poetry and fiction- recent works and works of yore

Hey guys!

I've been busy writing- a new novel has come into my ethers and so I've been spending time working on plot, researching, getting to know all the characters... how they think, where they live, who they love and why.

In the meantime, please enjoy this poem:



Oh, life, how you flow into yourself, and into me,
Astonished, a pearlized heart and a smile of stardust,
And the places I have gone, and ballerinas in music boxes,
and the smell of the pine trees in the clearing,
and the people I have smiled at, and the homeless ladies
and the window dressings and the forgetting of sadness
just in time to remember it again as a sort of faded name on a dance card
from the days when such a thing pertained to a courtship...
And the people who smiled at me, and who did not look past,
and who did not keep going but who, in me, saw sister,
daughter, friend... and the poems, pages and pages and pages of poems,
and you, and a secret keyhole in your heart that only I can fill,
and the delighted surprise at the realization that somehow
I have unlocked my way into the memory of your future...

Radical Acts... Waxing poetic.

...Because the radical act is to be happy. To follow your heart. To connect to people and love them even if they're wrong about stuff, and if they don't love you back when you're wrong about stuff, what do you care? Love them anyway. And then remember that true love doesn't enable and you don't have to put up with disrespect in the name of love, and love will sometimes be from far away...

...But back to following your heart, and how hard that actually is, and the navigation of the rushing white waters of the river of your life, and how much energy you really have and thinking about your heart now AND then, not to future trip but simply to let go of everything and honor the self and that might include honoring the niggling doubt not because it's true but to allow yourself to investigate all those feelings and explore...

...and being willing to stand out and apart sometimes...

...and still connecting to people, the people who matter, and you might never get to know until you are five hundred and thirty seven years old, and what the hell is the point of any of it anyway?

...and being willing to then, after sitting with all those feelings, not in the head per se, but in the heart, purely, and in the body, and in your blood, and in your toes, and as you cradle a child (or in my case, a pet), or touch the rough ridges of a tree, or pray before your deity, or bow your head because you are still a human creature and such creatures do experience fear and welcoming it as a friend you get to care for because she is dying of cancer rather than shun her and ignore her because she is dying of cancer seems the more loving response for everyone, and especially for yourself...

...after all that...

...when the time is right (and how will we know?)...

Take the risk.

All of this great humanity,

this is the radical act that we are being called upon to take,

not false, fake, presentational happy,

the endeavoring, and the failing, and the endeavoring once again,

allowing all of life and saying,

maybe I don't fit,

maybe sometimes I do,

but this day is mine.

I shall lead, I shall follow. I shall offer, I shall receive. I shall weep. Laugh. I shall dance badly, and I shall sing well. I shall listen, listen, listen to the silence within, listen, listen, listen to the words as you are speaking them. I shall listen to the music and the starry starry night. I shall come forward with my hands open, asking for more, for reasons, for help. And then those hands open shall be ready to work, to build, to pound nails and plant seeds. And the seasons and the beatitudes and the tides and the turning and this is the stuff of life and we are born and then we die and every day we die again and let this take your breath away so that you may join the heavenly choir. Temptations sing... oh, glory, jewel of the nile, childhood things, wonder, mystery, discovery, all making things like taxes tolerable, all things like the power bill and heartache tolerable, tolerable, tolerable.

The options are yours, then. Will you allow life to be radical, or tolerable?

On Happiness

You think happiness is a gift, and then you learn it's a practice. 

Then you think happiness is a practice, and you realize it is a radical act of defiance. 

XO, Erin

p.s. you can also replace the word "happiness" with "love." 

Baseball- a poem

When the bat cracks on the ball-

on the inside of that sound,
if you stretched it out a thousand years,
you would hear the yearning sigh of a mountain.

My body is so rigid with desire,
with hopes, and sunshine, and wet on fresh cut grass-

The ball flies and the game runs its own pace,
and the mountain dreams and the clouds move along to the next sky.

The Love Song of E. Elizabeth Prufrock

REPUBLISHED from 2010-2011 ish

The Love Song of E. Elizabeth Prufrock

by Erin Elizabeth Muir

Amidst my avocations, distraction and demons,

and music, strains from another room.

