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What changes when we change the month of May to the month of Can?

(a palindrome)

Bryan
Wednesday, 1st.

It is the beginning of a new month with all things possible.

The month renamed as the month of Can.

There is a bird that sings at 3:15 in the morning.

It is still dark now at this time but the bird’s song makes me think it is light.

How can the bird sing like this in the darkness?

It is hope that dies last.

Randy once said, “We are surrounded by insurmountable opportunities.”

Today is Can one yes? Yes, one can is today.

It is can day.

The day we unite with our fellow laborers around the world.

We can do more than we have done.

We can do anything we set our minds to do.

CJ
Thursday, 2nd.

192 + 291 = 483 + 384 = 867 + 768 = 1,635 + 5,361 = 6,996

Do you love it?
It’s our child isn’t it?

Hou je ervan?
Het is ons kind, niet?

Tu l’aimes?
C’est notre enfant, non?

In each mirror, the world exists; and in each world, mirrors multiply; time moves on - we need to start.

My mind was blank, and I didn’t know what to say.

I found myself reflected in the faces of others, but this didn’t help me, as their faces revealed very little – what were they thinking?

I had forgotten if my friend’s father was still alive, or dead – and how facts eluded me, I sought them out but couldn’t hold onto them as much as I would have liked, and despite my efforts to obtain them.

38 years of memories and my mind is blank.

Could you say I’m half dead, midway on life’s journey, lost on a dark road?

Looking up from the table, I turned left and my image was reflected in the sideboard mirror, and my face - partly silhouetted - was unfamiliar to me.

I tread lightly, exuding politeness, and say “may” instead of “can”.

I turn around on my heels, 180 degrees, and retrace my steps.

Old age is a second childhood.

I sink into the mirror of mercury.

Twilight has arrived; through the window, the green leaves of the treetops are illuminated with an unreal hue which lasts for ten minutes, then is gone, though its traces continue to refract in the glass.

Lin
Friday, 3rd.

The sun pushes up dragging the toad.
The sun pushes up pulling the rain.
The sun pushes up whispering to the birds.
Beware. A man shouts under water. He pushes his way through the wall of forgetfulness learning to talk after the car crash. "When I was younger," he says, "I was a planet. Now I am extinct."

A whirling dervish is forbidden to pick-up an object or money if it falls out of his bag while spinning. Coins on the ground are left behind. To believe is to lose. No longer retaining possession. Mislaying this and that. Unable to keep control. Failing to win. Letting oneself not know the way. As when making tracks, making hay, making no bones about it, making eyes, making a go at it, making a performance together. To believe is to leave something behind. We lost a week to bad weather.

Stories begin.
You leave the rest of your day.
Farewell to reason.
Farewell. Farewell.
We carry hunched stones of the past on our backs so take up your ancestors and walk.
You died from the deaths of others.
On the horizon
A short-legged horse departs.
Gandhi laughed often and heartily, embarrassing his friends. This is often left out of his biographies.

Mark
Saturday, 4th.

A rehearsal of The Sea & Poison in front of Northside high school students, our first meeting to start a ongoing dialogue with. The high school students tell us of a painting project process they have worked on throughout their school year.

If we jump high enough do you think we can suspend ourselves off the ground, do you think we can echo a place we haven't seen before? Can we sit here, can we take this seat, can we have this dance? How can we alter the previous, the present, the past, how can we alternate towards change to create adaptability, with adaptation we must adapt this body to its surroundings, its renewlocation. We must take this opportunity to rise, in a single exact jump (I am not quite sure which number), from falling to jumping, and upwards to rebuilding.

Two sentences for two Tic Toc performances, one for Sara Schnadt, a tedium of unwinding a wound of coral red, red blood stained wool, be careful to attend and clean what is left. For Deva Eveland, a creaturetion of a gymnasium kindergarten librarian, a mutation of a non-existence with a protruding rounders bat nose.

