Does This Make Me Look

Not gonna lie to you, my friends, I got bupkis up in this blog-brain o’mine. Besides the fact that I’m amazed that Saturday is here again, I’m not unaware that it comes around regularly. And yet, a week passing like a blink is still a bit surprising. A week in which stuff happened, sure. A good week. A fine week. Not without its issues. I could easily flip on my outrage around mentally unhinged and unattended young men with access to high-powered firearms who kill. The sadly not-surprising, yet necessarily ongoing conversation around racism, which two weeks ago brought the lens in on the violence against the AAPI community that ramped to nuclear in 2020 after 45 and his minions used (&used&used&used) hateful, bullying, deadly language as a tag around the global pandemic. I could definitely wax on regarding that, yet instead I’m including this link for folks to find and explore ways to help channel their outrage. Within that same tragedy, the issue of women and sexuality. The undeniable fetishization of Asian women and the marginalization inside of that topic. (Great essay on that here.) The fact that in my frustration this week with the seeming impossibility that there is no meaningful movement around gun-control issues up on that hill called Congress, that I fantasized about reaching out to my fangirl fave Ella Emhoff to discuss bulletproof knitwear for trips out of the house. Sure, I could go on about all that. But instead I’m going with the joy of meh…it was a week.

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From last Saturday to this, I wandered around the neighborhood and made up stories about all the people who used to be connected to the masks & one glove (above) I found scattered here and there, indications of the times we live in. I made a lot of appointments for people to get vaccines so that those masks & one glove will signify a time past (though not anytime soon, people. Herd immunity. say it with me). I talked to a few of my very favorite people via phone, Zoom, and FaceTime. I finished an amazing, darkly humored, deeply insightful, hugely entertaining fiction, We Play Ourselves, by Jen Silverman about what happens when your sense of self feels on the verge of nothing, but then you dig deeper and find a lot of something. Watched the Sound of Metal in which nothing becomes a soundtrack and accepting that moves along every emotional track imaginable. Watched a short series, The Night Manager, which is nothing to write home about but does feature the Awesome (capital A) Olivia Colman. I spent time petting Gladimus the Great (formerly known as Gladys. Name changed on account of gender discovery), who one day slipped past my legs and into our apartment, then upon finding nothing resembling endless containers of kibble or cabinets of cat toys, glanced at me with cat-size disappointment, stepped back out, and carried on with chasing butterflies.

I’ve been sitting in nothing twice a day for two-years-plus. Perched on a little stool on a cushion. I say sitting rather than meditating because although the aim is in fact to meditate, often I’m really just sitting. Attempting nothing. Boy that’s a challenge. The first flush is a deep breath of aaahhh, just releasing all thought. Sitting on the bank of my mind letting thoughts go by until wait, what’s that sound? A song. out a window. of a car. wow. that was a hit in my first NYC summer. Rolling Rock. loved those bottles. and my phoenicia t-shirt. where’d that go? i want that t-shirt again. must look online… and then I’m paddling that raft down thought river until I spot a waterfall and pull myself to shore to start again. Nothing. the feel of my breath under my nose, rise and fall. nothing. did I respond to that person about her vaccine appointment? gotta do that. the word vaccine comes from the latin vacca (cow)? so weird. that podcast was cool. … WAIT. STOP. You see where I’m going here. Nothing is difficult. But the trying is so very worth it. There’s no doubt at all that from my time sitting I’m a lot more okay with the nothings, the unknowns, the uncertainties of stuff, the realization I don’t really know and fine, so I’ll wait. It’s possible (okay, yes, true) that I thought up some of the things written here while I was sitting attempting nothing this morning. But starting again. That’s a thing. I did that then and I’ll keep swimming toward it. Nothing like the present. Til next week. May your nothings be filled with exactly what you need.

Once a few years ago, I was in a group therapy meeting where someone offered up a story about seeing a blind person at a busy crosswalk and as the light turned green, she swooped in, taking his elbow and walking him across the intersection. He’d said something like, “Hey, wait…” around the middle of the street, but she’d apparently answered, “Don’t worry, I’ve got you.” Once they reached the other side, she said, “Here we are” and let go of his elbow, at which point he said, “But I didn’t want to cross the street.” My mind&more filled with little fireworks of recognition and I looked around to see a whole bunch of heads nodding around me. Yep, I am often that person who, metaphorically speaking, grabs an elbow and takes action when it’s not quite the thing needed. My mind whirrs with “I can do this, save the day without anyone telling me how, thank you very much.” I don’t even need special clothing for that. Can just do it in casual, yet stylish, streetwear, or, as is the case lately, one of my many choices of comfortable joggers and pullovers.

