’t. My heart is lead and every limb and joint is heavy too. I want him to linger. I want his scent to stay. I cut off the string from the lemon tree where he hung the wasp trap. I save the knot because no one will ever tie a knot like Bruno… the way he would truss a bird before it goes into the oven to feed the lonely hearts and the empty bellies.

There are no words to put order in the midst of chaos. I move like an automaton to survive. Yes I’ve got that. I can’t let the wall of dignity crack lest ‘I lose it.’ Maybe this is why people offer structures to align myself to: “Have you thought about what you’re going to do?” Please don’t ask me this question in a phone call in between errands. It hurts my feelings.

Words create order. A skilled writer and/or speaker can put disorder into order. A meteorologist can enlighten what’s happening in a hurricane. The eye of the storm is the calm surrounded by the vortex of violent forces that destroy what we believed as permanent. No matter how hard I tidy up, sweep the floor, dust the picture frames and put clean laundry in its proper place entropy will rule. It’s a matter of time. How long can I keep up this face of composure like Humpty Dumpty sitting on the wall?

The natural laws of the universe is held in place by a tension… Life is a delicate balance shadowed by that moment of “Time is up. Let’s go. Leave all else behind. You won’t be needing it. You’re a light traveller. You are light.”

On January 15, 2018, Bruno Hervé Commereuc was killed by a hit and run driver at the corner of 54th Street and Arlington in Los Angeles, California. The Los Angeles Police Department is asking for information to help in apprehending the driver of the grey Nissan 370Z (updated vehicle description from the flyer, below) who is still at large.

Click Here for a Flyer of the Community Alert Notification and Reward for Information.

All of us at the Los Angeles Female Playwrights Initiative send our love to Analyn.

A Pilgrim On the Edge

August 17, 2014UncategorizedAngelique Cafe, Bruno, Bruno Hervé Commereuc, Charcutier, Ensemble Studio Theatre Los Angeles, Motorcycle Roadtrip, Normandie, Saint AmourAnalyn Revilla

by Analyn Revilla

The seed I planted in my mind before leaving LA was to experience the open road to rediscover my edge. I felt I had lost it during the past few years in trying to survive living in a big city. I’m no longer surprised, but happily accept, when events endorse my faith that the universe will give you what you ask for though I may not know when or how it will manifest.

Homeward bound along the I395 we spent our last night of our vacation in Lone Pine, CA. The magnificent Mount Whitney, at 14,505 feet, is a beautiful backdrop to a “small town with lots of charm”. This town has grown to become a mecca for travelers, hikers and tourists since the Mt. Whitney trail was completed in 1904. I discover that I came here as a pilgrim. There was time when I looked at a mountain and I would imagine the traverse up, studying the contours and ridges to determine a way up to the top. When we passed through Lone Pine two weeks ago, I described to Bruno my feeling of loss – why wasn’t I surveying a trail to climb up? What a strange feeling to be aware of the loss, and then accepting the loss.

I haven’t hiked very much since I moved out here. My excuse was the heat and dryness of the mountain ranges in SoCal which I was not accustomed to, compared to British Columbia, where the forest and meadows are lush and the flowing creeks spray cool mountain waters. I had allowed this joy for the wilderness wither away as I embedded myself into the living of a desert city, yet a mosaic of cultures. The tiles of faces, languages and smells from the streets are both an invitation and assault on the senses. Which one to choose?

Riding, alone with my own thoughts, and only the wind to brush my jacket and pants, and whistling in my ears, I focused on the terrain. There’s always something to be prepared for: debris, crossing deer or elk, open cattle, falling rock, weather pattern changes, looking to see if Bruno is still behind me, the curve coming up, state patrol, the unwrapping scenery of mountains, valleys, basins and rock formations. This is a beautiful country. Every turn is breathtaking. As one local in Snohomish Valley described, ‘God couldn’t have painted a better picture’. Certainly, people are more apt to look at the bikes with its zig-zag of bungee chords to tie down whatever we deemed as ‘necessary’ for the journey. That too changed on a daily basis. We made trips to the post offices every few days to send back home the simple little treasures , souvenirs and dirty clothes we had accumulated.

The daily grind of the road didn’t wear me out, except for a fresh fatigue from the intake of conversations, scenery and preparing for the next day. I tried to meditate on ‘the edge’. How did ‘Stella Got Her Groove Back’? (I never saw the movie, but the title was apt for my situation.) How will I relearn to look at a mountain and have that joyful curiousity to climb it to the peak? It took miles and miles of riding alone and just letting things happen. Without expectations we chewed up the miles between LA and Hayden, and back down to LA again, doing a loop that closed again at Lone Pine. I don’t know how it happened, but it happened – not by design – but simply accepting what was present at the moment, and making choices and adjustments as needed.

The choice between forging ahead into unknown territory or staying one extra day to fix the bike; the choice to decline the offer of a shelter overnight from a stranger because of the rain and lateness of the day; the choice to accept a round of beer at the saloon from a traveler who cared to ask, ‘Where are you guys from?’. Regardless of the choices made, I see now that there is not a right or wrong. It’s a matter of accepting the results of the choices made. I’ve always pondered the quote from Miles Davis:

If you hit a wrong note, it’s the next note that you play that determines if its’s good or bad.