He is still breathing, he is now awake, out of the coma, remember this is another station of his recovery. He can breathe with a tube inserted into a circular incision in his throat, a pipe. He has to learn how to swallow, he has to learn how to sustain breathing for himself, without the aid of a machine blowing air. Tonight with tiny breathes I lie awake, tiny jumps of air that suspend and glide like a small mist, humidifying into his lungs.

Matthew
Sunday, 5th.

Bells of Orthodox Easter will wake her in the night.
She will articulate an incompleteness as if to say here was a garden of roses.
She will say the listener is the only creator here.
*
Her arrival will cheer everybody up.
She will sit quietly at this time, and nothing will happen.
She will talk about cooking, concentration, care, and how does all of this collapse?
She will forget something at the grocery store.
She will have time to assimilate what you think this means before the time that she will repeat it.
She will say three words that have the word can in them:
Karen: mechanics
Litó: can't
Bryan: Canetti.
*
She will set a swarm of miracle workers in motion.
She will travel home on the train.
She will dream of speaking with clarity, and she will speak with clarity.

Karen
Monday, 6th.

Three parts of May (entwined):
answers to a writer’s questions in preparation for our Chicago premiere of It’s an Earthquake in My Heart, memories of a child named May who came to stay, email home from Brussels.

There are loops of fear and insecurity that we get caught in and this piece is about those loops: how they are constructed and how they might work themselves out through memory, reiteration, and internal discovery.

May was a problem. She was moved into my room and I was moved into my mother’s room to share with her.

Here are your instructions for teaching my class Thursday, May 16th.

A kind of meditation in the form of a list of trees to heal the psyche of a wounded soldier: The natural world offers solace.

Class is held in the Luddington Building 1104 South Wabash, third floor (walking up is faster than waiting for the elevators) room 307.

May was a young girl. She was moved into my room. She was to be like a sister to us only different.

We didn't want the imitation to be complete. It proved too difficult for the knees and so we modified it.

Litó
Tuesday, 7th.

begin
stretch of your arms
the stretch of time
stretched between
the time of emptiness
the act of emptying

we are sleeping next to each other

the kind of writing that you could call "the daily me"

here are 2 solutions to spray your plants to keep the bugs away: coffee or cigarette-butted water
a more chemical solution will more definitely evoke a sort of 'bug holocaust'
end

remember i anewadventure he'scontinuedinto andi'mhappy iknowit'sbest tobeinside myinsidesfeeltoobig itmakes soi'malone love&concern&explanation amessageonthemachine returninghome accompaniedforgetfulness driftingresonance lickableleisure shadowsofthehand lettersshowing iwouldlikerecorded thestinkingwheel beginningtoleave tellingsomebody unitingwiresbyyourself associatedsceptically ofastoryrecollectedrandomely refreshingfactisciousattitude knickersdrawnuptorecall toapurpleknot wilderfixerfashioned mastermixer

Bryan
Wednesday, 8th.

I remember being abnormal as a child and my parents & friends didn't acknowledge the fact.

Everyone else in the community was in on the scheme to accept me as a normal person and treat me as such.

When I left my home community it was different.

The new people I met were not in on the plan.

People thought I was abnormal and I realized it was true.

I had to fill them in on the scheme, and slowly learned to introduce myself.

If I think i can live a private life I am mistaken.

I am a part of a close community and the whole world, watching.

We still perform like we are hungry.

I wanted to write that falls apart.

I wanted to write in a sentence that doesn't hold well yet holds its place.

It should be quite simple but I don't always realize the importance of my fragmented thoughts.

CJ
Thursday, 9th.

193 + 291 = 584 + 485 = 1,069 + 9,601 = 10,670 + 07,601 = 18,271 + 17,281 = 35,552 + 25,553 = 61,105 + 50,116 = 111,221 + 122,111 = 233,332

When you talk to your grandfather, refer to him in the third person.

The mirror shakes in its place, the reflected cars rumbling by outside the window seem to bump up and down vertically as they continue forward on their horizontal trajectory.

The long hand of my watch continually overtakes and laps the short hand - the here and now is frantic, always ticking over, difficult to process, but the slower time, the hourly pacing around its 12 hour cycle offers a structure to make the reflection of the cars still, clear, defined.

