Train-ing...  back to NY from Charlotte, N.C.
 
There's a black Tom Waits talkin salvation to a man in a black leather cap. 
The handsome, young train conductor is making sign language to someone behind me
at the snack bar. His apple juice is swishing in the plastic quart jug.  He yawns and leans
on his hand, taking pause between working on parts of a cross word puzzle. 
Passing shrubs of brown, yellow, red and green - tall thin trees and the occasional home,
like islands in the wilderness.  My vision is quickly blurred by a fast freight train
rushing by the other direction. White blossoming trees draw my attention as do swampy
ponds and a house with tombstones in the backyard.  A town appears for a moment,
a graveyard, houses, and churches, laundry hung out to dry and a crowd of people
with a police car - lights flashing - something went awry, an event and the community
is witness on the scene.  Now the man in the black leather cap is croaking back in that
characteristic Tom Waits bellow. Voices spilling out over the music in my ears. 
Just ahead of Richmond, VA. train held before a bridge due to some burning trees beneath. 
The 'all safe' and we got on our way.
 
 
 
The Other End of the Spoon...,
My long day of auditions (for a show I'm directing), Ode To The Actors
 
It feels so free to be charging at the influx of the source, my creative sangria poured
and tasted to leave my tongue wanting of the glass. 
 A day of good, good, good and I'm good to be exchanging energies
with the most generous of souls that offer themselves as vessels for other's lives
to transport and stories to be told through. 
How many ways strong can come, how many forms soft can take
and how finely tuned an instrument to play is that of human kind and human pain. 
There is a gift in  the act of giving.  There is a resonance in the room each person
adds their own tone.  What a spread of sounds we make as walls echo,
warp and shake.  Like a wave his feelings went through me and in the after shock
we both reverberated with an exhale and perplexity.  Has a demon entered the building? 
So immense this energy we compose, generate and transmit. 
The daggers are left here.  The rings and promises, the willing steps and hesitations. 
Voices sharp as knives to cut the space between us, pounding like the ocean fervor,
landing with animosity and resound to retract and rush in again.
Once more to the battlement of emotion. 
Once more to the trembling of triumphant exposure, stakes penetrating
and shattering the concrete box.  
This here the space we'll soften and carve, net in hand to gather the shiny stones and shells,
feathers and leaves, pine cones and petals- all completely unique and lovely,
our excavators of existence and human connection - the sea of many actors in new york city.