Welcome to a World of Spiritual Harmony

Blithe Spirit, being currently performed by the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company, is a Noel Coward play set in 1941 in Kent, in Britain.

I’ve always liked the sophisticated / smart / spot on while being slightly acerbic wit of Noel Coward. Set in a British country house, depicting the Agatha Christie feel of those times. And of course this play includes a medium, a seance, and a ghost who wants her husband back - even though now, 7 years later, he’s married to someone else.

Fun play, excellent performances. And actually the psychic stuff was spot on as well. The only sour note was when Madame Arcati said she didn’t know what to do about the ghost who showed up. Basically, ghosts have to do what you tell them - after you ascertain what sort of spirit you have on your hands, that is.

The problem here was caused not by the ghost(s), but by an untrained psychic. Of course, since most everyone is psychic and few folk are trained, that problem exists all around us. But most folk are not really manifesters - don’t have the kind of focus / attention / powerful intention that can change the world. This one did. My thought is that the untrained one just said something, not out loud, but powerfully, like “I want this house all to myself.” And the train of events thus unleashed resulted in just that situation.

Not that any of that was talked about in the play itself, but it’s what I saw! Made for a rollicking good British mystery story, with some great characters and great acting putting it all in front of us.

You’ve got two more weekends to see it! The Perfect Summer Play!

I don’t think I’ve ever had another opera affect me more than La Boheme at Music Hall last night. Puccini, of course, produced real magic. So many of the arias and melodies have made their way into our culture. And the sad love story is over the top, as opera always is.

I had seen it before, and was expecting more of a workhorse/well worn opera. Instead, this remake, set in 1930’s Paris. had me from the first moments. The voices of the two principals, Rodolfo and Mimi, were perfection, and when they sang together, the entire audience melted. They fell in love at first sight, as she came to ask for help in re-lighting her candle. Then she lost her key, and when he found it, he kept quiet until she agreed to go out with he and his friends for supper. Where they encountered the sexy Musetta, who was an ex-lover of Rodolfo’s friend Marcello.

So we’re following two love stories, and the increasing cough of Mimi. The gray buildings in the background, with snow falling, as they try to work things out. And then her final visit to the apartment of Marcelo and Rodolfo - just after the 4 guy friends had really been celebrating and having fun, forgetting all their troubles.

The little touches Puccini inserted were so real, and the staging - so inventive, with two buildings moving into various configurations in nearly the blink of an eye. But it’s the music, those soaring voices, the beautiful singers who had us standing and applauding for at least 10 minutes after the last note.

Hurrah for Cincinnati Opera. Another star in their crown!

Oscar Wilde and the Dead Man’s Smile - by Brit Gyles Brandreth - has certainly made me happy! At the turn of the 19th century into the 20th, Oscar was one of the most important writers of poetry, plays and books. and one of the best of all time Irish wits. He was also prosecuted essentially for being gay, and lived altogether a very interesting life.

And now, thanks to Gyles Brandreth, a biographer of Wilde’s, he is having another life - as a detective. I managed to find his third mystery on the bargain books table at Joseph-Beth, and it is just terrific. Quotes from Oscar and from his books, with a number of his friends - including Sarah Bernhardt and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

A treat of a mystery, set in Paris, involving a theater company. I’ll say no more. If you life upscale excellent writing, cultural commentary, and British mysteries - you can’t do better. I’m off to find the rest of the series.

My DC grandson is in town this week. He pops in 2 or 3 times a year for a week or so, we see movies, he goes to Kings Island with his cousins, we all eat a year’s worth of Skyline in that week.

Kyle loves Skyline. If he ever moves here - as we discuss pretty often - at least one meal a day will always be Skyline time.

He arrived around midnight Saturday night / Sunday morning. The rest of the family was in bed by that time in their various houses. I was still up, because Kyle was going to stay here. And he wanted his Skyline hit right then - if it wasn’t too late for his grandmother. No way was I going to say it was too late. So there we were at 1 a m, at the Clifton Skyline, with me eating their vegetarian black beans and rice.

The whole group of us saw Inception together on Sunday, with Skyline before and after. And I had the black beans and rice over a steamed potato. Monday was a day with cousins and uncles, car shopping and suit shopping. Then for supper, we went to Dewey’s for that great house salad and the Edgar Allen Poe, half and half with Kyle’s pepperoni and extra cheese. We came back to the house and did his semi-annual Tarot card reading.