Shake hands with business colleagues and always offer them a small gift at the start of a meeting.

When you meet a stranger, mirrors shake with excitement, because the world is multiplying.

Now I’m calm, content with my lot, with the here and now.

Three kisses on the cheek: left cheek, right cheek, left cheek.

Approaching 40, childless, but there are children within me.

I strategize how I move around a room.

People are generally outgoing and use nicknames, but avoid planning business trips in June, July and August.

I marvel at those who don’t seem to be in a hurry.

I feel the time running out, constantly ticking away, behaving as a mirror that does not reflect.

Lin
Friday, 10th.

Are words birds?
That fly through TV picture shows after midnight?
Lining up on the horizon line of Hogan's Heroes, Hawaii Five-O, and Hill Street Blues?
Like drops of rain on the telephone wire, they perch
Tern. Black Tailed Gull. Sage Sparrow.
to spell The Dead want their portraits painted.

My name is Arnold. I was born in Tiegen, West Flanders, in the eleventh century. I lived as a monk at the abbey of St. Medard. As by knowing one lump of clay, we come to know all things made of clay. As by knowing one gold nugget we come to know all things gold. As by knowing one brew, we come to know all things brewed. And so I came to know the invisible as winter loomed and the city flooded with plague. Verily, verily, I say unto you, hail the brew.
Verboden Vrucht. Dark, strong, with a spicy aroma.
Rochefort 10. Dark and sweet with a fruity palate.
Orval. Amber. Malt. A great aperitif.

If we change the month of May to the Month of Can, we can paint your portrait.
When did you die?
"I was killed here one cold night in March."
You will need to sit still for a long time.

Mark
Saturday, 11th.

Two days ago I reached the age of 29, and yet a voice is still missing, yet his breathing is still here. At the gym we pack up The Sea & Poison props in their trunks once more for another departure to a new city of Brussels. Last night we made chalk dust markings. Stick figures on a concrete floor outside of an El stop, repeated over and over rhizome patterns on the pedestrian tracks to and from the city. A point to remember loss, suddenly tonight with a spring downpour the figures are gone. They've lost their motion, the smallness of marking, has lost itself this evening, a disappearance of change. What would Hans Christian Anderson say now, once the voice has gone, once a year has gone. To look and feel blind in the throat, as if a possibility of sight has come this year and still, withholding itself. Clear tight marbles filled with air bubbles swirl themselves around the lair. Careful not to swallow or you can lose your place and have to start again.

After cycling home in another rainfall from the joint birthday party of Katrina, Eleanor and I, I make a phone call. I just want to know when I can bring him home Mark, then I can rest.

Matthew
Sunday, 12th.

Travel plans will wake her in the night.
She will articulate a difficulty remembering an exquisite tetrahedral shape as if to say here was a heart beat.
She will say she used to dye her hair, but now she dyes her I hate America.
*
Her Mother's Day greeting will cheer up her mother.
She will sit in silence, she will sit in science.
She will talk about the multiple causes of self-consciousness.
She will forget to turn off her lights in the grocery store parking lot in the rain.
She will have time to move the Same towards the Other and time to not return it to the Same.
She will see four words that have the word can in them:

CJ: Canadian
Lin: American
Mark: candybar

cancer.
*
She will set a cup of water in motion on the lift of stain from auto-upholstery instruction that betokens dance.
She will travel seven hours ahead.
She will dream of over Gander, Newfoundland a mirror that reflects the sound of a bell.

Karen
Monday, 13th.

She stands with her fingers flicking at odd angles, her mouth is open, it looks as though her tongue is in mid swing. It’s not a wince but there is something around the eyes. He and I are smiling, he at me with a devilish glint and I at her, beckoning. He and I are walking along the edge and looking back to see her cantering toward us with one foot in a slight drag.

The part-time office is across the hall, you’ll see my name on a drawer in a file cabinet, there are some papers in there for you.