It’s tricky when good intentions splash around in puddles of ego. The slippery slope that is standing in one place and listening, then looking around and seeing how to truly make a difference tempered with the desire to dive in immediately, headfirst onto an emotional slip&slide that hurtles me into action but more than not lands me in busy unnecessary traffic. Grass stains on my chin are not a good look. This past week I had a few moments where I hurtled down that hill, then got up and realized, damn, that didn’t go like I thought it would. The things themselves had started from good intentions, but I just hadn’t taken the time to listen to what the people involved might really want or need. The need to want to do something and really fast is tantalizing, but often also wasted if that thing is not done right or isn’t necessary or even wanted. Soooo…the root of it.

Before I made my first call for Get Out the Shot: Los Angeles, I was nervous as all hell. First off, I don’t love the phone or talking to strangers, but more than that, what if I failed at making someone a vaccination appointment, or got that person—or a whole load of someone’s—tangled up in a mistake or, I didn’t even know what. I just knew I kept staring at the call sheet saying, “effin, do it. call someone.” I knew this wasn’t an unusual reaction because per the org’s shared Facebook group, a pretty common post is “Aagh. I’m nervous. Gonna make my first call” and like that. So I read and reread the script of what to say, got on the phone and promptly promised a man making an appointment for his wife that “Yes, I’ll call you in an hour with the date and time.” Bam. Then I hung up and realized, No. That’s not a thing. Even Dennis looked at me sideways realizing I’d overpromised. Thirty-six hours and too-much-adrenaline later, I got her an appointment. Then made a mental note to chill-the-F-out and not do that kind of promising again. I mean, clearly people were signing up for this service for reasons that included how impossible it is to get a damn appointment, so it’s not like they’re surprised at it taking time. For my next call, I was able to be realistic and I got it done in the time it took. The one after that went even better and so on. After about a dozen calls over a few days, I’d found a sweet spot in slowing down the intake conversations. Finding out what these people really wanted (Moderna, Phizer, J&J; drive-in, walk-up; and so on). I also got to get to know them a bit and share fully in their relief when the appointment was set. Some high points: Talking to a guy who’d lived in NYC during the 80s&90s and comparing memories of how it used to be along with learning he’s an illustrator and his stuff is fantastic (click here), a woman who was about to go back to work and was having a helluva time navigating the appointment site and who cried with relief when we got her the appointment and promptly called her mom in Canada who had been so worried about her; a man who asked me first thing—though not unkindly—How’d you get this number? then when I read him the email on the call sheet said, “Oh, that’s my daughter in France. She wants me to be able to see my grandkids. I wish I could too”. After we’d found him an appointment and confirmed it, his daughter emailed me “Thanks, We miss him terribly” and my heart filled and burst with poignancy for what has been missed and hope for what is to come.

This last week there was much talk of being kind to ourselves at the end of this [insert appropriate chosen adjective here] year. My friend, Elizabeth, sent me a great piece from the NYTimes about grief and how so often we say things like, “Meh, I really can’t complain.” But here’s the thing, yes, we can. It’s good&fine to feel emotion about whatever it is that shifted in this year. The unsettling, the thread of terror weaving through our emotions. Even as someone who was able to lock it all down pretty quickly and form a pod of my dad and Dennis while still eating, laughing, and generally surviving, the grip of fear, of what if, of keeping an eye on the numbers of ICU beds available in the local hospital just.in.case. never ever left me. This is all real and truly affects our inside moments. Also part of why I remind myself to take time to listen for what I need, for what other’s need, for what it takes to be okay: time, space, energy. And sometimes if things don’t go exactly as planned, that’s not failure. Just living. And I’m saying that out loud to remind myself, since I want everyone to have vaccine appointments as soon as possible, would love everyone to see each other as equally valid, stop hating and being afraid of the other starting now. I want those things particularly after the week just passed and the year just lived. But also, I can’t fix all that in the immediate. I can listen for what is needed and try to help from there. That is all. No special outfit required.