– Miles Davis (1926 – 1991)

We rounded back to Lone Pine because we had determined we didn’t want to take the I5. I’ve traveled along this path many times before, and I had never seen the Sierra Nevada, so it seemed to be the natural choice to make. The first night into California we stopped at Susanville. The motel owner welcomed us with the ‘biker special’ at $50 for a simple and clean room stocked with a fridge and a microwave. By this time, we had learned to make nutritious and delicious meals using simple ingredients and cooking in the microwave. I was still masturbating my brain to figure out how to get my groove back, but I was fully absorbed in fullness of traveling and the ripening of the end of a trip. I had seen a lot of faces of the desert with its terrains and living and non-living habitats, such as the family living in Middlegate, Nevada running on a diesel generator and the beginnings of a solar energy. Certainly these inhabitants of the desert are pushing to maintain a type of life on the edge.

Black Rock Solar is solarizing one of our country’s historic roadhouses. It’s Middlegate Station, on the loneliest road in America – Highway 50 in Nevada.

If you’ve stopped in whilst bumping around in the desert, you were probably glad for the cold drink or ice cream sandwich to wash the dust from your lips. But cold in the Nevada desert doesn’t come cheap. Off the municipal electric grid and powered 24/7 by a diesel generator, Middlegate’s future is in doubt after years of rising fuel costs.

Middlegate’s owners – Fredda and Russ Stevenson – and Black Rock Solar have secured a State Office of Energy loan and are working to secure more funding for a larger array to keep Middlegate Station viable with the power of the sun.

(http://www.blackrocksolar.org/news/2014/the-last-nevada-roadhouse-needs-your-help/)

The story above is the beginning of yet another blog I’d like to write about, as it is a story in itself. But it watered the seed of my initial inquiry about getting the edge back. One of the crew members, a bold and wise young woman, told me that you never really lose the edge because you always have the edge. It didn’t dawn upon me till today that it’s like the knife that loses its sharpness. A knife will always have an edge, but how it is used and maintained defines the kind of edge it has. Using its metal against ceramic or breaking open a coconut shell with the wrong type of knife will chip or dull the edge.

A journey is the process of letting the inner wisdom spring forth, and giving that joyful creation the environment it needs to self-acutalize. A journey into the desert just as prophets and gurus have practiced emptying oneself to transform was what I had been doing. I had an intention but I didn’t have the ‘know-how’, and was left without a choice but to accept – accept what I had become, and then re-orient myself to move towards where I want to be. There will be a re-learning to develop better habits to replace others which I have decided I need to out-grow. Like a river that meanders around the bends and creating oxbows as it matures, there is a wholeness in both edges of a knife. I’ve pierced sharply up a terrain and I’ve also shredded down loose scree from the top, and tumbled on my hands and knees; and bounded back up with a richer perspective.

My pilgrimage to Mount Whitney has just begun. I left Lone Pine yesterday with a map and couple of books about ascending Mt. Whitney, along with tips from a local guide in the adventure store. I feel the butterflies dancing in my belly and the perspiration on my palms thinking about the possibilities. I could try to hike in the winter geared in cramp ons and ice picks. That would be my first time, but it is a possibility that the guide described to me. Staying on the edge has many possibilities.

Stillness…

September 11, 2013UncategorizedAngelique Cafe, Bruno, Bruno Hervé Commereuc, Charcutier, Mindfulness, Motorcycle Roadtrip, Normandie, Saint Amour, StillnessAnalyn Revilla

by Analyn Revilla

I wanted to write this blog from a quiet place inside of me. After some reflection and some practice I believe that creativity comes from a quiet place, and the by-product of creativity is a creation.

Most times, I’m too busy with being busy that I’m hardly ever quiet, so there isn’t much creativity happening. It’s all noise, and that creation isn’t inspiring or useful to others – hardly anyway.

I had been mulling about creativity, creation and stillness in the past few days. Then I stumbled upon the whole kit and caboodle while preparing dinner last night. What I had been trying to understand is also something that Bruno experiences as a professional chef. He has worked for a lot of very good charcutiers. I asked, what makes one better than aother? He said, for example, he is different from one his former employers, Thierry, because Thierry was a perfectionist. Thierry had the ability to invent new products, because he’s not too concerned with productivity. Meanwhile, Bruno was able to create something new based on parameters he is given by a client. He admits that he didn’t invent what he’s created, but he’s able to reproduce someone else’s idea. I followed with the question, why can’t he create something new and original? He said he’s too busy with being productive. He needs to have time to be quiet to inspire creativity.

I’ve been wanting to give you something worthy of your time, and I didn’t want to rehash something that has been said before or a cliché about life. Though I wanted to remind myself that it’s good to just be still, like telling a child who fidgets to “be still.” Being busy without being rooted to a purpose dissipates energy, and can even lead to an unwanted residue of consequences. (I should have gone home before I deleted some report configuration from an environment which was firstly an embarrassing mistake, and also created more work in the end. The only salvation I grant on this occassion is a Miles Davis quote, “Do not fear mistakes – there are none. ”)

Here’s another analogy. A playwright friend of mine was auditioning actors for a new play. His comment at the end of the auditions was, “there was too much movement of arms and legs from some of the actors, and less focus on what’s being said.” I know what he meant, because when a person is embedded into a character there is a sense of stillness in their demeanor. Less is more. Like makeup, applying less brings out more of the essence rather than covering it up; and over-amplification of the action takes away from the subtext of the conversation.

On my office wall, across from my desk, is a picture of Martin Luther King from the TIME magazine cover (August 26^th to September 2^nd 2013 issue). There is a remarkable stillness in this image. I wonder what he was thinking, feeling and being. There’s a stillness there that draws me in closer that I put the words “Role model inspire to aspire” beneath the picture.