Lucia Frangione

I think of the Victorian era as the age of letters, of poets, of the romantic writers. But I see the birth of this again. Have you noticed? Every other person is a writer. They have a blog, a website, witty twitties. Or they film. Or they record their own music. I’m not sure what propelled so many people to write beautifully in the eighteen hundreds. What made it suddenly fashionable to be articulate? Did people feel the need to immortalize themselves during times of great war? Part of it, simplified, was finding the divine in nature, turning away from…

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Sometimes women terrify me. Tonight was such a night. My lovely smart broker, I’ll call her Cherub, (because she has the face of one), invited me to a night about “women and money”. For her sake, I will not name the company that hosted this event. I will say that she had never been to one, she knew it came with a steak dinner, free booze and valet parking at Gotham steak house, what’s not to love? She even said I could invite a friend. My dear friend Sandra volunteered to come along, if nothing else, so we could have…

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The other day I noticed I had inadvertently posted all my personal photos that were on my computer onto Facebook for the general public’s viewing pleasure. Pictures of my family and friends they didn’t give permission to post, endless pictures of my daughter, embarrassingly personal photos only meant for one or two people to see, unflattering shots that I hadn’t bothered to trash, the “before and after” exercise regiment pictures…oh oh oh I shudder at the thought. They went all the way back to my wedding. If anyone wanted to creep me, they had plenty of material to wade through….

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For those of you more experienced with melon pain, tell me, is this a migraine? I am at my lovely friend’s house. Jovanni, Leanna and I are reading over tidbits of scripts we’re working on. Leanna goes over hers, I am engaged, happy, dull headache that’s been bothering me all day. It increases to a PMS level when we read my work, I am irritable and dissatisfied with my rewrite. Why? Why am I so grumpy? I apologize. WOW. My head bursts into a mushroom of pain. I don’t say anything but they can see it on my face. I…

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When I think of crossing over into film, I have this idea in my head that I’m a young person. I feel I’m just slightly beyond “emerging” as a writer and actor. People may see me as a dewy eyed burgeoning artist. And then I remember how long I have been at this and I look in the mirror and shockingly see a woman in her forties. What?! When did this happen? In my heart I’m about twenty eight years old. I remember once I was driving with my grandpa at the wheel and a man his age, in his…

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Today I heard from my young lady of Shalott. She is half sick of shadows and short a decent Lancelot. She writes me about every two months. She is willowy fair and lovely and loved. She’s articulate and soulful and suffers from a mental disorder, she knows. But knowledge doesn’t shake the darkness. And it doesn’t give her an answer to, “Why should I live?” I’ve had a hard time writing lately because I am desperately compelled to seek out an answer. There are a few people in my life suffering from crippling depression. Christmas followed by January…tends to be…

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Cookum, Baba and Nonna waddle towards the hot pool, three rutabagas. As soon as they hit the water, they become three beets. I instantly love them. How did they meet? There they are, cackling together, one with a rubber cap, one with false teeth. The other showing cleavage down to her knees. Beside them is a tattooed biker dude with a drippy “wet dog” handlebar stash. He’s chatting up a skeleton in a bikini telling her how much it hurt to have the cop kick sand behind his eyes. The skeleton is the one who makes me sigh. Her black…

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Day two of learning Italian. Dog and cat are masculine but bicycle is feminine. Why? I don’t know. Because you can put it between your legs and ride it. There. I won’t forget that now, will I? Lately the days are all about “working towards a goal”. Someday I will figure out my allergies, someday I will get into that bikini, someday I will speak this language, someday the phone will ring and tell me I have work this year, someday Leave of Absence will get produced again…and what happens to the present when so much is focused on the…

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Nora and I are having our first Italian lesson today. We pull up our matching chairs to the computer and tap on our Rosetta Stone, una bambina, una donna. I am not ashamed of many things, but I am a little ashamed that I haven’t learned Italian. With a name like Lucia Frangione I can’t tell you how many people GASP in shock that I don’t speak my father’s tongue. There were a few brief impatient lessons with Dad when I was young. He’d tug on my hair gently with his big wide hands and say “capelli”, tap his tooth…

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