If the trial is one of fire, ice, or both,
Go through it.

If you have the chance to love someone and be loved,
Do it.

An Old Moment

Last night, I went out with friends to see the

TOTAL
LUNAR
ECLIPSE

and possibly a meteor shower.

We set out at about 1:45am, bundled up as best we could, with a sack of goodies to help convince us that if we went out there, into the middle of the freezing cold night, we would not die.

We made our way towards the fields at Lincoln Park, stopped for coffee. (Who knew Al’s Diner at 2:00am was going to be a see-and-be-seen venue?) I launched my StarWatch app and we pointed out the beginning of the show to the waitresses and then headed out.

We drove around the park and over Route 440, made camp in the car at the edge of the Hackensack River, and watched the earth eat the moon. Bit by bit, it blackened the satellite’s full, bright face. And as it got closer to full coverage, sure enough, the predictions came true – the moon turned RED!

Or rather, sepia. That’s what our driver was saying. I was saying, “RED!” She was saying, “No. It’s not red. It’s more brownish.” “No way! That is, um, reddish!”

The iPhone sound track started with the Fifth Dimension singing “Age of Aquarius”. Then two of us broke out with a very gusty “Red Rubber Ball”, inspiring all of us to produce a new act for the occasion:

Band Name: Sepia Moon

Album: Beyond the Tinge

First Hit Single: You Never See That

Plus, ten cosmic tracks, including

• Moon to Earth 1: Get Out of the Fucking Way, It’s Cold Up Here.
• Moon to Earth 2: We Get It, You’re Floyd Fans.
• Earth to Newark: What’s With the Lights, Largest Commercial Seaport in the Continental United States, Huh?
• 72 Minutes Means the Earth is Fat
and
• It Really Happens Every Friday


A glow of almost gold capped what used to be our moon, lying across the top of this now unfamiliar circle in the sky, like snow atop an Arizona mesa, only 235,857 miles away, straight up.

And then, it got cinematic. The glow slid slowly down, over the face of the ball, and illuminated it more brightly than I ever expected, until it became not a disc, not a circle in the sky, but a three-dimensional glowing solid mass. It was a body, suspended, full, alive, incredibly precious. I whooped, my mouth opened, I stared. I said, “I read that 1638 was the last time this happened on the winter solstice. It was so beautiful here then.” I thought about what it must have seemed like to those people, the Lenape, the Algonquin, the Mohawk, the Africans, the Europeans.

Now, the moon looked like a glow-in-the-dark superball, like Orion’s belt in Men In Black. But it was so real that some part of my brain kept looking to see, how did it stay there? And I had to tell myself again that it is the pull of the sun, behind us now, that keeps it there, that keeps us here, that in this miraculous universe planets, moons, stars and dust spin around each other, a phone plays songs and maps the eternity above us, and friends share an old moment in a new time.

So, no meteor shower. But that was awesome.

Guests from Gibbet Island

I have recorded an audio reading of Washington Irving's short story, Guests from Gibbet Island.

Written in Irving's later life (around 1855), Guests from Gibbet Island is set in the late 17th century in the Village of Communipaw, a settlement on the western shore of the bay by the city previously known as New Amsterdam, now New York. For a long time after the British took control of the New Netherland colony, Communipaw remained a Dutch enclave, and anti-British sentiment was the norm there.

The son of Scottish merchant immigrants, Irving was born on Williams Street in New York City in 1783 but was teen-aged before he learned of the Dutch origins of New York and the surrounding area; in tradition, the history books had long been already rewritten by the victors. From one of his sister's Dutch-American suitors, Irving learned of the New Netherland period and began a lifelong interest in the period and the culture, writing stories anchored in Dutch characters, names, habits and politics, including the novels Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Irving also wrote several short stories including at least four set in Communipaw in what is today Jersey City, New Jersey, where I live. Guests from Gibbet Island is one of these.

For those who know the area, I estimate the location of the public house in the story, The Wild Goose, to be at the western edge of Liberty State Park, near the Light Rail station there. At the time the story takes place, high tide brought the bay waters to about what is, indeed, the foot of a street known today as Communipaw Avenue.

Guests from Gibbet Island was brought to me by a writer friend in late 2006. Its simple 37 paragraphs struck me as a somewhat elegant description of the legacy that the Dutch left on Jersey City, the New York region and, perhaps, the United States -- we think of our multicultural business profile and the U.S.'s apparent high drive to commerce and production as American characteristics when they are, in fact, traditional Dutch cultural norms imprinted on our region and our country. As early as the 15th century, the Low Country cities of Amsterdam and Rotterdam were home to the most diverse merchant class in Europe.

