Infinity:Sent from my friend Rosa..

 

You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. You want the physicist to talk to your grieving family about the conservation of energy, so they will understand that your energy has not died. You want the physicist to remind your sobbing mother about the first law of thermodynamics; that no energy gets created in the universe, and none is destroyed. You want your mother to know that all your energy, every vibration, every Btu of heat, every wave of every particle that was her beloved child remains with her in this world. You want the physicist to tell your weeping father that amid energies of the cosmos, you gave as good as you got.

And at one point you’d hope that the physicist would step down from the pulpit and walk to your brokenhearted spouse there in the pew and tell him that all the photons that ever bounced off your face, all the particles whose paths were interrupted by your smile, by the touch of your hair, hundreds of trillions of particles, have raced off like children, their ways forever changed by you. And as your widow rocks in the arms of a loving family, may the physicist let her know that all the photons that bounced from you were gathered in the particle detectors that are her eyes, that those photons created within her constellations of electromagnetically charged neurons whose energy will go on forever.

And the physicist will remind the congregation of how much of all our energy is given off as heat. There may be a few fanning themselves with their programs as he says it. And he will tell them that the warmth that flowed through you in life is still here, still part of all that we are, even as we who mourn continue the heat of our own lives.

And you’ll want the physicist to explain to those who loved you that they need not have faith; indeed, they should not have faith. Let them know that they can measure, that scientists have measured precisely the conservation of energy and found it accurate, verifiable and consistent across space and time. You can hope your family will examine the evidence and satisfy themselves that the science is sound and that they’ll be comforted to know your energy’s still around. According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone; you’re just less orderly. Amen.

Writing A TV Pilot – The Hard Stuff – First Thoughts

Today I am looking at the pilot script for  a TV series I have created.  It started life as a 20 page story, that soon became a 95 page 90 minute premise pilot that I worked on with my friend, mentor and colleague, Scott Winant.  Along the way we found kindred spirits in Mike Newell and Nicky Weinstock, Ben Stiller and Stuart Cornfeld.  I realize that I have found myself in terrific and supportive company, the company of men who like women.  They do exist in the business.   Years into this process we now have a 55 page script, a first season bible, and so many drafts on my computer hard drive it is humbling.  Soon we will be taking this beautiful piece out to the market.  I don’t know that I have worked harder and more focused as a writer.  The process of taking an idea and honing into a truly clean, sharp, and dramatic one hour drama is a humbling and exciting process.   I will write about it in the days to come.  Often we writers don’t comment on the strange and silent road; the hours alone, the months of work thrown out, the unique process of this deep and intrusive, yet necessary collaboration.  I don’t think I would trade it for anything.

Good People – A poem inspired by the actions of State Trooper, Leroy Smith

While You Were Away

Sunday, July 26^th, 2015 – jdj

Inspired by the NY Times article on the black state trooper, Leroy Smith

GOOD PEOPLE

All around us they are there,

The good people

But you have to look hard,

Beyond the clothing, the coiffure

The labels, the shabbiness,

The weariness, the impatience,

The yelling, the crying, the singing, the laughing,

The eating, the sighing, the drunkeness,

The lying

Beyond these symbols of judgement

Lies the good people

Below, underneath, submerged

By that thing called body

Hair, skin, eyes, teeth, mouth

Obvious things to focus on but

Nowhere near the truth

Of who you see before you,

(criminal, misogynist, misandrist, cop, bigot,

stupid old lady, slut, stoner, faggot?)

No,a fellow traveller

Peeling back the façade you see

The good people

It is easier once you glance inside

To the heart of the matter, the soul

The essence of who stands before you

They may be stuck on seeing you

as just a single story as

Clothing, coiffure, labels and shabbiness,

Not as Good People

Oh, wake good people

And see each other

In the light

It isn’t so painful once you try

In fact everything is illuminated

Illuinated in love

Wake up good people

And love each other

In the moment

It is so beautiful once you know

So beautiful life is illuminated

Illuminated, in love

Wake Up good people

You are all one

Right here now

There is no difference once you know

We are only here to love and grow

And all of life from here is illuminated

Illuminated, in Love

So my fellow travellers,

Embrace your Good People

Cherish your Good People

Know your Good People

You, are the Good People

Green, green, flowers and Pelicans July 21st

Green, Green, flowers and Pelicans

How are we here today?

How did we manage this?