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Happy anniversary. Condolences. Thinking of you. Choose your appropriate Hallmark sentiment. How’re we all holding up? The past year wrought a few things (you think?). Twelve months in which toilet paper became a combat sport, bras became face maks, Purell became a verb, Zoom was a noun, verb, and a way of life, and I imagine Anthony Fauci must be looking forward to never saying “mask,” “please wear your,” “social,” and “distance” in any order or combination ever again. I finally learned how to pronounce epidemiology, tho I still have to concentrate and think it through every time. I’ve done an extensive amount of traveling while sitting on my couch: Paris, Denmark, Northern Ireland, Naples, pre-pandemic cut-throat New York, just to name a few. Nothing like a televised drama to drop you into a foreign city while you lurk, skip, and scurry along streets and into alleys chasing folks or living filthy rich without needing to quarantine or take a Covid test. And about those tests, remember when they were impossible to find/get? Brings me to patience.

Patience. Oy. If there were an English-language lexicon of 2020 (and of course there is, I’m just not looking for it right now), politicians saying “be patient” would rate around 48.6 times per minute over the last 365 days. Patience around the pandemic, around testing, around home deliveries of everything, around where to find or get PPE, around election results, around when to reenter society and when we can step inside certain places, see people, touch strangers—if that’s your jam—and on like that. One area where patience broke this year was around racial justice. That moment wrecked patience and brought people into movement. And YAY for that!

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Now, the big push for patience is around the vaccine. I’m currently working with a group called Get Out The Shot: LA helping qualified people set up their inoculation appointments. I went in with some confidence around the process, a sensation I was disabused of almost immediately. The whole grab a name from the Google doc, call up, get their information, then get on the LA County website with all the myriad choices for setting up appointments and score said person one sounds straightforward. And it is until you cross over into the LA County website/make appointment moment. That’s when the Alice in Wonderland adventures begin. This process is bonkers. Broken. Crazymaking. Requiring Herculean patience. I feel incredibly lucky I got my dad his full raft of doses when and where I did. Absolutely if someone doesn’t have stable internet, an ability to keep a lot of tabs open and refreshed every few minutes, and endless time, so. much.time. then no way a person is going to get an appointment. This is, quite frankly, bullshit. There are a few places across the nation, one being Gila County, Arizona, where anyone can walk in and get a jab anytime. But here in Southern California, and most other places I hear about, not so lucky. Which is why the problem affects folks who don’t have reliable internet or hours upon hours to search (not to mention patience or transportation).

So I’ve been giving some time to setting people up for their doses. Over two days, I’ve gotten one man’s wife an appointment. That is all. There are more folks on the list who I’m moving on to next, but having scored my first, I’m taking a moment to celebrate…not long though because the list grows and those people on it are being—yes you know where I’m going here—patient. I feel like, as with so many other things during this pandemic, it will get easier as it goes. That the supply will pick up and the system smooth out. I’m exercising great amounts of hopeful thinking here while working my computer like a giant keyboard. Right now the tune is horrible, but with a little practice, the song should get better. Really, should.

In the meantime, I’m looking forward to when our new globally overused word is joy.

Woke up within a different four walls. Dennis and I drove out to Palm Desert for four days and it’s been interesting to notice the different mood pandemic travel brings: a cocktail of familiar (relaxing into unstructured days, curiosity around seeing/hearing things completely new) with an obvious chaser of caution (covid checklist). The place we’re staying is a resort we used to frequent when we’d come to visit my dad. So this one-bedroom apartment with balcony, view of a pool and golf course is a place where we’re self-sufficient, no contact with other people, but we get a nice view of what’s going on around us. Although for sure watching people play golf (some with masks, most not) and lay by pools (masks abound. go, humans!) is not action-packed, which is the point really. Last night two families with a caboodle of kids (9) checked in catercorner to our place and my mind went to roads not taken.

