Yesterday was the Birthday of Hal Prince.
He would have been 96!
I feel this loss every day.
Midday, as I was rushing from a meeting and on my way to teach a class, my phone began to blow up – first with texts and people reaching out about Chita, then about Hinton.
Two Broadway Legends, gone within the same 24 hours.
Our Map, our Community, our World – shifting dramatically and forever!
Posted by Arnold J. Mungioli on January 31, 2024
https://livethequestionsnow.com/2024/01/31/chita-hinton/
’Twas an unseasonably warm afternoon, [two weeks] before Christmas, and all through the [park]… I found myself clearly overdressed, but dressing in layers was an option for me only to a limited degree – the suit is the suit. I was expected to look a certain way, and I respected that. If one has a message to deliver, it is often wisest to appear in whatever image the recipient will be most able to receive it from you. Dressed for success, I sat on the park bench and waited. It would not be long.
~~~
“Coolest Day of the Whole Freakin’ Year! It takes a certain kind of guy to pull it off!” he thought to himself as he combed his hair looking at his reflection in the mirror that morning. This simple black plastic comb had been a gift from his mother in his Christmas Stocking when he was a young boy, and it’s the one he always used. She had noticed when he began to take some pride in his appearance, and she helped him along. He kept it on the Lucite shelf above the sink next to a quartz crystal that an ex had left behind. He remembered that the crystal was supposed to have special powers – he didn’t believe that, yet there was some sliver of doubt: what if he’d just not yet discovered its powers? So, he never got rid of it, just in case.
Pleased with what he saw in the mirror, he gave himself two thumbs up sticking out his tongue; then, pointing his camera to the mirror, he proclaimed out loud an exclamation of self-praise that some might have thought overrated. “I’m awesome,” he declared with the confidence of a guy who knows he is lacking, but still takes a good photo of himself for social media. Click. Post.
He oozed confidence today. He had downloaded the app. He had started drinking at 10am. He’d been working out to get ready for this. He even got the Santacon badge which boasted that his fifteen bucks went to all the cool charities supported by Santacon, such as Burning Man!
~~~
Christmas celebrates giving. If one maintains a limited understanding of what giving can do to transform human beings and transform the world, then the true magic of the season may be lost on a person. He kept his nose mostly into his phone, brokering deals and making money even as he drank – in cases of such behavior, the magic of life itself may be lost on a person.
Posted by Arnold J. Mungioli on January 31, 2024
https://livethequestionsnow.com/2024/01/31/santacon-2023/
1931-2023
I do not remember the exact moment that I met Joanna Merlin. But I cannot remember my life without her!
She lived her life as a Guardian Angel in human form to those of us who knew her and to the Community at large.
Casting Director.
Actress.
Mother.
Teacher.
Friend.
Talent…
Grace…
Incandescence…
Always and at every turn!
Posted by Arnold J. Mungioli on November 17, 2023
https://livethequestionsnow.com/2023/11/17/joanna-merlin/
For those of you who know me well, my Christmas Card is early this year! Some years it doesn’t make it out until March!
For those of you with whom I am more recently acquainted… Yes! I do understand that it is a very strange thing to receive a Christmas Card in February! (It doesn’t really ever go out as late as March… well, once maybe! 🙂 ) But it has become a bit of a tradition over these last few decades that it arrives in midwinter…
It is my wish to send a special gift – something from my heart – to celebrate the Joy of the Holiday Season, and to remind us to keep cognizant of the Spirit of Love and Kindness throughout the year! I am a great believer in the power of words. Since my teen years, I would collect quotes and stories about Christmas and send them out to everyone as my Christmas Card. Eventually, I began to write my own original stories. (This, as it turns out, takes even longer! 🙂 )
I am inspired by the experience of each Christmas Holiday Season and every year, I am stirred by its beautiful values. I love to celebrate and savor the time… I usually don’t get to baking until some mid-January weekend. I capture whatever bits of Christmas Magic I can throughout the winter and weave them into a story that I hope will delight you and lift your spirit whenever you may read it!
So, you may choose to dismiss this as, “Oh, that Crazy Guy is sending out Christmas Cards in February again!” or you may choose to receive it in the spirit in which it is sent: May you enjoy all of the Magic and Sparkle and Beauty of the many Gifts of Christmas (Peace on Earth! Good Will toward Everyone! Love and Kindness, Compassion, Generosity and Cheer! Wassail! Wassail!) Boy, oh Boy! Could we ever use more of those things now…
I hope that you will appreciate this years’ story: It is the story five brothers. Perhaps you have met some of them already. And it is about the importance, and sometimes the difficulties and challenges, of sharing the unique gifts we bring to the world!