Today the metamorphose is incomplete, and I have awakened as J. Alfred.

I am falling, again and again I am falling, you see,

and willfully, and against my will, an ancient pain,

sweetly, sensually, unrootable:

vines from a mobius strip wrapping round my body,

chains made of a flesh eating green, like a venus fly trap,

a nature, a desire. I want it. I fear it. It is me. It is he. It is all of us at once.

and words and words and words

and the poet sings

in dreams the message is perfect

but waking, she becomes ineffectual in her babel tower.

beautiful, and desirous, and possibly quite mad.

If ever I had known how to never

allow bitterness in my heart,

then I am child-like now, and so imagine my

shock at my own self-dismay,

as from all my shadows emerge, dusty, now dusting off the drapery,

the drudgery, engaging, on fire, a Demon.

like the brightest star that fell from the heavens,

plunging e’er deeper into the murky sludge, the far corners of paradise,

rising up now, the mists of eternity clearing way for that

truth greater than all facts and figures, the inhuman form

which whispering, places a single icicle of fear in my heart.

Oh, love! To be Juliet. To have died within moments of the first sweet lock,

to never know the other side of purity.

But I am not asleep, and nor am I awake.

I am breathless, I am all the breathing of the sky,

a billion stars shining in the heavens,

a single pebble on the sand.

No, I am no J. Alfred. Nor was meant to be.

And in the room, the girls giggle, talking of

nothing.

I am not walking on the beach, trousers rolled. I am not standing on the balcony, I am not sculpting David, I am not whimpering and I am not banging, I am singing-

I am singing!

(Each to each.) Which means-

the mermaid-

is me.

ah, drawing breath again, do I dare to be a human?

Emerging from this sea of crystal thoughts, wearing a crown of anemone and kelp?

Do you see? These waves are your dreams,

and these pink shells are recompense for your hopes that washed away

where once you wrote them along the beach,

and these glistening pearls within are made rarer, truer, more valuable in your eyes.

If you say so, I will remove my fishy scales,

lay down my cerulean triton, and emerge

a woman.

And if I say so, too, then the human voices waking us shall be our own.

(and it will have been worth it, and we will never know what we meant.)

Parakeets in India

This blog was originally posted on Apple news via http://markhusson.com/12blog/2018/3/3/parakeets-in-india#.Wprv69QrLGg.

It was my second trip to India, and I had started out very sick. The week before I had departed on this pilgrimage to Varanasi, to watch the burning of the dead bodies, and then go help build the school in Rishikesh, I had suffered away in a lover’s Cow Hollow apartment in San Francisco with strep throat. My fever had been so high I was hallucinating that he was an assassin sent by a FORMER boyfriend to kill me, but that’s a different story than what happened in Varanasi, and by the time I arrived at this gorgeous city dubbed “Venice of the East,” I was free of strep throat, probably, thanks to antibiotics, but still feverish and unable to eat, vomiting green bile. 

I stayed at a hotel right on the Ganges River, listening every night to the boatmen sing, watching stray puppies chase after the children. Holy men in loin clothes strolled past the steps of our hotel, and only a few hundred yards away, the families of India burned their dead. 

Sometimes, I hear my fellow western friends talk of India with horror at the poverty, the trash, the illness. They point out things like rape culture and the caste system. Controversially, I don’t see much difference between India and the US in those regards, but perhaps that’s because I live in a huge city overrun with its own problems of homelessness and violence. A lot of it depends on what you’re looking at, I suppose.

I was in Varanasi with a spiritual group that was working with a self-proclaimed guru. He’s pretty famous. I don’t know. He was angry on this trip. Because I was so sick, I missed most of the group outings and teachings. I was confined to my hotel, watching the river slumber by.

But every day, a little boy came to visit. His name was Ahmed, and he was a Muslim boy. I know because he came to sing the Qu’ran to me. Then he would offer to show me the finest shops. I would explain I was sick, and he would tilt his head left, then right, then left again, very quickly. 

“I am sorry, madam,” he would say. “I will be back tomorrow.” 

