if . . .

. . . yesterday while visiting my mother for Sunday supper . . . my car parked at the rear of the house was torched . . . witnesses identified a five year old playing around the vehicle followed by three sharp explosions and high flames . . . the fire department responded in less than a minute thanks to a neighbour's 911 call . . . the gas meter directly behind the car melted and had to be replaced . . . the house was slightly singed . . . inside the smell of smoke hung around the night but all is well now . . . i was fixing the car up as a graduation gift for my son so the vehicle was unlicensed . . . no insurance but sure makes a dramatic picture & story . . . how 'bout this story (all factually true) - vehicle parked behind former Islamic Temple torched while recently arrived Korean guest out visiting campus . . .

tonight the river ran quietly so quietly we couldn't breathe deeply the climb up & down the bank the intense purple sunset even the busy ice cream store           &nbsp let us breathe deeply but the river the river ran so quietly it spoke of grass jelly and the tears that almost came to a. . . how does the river run so quietly? generosity and relationship the river is abundant acquiring only to give away the river connects us looks like affection kindness empathy and makes an apology tonight the river ran quietly as the fabric of life flowed in goodness in love in peace belonging :: note :: . . . apologies to Chris and his notes of Martin's full morning sessions . . .

"REPETITION AND IMPROVISATION: A practical dialogue with Zygmunt Molik" / 14th ISTA (International School of Theatre Anthropology: IMPROVISATION - Memory, repetition, discontinuity :: note :: . . . on the question of the source for Apocalypsis Cum Figuris Molik described a 'crazy dance' by Ryzard Cieslak that was identified by all the actors as something - life . . . life doesn't come easily . . . preparation is required . . . a careful study where forcing falsly to find 'something' results in nothing . . . three weeks of nothing gave birth to the movements of the Simpleton and what followed has become an accepted masterpiece of 20th Century theater . . . Molik commented that the ensemble composed . . . the word improvisation was not used . . . :: note :: . . . after much discussion we sought some conditions for improvisation . . . improvisation needs preparation a state of readiness . . . the participant seeks to be open, attentive & knowing . . ....

:: note :: . . . John L. Clark signing Poems From A Broken Body at his book launch (thistledown press) @ Amigo's . . . the reading involved the musical accompaniment of Ray Stephanson on keyboards & Duane Dorgan on "skins" with Raymon Montalbetti as second voice . . .

"I locked my husband in a closet one fine winter morning. It was not a large modern closet, but a little stuffy one in a century old brick building. Inside that space with him were two pairs of shoes, a warm coat, a chamber pot, a bottle of water, peanut butter and a box of crackers. The lock was strong but the keyhole was the kind you both can peek through and pick. We had already looked simultaneously, our eyes darkening to the point of blindness as they fastened on each other, separated by only two inches of wood. Now I would not want to try peeking again. My eyes meeting his eyes was more disturbing than the naked encounter of our two whole faces in the light of day. It reminded me that no one knew what I had done except for the person I had done it with. And you God." ( Indivisible by Fanny Howe p 7) :: note :: . . . reading Indivisible by Fanny Howe . . . the opening is stunning . . . so is the ending . . .

". . . compassion is a necessary condition in the teacher/student relationship for a movement toward learner autonomy to be possible, not to mention a healthy communicative learning environment. I then stated that 'creative visualization' practices could be helpful in bringing about compassion, . . ." (apcampbell| Empathy and Compassion in the Classroom ) :: note :: . . . we practise creative visualization in drama class often . . . students respond to the the stillness and the image . . . we call it working the imagination muscle . . . it has a physical (relaxation/health), creative (imaginative/focus),& spiritual (awarness) component . . . it is meditation, visualization & prayer . . . the human condition . . .

if not winter defensiveness if not death stonewalling if not contempt criticism if not resistance promises if not the darkest hour wanting your disappearance created questions in me all the remembered gestures of love indications of tangled hours offering one day to the flesh one day to the cold flame

"The real issue is not regulation or State action in and of itself: but rather, what is being regulated, and in the interests of whom: the market, national elites, the aggregate interest of the majority, or the disadvantaged and the vulnerable. Poverty and exclusion is too readily accepted by majorities as regrettably accidental, or natural or inevitable, rather than the outcome of conscious policy choices. All underlying agendas and preferences must be brought to the surface if these debates are to lead to policy decisions that produce just outcomes. . . The possibility for people themselves to claim their human rights entitlements through legal processes is essential so that human rights have meaning for those most at the margins, a vindication of their equal worth and human agency. There will always be a place for charity, but charitable responses are not an effective, principled or sustainable substitute for enforceable human rights guarantees. The debate in Canada on these i...

"It might seem odd to go to a text on repetition when discussing questions of the image. However, as soon as you start to realise that the image is not something inert, something once and for all, that, on the contrary, it implies some type of temporal process in its production, reception, and circulation, then a temporal category such as repetition is not in principle as alien or as strange to it as it might seem were you to regard an image as something absolutely self-contained, instantaneous, as purely spatial." (SAMUEL WEBER with TERRY SMITH| Repetition: Kierkegaard, Artaud, Pollock and the theatre of the image .) (via wood s lot )

surface soft ice thin reflections are mirrored messages of forgotten reconciliations the wet leaves & mud underneath the stone sky follow oversnowed self ripples time to pile hills of leftover autumn debris I silence myself

Soul Work "Bellow: I think the first thing to do is to locate your soul and find out what it has to suggest." (Saul Bellow | Choosing the Necessary: )

. . . she slides the gun along the wall guiding it with a breathless muttering about letters and jobs while he waits anger smoldering claiming his being into existence she cornered beautiful eyes terrified collapses whispering of time the sensuous sigh of sex caresses & arouses & he panics nervously scratching the wall paper then she sneers a sleezy broken hearted diva drowning the cry of unrequited love and the whispering fear of childish horror we are the blind the shaking struggle of the defenseless helpless . . . :: note :: . . . the university term moves towards an end . . . for the first time ever it is a spring of text work . . . an exercise of enormous challenge . . . frightening & so rewarding . . . a collective story . . .

"He is in the restless gap between deciding to do something and doing it. In thinking about his need to choose, he enacts in his own mind the conspiracy and the revolt that will happen in a larger scale in the real world. This is a poetry of double crisis, personal and national." (Guardian Unlimited | The evil that men do by Frank Kermode) "It is Hamlet[base ']s duty, then, and that of all contemporary intellectuals, to think therefore to imagine, at risk of being thought mad, beyond consensus to sustain the production of ideas and history, the moral ingredient of thoughtful exchange, and to prevent the alternative, that is, the fate of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern." (M/C Journal | Schools of Thought The Madness of Consensus by Carra Leah Hood ) :: note :: . . . scottish play work on monday . . . a filleted version . . .

"In recent years, I have been using the word "Disorder" more and more when speaking of the theatre craft, aware that it creates confusion. For me it has two opposite meanings:the absence of logic and rigor characterizing nonsensical and chaotic works or the logic and rigor that provoke the experience of bewilderment in the spectator. I ought to have two different words for this. Instead I will use an orthographic trick - the difference between small and capital letters - to distinguish disorder as a loss of energy, from Disorder as the irruption of an energy that confronts us with the unknown. " (TDR: The Drama Review | Volume 49, Number 1 (T 185), Spring 2005 | Barba, Eugenio. Children of Silence: Reflections on Forty Years of Odin Teatret/ PDF access through Project Muse) :: note :: . . . Barba has always been a master of the work/word . . . penetrating insights & precise articulations of the processes & ways of the work . . . the practice is far more el...