"And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away." Revelation 21:4

The rest is silence.

Today was the first day Spring was warm enough for the crocus to bloom.!

In like a lion...

Out like a lamb!

"The Further Adventures of Uncle Wiggily: Windblown Visitors" under construction in February. A four-week run, the children's show was very popular and will be revived at a later date, perhaps as an annual presentation for young audiences. The scenery, costumes and properties are all being stored for that event. Last performance Sunday, March 25th at 3 pm, Theater for the New City -- http://www.theaterforthenewcity.net/wiggly.htm

Vanity of Vanities

One of the hard cold facts of the internet is that no matter what is posted, published, rumored, prevaricated, perceived, pictured or posed, etc. there is always someone out there who knows the truth, who knows what the story really is, who knows that someone has been playing with the pixels and messing up the blogs -- self-aggrandizement and self-deprecation are at war over one simple goal -- attention! “Hey, look at me!”

THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF UNCLE WIGGILY, a charming and delightful musical for children and adults! Book & lyrics by Laurel Hessing, directed by Crystal Field, music composed by Arthur Abrams, set design by Donald L. Brooks.

Playing Friday through Sunday, March 2nd through March 25th, 2007 -- performances Friday at 8 pm, Saturday and Sunday at 3 pm -- all seats $12, children under 12 $5.

For info and reservations call (212) 254-1109 or online at www.theaterforthenewcity.net

2007

Last Entry On Exit

The deep recess was hollow, nothing was there -- no blood, no air, nothing -- an abandoned chamber for the soul, walls charred from a conflagration of immense intensity, the sound of tears could be heard from throats echoing from ages unknown, fear and folly, a bottomless inertia with but a slight sliver of light of above, I froze with no eyes in silence.

On the eve of Christmas Eve the old man sat at his desk listening to the rain with the windows all boarded shut his dying dog on the floor before him as he wrote a simple song for the occasion and tore it to shreds in despair.

Christmas dinner shoved through a slot under the door head shaved clean cold bars yesterday’s deadman’s cell now holds black rapist’s white boy punk whore.

There are those who will be what you want them to be if you don't let them know you know what they are.

Blood
Is red
Is kin
Is spilt
Prevarications and destinations
Somewhere in another room
Lies the answer
To whom

There's no time left so this will be brief after all who has time enough left to dwell upon musings of others when one's own life hasn't been properly relived if same could be had for the living. Sadly, happily our existences have met if upon these words you dwell. Tragically, comically; wisely, stupidly; chastely, carnally; poorly, richly; yes, you will know me, but you can keep your secrets -- you can pry into my life, you seek, you see, you know, but of you I know nothing -- or do I? Does the writer, dead or alive, peer from the page and stare at the reader, as the reader stares at the page and thus the writer? What fantasy, fiction, fact or fate awaits? I suspect you have the power -- you may see me, but I cannot see you -- so if you are the voyeur, then let me do my best to exhibit -- do not chastise me for my immodesty as I only wish to reveal -- time has stripped all vanity thus this will be brief after all who has time enough left to dwell upon musings of others when one's own life is at the precipice of the abyss... tick tock, tick tock, tick tock!

Jimmy pasted his head on a photograph of Judy Garland and the police confiscated it shortly after they found his lover's head in a garbage container. He made the Daily News and several other lurid publications gave him notice. His mother saved the articles. He ran from a house of stinking barking dogs only to find he himself was so and so he ran and ran and ran! He ran from everything -- he sat among strangers in a strange tavern, he worked among strangers, he slept with strangers, his family were strangers, and his phone calls become stranger and stranger and stranger! He had nightmares of roadkill and garbage cans, priests and perverts, dogs and derelicts, hairy beasts sleeping under his bed, or worse yet in it. He mused perhaps this was not the way everyone lives, no one lives as anyone else, he concluded his life to be tout le monde and lived on and on and on!!!

Hubris! Babbling in Babylon! Lies, rumors, cockroaches as a consolation, stealing in through your own window because the landlord has barred the door. Scripts that yellow in producers’ files until they are rewritten for a television series. Hubris, you say hubris? It is one thing not to get paid, not to have a grant, to lose one’s own hard-earned office-worker paycheck to finance “The Sonnets of Shakespeare” rather than adorning one’s body and home and line one’s stomach and pocket -- and it is quite another to survive at the mercy of quaint curiosity. Oh, we wanted to revitalize the blood of the theater and instead have to clean rat-infested apartments to save other artists’ lives and God’s muse. I’ve built stages upon which I’ve been denied the use. I don’t understand how it happens -- one actor slashes himself onstage, another urinates on the radiators offstage, yet another defecates himself and the audience screams and tears the lighting off the grid, usually-Christian-Episcopal parishioners throw bricks and scream obscenities, underground”liberal” actors screech ethnic slurs, friends are lied to, actors quit on opening night, the stage catches fire, off-Off Broadway is a floor show in hell!

“Hubris”! -- you speak to me of “hubris”. Well, I am so tired of label-makers who can’t spell, slanderers who make up stories when the truth is more vivid and exciting, foundations that are on top, publishers who are actually privashers, publishing private trash, theaters in lofts, basements,, garages, churches, brownstones, storefronts, halls, gymnasiums, and their HUBRIS! Critics with their hubris, producers with their hubris, actors with their hubris, it amazes me that I’ve any hubris myself. Pearls before swine! This is it -- there’s no bottom left to hit. Sin City. Icebergs and blacklists! How deep they run!!!

from Donald L. Brooks' play 'SHOWCASE"

The morning light falls evenly
Cross the sky
The pending storm
Not yet secured its hues
Though brother calls with cheerful news
The rain lets not the stars peer through
As midnight falls and all is still
Natures tears have soaked the soil
By candle comes the folowing day
With hope for it to lead the way

It's the blood, the vultures smell it
We lick our wounds for nourishment
Our carcasses not yet still
Tremble in anticipation
The stones upon which we lie
No longer fly in torment
We turn away as not to view
Open wounds among us
Lustful laughter lifts our listless lives
Where tears could not arouse them
Darkness in the blazing light
And soon the circling ceases.

Summer persists step by step progressing to what we know will be our fall. Caesar and I -- we live for only now to awake to another day in wonder. Blood, aches, pains, memories, unfulfilled hopes and dreams, madness held at bay, growls from a corpse, snarls from the dead, laughter from the living and everything continues to expand -- there is no end and there is nothing in the end but the snap of rotting flesh, the ghastly ghost of memory whispering.