I loved that lilting cadence in his face. I would go back to my room and watch Bollywood movies, breathe heavily, drink flat Pepsi.

Finally, after a few days, I felt well enough to want to leave the Villa-turned-hotel and as I stepped out into the bright sun, Ahmed rushed up to meet me.

“Madam!” he cried. “Would you like to see an old fort?” 

I looked into his big brown eyes and felt a small warm hand slipping into my own.

“Yes,” I said, against my better, urban, Western judgment. “Yes, I would.”

We hurried down along the river for a few minutes, maybe ten or so, until we reached an abandoned villa looming over the foamy water. We climbed up the hill and Ahmed passed easily through a hole in a fence that I could barely shimmy through. Then, he took my hand again and led me through what seemed like an empty palace: a large veranda over the front, looking over the river… a center square in a large property with crumbling pillars and mosaics along the walls and floors. Empty rooms, a place void of any humans, at least dwelling there.

“Madam,” said Ahmed. “Would you like to see some parakeets?”

I looked at the excitement on his face, like a kid at Disneyland or something. 

“Yes!” I cried.

Ahmed nodded. He took my hand in his and we ran to the back of the house. There was a large, lonely willow tree reaching up over the high red walls. Ahmed put his fingers to his lips as we crept toward the willow. Then, he breathed in and raised his hands like a conductor about to instruct an orchestra. He brought his hands together in applause: clap, clap, clap, clap, and –

FLUTTER FLUTTER FLUTTER FLUTTER FLUTTER FLUTTER

Scores of little green birds bolted from the weeping willow tree, an exodus of rustling and flapping in every direction!

I laughed with sheer delight and felt a breath of life enter my body.

Then I looked at Ahmed and he looked at me. My heart burst open with a million little tingles of pleasure, and I wanted to cry. I fell in love at that moment with this sweet little boy. Not romantically. Just. Like. A mother. Like Mother India herself.

hmed,” I said, “how old are you?”

“Madam, I am eight years old.”
“And how do you speak English so well?” I asked. He tilted his head left and right a few moments, considering the question. “From the tourists such as yourself,” he responded.

And then, I took the risk. “And do you have a mother?” I asked. 

Now I wonder why I even could ask such a question, but I did. I already had the fantasy in my mind’s eye. I could adopt him. I could bring him back to America with me and we could live together as mother and son. I could give him all sorts of opportunities. He could visit my parents in Minnesota with me.

“Of course, Madam!” he chuckled.

My heart began to fall.

“Oh, and… um… where is she?” I asked.

He opened his hands, explaining the obvious.

“At home, Madam!” he responded.

“I see. And… would you ever… would you like to visit America?” I asked. A last-ditch effort.

A horrified look crossed his face.

“No, Madam,” he said. “Oh, no. My mother says I must never go to America. No, no. It is a wicked, violent place!” 

I paused for a moment. It was, but it wasn’t. So was India. So was the world. So had the world been in so many ways since the dawn of… since the dawn of opposition, whenever that was. 

I let my heart suffer these slings and arrows. I let my heart love him, knowing that I would never see him again. I marveled that I had fallen in love, not romantically, but as a mother. And then, I smiled and nodded.

“Shall we go back to the hotel?” I asked. The world was spinning. My fever was returning.

“Alright,” he said, taking my hand and leading me out of the abandoned building. “And if you like, I can show you some nice shops along the way.”

I didn’t want to go to the shops, but I heard my voice murmur, “sure.”

I didn’t look back at that fresh, clean, green place where no people lived, only birds and trees. We stepped out onto the dusty streets where bicycles zoomed past and poor women reached their hands out in need. I looked up into the firmament of sky, as open and blue as my heart.

photo by Rick Canter.

FANTASIE FOR A MARATHON MAN

FANTASIE FOR A MARATHON MAN

Here now we Stand 

as Autumn Takes the  land

And living is  hurried now, oh

Hush, Hush, Hush.

Hush, Hush, Hush.

Posing for pictures now, 

Leaves swirling, I am sound  

Of longing and Hope, oh

Hush, Hush, Hush.