Roads. We rode on some yesterday. To Joshua Tree where we stopped by the Noah Purifoy Outdoor Desert Museum of Assemblage Sculpture, wow, that’s a mouthful, but also it’s an amazing eyeful. Noah was an artist who lived in LA and Joshua Tree and whose earliest sculpture was formed from the charred debris of the 1965 Watts Riot. The sculptures in his Joshua Tree location, where he worked during the latter part of his life, are both whimsical and socially relevant, even—or maybe especially—seventeen years after his death. To have the stillness of the desert juxtaposed with his found-object sculptures that make comment on how the world is both chaos and created-interesting from what is found all around, the perceptions of one person’s beauty next to what might be another’s discarded moment, was fascinating. Once we rode into Joshua Tree National Park proper, the difference between how nature, when left to its devices, is about as bananas as humans in presenting things astounding to the world. Seriously, it was like riding onto the moon. At any moment I expected Barbarella to step out from behind one of the massive rock formations. Trees like stick figures with very serious spiny bits on top in sharp relief to giant boulders alongside drip-sandcastle-looking moments. Over and over I kept thinking, so small, I am. So tiny in this place, which I imagine is the view most/many national forests bring about. That adjective majestic had to come from somewhere. And while I’m more water than sand when it comes to love of location, the solitude of the place wrapped around me in a peaceful way.

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I used to play a game when I was young sitting in the backseat as we’d drive through a neighborhood or on the freeway. I’d look out at the houses or cars and wonder who people were and what they were up to. Now the game has changed slightly. As we rode through various locales: Joshua Tree, Mecca (yes, a city), rubbed up against the Salton Sea, through Coachella, I wondered, what would it be like to live here? How would I move and shake? Joshua Tree, the town, offered a yoga-toned, earth-tuned type of citizen, Mecca more agricultural seeming, in Coachella I watched a Greyhound pull out of the bus terminal headed for El Paso, Texas, and we watched a man, his bike tipped over near the road, pulling something from the train tracks as a freight train headed toward him. Yes, the train was literally bearing down. He got out of the way. Who knows what he was grabbing or if it worked. A young woman going to the laundromat, a line outside the drive-through CVC.

Snippets of life. people going about their day. and us heading back to a room to have no plans for the moment. All good. The sense of limbo reminding me that nothing’s permanent and that actually feels as good as it does strangely huge. Speaking of, we also happened to pass an elephant (fake. red) pulled happily from the back of a pickup truck. What kind of life might that be?

Last week, driving to my dad’s, somewhere around the third NPR segment on the heels of virus varients, Cruz Cancuning, and climate/Capitol/car crash catastrophes, Dennis said “Remember when we used to listen to music?” And, yes, I did. The times in college driving down Pacific Coast Highway, window open, hand holding cigarette hanging out the open window, singing along to “Pour Some Sugar on Me” feeling both brave and breathless about what might be around the corner, not of that particular road, but of life. Music was the thing that lifted me up and pitched me around into alternate universes. An escape into whatever I didn’t see out the window. Moving to New York, music became my flying carpet into those worlds I’d wanted to know. Intimately. And I grabbed up to the sun and into the gutter, figuratively and literally too. It’s weird to think back on life being incredibly hopeful and beyond baffling all within seconds of each other. (And being honest, it’s still that way. I can maybe just recognize it faster.) When E.Vedder would leave a message on my phone machine yet I felt incapable of communicating why I was constantly breaking into terror-tears. Be traveling with a band that was rearranging the face of music, while working hard to present my confident face hiding a pretender. Music was still my escape hatch. But then so quickly it wasn’t. The speed of disengagement was so swift and sudden. A little like the Mars Perseverance parachute disengaging. Just poof. Drop. Gone. (I went deeper on that topic in The Stake post over the summer.) At the time, I figured I would find my way back to my rover fairly fast, yet here I am over two decades later still wondering about where my ride went. Apparently I didn’t leave simple bread crumbs. Or the birds ate them. Truthfully, I can still see the trails in the sky when I take the time to look. You can’t know a thing deeply and then completely cut it out of your life without a helluva lot of spadework, which also holds true for understanding why I put it aside in the first place. The very reason music brought me in and held me was the thing that had me twirling out the door. So much damn feeling.