So please, if you will, make yourself your favorite warm beverage – a Hot Cacao is always nice! – sit back this lovely day or evening, allow yourself a brief respite, and have a nice read, enjoying the magic, wonder and delight of “Five Brothers’ Unique Gifts…” Read the full post »
Posted by Arnold J. Mungioli on February 12, 2023
https://livethequestionsnow.com/2023/02/12/christmas-card-2022/
What A Glorious Day!
It has been a while.
It has been a very Full and Rich Year — Too Many Blessings to Count!
As LIVE THE QUESTIONS NOW continues to evolve, much of what we offer has been shifted to GRATEFUL READY OPEN WILLING.
You may follow us on Social Media via:
In thinking about Highlights of this past year, one that stands out is the talk that I got to do for FIND CENTER: COME AS YOU ARE.
I am including it here. May it either conclude this year for you in Gratitude and Appreciation for all that you have, or may it start the Coming New Year in Joyful Abundance and may you be inspired throughout the year, and our Lives, to spread generosity and Create Beautiful Things!
Enjoy!
Posted by Arnold J. Mungioli on December 31, 2022
https://livethequestionsnow.com/2022/12/31/come-as-you-are/
In this recently published book, we in the Broadway Community express our Longing for all that we have worked our Lives to do – our Faith that we will rise and do it again, our Hope that we can return not only to the fullest expression of our art, but to a new and better version that honors our time away from it and enables us to express even more fully what we have to share – that which we Love.
As Biblical Scholars have pointed out, Love is the greatest because it ensures that the quality of our interactions with others is Life-Giving, or put another way, Faith and Hope are our own – a more personal experience — whereas Love, we share among others. Faith and Hope get us to Opening Night, and after that comes the really good part: we get to share what we’ve created with the final and greatest collaborator: the Audience!
Broadway…that Fabulous Invalid!
Those of us who Live and Work in this Community have taken a Beating!
No audience gathered together in the dark to share our work…
It’s been a rough two years!
Read the full post »Posted by Arnold J. Mungioli on February 12, 2022
https://livethequestionsnow.com/2022/02/12/when-the-lights-are-bright-again/
A Story for a wintry afternoon…. As many of you know, my Christmas Card Story usually gets posted in the weeks following Christmas, sometime between Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and Easter Sunday. This year, this seems the perfect week for it. The temperatures are low and the daylight is short… perhaps a story about this little Bakery in the Italian Section of the Bronx a few years before the turn of the century will help remind us to appreciate how much Beauty and Value can be found in the simplicity of what we do. It is sprinkled with Miracles and Italian expletives!
It has been a wild ride these past two years. Perhaps Showing Up for our Lives is the Miracle!
The idea of sending this out after Christmas is in part to remind us all to celebrate Gratitude, Readiness, Openness and Willingness, and all the values of Christmas the whole year through… The other part is that it takes me a while to write it! 🙂 It is sent to you with Gratitude for our manifesting here upon this planet at the same time, for our paths crossing, for the Life that we share, and with Love…
The Course in Miracles says, “There is no such thing as coincidence and chance plays no part in God’s plan.” The poet, HAFIZ, says, “This place where you are now. God circled on a map for you.”
And so, inspired by the idea of just how Lucky and Blessed we truly are, I offer the following story…
Perhaps you would like to make yourself a cup of hot chocolate, or bubbling herbal tea, or some delightful warm beverage, and take a little time to cozy up and enjoy this Story Adventure…
By Arnold J. Mungioli
You would have thought her a crusty old lady. Pugnacious and confrontational, Mama was a tough First Generation Italian American Woman from the Bronx with a heart of gold! If you were a child and walked into her bakery, you would often be hit over the head with a breadstick just a little too hard, and then she would smile the warmest smile and hand it to you. It was an act of generosity, as she saw it. She had made the breadstick herself, so it was a heartfelt and handmade gift. Moreover, she never wanted to see any child go hungry. But no kid likes to be hit over the head with a breadstick. Often the children would cry just from the shock of it, not because they were hurt at all. And Mama would dismiss the child disparagingly and unsympathetically as “shpeel la beep’,” “mingherlino” or “affamato.” She didn’t trust skinny people. And she held firm the belief that to spare the rod was to spoil the child.