It is a delicate thing, it involves dichotomies of power and vulnerability, destructive mobility and helpless stasis, and the burdens of our own customs.

My mother is behind the windshield of a car, she has arrived at a scene between three children: we two positioned close at the elbow and leaned together, I have an arm straight out towards May who is placed at a slight remove, she is looking down.

Imitation became a part of it and the concentration on imitation brought a certain kind of focus to the look of the work.

You can also leave everything for me in there at the end.

There is the ocean behind us and palm trees and the laundry line stretched between them. The sky, of course, is blue with a few white clouds.

To keep May away we taught her the wrong words to the songs.

Litó
Tuesday, 14th.

mastermixer wilderfixerfashioned toapurpleknot knickersdrawnuptorecall refreshingfactisciousattitude ofastoryrecollected associatedsceptically unitingwiresbyyourself tellingsomebody beginningtoleave thestinkingwheel iwouldlikerecorded lettersshowing shadowsofthehand lickableleisure
driftingresonance accompaniedforgetfulness returninghome amessageonthemachine love&concern&explanation soi'malone itmakes myinsidesfeeltoobig tobeinside iknowit'sbest andi'mhappy he'scontinuedinto anewadventure i remember

alwaysstarthere

i'm a smaller body maybe 4 years old i'm wearing a pink zip up jumpsuit even though i remember that the one i had was blue and although meant to be pajamas, i would wear this blue suit out to dinner-party-visits with my parents, but this pink one made me look a bit like a bunny, and i see myself mingle between taller adults who are wearing dark clothes and holding drinks and talking and the party goes on late and then i

Bryan
Wednesday, 15th.

Penny Rae took us to brunch at her house in Saint-Gilles.

Karen said she and CJ saw someone auctioning off a pair of mismatched
crutches.

A man has a Pink Panther theme song cell phone ringer and when he answers
his accent sounds like Inspector Clouseau.

Titanne has a frog croaking cell phone ringer sound and when it croaks
Matthew throws one of our frogs at her.

Our theater in Brussels is called De Kriekelaar (which means Cherry
Orchard).

As we arrive we see a lot of kids there for a birthday party.

We enter through the garden from the side.

It is our dress rehearsal, and we see for the first time our new super
titles in Flemish & French.

The first two questions of the performance in Flemish are: Hou je ervan?
-Het is ons kind' niet?

The first two questions of the performance in French are: Tu l'aimes?
-C'est notre enfant, non?

Later two frogs jumped out from Matthew's armpits and Mark spun around like
a spider making her web.

We rehearse with the sound of the kids playing in the garden.

CJ
Thursday, 16th.

194 + 491 = 685 + 586 = 1,271 + 1,721 = 2,992

The opening night of The Sea & Poison in Brussels: many in the audience laugh at the opening lines of text, it feels like this will be a good show.

At the post-show discussion, all the questions and responses from the audience were about the environment, politics, war, culture; no questions about form, structure, and how did you create that movement?

After one hour of enigmatic, slowly unfolding somber reflection, scenes and texts concerning childhood, rumination, recreation, re-creation, distanced memory recall, there is an outburst of energy – performers separately or together engage in movement trials, games, exertions:
Mark balances inverted on his cheek;
Karen repeatedly stands, and swoons into another fall;
Matthew overreaches, dazed, then dashes from one end of the space
to the other;
Bryan swirls and tumbles, hands over stretched, offering himself.

This reaches a culmination with a baroque soundtrack, and then emotion floods in because it’s not anything like my life, but I recognize its struggle and play, and it’s touched an essence, despite everything else – it feels unclear, formless, chaotic, I don’t know the why.

Now it’s the center point, the axis of my writing, the midpoint of the middle entry for May, this sentence will turn on its 31st word, and that word is departure, and from this moment, the middle of my life (already passed), I am closer to my anticipated death on 13 December 2040, than my documented birth on 17 October 1963.

And soon, figures are hunched over, hands on knees.

Standing or walking in line, bringing the performers down to the height of a child while also suggesting the hunched over spine of the elderly.