There was a way that the sound and fury, the bombastic and quiet emotions carried on a note did reenter my life. About ten years after I’d stepped out of music’s room, I walked into one where bodies moved in different ways. In a semi-darkened studio across the street from the Chelsea Hotel, I let myself roll around in all kinds of sound. People brought songs I’d never heard before, but could feel in my bones. Then there were the ones I queued up that took me back to when I’d stood side stage watching a band perform them. It dawned on me at some point during classes that letting myself be front and center in the moment, rather than watching side stage as the musicians dictated the terms was kind of incredible. I could also go deeper mainly because the women in the studio were my safety. A kind of what-happens-here-stays-here vibe. Also I found my body just moved to the song, and even if it was one that took me back to a memory I didn’t know what to do with—one that required me owning messy complicity for all the jagged joy and slicing sadness—I’d focus on what my left hip was doing, my chin, or my right pinky and often the judgmental words would crumble to dust and blow away.

A few of us named ourselves The Dance Luvuhs and went off to the Joyce Theater, Bam, the annual Fall for Dance and got lost inside the mostly-modern movement of dance companies. Ballet was beautiful, but we favored the more edgy. The pieces that encouraged unexpected expression: faces, hands, bodies, grimacing, covering, falling. Pina Bausch or, my personal favorite, Karole Armitage, whose moniker The Punk Ballerina checked all my boxes of music and movement. In 2009, we went to see her “Drastic-Classicism” and time froze. For the first five minutes I wanted it to go on forever, but then, when it ended, I was glad it had because it was just enough. Enough to shake me, to make me feel, to remind me what it felt like when music and mayhem (known in this case as choreography) came together and made you watch. Unless you’d gotten up to leave, which I suspect some people did. Thinking back and stretching out the moment, I realize that’s what I’m aiming for now. To stay in my seat and let music float me, toss me out of emotional stasis. Back in the day, when my inner Madge told me I was soaking in it, instead of letting her push my hand back down, to soften up and trust, I jumped up and ran out the door. No emotional manicures for me, thank you. Yet when I see the clip posted above, two dancers responding to a song aching with emotion, something cracks open inside and I know I’m not immune.

The novel I’m writing revolves around a woman, 50 years old, rejoining her old band on the road. Nothing is as it seems or as she remembers. She was a bad-ass. Maybe she still is. But her sense of rediscovery is not going as planned, because of course it isn’t. It’s a novel. Comedy. Tragedy. The stuff of life. Fiction lets you play with those moments, even though I’m pulling from an inner playground of memories, I get to move the see-saw over there and repaint the swing set puce if I want. Running alongside my writing currently is the news that the studio where I let my body be reintroduced to music has closed, the woman at the helm exposed as a toxic manipulator. Honestly, that’s not really a surprise and the exposure a while in coming. The thing that surprises and pleases me though is that none of the beauty I found in those rooms has been spoiled by her bullshit, which I think speaks to the fact that we are capable individually of finding what we need without buying into a cult of personality. In my early studio days, I absolutely placed a stepladder next to a pedestal where she climbed up in my mind. But ultimately, as I looked around, I saw that it was really the women in the room who held me and my heart while letting me roam with no judgment. And they’re still close and lifelong friends. It’s been said time and again that things are never all-good, all-bad. We live in the in-between. Logically I can hear that. Emotionally I often forget. There is absolutely poignancy in knowing I’ll never step into that studio and feel the room’s semi-dark power as the music pulses, my body moves, and my ladies are there taking it in. I’m not so good with change, even though I apparently dabble in it quite often. So when I step into my novel, the story asks me to feel the rawness of music. Not all puddle-reducing or sunshine-blinding, but also the in-between place where pain and pleasure coexist. Turn the radio back on and twiddle with the dial. Sing along. Sob along. Move forward.

Also, for (all) of us negotiating the traumas that this(these) last year(s) has(have) wrought, the very different and personal moments we are all carrying, this piece in Vanity Fair, a chat between Roxane Gay and Monica Lewinsky, is so great. A sample: “So many people with trauma feel like they’re failing because they have a bad day or a bad week or a bad year. And you know what? If you wake up, you’re not failing. If you brush your teeth, you’re not failing. And I think if we just have slightly more realistic goals for ourselves than perfection, we’ll be okay.” Touché and note to self.