Green, green everywhere we look,

People, people everywhere we look,

But if they push and rush, we don’t care

Today I take a day off with you

And decide to stroll, easy, happily

Where ever our feet take us,

Where ever the sun directs us,

Where ever the mood strike us!

Flowers of St. James startled us with color,

Magenta, canary yellow so yellow

I expect to see the little birds eyes peek out

Pinks so rosy, babies cheeks burst out

Blues and hues of reds and bold golds speak out

Victoria’s garden, more subtle in her mood

As trees offer hide aways for office workers

And frisky lovers kissing away their afternoon

We sit above them like curious rooks nesting

They don’t mind us as we delight in their tryst

Pelicans!   Pelicans loll on the rocks

How came you there you big, robust birds?

Aren’t the swans annoyed that you’ve stolen the show

Confused foreigners look for you, we do too

You don’t even lift your beak to show off, so indifferent

Onwards to a square of gold

Tramping along on the street

Cobblestones, cobblestones underneath

No more rushing now, evening calls

Everyone sits on curbs and benches day’s done

Sharing this with you

The best thing of the day

Even bustling teashops entertain

And heaving crosswalks make us laugh

Until we part, you run underground, me above

And for a time

Nothing happened

and everything happened

And isn’t that lovely…

-jdj- 2015

I swim – a poem july 18th

Thoughts on Kate and Osgood

Characters from “Gramercy Park”

GP, July 3^rd, 2015

jdj

I SWIM

Water, water takes me whole

Down I go, down, down,

But legs kick, arms stroke,

Desperate to breathe, desperate to live,

I swim

I swim

The lake, the lake takes me whole

But I dive into her, dive, dive

Down, I go, down, down,

No longer desperate to breathe,

And happy to live in her womb

I swim

I swim

You, you take me whole,

Down I go, down, down,

But hands touch, legs stop

Desperate to live, desperate to be

With you

I swim

I swim

A New Dawn – A poem – Reflections on The Brooklyn Bridge

Stories of a World Gone By

Poem – jdj, july 4th, 2015

Reflections of the past on Independence Day

A NEW DAWN

The Day the Brooklyn Bridge Opened

My 24^th, 1883, New York City

The Queen of the Great East River spreads over the sky

Like an eagle adrift the golden fields on a summer day

As darkness falls on the bridal night of your virgin “flight”

Electric lights are dimmed by the glorious

Colors that explode over your beauty as

Yankee Doodle fills the air and every type of

Boat known to man swims underneath your

Capacious, Angelic arch that welcomes all to come forth

There will be no turning back now

To the time of ferries, row boats, rafts and canoes

Of longing, of looking, of wondering

What exists on the other side of this great

Yawning river that rushes to the sea

In a sudden rush of humanity

Of imagination, steel, grit and dreams

You span before us now in a majesty

Heretofore not seen by man

A call to modernity, to expansion to never

Looking back

Man and woman and child, of all races

Creeds, colors, religions, no religions, or

Trades, skills, nefarious intent or the most

Beatific humanitarian can cross

With equanimity, all at once if they wish

In a wave of hope, excitement and wonder

We are in a different age, an age of change

Change of a nature that we have not seen

Time speeds up and catches us in the zeitgeist

Of machines and canyons of towers and

Hellholes of sweatshops and tenements, of images moving

Before our eyes on paper, the present instantly caught,

already the past, images that fool the eye

So like reality, but not reality

There will be no turning back now

As we cross you, our bridge to the new age

Woman will become her own work in

Progress, Man will be a captain of industry or

A minion sweating away his blood on wheels

And tracks, steel and streets,

Blood that will pour into the drains and

Become water that will wash down upon

The metropolis, which you now bring

To life in a shocking and vital way, blood to

Water, water to once again blood

And Child will be uplifted like a prize or stepped upon

By the heel of the boot of the captains,

And each child’s heart will drain away into the

graves which wait for them with ripe indifference.

Such is the way that you signal for us,

For the march of man must go forward.