How did the spine end up like that? How did your body grow into this shape? It’s inexplicable.

We grow smaller as time goes on.

We say of those who die in their 50s, they died so young, before their time.

Lin
Friday, 17th.

Death shows up and measures the inseam of your pants. You talk. Then you forget. The Christmas lights. The neighbor's car. Your own mother sitting at the table slicing bread, blankets the encounter. Yet somewhere quietly he sits embroidering your name on cloth.

Belgian lace is renowned for the fineness of the thread. Flanders lace was worn in the royal courts of Paris and London. Queen Elizabeth, the first, owned more than three thousand lace dresses. Her courtiers wore lace ruffs stiff with starch. Lace reached its zenith of popularity in the mid-nineteenth century when an estimated 10,000 women and girls worked as lace makers.

My name is Arnold. I have two things to tell you. A red sky at night is the shepherd's delight. A red sky in the morning is the shepherd's warning.

Three sets of twins, twelve years old, stand on the hill posed for a portrait by the photographer. Each couplet is dressed in matching outfits. Plaid. Maroon. Wool. They all wear lace collars and the masks of a fox. I cannot tell them apart. But embroidered on the pocket of their shirts, in bright yellow thread, are their names: Amelie, Hugo, Marianne, Rosa, Luc and Jeanne.

Mark
Saturday, 18th.

We wake to the cool grayness of Brussels, after a previous evening of The Sea & Poison performance. After an evening where a bag of Claire's from Forced Entertainment with a lost address book from over years and years of collecting was stolen on the way back to the hotel - Stop that man. Was I in a northern England town and keeping up in running after that man was not going to happen.

Now in grayness we walk through buildings of rain decay, we pass a wall with drilled holes, inserted in the concrete surfaces were flower heads. Somehow it helps to stabilize and pollinate itself, to think of this building in a state of collapse, of its stories and history and then to stabilize with nature, with a moment to see a process of a possible attempt towards surfaces healing. A tender moment of yearning to connect with histories past, and yet he still breathes.

We walking are, Boris, Lucy, Nicholas, Litó, Matthew, Lin, Karen, Cj, Bryan, and Mark, around a wooden table we sit, in a wooden room. Where elderly figures pass through the mid morning with cards and chess, coffees and tea. In this morning we talk of change of our web site, of surrounding ideas and connectivities with the new site.

In the hallway of the festival eating area (an old courtyard that has been repaired and covered with a glass ceiling) was a red carpet, at this moment not fleeing in the night but two figures walking, jump up and glide along the corridor of red.

A Passover between Matthew and I between 23:59 and midnight, a cut off point, a segway moment, a clarity to this other time, Sunday has arrived to Matthew.

Matthew
Sunday, 19th.

Her shaking calmed by feeling a heartbeat, larger on one side to repair the world, she slept and dreamed of a cormorant.
She saw it travel to add stars to the sky.
They saw the grasshoppers like rays from the sun, and they thought of the things they had lost in the wind.
*
There was a can in the canal, and there was no history in that nor was there candy nor was there farming.
Bells began to ring at 9:45 and continued at intervals through the Pentecost morning.
To experience these recurring images not as narrative but as a pointing to it.
She heard that beautiful things are difficult.
She sat in silence with her wealth where her friends were.
With more haste and less speed they departed the garden.
*
He said he was first a citizen of the world, his homeland everywhere, and a foreigner to everyone.
As to whether he was right, here was a garden of roses, here was a heart beat, because, as it is said, one plays the flute.
A telephone rang in a nearby room in the hotel, waking him, and he counted 120 rings, one every 2 seconds, four minutes of unanswered ringing, provoking a vague nocturnal dread and thoughts of St. Anthony's bell that rings in the desert.

Karen
Monday, 20th.

Songs to her were words away to keep safe and never May quit trying. Years on, May looked back saying: I’ve got your words hanging.

Her fingers are chipped and raw, the nails are bitten and soft with ragged cuticles.

I have warned the students that they will need to be wary of the time but they will need you to remind them. Let them go when you are finished.

