Joy in the afternoon

There’s a term for what Sue and I are, and it’s not what you think. We are blissfully happy LATs--living apart and and carving out time for each other several days every week. This leaves me free for writing, political activism, and social justice photography, which gives me a feeling of purpose and connects me with many change-makers in this city; and it leaves her free to spend time with her siblings and other family members, care for her aging house and lush garden, and paint. She’s working on a series of acrylic paintings right now, and she’ll be taking a workshop on portraits in oil in a couple of months. When we’re together we have stories to tell from our separate adventures in the world; and each week we plan our calendar together so that we have some unstructured time, some time for exploring together, and some delight.

This week in my neighborhood we attended Playhouse Creatures by April de Angelis, a play about British Restoration actresses. It’s a fine play, and we thoroughly enjoyed every aspect of it: the acting, the staging, the writing. I wish the playwright had made some reference to other women playwrights of that era, since the Queen Anne period, just thirty years after the Restoration, saw proportionately more women writing for the London stage than ever before or since. But I quibble.