You watch us all now with perfect

Benign love, hoping for us to be

Better, best, yet knowing deep into the

Ground that holds you aloft, the truth;

The truth, that even you, in your beauty

And power and purpose cannot bring

Mankind to awe and love,

It is his journey, her journey, but perhaps your beacon

Will ignite in the few a brighter way

And truly announce a new dawn

I Forgot to Remember – A Poem

I FORGOT TO REMEMBER

A spring day in May on Primrose Hill

2015 jdj

The chestnut tree so bleak and weary through the winter

Is suddenly transformed overnight

Awash with shimmering green leaves and piles

Of bright white whipped cream cones of flowers tipped with

So many bright red cherry flowers,

looking like an ice cream sundae,

Dance on your boughs in stunning beauty and grace

Like hundreds of white angels singing peacefully

Miss Hawthorn so cold and cruel and sharp in winter’s light

Softens and smiles with new growth that hides her bite

Under millions of shocking pink buds that give shelter

To the robin building her nest deep inside her heart

I forgot to remember the chestnut’s poetry, the

Hawthorns beauty

Beneath the sudden canopy of the sycamore are

The dancing dolls of Queen Annes lace

They come up to our waist and gently touch us

With flowers intertwined in a weave of magic,

a sea of white floats around us

and we are moving in clouds

And undernearth my feet I stop and kneel to

See the tiny wild violet’s sweet flower reach up

From the green to greet the summer with

An innocence of being that is pure and beautiful

Winking at us to stop and enjoy her small elegance

I forgot to remember the clouds of Queen Annes lace

And the purity of the violet

Too soon you give way to nature’s progress and

Leave us with a memory that winter works so hard

To erase

But I will forget to forget and remember,

I will remember not to forget to remember,

Every burst of spring on the hill

WE HAD A CHANCE TO ABOLISH SLAVERY IN 1776 – THE ORIGINAL DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE BY THOMAS JEFFERSON.

In the aftermath of the horrendous terrorist attack in South Carolina at the AME Church  I  went back into my research on a film project I did about Thomas Paine and the American Revolution.  I wanted to find the ORIGINAL draft of Thomas Jefferson’s “Declaration of Independence.”  Paine had helped in the drafting of Jefferson’s plea to end the practice of slavery in the Declaration.  This was in the late spring of 1776.  The Continental Congress went into a tailspin over the abolition of slavery  text in the draft.  Here is what Thomas Jefferson wanted for America.  This would have ended slavery then..in 1776 instead of allowing the barbaric act of slavery to continue in the land of the FREE?   Please read it and share.  I also included his original opening, which included the word Independent.  Yes, Jefferson owned slaves and we know about his affair, but it does not change what he wrote or what he envisioned for America.

“We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable; that all men are created equal & independant, that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent & inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness;
(HERE JEFFERSON IS STATING WHY THE REVOLUTIONARIES ARE BREAKING WITH KING GEORGE OF GREAT BRITAIN.  THIS WAS TAKEN OUT BY PRESSURE FROM GEORGIA AND SOUTH CAROLINA, WHO SAID THEY WOULD SIDE WITH THE BRITISH IF THE SLAVERY TEXT WAS NOT REMOVED.   WE KNOW WHAT HAPPENED.)
He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it’s most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. this piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce: and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, & murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.
in every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms; our repeated petitions have been answered by repeated injury. a prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a people who mean to be free. future ages will scarce believe that the hardiness of one man, adventured within the short compass of 12 years only, on so many acts of tyranny without a mask, over a people fostered & fixed in principles of liberty.”

Dream Trails – After A Walk on Primrose Hill, May 2015

Things I see

Along a walk on Primrose Hill

At 7 in the morning

25^th May, 2015

Dream Trails

Along the asphalt foot path

Shooting off across the tall grass

Children have chased each other in games

Mothers have quietly escaped the noise of home

Lovers has slipped into bliss at the end

Of these dream trails

No one was supposed to walk there

But the human soul knows no bounds

And defies regulation in a solitary act of walking on the grass

to claim their own journey,

Join the ancient druids, the philosphers and ghosts

On these dream trails

So beautiful in the early morning sun

The night dew evaporating quickly to one day be rain

The grass recovering, some, but not enough

As boots and shoes and sandals and feet

Have marked a new direction for others to follow

Along these dream trails

They go to secrets and wishes

And only for the daring and adventurous do they live

Others pass them in annoyance, if they notice

Clucking that someone has broken the rules

Or most not noticing at all, too plugged in or chaotic to see

The beautious dream trails

I will blaze a new path, away from man

Away from competition, away from racing about

so earnestly that life slips from my hand like sand

Instead I feel the grass crunch softly under my shoes

I reach the grove of trees and lead others to a haven

Reached only by the Dream Trails

Join me

GOOD NIGHT ROBIN WILLIAMS THANKS FOR THE BEST NIGHT ON STAGE

ROBIN WILLIAMS – Peace.One of my happiest and most magical memories was thanks to an evening at The Comedy Store on the Sunset Strip, where I ended up on stage with Robin Williams.

