Meandering Streams of Consciousness

Journal of Valya Dudycz Lupescu

January 1, 2012
by Valya
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Words ripe and juicy

Words.

When I see light hit the tree branches during a December sunset on a particularly calm day, and it reminds me of the way life is fragile and hope is present even if for a fleeting moment, I try to translate it into words.

When my husband is lying on an ER table during a heart attack in the middle of the night, pale but joking with nurses, and at the same time asking to talk with our oldest daughter on the phone (“just in case”), I want to translate it into words.

Maybe it’s because words help me: to make sense, to share, to save any given moment. I know friends who do this with photography, “capturing” life.  For me it’s words. It has always been words.

A few years ago, I read an article about Love Languages in which the author, Dr. Gary Chapman discusses five different ways that people express their love:

Words
Time/attention
Gifts
Acts of service
Physical touch

It’s no surprise that for me, it’s touch and words.

If I give you a hug, I mean it. If I tell you I love you, I really mean it.

Words.

I surround myself with them. Collecting books like lost photographs in an ancestral album. Together they tell a story, even as they each have their own voice.  Separately, they are a gift to be treasured.

Words are like leaves at the bottom of particularly delicious cup of tea (for me, a cup of Fortnum & Mason’s Russian Caravan, black). If I love them, I look into them, trying to see beyond the story, beyond the living characters, beyond the beautiful sounds, into the poetry that lies at their heart: the magic of the words.

Children understand the poetry, the magic. I’ve watched my three as I read to them, cherished stories or new adventures. I love when we discover the magic together; it’s one of my favorite things in all the world. It’s the reason my next book was written for children.

So as we begin a new calendar year, I find the urge to look back with words. I am always aware of “how much has been written.” But this isn’t about “how much.” I’m not placing each word to be weighed on the Goddess Maat’s scale. The answer to that would be: not enough. There are always more words to be written.

The stories are there, the character clamoring for attention, but the last year, 2011, was heavier with life than written words. Some years are like that, and though I wish I had made time for more words, I understand that sometimes life happens. Sometimes new babies are born, heart attacks happen, blueberry girls must be blessed, family members in crisis happen, pillow forts occasionally need to be built, and towers of doom must be played with. There are times when we need to put the pen aside to be present.

And yet, there were still words. Here on the blog, on facebook, and on twitter, I have a way to record moments and share them. I still have my notebook for story fragments and plot ideas, but the internet has created a community that wasn’t possible for a writer who would likely spend much of her time in a room, or perhaps out walking, or maybe sipping coffee in a café…alone. Marvelously, the internet has brought many of us who would be solitary together, so that we can be alone and also connected.

So late one September evening, when my husband was in the hospital after a heart attack, I didn’t really want to talk, not even to my father who sat beside me in the waiting room, but I could send out a few tweets. I could shout out a moment of fear and heartache. The miracle of twitter and email and facebook, was that people responded. Friends offered to come by or call, but their messages of support were enough, those words across time and space were exactly what I needed. Thank you to everyone who sent prayers and energy.I thought about Twitter a lot after that, because it’s such a strange creature, something my generation did not grow up with and many have resisted. Some friends love facebook, others text constantly, or skype, or tumblr. We all seem to adopt different technological tools depending on our needs and personalities.

I still prefer the online journal because it allows me to meander, and I am coming to appreciate tumbler as it lets me collect different bits, but I like twitter best. I’ve come to the following conclusion: Tweets are like dehydrated fruit.

Rotten grapes make rotten raisins, but the best fruit—robust peaches, sweet apples, and other juicy delicacies make delicious dried fruits. Twitter can be like that. Much of it is forgettable, most of it is ordinary and that’s ok. Some of it is terrible, but occasionally it can be wonderful.

Words. Carefully chosen words:

Happy. New. Year.

Three words to hold so much, like a tiny tweet.

The year has begun. It’s a new page.

Happy? What makes it happy? What makes you happy?

Whatever it is, I hope you find it. I hope that you fill your new page with words ripe and juicy and bursting with potential.

