Sunday, July 15, 2007

Martial Arts + Writing II

One more quick book review: "American Shaolin" (Matthew Polly) = exceedingly, exceedingly good, renewing my faith in martial artist/writers. (Pen and Sword! The name of the magazine I'll launch to cover this budding literary genre.)

Saturday, July 14, 2007

The hills are alive with the sound of nuns

I am Nun No. 6 in the nun chorus in a local production of the Sound of Music. The nun (backstory) whose left femur was shattered by an angry dairy cow, making her gait ungainly and her prospect of marriage not-likely. She arrived at the abby the next Monday, clutching a battered case.
Her domestic chore at the abby was to darn habits, which was her passion, though it strained her already-weak eyes into severe squints. Still, tears squeezed freely the day Mother Superior pried the needle from No. 6's iron-vice pinch. Sewing duties passed to the more charismatic and talented Maria (who would make a stylish wardrobe for six children out of curtains).
Nun 6 was re-assignmed to the VonTrapp mansion -- where she fell for the baron. Her physical disabilities, however, prevented her from twirling in meadows and climbing trees to wave at trains (and might have eventually slowed down the entire family enough to be caught by the Nazis). She just "wasn't working out."
Watching from afar as the baron wooed Maria, No. 6 yanked down the abby parlor's lace curtains one night and stitched a diaphanous white gown, which she wears at night through the empty halls.
It's one of the most challenging roles I've ever tackled. Oh, the complexities! The dragging of the left leg and the squint will be a piece of cake, but the madness! I must -- though it be extremely avant garde -- wrest control of the musical mid-performance and shriek out mad despair the Baron and Maria's love. It would cause an emotional sensation never to be recreated. Art!

Friday, July 06, 2007

Tire Fire of the Heart

My Volkswagen Golf supposedly has tires that, if compromised, leak air in itty bitty incriments so if I'm blazing down the Autobahn at 200 mph I won't have a blow out, flip up into the air and down a picaresque Alpine mountainside.

However, as far as life's concerned, I usually shop at front-yard used-tire piles so when the going gets (too) fast, I careen around on rims, feet from precipitous edges. Note to self: build a big bonfire of bad mindsets, predjudices, fear and furies. Do whatever it takes to Think Right.

Monday, July 02, 2007

So tired of the straight life
where everywhere you turn
there's vultures and thieves at your back.

-SM