Selected Letters from correspondence between Harold Brodkey and his young daughter Temmie Brodkey. Photographs of the Brodkeys from the 1950's and 1960's. EXCERPTTo be right in school means only to agree with the teacher (or means only that the teacher agrees with you). The great gift of an education is to learn to think one's own thoughts, to learn to observe and to learn from the observations, and from that learning to make thoughts. An essay is a chance for you to study your own thoughts some of which may be foolish, but they are yours, and if you write them - the foolish ones - you may discard them. Mistakes are good things. So is not making mistakes. But we are humans and we had better love our mistakes - love learning from them. Don't worry about grades all the time. Grades are only part of school. You are the other part. And I love you. Daddy

Harold Brodkey Letters to Temmie 1960-1965

A four character romantic comedy in six parts. Reality takes place during the course of one day in a large California city in 2005. Buddy is putting together a large piece of furniture that comes in pieces, his wife, Lorraine is doing yoga, reading her tarot cards and cleaning house. Norm, their neighbor and Lorraine's neurotic brother, drops by in the morning. Frank, a policeman investigating a crime recently committed in the neighborhood, comes to call in the afternoon. The play begins in the early morning in semi-darkness and ends at night under the stars. Excerpt 1: Why am I always trying to be a better person? Why can't I be satisfied just to go to work, come home, fuck my husband, love my children? What is this longing? I have everything I ever wanted. The bounty of my table is truly astounding. The extravagance of my existence, my magnificent children, smiles of an eternal summer night. Why is this not enough for me? What am I looking for?Excerpt 2: Well, no, we're not sure what happened exactly. Raped and murdered. Behind your house. Over there, in that woody area. Some kids found her body this morning. We don't know anything much yet, who she is or how she got there. You have any bad feelings about any of your neighbor kids?Excerpt 3: Sometimes I need to feel that life is beautiful. I need time to slow down so I can feel how incredibly lucky I am, how incredibly beautiful the world is. How perfectly I fit inside it. Spinning, whirling, galaxies bleeding new worlds into being.

Reality - Iconography: The Anatomy of My Becoming, #1

A woman's poems reacting to the end of a relationship. At first she is desolate (cold), lost and humiliated. Then (colder) her immune system kicks in and, realizing she is also a character in her story, not powerless, but a co-creator, she begins to stand up for herself and assert her right to life. Excerpt:perhapsit was all the same to himshe thoughtthat he careened through lifeleaving her moreor lessExcerpt:this engine of silenceturns and grindsmy wheels of desireburns fires of longingmelts me into red hotremembrance lavaExcerpt:can love show me howto love myself?will love fall like rainmoisen mea sproutto grow again?to love myselfExcerpt:dreams are seedshe holds his dreams to himselffertilizing no onehe would rather feel rejectedthan let go and vent his dreamspermanentlyin the dust

Bethlehem Steel - Cold and Colder

Sympathy is a dramedy that takes place during the tech rehearsal of a fringe, alternative theatre production of Euripides' Medea in 1981 in Manhattan. The main characters are the actors and staff of the experimental productionof Euripides' tragedy, Medea. The actors spend a long night dealing with their dreams and personal demons regarding love and death, relationships and sexuality. Two versions of the play, from 1981 and 2005 are included. Excerpt 1:ANGELA: I think we're living in a dark age of thesoul. Radiant freedom, a distant memory. TRUDY: Radiant freedom? Did it ever exist? Radiant freedom: memory or mirage? Seriously, Ange, when and where exactly have human beings enjoyed radiant freedom? (she sighs) Honestly. Excerpt 2:FRED: Love begins in fullness. Overflows sometimes and drowns everyone. Overflows sometimes and everybody swims. Excerpt 3:JEAN: He wanted me to submit to the reign of terror he called being in control. He assumed that the only alternative to him being in control, was for me to be in control, so he interpreted my refusal to accept his control as rebellion with intent to take control. He tried to crush me. I thought I'd have a better chance with you. Excerpt 4:LOUISE: I want a world where I can feel safe and beautiful and loved. An oasis that will sustain me. And my child. TRUDY: I'm tired of trying to transform reality. Excerpt 5:ANGELA: He never loved me. I loved him. It was an ecstatic reality. I was a King's daughter, the granddaughter of the Sun. I never felt any power in myself until I saw him standing there, the sun shining on his brown shoulders and all I could think, all I could want, was to fall inside those shoulders. To be lifted, carried away. He smiled as if he were reading my mind and I was everything he'd ever dreamed. His gestures are burned into my blood. My hopefulness when he kissed me. An untamable hunger. I will do anything for him. He makes no promises.