Happy New Year.

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December 12, 2011
by Valya
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Dancing in Echoes

Last weekend we went to the Museum of Science and Industry where my oldest daughter performed with her Ukrainian folk dance group as part of the Christmas Around the World celebration.

If you’ve never seen the exhibit, 50 trees are decorated by volunteers from Chicago’s ethnic communities to represent their various cultures and holiday traditions. The Ukrainian Christmas tree was decorated with embroidery-adorned ornaments and sparkling spider webs, inspired by the Ukrainian legend of the spider web.

(Spiders have long been important characters in Ukrainian folklore, but the incorporation of the Christmas Tree into Ukrainian celebrations is a fairly recent one. It’s likely that the tradition came to Ukraine from Germany in the 19th century.)

According to the legend, a poor Ukrainian widow and her children had nothing with which to decorate their Christmas tree. After they went to bed, a spider (a “pavuk” in Ukrainian) took pity on them and spent the night spinning her web all around the tree. When the children awoke, they saw the beautiful web on the tree, and as the first rays of the sun touched the spider’s web, it turned to gold and silver. The family never had to worry about money again.

We sat in the front row, listening first to the Ukrainian Children’s Choir, whose performance was wonderful. Ukrainian music and songs always grab hold of my heart. Traversing time and space, music is so powerful. Along with other types of art, it gives us an experience of tradition, communicating the depths of culture, identity, and memory.

After the choir, my daughter’s group performed “the Hopak,” often referred to as the National Dance of Ukraine. I watched her the entire time, aware of  the moments when her nervous smile dropped for a second as she concentrated. When she dances at home, it’s with such joy and abandon. This was a different experience, careful and almost solemn.

Watching her, I remembered that feeling, being up on stage with my fellow Ukrainian dancers. I loved to dance. I still do, although my dancing is usually relegated to my living room or occasional dance floor. It’s a different thing to dance the choreographed steps, even when they are so familiar that they are almost muscle memory.

Dancing in an ensemble is like reciting a famous poem. There is the knowledge that what you do carries weight, each step like a word in a prayer. You are part of a group, but also part of a tradition. Proud and nostalgic, I watched my daughter dance familiar steps to familiar music. So interesting when time folds up on itself, and our children walk in the echoes of our footsteps.

 

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December 6, 2011
by Valya
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The Magic of Music

As a child, my favorite part of going to Mass at Sts. Volodymyr and Olha Ukrainian Catholic Church was the music. The walls, covered with their beautiful icons, were a feast for the eyes and my  young imagination, but it was the music that transported me into another world.

Mass was usually sung in Ukrainian and accompanied by a choir of voices in the balcony. Standing with my parents and little sister, I remember closing my eyes and feeling like I had stumbled into another world. I was absolutely certain that those voices and music got God’s attention. It was my first experience with the very real way that music could transform a space into something sacred.

The first time I remember hearing Gregorian chants, I was in high school, and it was a similar experience. I recall sitting in my religion classroom blown away by the power of those voices. Later, it made perfect sense to me that ethereal bands like Enigma or Dead Can Dance would incorporate the chanting into their music. There was power there.

As I got older, I became interested in comparative religions and learned that the ancient Greeks were among the first to document the ways that music shifted the collective consciousness of a group of people. I became especially interested in shamanic music and the ways that indigenous holy men and women used drumming and their voices to heal, to protect, and to communicate.

My first drumming circle, hearing the heartbeat of those many drums working together, was another of those pivotal moments that touched something deep inside of me. Although maybe not as elegant, drumming was raw, honest, and primal. The drum beat is so much like the first sound we all hear–the heartbeat of our mother in the womb. It is the sound of our own heart as we learn to sit quietly and meditate. It is a sound that stretches across time and space.

After following more breadcrumbs of myth and music, I encountered ritual theatre. Theatre emerged from ritual and mythology as a way to recreate sacred stories and repeat certain actions for a desired end. From the ancient Greeks to contemporary Balinese, ritual drama engages the community and allows participants to surrender themselves to the ritual process.