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My pal Gladys the cat has been visiting me in the backyard since October. We share almost-daily tête-à-têtes of petting, lap sitting, chasing stuff. And then we both move on to the rest of our day with a wave and a promise of more the next. Occasionally, I’ll spot Gladys out the front door stepping along the sidewalk. The first time that happened, she was right outside our patio and I stepped out happy to see her on new turf. She froze, flashed me a look of panicked unrecognition, and did a dash so fast it was like I was going to grab her and throw her into a kitty labor camp where she’d be forced to learn how to swim and endure constant scratching in that place that felt so good you eventually wanted to kill someone. As I stood there watching her tabby tale disappear into the bushes across the street, I was shocked. What the hell? We were such good friends. How could she not know who I was and treat me nice? I rolled the question around and came up with this: who we are in the backyard, metaphorically speaking, is not always who we present ourselves to be once we step out the front door. (I know. I’m at a thought-point where very little actual physical interaction has led to me forming theories based on the flimsiest of premises. If it doesn’t actually break through the ice and drown me, then I go with it.) It’s not like this is a new theory around who we are inside our own homes/minds versus who we present in public/socially, but this past year’s isolation has, I think, brought about an acute sense of what it feels like to be outside among people. What our social responsibilities are to each other (mask up, mutherfukers) and how our interactions with each other have altered (move any closer and I might have to scream).

It’s all incredibly fumbly, this pandemic dance we do. When I walk out the front door these days, not only is the bottom half of my face covered, but it seems to me that my observations—sight and sound—are lasered up as a trade-off. Like how they say when you lose one sense, the others sharpen. (Wonky quote from Neuroscience Institute at Stanford: “Since certain signals will not be reaching the brain, the other senses will expand out of their usual locations in the brain and into the area of the missing sense. Thus, these senses are overrepresented proportionally in people who lack a certain sense.”) So there I am not smelling, not smiling—which I realize is not actually one of the senses—and I’m watching and listening. To be honest, there’s a great relief in not having to smile. To all my urban ladies, how much of a relief is it to not be told to smile by passing strangers? I do feel like a bit of a social outlaw as I pass (very few) strangers on the street and know I can scowl if I want. I’d never dare do that without a mask. People are also avoiding eye contact as if it’s NYC in the bad-old days. It’s a bit of the playbook I learned when I first moved there. I don’t know if it was the era (80’s) or the idea that there are so many people all around that you don’t make eye contact because A) give the people their privacy, B) you are too busy going somewhere/I’m trying to walk here, people, or C) oh shit, that person actually seems bananas so best not to acknowledge unless I’m in the mood to hear about the end of the universe/the elf living in their shoe/the radio waves controlling our thoughts. Currently though, on the flippity-flop, there does seem to be a sense of loss in the manners department i.e., no thank-you’s for holding doors and what-have-you. Maybe because in the early mask-wearing days, everyone’s eyes looked slightly guilty, as if they didn’t want you to think they’d left their house to spread the COVID and would rather you just didn’t even notice they were there. They’d be sure to do the same for you. Now, after thirteen million months of mask practice, folks seem a little more comfortable with smizing.

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Surprisingly (but not), I don’t see so many people out and about during my near-daily run/walks (ralks?) in this land of car culture. If I go early morning or late afternoon, there are the dog walkers and they’re fun, but I’m not one of them. My normal time is elevenish, when the humans are most-probably working. So I pass a lot of houses with no outward signs of life and make a lot of things up about who lives there. What their backyard/inside lives are like. I mean, I can normally see their front yards, so I have something to work with, which I take full advantage of. One place that fascinates me is a house a few blocks away on a corner surrounded by a variety of old Victorians, some classic California stuccos, and a couple of standard-issue Brady Bunch–style places. It’s a clapboard structure and there are chickens roaming the lawn. There are also oversize structures in the shapes of bicycles, windmills, and a giraffe all fashioned from plywood and wire (really truly). I don’t think these lawn ornaments are for the entertainment of the fowls, when I’ve paused to watch them, they seem to take very little to nonexistent interest in anything but pecking the grass, but I have certainly wondered and subsequently made up whole-cloth stories about who lives inside. They are mid-thirties, whimsical, have dreams of living off the land, and are currently pricing out solar panels. I wish them well.