Sympathy: A Simple, Tender Grace of the Heart - Topography: The Landscape of My Soul, #3

A three-act romantic comedy takes place in 2212 in the city-state Times Square. An ensemble piece exploring life and theft: the theft of the diamonds that are the basis of the local currency, the theft of the right to conceive and bear children, the theft of the right to individualism. A comedy with many choreographed, musical interludes. A focus on sexuality in many forms and how we might preserve humanity's creativity, our connection to and our place within nature. A three-act romantic comedy takes place in 2212 in the city-state Times Square. An ensemble piece exploring life and theft: the theft of the diamonds that are the basis of the local currency, the theft of the right to conceive and bear children, the theft of the right to individualism. A comedy with many choreographed, musical interludes. A focus on sexuality in many forms and how we might preserve humanity's creativity, our connection to and our place within nature.#1 QuoteGY: Look at it this way, we're collaborating on the future. JASON: We're not cooperating. You drive me nuts sometimes, you know that? We're competing to see who will control the future. How can you not get that?GY: No one can control the future. JASON: That's why it's so appealing. GY: But it doesn't make sense. JASON: It doesn't have to make sense, it's history. Once upon a time there were Creons and Pharaohs and Caesars and Goliaths. GY: And the little people?JASON: What about you?GY: We deserve a break. JASON: A temporary reprieve from the repressive cotton wool shoved in your mouths by the elites who benefit from your silence, which will be recorded for your protection?#2 QuoteKIT: I travel the same roads, over and over, back and forth, around, looping, to create a groove, a rut, a feature of consciousness dug deep into my soul through the repetition of random events which in their aggregate are no longer random but highly structured, strangling. Peace. What is that? If you could define it for me, then maybe I'd think there was some validity to it. War, now there's validity. We have so much data, an analyst's dream. Numbers galore. This many dead. This many wounded. This many guns. This many bombs. This much plutonium. This much uranium. Peace? How do I measure that? What chart do I use?Confound me with your peace data, go ahead. I applaud your vision. Peace would be great. But, if you want me to invest in your dream, give me something I can count.#3 QuoteFEATHER:  If I was Superwoman I would gather all the pain inside a net of woven light, a net so fine that none of the pain could escape to burden anyone ever again. Then, inside this web of light, inside this rainbow caress, the pain will heal. The web will break. The cocoon shatters. The pain is no longer a many-legged, crawly, hairy pain but a shimmering butterfly hope, a firefly faith. A season of sequined seraphim. If I was Superwoman I would lift this weight of sky, gather all our pain and throw it far, far away, into an outer space so deep, so dark that even our pain is a welcome brightness, signifying life. The Afterwords include (with permission from her family) a poem by Michelle Toomey, PhD

Once Upon a Time in Times Square ~ A Wonder Tale - Iconography: The Anatomy of My Becoming, #2

A five act play that takes place during a beauty pageant. The ensemble piece is a dreamlike experience of the events of the pageant and simultaneously the thoughts and feelings of the characters. There is a swimsuit contest, a talent competition, a ball gown sequence and a dressing room battle. Video projections of the pageant offer contrasting views to what the audience can see, adding to our understanding of what the characters are experiencing. The pageant personnel and characters are exploring their individual issues around beauty. EXCERPTS:I love you so much it hurts to breathe. I am electric current wild waiting for your touch so I can flow into your flesh laughing wet leaping into forever. But what about the unspeakable joy of existence? And our unspoken pleasure in that joy. The bottoms of your feet touch the inside of your shoes, their soles touch the linoleum, touch the concrete of dreams, to the center of the earth roiling in fire. Your heart beats swirl with the galaxy. My childhood was house arrest peppered with gross humiliation, random psychological beatings that kept me crippled and in my place, everything orderly. Nothing kind. I could stake everything, not for a win; but for the beautiful, I could win. I can struggle to create and sustain the beautiful. There's nothing petty about that.

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