Last weekend, Mark and I had the pleasure of watching my favorite ritual theatre ensemble, Terra Mysterium, perform the Snow Queen version of Betwixt & Between, A Journey into Faery for their Winter Gala.

Photo by Angie Buchanan

Held at the Chicago College of Healing Arts on Devon, the performers masterfully wove the web of their story about the Snow Queen, two human children, and the Fae.

Photo by Angie Buchanan

All the members are talented, and I’ve had the pleasure of seeing them perform in several other venues. Each performance has been wonderful and wonder-filled, but this time I was struck by how polished they have become, how cohesive as a group.

When Terra Mysterium sang their beautiful songs, I recalled those days in church as a child, when all the world faded away and I felt a part of this magnificent music that filled the space. Their music was magic. Terra Mysterium took my breath away, transported me to another world, and inspired my imagination.

Photo by Angie Buchanan

Plato believed that music was a form of medicine that brought order to our souls. In this day and age, when there is so much disorder and dissonance, we could all use a little more music in our lives.

So I leave you with two songs from Terra Mysterium:

Walk To My River (music and text by Shannah Lessa Wojtyska; arranged by Matthew Ellenwood)

07 Walk To My River

Athrabeth (music by Matthew Ellenwood, text by Keith Green):

09 Athrabeth

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December 5, 2011
by Valya
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My Light in the Dawn

I’m trying to finish up these half-written blog entries, so expect a few in rapid succession.

Last month I participated in the first Chicago Book Expo, held at the abandoned Borders in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood. The Chicago Writers House Project created a pop-up bookstore in the empty building on November 19 and 20, 2011. More than 40 local presses participated (including Wolfsword Press). The Expo included readings, panel discussion, live performances, and architectural walking tours.

You can hear a Chicago Publishes Podcast about the Expo:

Chicago Publishes Podcast: Chicago Book Expo by Chicago Publishes

Listen as founding member of the Chicago Writers House John Rich, Gabriel Levinson of ANTIBOOKCLUB, and I talk about the Expo (you can hear me at 6 minutes 20 seconds).

The Expo coincided with Adriana Renescu‘s visit to Chicago, so Wolfsword Press invited her to be one of the featured readers at the Expo and read from her novel The Wolves of Pavlava. With the combination of her gorgeous accent and powerful imagery, I could have listened to her read the entire novel that afternoon! (Maybe an audiobook, Adriana? Check out acx.com.)

With Adriana Renescu at the Chicago Book Expo, 2011

On Saturday, Adriana and I read from our novels, along with two writers from the Chicago Center of Literature and Photography (CCLaP): Sally Weigel and Katherine Scott Nelson. I enjoyed both of their pieces, but Katherine’s novella Have You Seen Me absolutely blew me away. She is an incredibly talented writer with a powerful voice.

I was happy to sit at the Expo for the two days to represent Wolfsword Press and talk about The Silence of Trees, but I was especially excited to connect with people about our upcoming comic, Sticks and Bones and The Artist Zoo project (which deserves its own post soon). So many people got excited by the idea, signed up to be considered for the art book, and volunteered to help out! I plan to follow up with everyone in the next few weeks so that we can move forward in 2012!

The Chicago Book Expo organizers did a wonderful job pulling it all together (special thanks to the lovely Heather McShane and Jon Fullmer). They had an impressive showing of publishers and attendees, each one an authentic and enthusiastic Chicago voice. I was grateful for the chance to be a part of it and happy to meet so many new publishers on the scene. From what I saw last month, the Chicago publishing scene has a bright future. It made my inner literary optimist happy and proud.

Reading at the Chicago Book Expo (the speakeasy location)

 

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November 22, 2011
by Valya
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Naked Girls Reading and a Love of Listening

On Friday night, I made my way up the stairs to the Everleigh Social Club with a friend, to attend the 2011 Naked Girls Reading Literary Award Gala. The fabulous loft space was candlelit and lushly decorated. We were among the first guests to arrive and took our seats in front of the swing, to the right of the stage.

