January 8, 2011

There was no crane action today.

Today was very much a day of sitting still and being bathed in the profound. This is particularly hard on my back – the sitting still part I mean – and I actually lay on my bed for part of the late afternoon.

In the morning ‘til late afternoon I was being taped for the Book of Judith. Sarah and Michael want a different sort of ending for the play for those performances where I cannot show up. For the life of me I don’t understand why someone else can’t just play me. Instead they want to have a video of me make the icon of me appear to come alive, rescue Mathew from the part where he is left naked not knowing what to do next, and end the play.

So there I was wrapped in the same winter weight poncho which I am wearing in the iconographic picture already used in the play. I was interviewed in this coat under intense video lights with the apartment windows shut to cut down the background noise. I was to stay still for the most part so the video, when edited, would fit into the icon background, and thus I will seem appear in the wall to the audience

What did I say? I don’t remember much of it, but most of it was serious in tone and some was profound, or close to it.

I remember sharing what I have recently learnt about my failure to notice people’s boundaries and how the gift of intimacy without proper limitations can bring people into difficult situations. I am certain that if Caleb and I had better appreciation of boundaries at that time I would not have asked him to help me find a lover. But then there would have been no Book of Judith. The paradox of life!

The rest of today’s sitting still had to do with going to the movie – The King’s Speech – with Gloria, Peter and Mike. I need to sleep and so it’s difficult right now to say fully its impact on me. I was struck by how obvious it is that a good personal assistant, and the one who is supported, will love each other. I wonder when the world will realize how utterly authentic this is.

The other depiction that struck me was how the prince, and then the King George VI, up until he gave his great war speech, had to struggle to assert, even discover, himself both inside of being seen as defective AND inside of the utter imposition of being royal. As afraid as he was of being king he really could only be himself when he was crowned and when he mastered being able to use his voice. This moves me because I can only be myself inside of bringing Inclusion into view for others. Everything that has occurred in my life prepares me for this, even being seen as disabled. And so, I can sit for hours, overheated and in growing pain and stiffness, speaking words whose depth and insight seem to me to be strangely not entirely my own. It is who I am and who I am meant to be even if it wasn’t me who decided this was the theme of my life. My role is not to craft it so much as it is to choose it, and make from it its own authentic fulfillment.

Such an egotistical, yet natural, thing it is to feel that one has a mission – inspiring yet corny, dangerous and fulfilling.

The Prince walks with his therapist openly in the streets, unrecognized – maybe because who could fathom that the Prince would keep the company of such a lowly man. I wonder if there is a way that I can step outside of myself to see me as others do?