Everything became supercharged in the aftermath of Sept. 11th because issues we were working with were engaged on an immediate level.

Her nose is deeply freckled, she wrinkles it often.

We haven't changed anything since the terrorist attacks but it is almost as if we were ready for it, ready with this piece as a response. It was a response to the condition of our world right now, and though our world changed drastically it isn't really so different is it?

They are Melissa, Beach, Ray, Del, Dane, Joanna, Chris, Patrick, Megan, Justin, Rachel, Jon, Angela, Tony, and Brock (there are 15 of them).

My brother, Nick, will do whatever I want in order to manipulate me. I put my hair behind my ears, as my chin moves down, my eyelids open and the focus rises to the lash edge looking up through the tops of my eyes in a way meant to convince May of that which was definitely untrue.

Litó
Tuesday, 21st.

was running running down the beach to get home, i was naked full grown and strong and i had shampoo in my hair and it was running down my face as i ran, and i ran strong between the houses on the slope it was getting morning and people were puttering in their gardens and garages but i just kept trying to get through the constructions of houses and cars and soon i saw the busy streets and recognized the intersection and i knew i was close

alwaysstartthere

andistayinbedanddrifttohalfsleep "theracehasbegun" themengreeteachother withashriekingvoice toherhusband thewomannextdoorcomplains
theweightoftheirbody thesoundoftheirhoovesresonate hearingdonkeyspassmyhouse wavesofoceanorsea thesoundofwindthatsoundslikelapping wakingto iwasprotected sleepingdeepintherock was i when

Bryan
Wednesday, 22nd.

In the wee hours of the morning Geert Van Istendael told me about his one
visit from the angel that inspired his hand.

Once in a lifetime he was able to write eight perfect lines.

As for me, I can wait for angels and that is the easy part.

It is when they are gone and have charged me with their work (my work) that
the actual impact of their visitation is weighted and driven like a rivet.

My angels extend my to do list and fix me longer to this earth.

We are 30,000 feet and wings.

We wait for the solid ground.

I have a long day to write.

We gain seven extra hours flying westward so I am allowing myself 3 1/2
extra sentences.

I have a feeling that I've left something behind, blue above, 7 hours ahead
and 5 shows under our belt.

We ride a 767, land at 7:37, gain 7 hours rewind to 12:37 and touch down
home sweetly in Chicago.

Teresa and Jake

I take a nap and dream about releasing hundreds of birds from their cages at
an ancient medieval city center.

There was also a cloud of bugs that the birds devoured.

This event was accompanied by the sound of a Disneyesque soprano chorus
singing a happy song as the flocking and feasting was in full wing.

I relocated this dream from the ancient city to the farm yard where I grew up.

CJ
Thursday, 23rd.

195 + 591 = 786 + 687 = 1,473 + 3,741 = 5,214 + 4,125 = 9,339

“This is Chicago.”

We move from one performance to the next.

We pivot around issues, concerns, theories, themes; and as we swivel on the hairpin, shifts occur.

Cultural biography, imitation, likeness, striving, dichotomies, all take on new shapes and hues.

The mirror on the cabinet door is swung shut, revealing the murderer standing in the doorway – place the camera in the right spot, place the mirror in the right spot.

Lean in to the mirror to examine the blemishes, spots, scars - apply lotions and powders.

Mark the center point of the day, the work day, the film, the working week, the flight, the journey – from which point we approach our destination, our conclusion, with a new momentum.

props are in their place
batteries recharged
an empty performance space
a thin veil of chairs
a transparent cocoon around an asymmetrical space
a damaged space which cannot be mirrored

Brick wall, exposed theater lights, some hanging in storage, the safety curtain is pulled up.

Turn around four times in place, stop one time each on North, East, South, and West.

Small circular pieces of paper thrown in the air, are confetti, snowflakes, stars, constellations, rain - spread across the landscape, covering the injured soldier.

Most of what is said hangs in the air: what if we call this a conversation?

Lin
Friday, 24th.