Hush, Hush, Hush.

Little One, oh why this sorrow?

"For biting Cold shall flow tomorrow!"

The snow is coming, snow is coming

Hush, Hush, Hush.

Hush, Hush, Hush.

Let me take your hand,  

You’ve nothing left to do

Stars shall light the way to wonder 

Carrying you through

To a  Marathon A Marathon

Of Melancholy Winter Too.

I Shall Take Your Hand,  

and we shall sing by the fire       

Poems and stories and thoughtful hours

Happily In Your Arms through

The Marathon, A Marathon

The Marathon Of

MUSIC! Sweet Music, Inspire, 

Inspiring LOVE!  

Sweet Love,  

 Returning, returning to

Spring!

Sing now for the marathon man

Dropping notes as slow as we can

Gather them

From the night sky

Like stars

Falling to  silent ground.

An Update with a Poem

Hello, my friends!

I know it has been a bit since I've posted. as you can imagine, we have been extra busy with "Spy v Spia." And that's the thing about life: it's busy. Ten years ago, being busy was a virtue. Now it just feels like some antiquated, bizarro indulgence, and by indulgence, I don't mean of the fun decadent chocolate variety, but like some sickness and since I wanted my beloved "Spy v Spia" to be the OPPOSITE of that illness of our culture at this moment, I just let myself be as present and focused on THAT as possible!!

And soon we will have updates for you. :)

But for now, I did want to drop a note and just send a few other updates and a poem.

What I am reading:
-The Taming of The Shrew. I just finished Act 3, wherein Petruccio marries Kate in horrifying fashion.
    In light of the #MeToo movement and Weinstein, Franken, and the President....
    This play takes on a new and interesting relevance.
    I used to LOVE the banter betwixt Kate and Petruccio but HATE the moral values therein.
    I'm reading it now for research on the next project I want to write, and I'm constantly shocked to find myself laughing.
    And I guess this is why we still read ol' Will. It's still so f***ing relevant.

-Lincoln in the Bardo
   Just started it.So far, only a few chapters in, I am blown away by its unconventional narrative style, its beauty, and honestly, I'm so happy to read a book that doesn't assume I'm an idiot reader. (Sorry, modern publishing.)


What I am watching:
 -"Three Billboards Past Ebbing, Missouri"
  I mean, just, wow. Wow wow wow wow wow. If ever there was any wonder whether or not Frances McDormand is a national treasure, and I don't know how there could be, THIS ensures it. She is incredible. But not just her- this whole film. I've long loved Martin McDonagh, the filmmaker, but THIS is a real beauty in the ripening of his work. I am so inspired.



What I am singing:
 -just sang an online concert to raise money for victims of the Thomas fire here in SoCal. All proceeds go to the Ventura County United Way and there's still time to help! Every video share and we will donate an extra $1 to help the victims.
 -prepping for auditions. Up next? I'm superstitious, so I don't want to say unless I book something, haha!





A poem I wrote yesterday:


12.9.17

Been a long time, then, since I have been myself

But as the moon, cut in half, smoking like the fires eating up the cliffs of the west

Reminds me that I have not been my self, it seems, too,

That the stars in population of the firmament of night

And the bright white against dark indigo ignite

In my own body the sole of truth which is-

I have never not been. Myself.

So, too, I wonder, cold air poisoning my ears,

Airs to which I listen but do not hear,

Who is this many selv’ed person, then?

Now a fool, then a sage, ever always a woman.

I am divine she, divine three in one,

Ancient, fecund, life everlasting.

The remembrances of all story pulsating through my hoary

Bones, hearkened as a moan, orgasmic moment of glory

Of some long lost couple, some prehistoric child

Suckling the milky stores from my breast, until I’m wild

Again.

Joy, sticks, goddess, marrow.

The things of life am I.

-Erin

This pic was taken by Diana Delzio of Modern PR after Carlo and I won "Best Screenplay" at the Catalina Film Festival. If I get to it, it will be our Holiday Card photo! If I don't, then, this is it! Happy Holidays! eek.

