Peacocks!

In between Act One-ing, I am co-writing a screenplay with screenwriter Benedict Fitzgerald. Along with having co-written The Passion of the Christ with Mel Gibson, Ben happens to be the son of Sally Fitzgerald, who was the best friend of one M. Flannery O’Connor. So, very often when we get together to work, we spend at least fifteen minutes or so with me picking Ben’s brain about Flannery trivia like why she loved Emily Dickinson, and how Sally obtained the letters in Habit of Being painstakingly one at a time from regina O’Connor who didn’t really like her daughters stories and couldn’t see what all the fuss was about.

There is a point to this story.

So, this past weekend, Ben and I made our way to a retreat center to work on the project. (Which is actually another cool story, but will have to wait until I can talk about the subject of the screenplay….[Barb doing the happy impatient dance.]) And there we were, sitting on a bench outside the reception area waiting for the nun portress person to check us in, when all of a sudden, two large blue necked, aquamarine tail-feathered male peacocks came strutting and clucking around the corner.

Yeah, I KNOW! That’s EXACTLY how we felt! (You either get how weird and cool this is or not. ref. Flannery’s Mystery and Manners if you’re really curious.)

The whole weekend, they were hanging around us – but the best was one conversation in which we were discussing Flannery’s haunting moments thing – and then the two peacocks came swooping right around the corner to land right in front of us. Ben bowed and said, “Well, Madame O’Connor I presume.”

We’re thinking it is a good sign for the project.