Are words birds sent through the skies to remove people from the face of the earth?
"I want my portrait painted", whispers Jeanne, the dying girl on the brown hill.

Belgium's brewers pay homage each July to St. Arnold. At a time of plague, Arnold is said to have immersed his crucifix in a brew-kettle; thus encouraging the populace to drink beer, rather than water. Suddenly, the plague ended. The water had probably been communicating the infection, while beer -- being boiled during production -- remained a much safer drink. Official estimates suggest there are now over 700 beers to choose from in Belgium.

Participants in a study watched a film of a car crash. "How fast were the cars going when they hit each other?", they were later asked, except the word "hit" was replaced by contacted, bumped, or smashed. Results showed that the particular word used influenced the speed estimated, with the word smashed evoking the highest average (40.8 mph), bumped (38.1 mph) and hit (34.0 mph), with contacted being the lowest at 31.8 mph. When further questioned a week later and asked if there was any evidence of broken glass, those who had been tested using the word smashed were consistently more likely to incorrectly report the presence of broken glass.

Mark
Saturday, 25th.

A rehearsal of It’s an Earthquake in My Heart in front of Northside high school students to continue our ongoing dialogue with. This time can we appears to have changed to a relaxed comfortability, towards an informal may we in how they view and interact with the performance. After the rehearsal we pack Earthquake props in their trunks once more for another departure to the Athenaeum Theatre in Chicago. If we run fast enough do you think we can suspend ourselves off the ground, do you think we can echo a place we haven't seen before. In running, can we sit here, in a chair of absence, may we take this seat you’re running with. Can we have this Bauchian dance, have we been able to alter previous through a collision of the present of the past. To adapt our bodies onto others from running, falling, collapsing upwards and onto others.

This afternoon in my Chinatown home I have planted a garden on individual steps to lead you to the front door. There are tall grasses with marigolds and silvas, English ivy, tall grasses, pink geraniums, tall grasses, a hanging basket of petunias, tall grasses, dahlias, a fuchsia hanging basket on top of a barrel. A hope to connect with nature, of growth that I have been unable to see.

Lucy's mother has had a stroke, her left side is immobilized, she is in the hospital, what can be happening, we discover frail bodies. They have taken away the pipe out of his throat, that has been a back up for his breathing pattern, still he doesn't talk, still he lies, they have increased his physio for him to learn how to grip, to move small objects to a certain distance.

Matthew
Sunday, 26th.

I dreamed I was the Grand Canyon, and I echoed every word that you said.
It is night that falls but day that breaks; can we outrun the saints in our names?
The hour of birth was full of danger and there was little peace in it.
*
Grand Canyon candy canal she will have seen cancer

Mark: candybar
Lin: American
CJ: Canadian

she will have said

Bryan: Canetti
Litó: can't
Karen: mechanics.

Thus began rerun season; the temple bell commemorates the birthday of the Buddha, with free parking provided at the adjacent butcher shop.
To see the wood in the table and the words in the sentence.
Stravinsky hums a tune at the piano, tentatively touching the keys, that one day will become The Rite of Spring.
So that the voices of sanity might not go unheard, she silently practiced one hour of non-action.
I would like to thank today's penumbral eclipse.
*
I said I had intended this to become one of 48 love songs.
As to whether I was right, here was a garden of roses, here was a heart beat, because, as it is said, one plays the flute for oneself.
She awoke in the night with the realization that she was still a beginner.

Karen
Monday, 27th.

We have had to learn even more about patience and quiet strength.

We children startle as the door slams shut, the hiccoughs took three days to go away, we taught the wrong words to the songs. What was the night like in the room at the end of the hall? Her parents peddled their wares on different islands. Take the “r” out of “Mary,” take the sing out of song, Mother May I, yes you may.

As I'm sure you noticed, I got cut off as we were trying to converse and I couldn't get back on, I'm performing in Brussels, I'll send more later right now I need to get off line again, I may be running up a huge bill.

Working away for small reward and having as much patience as we ask of our audience.

I hope all is well in your corner.