Love,
Erin
the poet, the muse, the comedienne-
the singer, the writer, playing in her garden
of stars and whimsy and stunts and action.


"Who knew Linda Hamilton, Bette Midler, and Anne of Green Gables could be wrapped up in one package?"
-a recent casting director, after talking to me for a few minutes

SPY V SPIA KICKSTARTER! and other news!

SPY V SPIA

As many of you know, Carlo, my partner in life AND writing AND acting, and I have written a very fun WEB SERIES for us to star in. We have had some amazing movement on this series! Check out some of the info:

Spy V Spia, a MADCAP Spy Parody...

…served up with an unexpectedly romantic twist!

LOGLINE: Two rival international spies join forces only to discover secrets about their past, their future, and their hearts...

Written by and starring YOURS TRULY and CARLO CARERE...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oan2CdZU1U&feature=youtu.be

 

With a TOP SECRET THEME SONG composed and produced by MARK MALLMAN, sung by YOURS TRULY...

With DIRECTOR CHRISTOPHER N. ROWLEY, whose previous films include "Molly Moon" (starring Emily Watson, Dominic Monaghan, Joan Collins) and "Bonneville" (starring Jessica Lange, Kathy Bates, Joan Allen, Tom Skeritt!)

Produced by GRETCHEN LANDAU (whom we met on the set of FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA'S "Distant Vision" last summer!)

Director of Photography: KARSTEN HOSE (If you've seen a BMW or Suzuki commercial in the last few years, he likely shot it!)

It's a series that promises to have a lot of fun! Zany characters, a lot of heart, action, super cool spy stuff, evil organizations, an aria of death, Cheesheads vs Vikings fans, traditional pizza vs ham and pineapple pizza, and tons of Ninja, Femme Fatales, spyboys and spygirls and maybe a little romance...

Or as Carlo would say, no Romans. He's Neapolitan. ;-p

We are going to be launching a Kickstarter in a few days from the CATALINA FILM FESTIVAL(more about that in a moment) and I wanted to invite you all to share, donate if you can, and let me know what YOU would like to see as perks and promotions. As you know, I like to hear from you all, learn and grow... So please, don't be a stranger! We're planning on raising enough to shoot the pilot first, but along the way we are also seeking Executive Producers and or Private Investors, so, if you're interested, or no of anyone, we're open to talking with people!

We can share more about out commitment to diversity casting, quality of filming, and marketing plans if you like.... but also know.... it's going to be a TON OF FUN!!!

Our Facebook page is up to around 10,000 likes. Have you become a Secret Agent, too? If not, check out any of our Social Media:

www.SpyVSpia.com

*Currently links to Facebook Page, but will link to our Kickstarter once we launch!

https://www.facebook.com/SpyVSpia/ 

https://twitter.com/SpyVSpia

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SINGING PERFORMANCES AND WRITING CONTESTS If you happen to be in Costa Mesa on October 1st, I will be performing that Sunday afternoon with my long time friend and collaborator, JEREMY WEINGLASS. We will be singing at a benefit designed to raise money for research into HUNTINGTON'S DISEASE... the theme of our show is BROADWAY! I'll be singing selections from everything from "West Side Story" to "Les Miserables" to "Chorus Line" to "Monty Python's Spamelot." We're going to have an amazing time. You can get tickets here. In WRITING NEWS,  Carlo and I have been busy! We won 1st place in the ACTION/ THRILLER category in the StoryPros Awards and are featured in their Winners' Circle with our script "TIME ZERO." Next week we will be attending the CATALINA FILM FESTIVAL as one of the top 20 finalists in their screenwriting competition with "Time Zero." And the week after that, we'll be representing "Time Zero" in another contest at theOAXACA FILM FESTIVAL. We have been in contact with the people running the festival after the devastating earthquakes of the last few weeks. They are well and the festival is continuing- we are continuing to hold them in our thoughts and prayers. If you're going to be in Catalina or Oaxaca, do let me know! I'd love to see you. :) Until we launch our Kickstarter.... please email to say hi!

Burn after reading!  Just kidding.  **Erin  and Carlo too!  and Henry. :)