Lucia Frangione

I walk along the glorious blue Ceanothus in Golden Gate park in that gorgeous Bay light that makes any woman in San Francisco feel like a star. Normally I would be giddily browsing the shops on Fillmore, the Haight, Union Square and Soma…I’m a girl who loves my cocktail dresses and shoes…but this trip I am avoiding temptation and sticking to the parks. JP cast me in his latest film and when I ask him, “What is scheduled for today?” He smiles, “For you, a day off.” What a gracious and smart director. I pass the Victorian carousel, the rose garden,…

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I have to admit, I usually ace my titles. They are just never a problem for me. I usually know my title when I write up my one pager. But this time I have struggled for years to come up with one. Here is what it used to be called – followed by the comments I got from the dramaturge, my agent or the artistic director I was speaking to at the time: Sanctuary – too religious sounding and also the title of a sci-fi tv show Haven – also the title of a sci-fi tv show Big Moon –…

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Bleak fragile fiddleheads and big fluttery farfalle. Nora and I swing our grocery bags as we wander down to our house, making up new meanings for BFF. I am impressed with her Italian word. The offer we considered putting on a house up the street gets out bid by a hundred thousand dollars and we are relieved: we have no intentions of being that stupid. Some poor family is either stuck for a home or they got caught in the frenzy or they didn’t wander around the house with a man who builds houses to know the wiring was shot,…

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Today I am thinking of my great grandfather, Albert Aris. He was a concert pianist good enough to make the short list of entertainers on the RMS Titanic in 1912. I’m sure he was very bummed to have been cut at the last minute. Bummed from April 10 to April 15th. I am also thinking of a dear friend who hadn’t performed for a long time and was up in a small town in Northern BC considering changing careers in her late forties and heading into seniors’ aid when she got that impossible magical phone call from a producer in…

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Walking through Grandview park, an aboriginal woman sits on a rock among heather and plays a tiny pink and white ukelele. I am babysitting little Henry Devine right now and the day is sunny. He bites his lower lip just like his playwright Dad does when he realizes the line he thought was funny is actually funny.  It endears me so much I have to give the baby a little kiss just because. He is happy, the sun is shining, and he hears music. Some kind of African drum is being played by a tall black leopard of a man…

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A little boy in front of me with a boy scout cut and a Gortex jacket like his dad, bites into a Starbucks cinnamon bun (Starbucks making dry chewy pastry trendy again). He pulls it with his teeth to try and break off a mouthful and it comes unraveled and stretched out like a rubber dog’s toy and he puppily grimaces and pulls with tremendous effort until he wins. I chuckle along with his parents. I am auntie to only nieces (and a gaggle of glory they are!) and I was not gifted with a son. So when I get…

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Fantasizing about a piece of real estate for a month before seeing it is like chatting on line with a guy too long before meeting up with him for coffee. What you end up with is likely smaller, smellier and way more work than you can afford. As Fellow and I drove away from my fantasy hobby orchard B&B off an incredibly BUSY LOUD UGLY road in Langley, I pouted for half an hour in silence in the HOV lane all the way home, then said in a small voice, “I just wanted to give my daughter a farm.” We…

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I might decide on a radical change of lifestyle by this weekend. Fellow and I have been talking about what we really want our future to look like and we have started really listening to and believing the kids. I guess with the passing of my beloved Nonna, I am also thinking of legacy. I will keep you in suspense until we are quite certain, but let me tell you, it will result in some new material for the blog, that’s for sure! And this is entirely why I keep making bold choices: so I always have literary fodder. It’s…

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I went public today. Red lipstick, heels and bandages. I headed out for a reading of a new play at the Arts Club. (I was an actor not the writer) It was a huge draft with many great changes. I never doubted it would get somewhere because he’s a terrific writer and he had the bones of a good idea. But still, it is thrilling to see something grow like that, right in front of my eyes. Never gets tired. To see a story realized. My students have been submitting some pretty great drafts too. All these baby stories growing…

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