Several at Once

Right now I have Jupiter sextile Venus, exact this Saturday, 1/16, Neptune squaring the Ascendant, exact 1/24, Chiron doing the same thing but with a further away date of exactitude, Saturn sitting on Neptune squaring itself and Pluto coming to square Neptune and oppose Saturn. Pardon my obsession with this, but I have been watching the latter aspects approach in the ephemeris for quite some time, usually wanting to throw up as I do so.

It's admittedly very early days but the amazingly wondrous (to me) effect of all the above so far is that I am working, seriously working, on a play that I have been toying with on and off for twelve years. There are index cards and yellow Stickies and sheets of paper all over the apartment, starting with Act One on the kitchen counter and going over the table through the computer room, onto the bed and into the living room, ending up with the end of Act Two on the couch close to the front windows.

For the past three days I've been pacing backwards and forwards muttering to myself - No, Daphne has to say that BEFORE she finds out Doreen knew the meeting was cancelled - scribbling on new Stickies and attaching them to the appropriate (for the moment) piece of paper, shuffling index cards around, rearranging the order of the pieces of paper - THAT'S better, then it makes sense for Dobby to go into the bathroom - running to the computer every now and again to bash out a couple of lines of dialogue, going back to the kitchen whenever I get to the front window and starting all over again, and every once in while wondering if I have gone completely insane to be spending all this time by myself with two cats and three people who exist only in my head.

Mid-day yesterday I got the answer to that question when an email arrived from the artistic director of an amateur theatre company in England who'd emailed me before Christmas about the possibility of producing Soldiering On, one of the plays I wrote about 9/11. The email confirmed not only that, God Willing, SO will be produced at his theater in April of 2011, but that scurrying around mumbling to myself IS a productive use of my time, pardon my shouting.

Of course I want to know the exact dates in April that SO will be produced - I know there'll be seven performances - so I can do a chart, but have so far restrained myself from asking. How long I'll be able to hold out I'm not sure, but in the meantime, Doreen, Daphne and Dobby are calling, and I need to go to Staples to buy some different colored Stickies.