Postscript to August

So I've finished the play and sent it off. What can I say about it? It is a thing now that more or less exists, called Dance of Souls. I know there's a reasonable structure there, dramatic movement, characters to play, some potentially moving moments and some (meant to be) funny bits. All in what is basically pretty high falutin dialogue. But how good it is, I have no idea.

What else? It started out as a dialogue between Jung and Wells, but some of the best lines came from a completely fictional character who arrived much later in the process. The serendipity and synchronicity of the early stages of writing it carried through to the end, or to the point where I had to abandon it and call it finished. I spent the better part of a week housesitting, taking care of a couple of cats while still close enough to visit my own every day, seeing no one and working on the play. The house where I sat has a large deck facing a hill and trees, with nothing on it but a white table and chairs. Such a table is where most of my play centers, and out there one day I worked out the ending by walking through it---or, actually, dancing it. (The deck was also a great place to lie down to watch the Perseids on the one clear night, though I saw only a couple of streaks. But even on the next semi-cloudy night, the moon and Mars were clear.)

What's bothering me now, as I wake up from this extended dreamtime and face the collapsing freelance market, etc. is that all my luck got used up in writing that play, with none left for the outside world of money and paid work. It's been my suspicion that this is my fate, but I suppose I will still be surprised if and when the hammer does definitively fall. Not looking forward to it, in the last of strawberry summer, and the August of one of my oldest connections, the smell of tomato plants. Maybe there’s salvation in September? Stay tuned…