Inspired by and named after the infamous Everleigh Club of the 1900s, this modern incarnation was founded by Michelle L’amour and is an extension of Studio L’amour. The Everleigh Social Club, while open to members for special events like the Naked Girls Reading Series and SPEAKEASY, is also the home of a modern art movement called Cyprianism, “creating art through a life lived artfully.” (A quote by Franky Vivid that I love. Read more here.)

From what I could see upon my entrance, the spirits of beauty, creativity, and sensuality are alive and flourishing in the Everleigh Club. Not unlike the ritual theater I adore by Terra Mysterium, the Naked Girls create a space and then fill it with intention, charging it with provocative elegance. On that night, the intention was to celebrate the five Literary Prize finalists, and I was honored to be in such good company.

The ladies on the stage disrobed at the start of each of the three reading sessions of the night. They did it gracefully, naturally, comfortably, at home in their skin and on the stage. Then they breathed the stories into life, charging each one with emotion, weaving the web of words around them. The crowd was rapt.  One word kept coming to mind: communion: a sense of intimate fellowship or rapport.

The word “communion” has an interesting etymology, a little different than its more modern and ecclesiastical definition.  It comes from the late 14th century Old French  comunion, meaning “community, communion” (12c.),  and from the Latin communionem (nom. communio) “fellowship, mutual participation, a sharing.”

The act of reading someone a story, or having a story read to you, is intimate. We don’t usually sit and read with strangers or people we dislike. If we read a story, it is with someone dear to us: a parent, child, partner. It’s often a part of a ritual, like “the bedtime story” or a “reading hour.” I love to read, but listening to a story is a different experience than reading a story. Listening takes us right back to our ancestors–sitting around a campfire to share in the storytelling experience, a sacred experience because it revealed ancient secrets, imparted treasured wisdom, taught life lessons, celebrated community milestones. The storytellers were both library and librarian.

Even today, when we listen, we receive something. Yes, it’s the same story. Yes, the words are the same. However we add the element of performance, the experience of emotion conveyed by a reader, the feeling that there is an exchange with a person and not just a text. Communion.

This is one of the reasons I love to listen to audiobooks, especially those read by the author. It’s like my own private bedtime story. In the reading of a story, the author has given me something, more than the words and the world they shape (although those are treasures). In an audiobook, as in a reading, they have given me an experience of the story.

It was an honor to hear my story read aloud on that stage, to experience my words delivered in such a beautiful and provocative way. I didn’t win the prize, but I certainly felt like I was given something to treasure. (It made me all the more excited to hear the audiobook for my novel when Xe Sands finishes recording The Silence of Trees for Iambic Audiobooks.)

The Naked Girls Reading Series is now in cities across America, so you too can experience the glamour and allure of Naked Girls Reading.

Rick Kogan said it so well in an article he wrote for the Chicago Tribune in April 2011:

It is a beautiful and bold experiment to be sure, with the emphasis on, well, beautiful and bold.

After the Naked Girls Reading, with a fully-clothed Michelle L’amour and Greta Layne.

 

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November 18, 2011
by Valya
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Reading Naked and Reading Clothed

Tomorrow is the Naked Girls Reading Literary Gala and I am one of 5 finalists to have my work read by the lovely ladies of the Everleigh Club in Chicago.

Reservations are required. You can purchase tickets in advance here.

I will neither be naked nor reading on Friday night, but I will be reading (clothed) from The Silence of Trees at the first Chicago Book Expo to be held in Uptown this weekend.

The Chicago Writers House Project is creating a pop-up bookstore in the empty Uptown’s Borders on Nov. 19-20. Featuring more than 40 fiction and poetry presses, Chicago Book Expo 2011 will also include readings, a nonprofit fair, live performances, and architectural walking tours.

For more information, check out their website www.chicagowritershouse.org . They will have panels, workdhopd, children’s programming and more!

I’ll be at the table for Wolfsword Press/The Chicago Creative Coop. Stop by and say hello! I may have cookies. I’ll also be reading (clothed) on Saturday, November 19, 1:00 pm in the basement of the Uptown Broadway Building (former speakeasy) 4701 N. Broadway.