Tuesday we hit Skyline before seeing Cyrus - I had the black bean burrito. Since I was teaching an Intuitive Development class that evening, Kyle hung out with cousins. Wednesday was lunch in Glendale with my sister at the Indian place, Taj Mahal, in Springdale. And a Second Degree Reiki class for me, with Kyle and his grandfather going to the Reds game (where I’m sure he had Gold Star coneys), so Kyle could see the Nats new star pitcher, Stephen Strasburg, beat the Reds. Exactly what he had in mind. Today they saw the day game, and played a round of golf.

We’ll see what happens tomorrow! And see how many more ways I can have those black beans and rice.

This is a good summer movie, fluffy and fun pretty much of the time. A fair amount of sex, some unexpected bromance at the end, good acting, good story.

So the guy is lonely and miserable (and he’s really worked to get that way, we see that right off the bat). He’s still attached to his ex-wife, who’s now getting married. So he’s being forced out of his depression, and wants a new woman without having to do any work at all. There’s the mandatory urination scene (have you noticed that the vomiting scenes are disappearing?). And then a dance that starts out embarrassing and ends up being fun - and he winds up with his woman. Who turns out to be more work than expected - and is Marisa Tomei.

This is actually a pretty good right-in-the-middle-of-the-paradigm-shift movie. Five years ago it would have been different, and five years from now it would be very different as well. But this is smack dab where we are. Throw in some California-life style stuff, enjoy some angst with Cyrus, feel sorry for the new husband of the ex-wife, and have a good time. It is summer, after all. No thinking allowed.

The new Leonardo DiCaprio movie - Inception - is riveting from start to finish. It’s all about dreams, about planting ideas in dreamers, about - not said this way - lucid dreaming, where you know you’re dreaming, and act on that knowledge. The motivation for all this, in this case, is about money. (As most of us now believe all motivation is about money/power/stuff. This is actually a fairly recent phenomenon.) Leonardo’s motivation different, and more in line with the mythic / hero story.

As the team works with deep, deeper, deepest levels of dreams, I am fascinated by how much material is in here. And with how their awareness allows them to move among the levels, and to communicate across those stretches.

Having been in a dream group for a long time, we are always aiming toward awareness in dreams. And often choose a theme to ask for dreams about. For instance, we have asked ‘What does the Universe need from us now?’ Currently, that theme is healing.

Here’s the standard stuff in the movie: A big cast of characters, scenes on a plane, in a Board room and in a hotel, and in an Arctic fortress. Tough corporate guy, and tough hoodlum guys. Plus a chase scene in perhaps a bazaar somewhere in the Middle East. A fair amount of what I think of as ‘boy stuff’, now that I’ve been listening to 20-something friends talk about guys. Mayhem of all sorts, guns getting bigger and better. Which, in my time listening to lots of people’s dreams, I have never heard much of - in men’s or women’s dreams - so that was the least real part of the film for me.

The story thread about the wife and beautiful children is often very dreamlike, as is the perceptiveness of the woman architect on the team. She leaps to answers, as dreamers often will. Not a straight line logical process at all.

Maybe all of this is necessary to get us to think about our inner Universe, and how all the different levels of ourselves grow and evolve and shape each other. Whatever gets us thinking about dreams, and knowing more about who we are, is just fine with me! And this is a pretty fine film on every level.

I actually started this book a couple of years ago, and just picked it up and finished it last week. Galileo’s Daughter, by Dava Sobel, has this subtitle: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith and Love.

It is a wonderful book, very human, and ties together lots of different threads of what I knew about that time, really put it all together for me, along with a feel for the people and the life they led. I gave it up a couple of years ago, over halfway through, because I could not bear the pain and injustice the Catholic Church was putting Galileo and his daughter, Suor Maria Celeste, through. Nothing much has changed inside the Church since the 1600’s, sounds like. Unreasonable, bureaucratic, power-hungry - and constantly shooting itself in the foot. Same as the headlines today in 2010, equating pedophile priests with women who would dare to think about being priests.

I came back to the book because I wanted to know the answers - how did Galileo manage? What kind of support did he have? How did his daughter do? (He had three children, but Virginie, born in 1600, who became Suor Maria Celeste, and he were exceptionally close.) She died in 1634, undoubtedly at least in part because of her concern for her father, care for the other sisters in the convent - and her neglect of herself, giving all her energy to her father and others. Galileo was allowed to return to his hometown, under house arrest for the rest of his life, just a few months before her death. Shall we add vindictive to our indictment of the Church? So at least they got to spend some time together.

