Birthday

All around the world we are falling apart and then coming together. You write to me that I am your little bird, that you will meet me in the woods or on some beach with no one around. You feel the aftershocks of the earthquake day after day. Yesterday when I said goodbye to my friend in the street, laundry turning in the dryer inside, a bee came over and stung me, the first bee sting ever in my whole long life. Not to mention flat tires, and peeing in the backyard because you can’t get into the house, and a litany of lyme disease and other possible downfalls. The swollen elbow and osteoporosis. The wanting to lift your grandchild but not being able because you are afraid your bones will break. Skin shedding, the old story. Life, death, these are such little things. Why are you the one I think of, the one who is distant. Being someone’s little bird made the whole day special, and all I saw were birds everywhere, dipping down and passing by, in flocks and singly. The vase of sunflowers on an abandoned bench in the woods, the swimming and swimming in that empty endless lake.

Today is this day. I question and wander, wander and question. Questions are answers. 

Split as always, whole as always.

And taking off.

The guy next to has a nervous tic, snapping thumb to middle finger, not so much sound but impact, dry snaps, vibrating the arm rest, one hand or both together. At the airport everyone was kissing goodbye, slow sensual cliche kisses, searching eyes for answers, beating chests, standing on tiptoes. In front of me an older man talks to a younger woman in German. She mentions her boyfriend a lot. The guy next to me has taken out papers about cash flows, and now closes his eyes, fingers to a standstill. Then sudden full body jerk. And stillness again. 

Before I left my friend told me my life stories were reminding her of a seventies band. Time to get out of town for a bit. See the small world from above. 

In Berlin they say some left wing punks have set fire to a BMW in a nice calm neighborhood.

This is the least of it, the world really is in tumult. 

She thought about him, she thought about language.

She thought about how he was a figment of her imagination, a springboard, a bounce, a mirror. She thought about how he did not exist.

In the south of Germany there is a full moon on the solstice, the first time this has happened since 1967, the Summer of Love.  She stands watching the full moon from the window of her mother’s childhood home, wondering what fantasies of travel and escape were running through her head as she looked out this window in that year. Her grandfather shows her the fields that he plowed as a sixteen year old, six weeks of plowing in exchange for a pig for the family. He was the youngest of eleven, but he was the tallest, like his father. 

Everywhere she is there is soccer and everywhere she is they win.

In Lisbon there is an easy breezy apartment with the room from her dream. 

Cobblestones. Balcony. Sea below and winding walkways.

An Irishman tells her about his broken heart.

The British exit the European Union.

In Italy there is a man with a very Italian name and she wants to be riding with him on a motorbike through the hills to a mountain pool for the rest of her life. They drive through a flock of sheep, the town is empty. A car drives up, a big man with white hair in a ponytail, he is a famous musician. He says, tell them I sent you. The town is silent. The pool is at the top of the world. To one side there is a cage with unexpected peacocks. In the water they are completely alone, or the town has secret eyes all around. Swallows arc and circle above, dipping down into the pool for a moment, and another perfect moment. Le rondini.

He helps her film things.

From the right angle she can blend in with the trees.

What is this hidden world. She tries to take a picture in the dark. 

The only evidence we have is our shadows. 

Ellipsa MG is preparing for BRAID at FiveMyles, February 26, 8pm

Two years of putting my inner life into words, starting with a tall singer-songwriter character born in a dream, and everything emerging as songs, spilling out of me on the street, buses, trains, places in motion, simple songs, little fragments of life, little ways of summing up a person, a place, that had no other container to hold it. 

Caught filming a cameo for Daviel Shy's Ladies Almanack 

Filming with 8mm requires just one precious take, what a lovely way to work.

Ellipsa out in the wild

Filming Scenes from Paradise with Lenore Malen at the magical sheep farm of the lovely Dan Devine and Lawre Stone. 

As for sheep, they are always close to the other sheep, they like to move as a unit, they like to stay at a distance. They do not speak to us of their inner lives. Humans are unpredictable and potentially frightening, prone to sudden movements. The only important things are water and grass. This is also what they dream about.

Jessica Weinstein is Ellipsa MG. Returning to Asheville's NC Stage with Anonymous Ensemble, August 6-9, 2015.