“Sky-Circles” by Rumi

 

The way of love is not

a subtle argument.

The door there

is devastation.

Birds make great sky-circles

of their freedom

How do they learn that?

They fall, and falling,

they are given wings.

Image: "Birds flying at sun set” by Chukwu Chibueze Pascal (Kingaustin07), CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Note: Translated by Coleman Banks. Collected in A Year with Rumi - Daily Readings (2006).

Readers Theatre on the Horizon???

I haven’t been active in my Casey persona in recent years (as a writer, that is!) for two reasons:

I have been focussing on my Brigit writings, as Mael Brigde, and this has taken a lot of time and energy. (You can find a link to my book, blogs, etc. here.)

VCon, our annual SF convention here in Vancouver, Canada, has been absent for several years. Over the last year or two, volunteers have been hosting events in order to rebuild toward VCon, and I’ve enjoyed these very much, but as a regular attendee, not as a panelist. In November, they are presenting a one day convention called CONnections, and I have decided to pitch a readers theatre, as we have done in previous years as the Pallahaxi Players Readers Theatre. 

I hope this happens. I haven’t volunteered this time around to be on panels, and with the very sad and sudden death of Fran Skene, there is not likely to be a Turkey Reading (one of the greatest delights of VCons past, for me, at least), but I would love to sit down with fellow writers and read out something delightful for the audience.

We may have something in the can already, but if you have a short, stirring or humorous, play that would suit readers theatre*, we would be happy to see if your writing would be a fit for us. Or if you know of something in the public domain that would work well for an audience of SF and fantasy fans, we'd be interested in knowing about that, too.

If you are interested in participating at CONnections, you can pitch your idea here:

https://www.zeffy.com/en-CA/ticketing/connections-program-guest-inquiry

* Unlike actors memorising lines and acting with a set, we sit at a table together and read out our parts.

Image: “Alien Amor” by Laura Molina (Laura Molina/National Museum of Mexican Art) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Lava Cameo by Eavan Boland

 

Lava Cameo

by Eavan Boland

I like this story -

My grandfather was a sea captain.
My grandmother always met him when his ship docked.
She feared the women at the ports -

except that it is not a true story,
more a rumour or a folk memory,
something thrown out once in a random conversation,
a hint merely.

If I say wool and lace for her skirt and
crepe for her blouse
in the neck of which is pinned a cameo,
carved out of black, volcanic rock;

if I make her pace the Cork docks, stopping
to take down her parasol as a gust catches
the silk tassels of it -

then consider this:

there is a way of making free with the past,
a pastiche of what is
real and what is
not, which can only be
justified if you think of it

not as sculpture or syntax:

a structure extrinsic to meaning which uncovers
the inner secret of it.

She will die at thirty-one in a fever ward.
He will drown nine years later in the Bay of Biscay.
They will never even be
sepia, and so I put down
the gangplank now between the ship and the ground.
In the story, late afternoon has become evening.
They kiss once, their hands touching briefly.
Please.

Look at me, I want to say to her: show me
the obduracy of an art which can
arrest a profile in the flux of hell.

Inscribe catastrophe

Image: Italian Bracelet 41269, Walters Art Museum, LA. Public domain. Diana, Pompeii.

Wolves Don’t Live By the Rules

Listen to this. It always makes me think of you when I hear this because of that band you were in so long ago, man does not become wolf. I have so many things I want to say and and nothing, all at the same time. I have nothing at all to say because everything I have said up until now has been meaningless. It's never exactly what I want it to be and how do I even know what it ought to be let alone what I want? I just wish I could play this song for you and have you be as enthusiastic about it as I am.

Wolves actually do live by very strict rules. But they're not the rules we put on them. And man never does become wolf. Quite right about that.

Fuck, I miss you. Now, listen to this.

Wolves Don’t Live By the Rules

Willie Thrasher 

[Chorus]
Wolves don't live by the rules
Wolves don't live by the rules

[Verse 1]
Down eastern hills you can hear them crying
They have to fight to stay alive
No one can change it
Mother nature knows the reason why

[Chorus]
Oh, wolves don't live by the rules
Wolves don't live by the rules

[Verse 2]
They're born to kill and to be free
Their lives are hard but they're meant to be
The cry of the wild and the unaware
They can't see

[Chorus]
Oh, wolves don't live by the rules
Wolves don't live by the rules

"Wolves Don’t Live By the Rules" by Willie Thrasher on Spirit Child album. 1 January 1981.

Image: Christian Mehlführer, User:Chmehl, CC BY 2.5 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5>, via Wikimedia Commons