Galileo professed himself mistaken about the sun being the center of our solar system, and continued to say that. He was too smart to believe it, one assumes. He had many supporters of his work in other parts of Europe, and had books published on other scientific topics, but not in Italy. He wrote another important book, Two New Sciences, again written as a dialogue, on motion, where he studied and measured and tested the falling and rolling of objects, really creating the rigor of the scientific method. He added into the book many other treatises, not knowing if he’d ever be able to publish again. Friends helped get the book to Holland.

He was physically slipping by this time, was already blind, had his son doing a drawing of a pendulum. He died in 1642, at the age of 78. Isaac Newton was born later that year.

And in 1992 Pope John Paul II publicly endorsed Galileo’s philosophy.

At my birthday party, lots of folk were asking how come I don’t look 70, when I am. The answer I gave then was that I basically do very little that isn’t fun for me to do. And since I’m always having fun, that’s what I look like.

I’ve been thinking about that answer, and still like it - here are some expansions of it. For one thing, I love my left-brained work: community development - and my right-brained work: spirituality, healing, readings, teaching. I love eating food that makes my body feel good - so I don’t eat like most folk. I pay attention to my body, and if I notice a twinge or new nuance, I pay attention to that. So I don’t have to end up with magic-bullet doctor-prescribed remedies. I love re-cycling and just can’t handle all this wastefulness any more. I love stretching and gardening and going to plays and eating out at wonderful restaurants with all of my wonderful friends.

I’ve also started to add more walking into my life - and will sometimes suggest a walk in place of a meal. This is such a great walking city. I wear clothes that are comfy and fun and elegant - gave away my high heels a long time ago. I’m doing more and more writing, and I love that. I have an entire yard and woods full of animal friends, and a great organic garden. I am doing almost exactly what I want with my life, with the people I want to be around. And those people / family / friends are a rich source of joy in every shade and stratum.

And when I do stress myself out - I’ve gotten a lot better at admitting it to myself. Always the first step in recovery. And there’s Rescue Remedy to help out if I really go over the top.

Thanks, Universe, and everyone around me… It is Truly a Wonderful Life.

Spent this evening having a wonderful time - and have been doing the same thing for a very long time. Pleasureful, intellectually challenging, silly fun - and always with great food. Writers Group for the last few years has been at Joseph-Beth Booksellers one evening a month, with dinner while we discuss the news of the day, which includes checking in with where we each are in our lives - and then each of us reads a piece we have written. Maybe a piece from years or months ago, or from the last hour.

Today, one of the members was sorting out the characters in her blog as we were eating. It was in pretty good shape by the time we were reading - or, in her case, working from the outline she had just completed. Since she’s an excellent actress, it was a full stage show - featuring God, a few angels, and a robot.

Another reader had been mulling on the long ago time when Lake Erie was nearly dead - and wrote an excellent poem about the life around it today. The third had been mulling over her own strong reaction to a meditation led by a teacher she really admires. She started it off as a meditation, so I went with her, and listened to the story from the fluffy cloud she had taken me to. A very powerful piece.

Then I read a piece I had just written today - which I needed for the second meeting of the Intuitive Development class I’m currently teaching. A piece giving the basics about Animal Totems - what they are, how you know the animal is presenting as a totem, how to work with that animal - and how to say thank you as you absorb the lesson. Got some great clarifying questions and some very good advice.

I love the variety, the helpfulness, the way each of us works. Makes me happy!

And next month, for the first time in a long time, we’ll be meeting at the new home of one of our members. Writers Group is always the same and always changing. Hooray!

Well, last Friday, July 9, was about 7 weeks since my birthday. And I still had 2 celebrations that day - one with my seester, the middlest of us, and the other with one of my fabulous adopted daughters. Having had all sons, and now all grandsons (who are wonderful people, of course), I early on began to look around for my daughters.

Susan and I visited the new tea room / coffee shop that Bonbonerie has opened in the space where the former coffee shop was on Madison. Except now, we walk in through the back, passing the old tea room on the way. It was just perfect to spend time with her, and catch back up with our lives. And the food was, as it always has been with the Bon, just excellent.

Sister Maureen and I went to Take the Cake Deli - I knew she would love it, and she’d love the long tables, to which, I’m sure, one of these days she’ll bring all her friends to enjoy the great food as much as we did. She’s just gotten back from Ireland - so I got a little baggie with a shell and some sand from Galway Bay. Plus other wonderful stuff - lots of it green. And then we wandered about for a bit, doing a little shopping around Northside.

And there is at least one more birthday celebration to come, since Carolyn and I haven’t scheduled our time together yet - our birthdays are just a couple of weeks apart, but can be celebrated at any time!