“Shpeel la beep’” in Mama’s Italian dialect meant literally, “pipe cleaner” and was used derogatorily to insult a skinny person. Growing up as her daughter — a Second Generation Italian American Girl — these dialect expressions would fly by when the families got together – sometimes you would get a translation. More often than not, you’d get slapped for asking because somehow you were supposed to know that it was a dirty word and not appropriate to ask about that one.
Eventually you would learn to just accept that some phrases get translated and others you just have to figure out for yourself – decipher from sequence context. As I tell you Mama’s story, you’ll learn to do that too.
: Christmas Card 2021 Read the full post »Posted by Arnold J. Mungioli on January 31, 2022
https://livethequestionsnow.com/2022/01/31/christmas-card-2021/
Yesterday morning, for the first day of my entire life, I woke up into a world without Stephen Sondheim. I cannot say that I like it better than the world I have known every day before that. It feels somehow bereft, stolen, less than, without…
Things looked pretty much the same. The Sun was shining
…”I think about you.”
There was Sky
…”I remember sky.”
The proletariat was going to and from the subway station
…”and another hundred people just got off of the train.”
So you see, it is woven into the fabric of my being how he helped me see the world.
…”Take me to the world that’s real. Show me how it’s done.”
Like so many legendary icons of Show Business, Stephen and I had a few direct contacts but he would not have known me. I do remember when he came to see Richard Maltby’s THE SIXTIES PROJECT. I was seated diagonally in front of him. He was so quiet and polite and unassuming, yet I could not keep my eyes from darting over my right shoulder.
Just to be in his presence…
…”All I know is, the minute you turn
And he’s suddenly there,
There won’t be trumpets!”
It got back to me that his only comment on the show was
Read the full post »Posted by Arnold J. Mungioli on November 28, 2021
https://livethequestionsnow.com/2021/11/28/the-first-day-of-my-life-in-a-world-without-stephen-sondheim/
[Below, a colorful Writing Prompt from SARK’s Happy + Successful Writers Community which begat this Post…]
…emerged from the palm of my hand.
I wasn’t even aware that that clamminess and itchiness I had felt for days or centuries had been some kind of chrysalis. I thought it was just my skin getting older and craggy. Turns out it was about neither deterioration nor loss, but rather an emergence.
I did nothing to earn such a Beautiful Release which did come seemingly from me.
It was simply Grace.
Orange Sulphurs
Menelaus Blue Morphos
Prepona Laertes…
Grace,
As in Something unearned,
Splendor Bestowed,
Without Cause or Reason.
I forget sometimes that we are Beloved Children of God and Good things just keep happening.
Viceroys
Zebra Longwings
and the Common Buckeye…
Miracles Manifest and no matter how downtrodden we feel, we can do little to stop them, or to prevent the Love that ignites them.
From nowhere, and All of a Sudden,
A Fluttering of Red Admirals,
Queens,
And Pipevine Swallowtails…
Butterflies emerging…
Rising Up,
Bringing Loveliness to the World!
Read the full post »Posted by Arnold J. Mungioli on April 25, 2021
https://livethequestionsnow.com/2021/04/25/all-of-a-sudden-a-fluttering-of-butterflies/
I once knew someone who kept a stack of poetry books in the bathroom – a busy man, when nature called, he would use the time to nourish his soul with the Magical Gift of Poetry, succinct, easily digestible, and sometimes in a moment, Life-altering. It always impressed me how poets – all writers really — could rearrange those same 26 letters of the alphabet over and over and over again to make us feel such a range of emotions.
A little over a year ago, we were all buzzing about.
We’d probably begun to hear about some virus, and at least in New York, we had survived SARS and MERS, and perhaps we’d seen some Folks from Asian countries on airplanes wearing surgical masks and thought something might be going on that affected people far, far away…
Most of us had no idea what was about to happen, or the scope of the journey upon which we had already embarked.
The Great World Shift had begun – we just hadn’t reacted to it yet or taken it seriously.
And here we are now over a year in, still wondering what we can do.
Read the full post »Posted by Arnold J. Mungioli on April 10, 2021
https://livethequestionsnow.com/2021/04/10/living-not-in-vain/
Live The Questions Now 