Irving's story stuck with me, and soon I began to learn more about the period, about Irving and about New Netherland, and eventually to write an adaptation of this story for stage. The play script is more detailed than Irving's short story, with more characters and more dialogue, but I have kept Irving's timeline, historical considerations, and the two characters who drive the action from beginning to end. The play's working title is "Roost". (I have a dream to one day see this play performed in the parking lot of the Light Rail Station or the Foundry Condominiums at the end of Communipaw Avenue where most of the story's action takes place. If you're interested in staying informed about the progress of this play, please let me know.)

If you'd like to hear this story read by me, please send an email to trishszymanski@gmail.com and I will send you the audio story.

And please, feel free to pass this audio reading on to anyone you think might enjoy it, or to someone whose pants you would like to scare off.

SHARED: Carolyn M. Rodgers

I heard that Carolyn Rodgers died a few days ago.
This is one of her poems that I like very much.

The Last MF
By Carolyn M. Rodgers (1945-2010)

they say,

that i should not use the word

muthafucka anymo

in my poetry or in any speech i give.

they say,

that i must and can only say it to myself

as the new Black Womanhood suggests

a softer self

a more reserved speaking self. they say,

that respect is hard won... by a woman

who throws a word like muthafucka around

and so they say because we love you

throw that word away, Black Woman ...

i say,

that i only call muthafuckas, muthafuckas

so no one should be insulted.

*********************************************

Some information about Carolyn Rodgers:
http://www.answers.com/topic/carolyn-m-rodgers

POEM: Might Have

By Trish Szymanski (c) 2010


Do you have regrets?

Do you wish
You had appreciated
More the plate of food
You had been handed,
Delicious, fragrant sustenance?
It would have kept you warm
Through winter's hard embrace.

Do you wish
You had not squandered
The chance to love and be loved by
A joyful, substantial woman?

Well, maybe you do
But what is that about?
Your empty belly?
Your soul, twisting in the cosmic wind,
its vacant sign swinging past
That dumb yawn?

See what regrets do?

Writing, A Solitary Sport That Cannot Be Played Alone

Writing can be such a lonely affair. Just me and my blank page. So, for balance, I try to connect about writing with others in different ways. I've had a good amount of help.

Among my influences are June Foley, whose memoir-writing class changed completely how I shape a story; Warren Lehrer, whose theories and methods on character development have become an integral part of me as a person; and Barry Goldsmith, whose construction and deconstruction of comedy made for one of the more fun semesters I ever had and taught me a lot about entertainment.

These days, one of my favorite coaches is someone I've never met in person - Daphne Gray-Grant. Daphne lives and writes in Vancouver BC and sends out a frequent e-newsletter which is always welcome because it is always meaningful in some way and is always designed to be easy to digest. Check her out:

http://www.publicationcoach.com/

Today's newsletter was about the writer's health and raised the issue that writing is just one more activity where we can concentrate so hard that we FORGET TO BREATHE. It speaks to the neurobiological consequences of that omission, to posture and to general good practices for writers. Why is this important? Because it impacts directly our ability to create cogent, compelling written product.

Thank you, Daphne!

Too much to write about

It's been many months now since I've written here. But I've been writing, alright. There's been plenty of business development, correspondence, marketing materials, website development, advertising, checking in, confirming, clarifying, creating. Just not much blogging.

I'm back here because I added a blog to my profile to boost my business, my Boost Your Biz business, that is. It's going pretty well.

And I'm working on my acting too, even though I missed a couple of classes lately. I've got a role coming up in the fall that I've been developing for a while, so I'm getting excited to bring her to the stage. And I've been invited to submit a part of my play script to a one-act festival, which is inspiring. And I was offered use of a country house as a writing retreat, so I might actually be able to do it.

And I am doing some photo-manipulation-collage which includes a piece that will be in a group show next month. And I'm co-producing a small event next month. And I got a cool domain name and a great deal on hosting.

And I'm working on my business savvy and sensitivity, negotiating relationships, bettering my self-skills, my boundary navigation. And I'm challenged by health limitations which I am determined to break through, and I think I'm doing it. And I'm feeling more confidant and relaxed, though not always.

And I'm looking for roommates and really pretty broke, like bad broke, but kind of don't care because all the stuff up above this paragraph is all I care about.

Well, there is that thing about feeling alone, which is different from being alone. I'd rather not be involved with either one of those. Working on that too.