I was still in university, but taking acting classes up in Beverly Hills and planning to somehow learn how to write movies.  One day a friend, who had an entry level job as a PA at ABC told me that that night, Robin Williams was going to play at The Comedy Store on the strip in the late show.  He said, “The only way to get to really have a good seat is to go to the early show and stake a seat at the front tables that wrap around the stage and hang on for the late show. ”  I did as my friend, Bob, suggested.   I was going to see Robin Williams live come hell or high water.   I drove my Toyota Celica GT 5 speed – I still miss that car — and parked in the lot.  First in line, I had a center seat right at the stage’s edge.
I sat through a funny blonde female comedian who made jokes about mini-pads, the guy with that wild curly head of hair who was insane and incoherent, and about 5 glasses of Coca Cola by the mid-point of the second show.  Eventually, around 11:30 pm the MC announced Robin Williams.  The place went nuts.  He came on to the small stage and started his routine.   I made a comment trying to be smart and he stopped talking and looked at me.   I honestly cannot remember what I said but it had something to do with books, I think I asked what he was reading in response to something he said.  He stopped and looked at me, “What did you say?”, — my heart sank — shit I’d pissed off Robin Williams and he hadn’t even gotten started.  I was horrified and I’m sure 1000 shades of red.  “Um, nothing”, I muttered, properly humiliated.   “No,” he insisted,  “let’s talk.”  Now I just stared like the proverbial deer in the headlights….(“Oh no…this is bad,” i thought, “really bad.)    “NO, that’s okay,”  I finally uttered.  “No, ” he said, “In fact why don’t you come up here and talk to me.”  Now I wanted to crawl under the table, but kept looking at him.   I shook my head and said, “That’s all right. I’m sorry.”   He smiled. “If you don’t come up on this stage I am going to reach down and pull you up out of your chair.”  Okay, now it was too bad just to sit there, I didn’t want him to  do that…so…I stepped up on my chair, onto the table and he reached out with his hands and pulled me on to stage.
What happened next was one of the most ridiculous, wonderful, insanely funny and truly spontaneous and fun fifteen minutes of my life as he lead me into these wicked improv “scenes”.   First he took on the persona of a flamboyant horror movie director and I was his leading lady — nitwit — who was to utter the singular line, “Oh my god the killer tomatoes are attacking!”    I perched myself on a stool on the stage and really started to get into it, mangling the line, we did take after take: each one getting more outrageous until we were on the floor battling the “killer tomatoes” – the stool.  The stool became Lincoln’s chair and he suddenly became an interior decorator and I was his competition and we were fighting for the job to paint the blue room in the White House a new color…that went off into the outreaches of Pluto; we were on a roll about fuschia when he suddenly became Uncle Tom and I was Little Miss Eva, but the roles were kind of reversed.  Needless to say when Little Miss Eva died, (I really layed it on with a trowel), we wrapped up this bit of his show and he thanked me.  I  remember stepping back over the table to my seat in a daze, people applauding and thinking “What the hell just happened?”   After the show, I waited.  Robin was in the back with people; I’m assuming manager, friends, agent?? talking.   He was wearing a Hawaiian shirt, baggy khakis and tennis shoes, he was soaking wet; sweated through from the performance, he did  at least another 40 minutes after I had left the stage.   I waited silently until he looked up.  I reached out my hand, “Mr. Williams” I said, I just wanted to thank you for being so kind to me on stage.  I’m really sorry I interrupted your opening.”   He smiled and put his very sweaty arm around me and I was just like “Wow. This is wild.”   “No, it’s fine. I like bringing up people from the audience, but you know, they can never keep up with me, you were really good.  Are you studying acting? ”  I said I was.   He smiled again, “well, you’re good, keep it up.”   I smiled and said I would that I was going to be a writer. The smile never left his face.   “Stay with it.”   He went back to his friends, I went to my Toyota and found myself shaking  I had to sit for a few minutes before I started the car and drove home to my parents house.   It was a tremendous inspiration for me and a moment that I would think about sometimes when life and the business was so hard and think, “That was a really nice moment and he was kind to you.  You can do it.  Hang in there. ”   Dear Mr. Williams, I wish you could have hung in there, but boy, you had a tremendous affect on thousands of lives with your generosity, humor and beautiful talent.  I wish you well and I will never forget my night on stage with you.    Rest in peace.