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You'll have to forgive my blog, or, really, me, for being relatively devoid of pithy insights right now (you know, in fact, let's make that a blanket request for forgiveness, because I can't really promise to provide pithy insights ever [phew, covered my ass there]). I was pretty hermetlike and self-involved today, emerging from the house only for a walk, an hour and a half jazz class with a teacher who recently had both knees replaced (and her recovery from bilateral, total knee replacement surgery in just over two months blows my mind and rivals the state of my knee three years-and-change post-ACL debacle...thus proving that she is either superhuman or that the debacle was even more massive than I knew at the time), and to do some grocery shopping. <---check out the length of that sentence

Okay, I'm going on a knee tangent. She's not doing a lot of high-impact stuff and her balance is a little shakey, but MY GOD her extension is un-fucking-believable and her flexion is almost all the way there. She's a powerhouse! I still have to work like a beast to get to 0 degrees on my right leg. She's a pro, in every sense of the word, having had multiple surgeries on both knees in the past and I certainly hope not to have any more of them myself. I just think it's astonishing how varied the effects of surgery and the process of rehabilitation can be...this reminds me that I'd love to see the photos Rick Ritter, my first post-op PT, took of my leg when I arrived on the table in front of him. I can't believe I went through all those months of being a walking hematoma without documenting it.

Anyway, back to what I was saying...

It's the four year anniversary of the official start of Vietnam II, sorry, I mean, the CURRENT Iraq war. I was pondering this fact when I was very nearly barricaded in to 35th and Broadway by some very boisterous post-Paddy's Day police officers manipulating large metal, civil disobedience and congregating-curtailing/random-person-and-cyclist-corralling structures.

I'm not sure what to say about all this. If anything, it makes me think of the day the bombing started...all of us sitting in the SF Circus Center with a work-in-progress showing scheduled for that afternoon, debating what to do. And that moment I knew we would create something together and perform it in the streets...there was nothing else we could do but commit multiple pie-icides and yield pies of mass destruction and make giant, raving fools of ourselves because...really, some levity amidst the tragedy, some breath amidst our anger...we all needed that.

Here I am, amidst a bazillion more people in NY and a bazillion more actors and what I'd like to know is...why am I not making theater in the streets? I might also ask "why am I not making theater in a theater right now?" but I've actually got some answers for that one.

yes, it's fucking cold outside
yes, there's snow on the ground

there will be auditions at the actor's equity building
there will be commercial castings
and I can only imagine what else

and I will be practicing yoga and going to the gym and running lines from Macbeth and, therefore, talking about murder

and what else? what is it that tomorrow or any other day for that matter...what is it that, like the Fools for War, seems so urgent, so inescapable that I know I will do it?

***

Right, here's something else I want to talk about:

Conni Convergence's Avant Garde Restaurant

Ask me about it.

In the meantime, here's a picture of me on my way there, having just left the house last night.



I like the relationship among the brown of my jacket, orange of my sweater, and the green of the walls and door, even though my face also looks a bit orange in the photo.

Since returning to NY I have, of course, seen quite a bit of theater.

I caught Blessed Unrest's (www.blessedunrest.org) Measure for Measure just before it closed - it reminded me of the work of a certain company I know and love in San Francisco (www.foolsfury.org).

I enjoyed Particularly In The Heartland by The TEAM (www.theteamplays.com), which closed tonight at PS 122 (www.ps122.org)

I had the privilege of seeing The Bird Stories, a new play by my new friend James Ryan Caldwell, at the Tank @ Collective Unconscious (www.thetanknyc.org).

And I finally got to see the work of Double Edge Theater (www.doubleedgetheater.org), an ensemble based in Ashfield, MA about whom I've been hearing interesting things for years.

I'm going to catch the Wooster Group's Hamlet before it closes - my first time seeing a Wooster Group show. I'm bummed I didn't get a chance to see Darko Tresnjak's Merchant of Venice with F. Murray Abraham (and SITI Co member Tom Nelis) at the Duke.