Paul Mooney

I find Paul Mooney to be a comfort, a balm of truth splitting right open the polite and then obvious-seeming untruths, and will continue to learn and feel freed by him in watching the way he is able to engage a playful, joyous side, while also ensuring his audience has no choice but to come face to face with the lies, and then the relief that accompanies both joy and the lifting of disrespect, the disrespect of veils and untruths 

Revision

Today, I worked on my play as in I looked over to my right at the manuscript, took in a big breath and remembered the chaos, disconnections and potential doom of these four characters, then

exhaled.

The Rest of Us

Monday morning and the construction has started with its usual relentless Monday morning vigor this still-quarantine of over a year now, the sound of chaos personified six days a week no matter how many fans or filters are running, with no end in sight and no reprieve at all for the landscape, the birds, trees, plants who somehow bear all of this with more grace and dignity than any human. 

Yesterday, I noticed yet another police helicopter flying lower than usual near the hill I ascend to get home and so I decided to keep running errands, traversing up the hill and feeling a bit like Ray Liotta for a moment as the helicopter also advanced up the hill, and then cutting back out. When I got home an hour later, there was no helicopter, but my porch smelled like gasoline. 

Are Americans ever going to feel they've filled the gaping holes they've torn out of their own psyches with all this aggression and noise? I vote no and no one can hear it. We bomb one another with noise and pollution, the threat of state violence, and drop literal bombs the world over, addicted to destruction. Our cover story of patriotism, democracy and positivity (or else) is tattered beyond belief and yet that talk's still being rammed down our throats, too. And here come the unmasked, raging and gleeful, disparaging people for protecting themselves and others against a virus that has taken more than 500,000 of our fellow citizens, a simple strip of cloth a bridge too far for them, a simple strip of cloth for them a painful reminder of our shared humanity they seek to obliterate, until there is nothing left but them, meaning there is nothing left, and that is exactly why the rest of us cannot allow that to happen.