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November 16, 2011
by Valya
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A Pause

I’m home drinking coffee from my new mug adorned by Magic the Bengal (a gift from the good folks at the Night Garden Project and Great Lakes Bengal Rescue). Look at those gorgeous eyes! If you’d like one, you can purchase one here.

Last night was the second annual Induction Ceremony for the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame. I’m tired, trying to catch my breath. It was wonderful event, and I am so proud to be a part of it, but truly it deserves its own post. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe when I can add photos by 8 eyes Photography. It’s so much better to have photos, and I was backstage the entire time and so unable to take any.

I still have so many things to catch up on. I attended an all-day seminar at the Art Institute for volunteers who teach in the schools. It was nice to be back at the Art Institute, to learn about some new and existing resources. I really don’t get down there enough. I also need to bring the kids downtown more often, to enjoy the incredible cultural treasures that Chicago has to offer.

The featured writers along with organizers, Sonya Arko and Anna Golash.

Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art had a wonderful reading series with some of my favorite Ukrainian writers/artists visiting from out of town: Askold Melnyczuk the novelist and founder of AGNI, and  Virlana Tkacz, a poet, writer, and the founder of the amazing Yara Arts Group. It was nice to just sit in the audience and listen.

Virlana Tkacz reading some of her poetry.

Also reading were Alexis Buryk and Roman Skaskiw. I really enjoyed their work, and especially appreciated the voice and characterization in Skaskiw’s writing.

Roman Skaskiw reading his fiction.

It was a mix of styles from writers new and seasoned. Though their voices and perspectives were different, I was struck by the repeating themes of identity, home, and authenticity.

As diaspora writers, we retain a collective memory and vision about our ancestral home–Ukraine. Many of us have been raised with an appreciation of our almost mythic motherland–its physical location, history, and achievement are praised and preserved. Yet we are also a part of a new world, an American reality, and there is a natural desire to also be a part of that world. So we stand on the threshold, between the old and new, longing for two things simultaneously.

In his introduction, Askold Melnyczuk mentioned that as writers, we often have themes or obsessions in our work. I think for me (at least right now) this idea of thresholds is an obsession: I’m fascinated by doorways in between worlds and realities, shades of gray in between the light and darkness, the places where the sacred and profane meet and cross.

“The threshold is the limit, the boundary, the frontier that distinguishes an opposes two worlds–and at the same time the paradoxical place where those worlds communicate, where passage from the profane to the sacred world becomes possible.” ~Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane

That’s the thing about thresholds: they suggest passage, possibility, transformation. A good story is a threshold, as is a good storyteller. They sweep us up in the complex beauty of words that are not truth but become true. We cross over and enter the world of a story, and if the writer is successful and if the reader is open, we bring a little of that world back with us.

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November 14, 2011
by Valya
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Chicago Literary Hall of Fame 2011 Induction Ceremony

Later tonight the second annual Induction Ceremony for the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame will be held at the Harold Washington Library’s Pritzker Auditorium, from 6-8PM. Once again the eloquent and charming Rick Kogan will be our Master of Ceremonies, and the audience will be treated to presentations, readings, and even a dance.

You may recall my entries about last year’s event, held at Northeastern Illinois University. (Read a recap here.) Last year we inducted Saul Bellow, Studs Terkel, Lorraine Hansberry, Gwendolyn Brooks, Richard Wright, and Nelson Algren.

The lovely Elysabeth Alfano from Fear No Art conducted interviews with some of our presenters and acceptors before the 2010 ceremony. You can see highlights here:

If you have never seen Elysabeth’s show Fear No Art, I strongly recommend that you peruse the website to watch interviews from a range of talented artists including David Sedaris, Pat Byrnes, Rick Kogan, Charles Osgood, Marc Smith, Joan Cusack, and so many others. Elysabeth’s show is always an inspiration to me.

At this year’s ceremony, we will induct Cyrus Colter, Theodore Dreiser, Harriet Monroe, Mike Royko, Carl Sandburg, and Ida B. Wells. You can read more about their lives and writing on the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame website.