There were three parents, there were three children, there was one May, one Mary, two siblings, countless giggles both gathered and scattered, a few airplanes, hundreds of miles between, 8 months, three bedrooms, one house, one beach, five palm trees, a hill and an ocean, countless grains of sand, the wind, the song—two songs sung together—and two versions: the wrong and the right.

It is about a kind of tolerance of that which is not completely explicable. In time, and with reflection, the piece reveals itself. It is like a piece of music.

Litó
Tuesday, 28th.

when i was sleepingdeepintherock iwasprotected wakingto thesoundofwindthatsoundslikelapping wavesofoceanorsea hearingdonkeyspassmyhouse thesoundoftheirhoovesresonate theweightofthebody thewomannextdoorcomplains toherhusband withashriekingvoice the mengreeteachother "theracehasbegun" andistayinbedanddrifttohalfsleep

end

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begin

Bryan
Wednesday, 29th.

I am carving a granite marker for my grandparents’ grave site.

It is not patience that carves stone.

It is not diamond or carbide that carves stone.

It is up at 5 AM the sun.

It is my multitude of light thoughts.

This evening we are running a dress rehearsal at the Athenaeum Theater in Chicago.

The flight of steps, the front box office, the long hall, the restrooms, the carved balcony, the paneled walls, the empty plush red seats, the dressing rooms. . . everything exists for the stage.

Our audience, our light and our performance space is on the stage.

Teresa, Jake, Eli, Margaret, Chris, Scott, Lin and CJ maintain a silence around us.

We do it so many times that we can do it perfectly (easily) without thinking about it.

Then we can perform it; but now being mindful of what it is.

At the end of the evening we leave the theater a ghost light in the darkness.

CJ
Thursday, 30th.

196 + 691 =

“Do nine men interpret?” “Nine men,” I nod.

At the post-show discussion in Chicago, there are questions about form and structure, and certain elements of the performance - sections, subsections and interruptions - are described.

When will we grow up?

The six year old’s daily school homework will make him a resentful but reliable worker - in old age, his hands struggle to hold a pen, and his eyesight is fading.

The small child, on her first flight, turns to her grandmother soon after take off, and asks: “are we getting smaller now?”

The car’s back window framed a picture: part night road receding, part my face reflecting.

As the performance approaches its conclusion, there is an understanding which spreads backwards, that encapsulates what has come before, that engages the present moment with the experience of what has already unfolded.

The memory of the performance is held differently, we know there are only minutes remaining.

What has been mirrored, what has been reflected back on us, when did the performance turn in on itself?

For a long time it moved forwards, leaving its traces, its evidence, disparate, unconnected, bewildering, then a point came where it turned in on itself, a circle was closed, and what was separate, singular, became a continuum, part of a whole, which contained echoes, repetition, coherence: and two ideas seem to mirror themselves although they are themselves worlds apart.

This lecture feels like nothing else.

In each mirror, the world exists; our view of the world is partially hidden by our own reflection; and in each world, mirrors multiply; time moves on - we need to stop.

Lin
Friday, 31st.

The sun pushes up hitting the trucks on their way home.
I can see them clearly.
The sun pushes up bumping the trucks on their way home.
I can see them rocking.
The sun pushes up smashing the trucks on their way home.
Windshields are cracking.

We perform The Sea & Poison. A friend sees it for the second time, a year later.

"Why did you edit the part where someone is given an award?" she asks.

"But we never had an award in the piece," I reply.

"You know the part. I think someone did it while standing on the green turfs. I'm sure of it."

I plead with her.

"I'm sorry, Louise. It never happened."

Stories end but you have to carry on with the rest of your day.
Everything ends with flowers. Daffodils. Peonies. Carnations.
We carry hunched stones of the future on our backs so take up your grave and walk.
You have already died from the deaths of others.
But look at the brown hill on the horizon.
Men moving their hands back and forth secretly nod, called to worship
A helmet with nothing inside it.
Night falls over skinny mosquitoes.
Split my words in the grass and make them soil again.

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