If you’re in Chicago, I hope that you’ll join us. It is free admission to get into the ceremony, although you’ll need to reserve a ticket here.

Following the ceremony, we’ll be heading over to Brando’s Speakeasy, where they will feature six literary martinis created in honor of the evening’s induction ceremony.

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November 13, 2011
by Valya
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Cocktails and Coffee Cups

I began this entry a week ago and am only now finishing it. This Autumn has been like that, full of bumps and detours.

A few weeks ago, Mark was in NY for business, and I met him in Manhattan so that we could have a belated tenth anniversary getaway that coincided (not coincidentally) with Cynthia von Buhler‘s Speakeasy Dollhouse performance.

The luxury of 48-hours together was wonderful, and Mark and I had a lovely dinner at a local bistro and then walked around Times Square. The next day we had the luxury of a lazy morning, followed by lunch at the historic Coffee House Club. Now that I’m a member of the Cliff Dwellers (as Artist-in-Residence), I have privileges at reciprocal clubs all over the country (and a few overseas). Each club has its own unique history and character.

Inspired by other Arts-related clubs founded around that time (like The Cliff Dwellers) in cities across America, a group of friends who called themselves The Foes of Finance Dinner Club held their first meeting in the old Brevoort House on February 5, 1914. After a few more members and a few different locations later, the Coffee House was born and resided in the Hotel Seymour for the next sixty-seven years.  In 1982, the hotel was demolished and the Club moved  a few doors to the west at No. 70 and then again to its current location in the 2000s.

The club has rules, but one of the rules is that there are no rules:

No officers

No charge accounts

No liveries

No tips

No Set Speeches

NO RULES

Upon quietly slipping into the club, we were welcomed by one of the members and invited to sit at the round table in the parlor. We were served drinks from the bar and waited to dine together at the one large table in the dining hall. Over drinks, we chatted with two members about the history and membership of the club. We then joined the other eight people who were seated around the communal table. Our orders were taken, and we enjoyed a delicious, hearty lunch care of chef Irene. The conversation was lively and varied, and only after he left did I find out that Mark had been sitting beside E.B. White’s stepson, writer and New Yorker editor Roger Angell!

I don’t know the names of other members who were seated at our table that day. Formal introductions are not allowed at the table. You sit down at the next available seats and like the lottery, it’s a matter of chance to whom who you end up talking to over your meal. On any given day, you can show up for lunch and meet artists and writers who have helped to shape the creative history of our times: New Yorker editors, artists, journalists who reported on the latter half of the last century.

The sad reality is that many of these social clubs are not drawing new, young members. With so much networking happening online, the Arts clubs of the past are being replaced by the online clubs of the present. While this may allow for a greater breadth and diversity of membership, I can’t help but ponder what is being lost in the process.

Later that evening, Mark and I dressed in out 1920s finery and stopped by Spano’s Bakery for “cannoli” (the codeword that allowed us to enter the speakeasy) where we were joined by the stylish Madeline C. Matz and her friend Annalisa from Connecticut. Together we slipped into 1920s New York City, and it was such fun!

The immersive theater experience was set in a beautiful former speakeasy. The setting was lush, and the actors were convincing and playful as they interacted with the audience. Artist Cynthia von Buhler created a vivid world and a provocative piece of theater in response to the unsolved mystery of her grandfather’s murder. You can read about her process here. The evening was also recorded by director Susan Marks  (of  the documentary “Of Dolls and Murder“) who is creating a sequel documentary on the Speakeasy Dollhouse.

While attending a theatrical performance (much like when I read), I easily and eagerly suspend disbelief. I love Art that engulfs me in an alternative world. Sitting on a velvet couch sipping a cocktail from a coffee cup while intrigue unfolded around me, I was delighted.  Cynthia and her actors swept us up in their mystery, and I was happy to be a part of it.

Then, just like that, it was over. The next morning, we returned to Chicago, to the kids, and the everyday.

But that’s another post.

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