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When I walk past the Southwestern–style adobe place with the Buddha fountain and little free library out front, I know that the dwellers have a vast knowledge of California wine, own a collection of flowing, artisanal silk scarves that they wrap around their slightly mature necks, receive weekly organic CSA produce deliveries, and practice daily vigorous-yet-forgiving yoga, perhaps around their fire pit out back. I have complicated feelings about them.

Of course I’m fully aware that all our neighbors have—if they’ve cared to—created a narrative around Dennis and me with our Biden/Harris banner that went up in 2017 (alright, in end-August) to our funky bicycles to the shoes we wear on our feet. I know Gladys has made a few snap judgements as well. And in that, I realize how our indoor selves have taken on even more partitions as we let people into our homes via technology. I have a friend who I appreciate (for all sorts of reasons) because every time we FaceTime she’s located in a new part of her apartment. Now, I’ve never seen her apartment first hand. One of the things about living in NYC is that you can be fast-friends/love them dearly/know inner-most secrets that neither of you will share with anyone else, yet you’ll have never seen where they lay their heads to sleep just because there are restaurants and studios and other locations that have more room than where you actually live. So anyway, I feel since the pandemic and because I’ve moved across the country, I now have a general sense of her inside vibe. I’ve also pushed into Judy Woodruff’s place and maybe Tom Hanks‘ as well. Yeah, I don’t know them personally, but I can now see what books they read, the kind of flowers they display, and that they have cluttered kitchens just like the rest of us.

As we cautiously negotiate what it may mean to step out our front doors again, ever so slowly, as vaccines roll out, I figure I’ll continue to make plenty of things up about the people around me while still keeping my backyard self somewhat separate from my front-patio person. But the possibility of even entertaining my outfacing iteration at a nice restaurant someday soonish is pretty damn exciting. Here’s to us all moving in that direction together!

As my body went clammy and nausea took over, of course my first thought was HolyHell, NOOOO, not the Covid. I quickly counted back three, five, ten days. Reviewed every time I’d left the house, even though my KN95 is practically surgically attached to my face at this point. Especially since my corner of the world still reads as Highest Risk and I watch a good portion of my septo-octo-and-beyond&below age neighbors wander hither&thither, faces bare as babies, at which point I’m always stunned with anger and incredulity. But back to me. As it turned out, I was felled by gone-bad almond milk (I know. I just reread that sentence. who am I? not a bad batch of bourbon, but almond milk. ah, maturity.). After copious googling, where I learned that while, yes, GI issues can be a covid indicator, they usually accompany the fever, shortness-of-breath companions. And I could still smell and taste. But really, who the hell knows with this thing anymore. Once Dennis and I had discussed that yes, that milk had a kinda funky consistency and, true, my symptoms lined up pretty straight with food poisoning, I stepped away from the covid-test scheduling site, took all my blankets and pillows back into the bedroom and slept for many hours. I feel fine today, thanks.

But ultimately, what lingered, other than an actual avoidance of the almond variety of non-dairy products, was the realization of how much white-hot fear this last year+ has threaded throughout my psyche. All of us, right? Isn’t it true that you don’t have to dig too deep to find a gushing waterfall of fear that’s been pounding away for a solid year now. Not just of an invisible virus that flies through the air and is now taking on superpowers via variants, but also of what might and did happen before, during, and after an election barely held together by a democratic process, one that left carnage and division in its trail and that just today ended with a majority of senators recognizing that the narcio-path who held office was guilty (sure I was sad for no conviction, but seven Republicans crossing over to make a majority’s not nothin’). Then there was the murder caught live of a Black man being slowly choked dead by a police officer kneeling on his neck, setting off a rage and recognition of the hundreds of underserved and underseen LGBTQ people who are brutalized regularly by police and everyday living. From my white-privileged shelter-in-place comfort I finally felt the fury. Shamefully late, but yet. So, this year+ of fear. What does it do to a person?

I know if it’s not dug up and chatted with, called out, and just plain seen, that it can paralyze, sicken, distort. It’s not like I didn’t already carry a healthy amount of fear into this past year of awful. A standard-issue range: of anger, of abandonment, of feeling too much. Sure, all of that talked about in therapy and beyond. All of it acknowledged as having to be looked at again and again so it doesn’t fester and freeze up my whole self. But this year+ of fear was a vivid reminder of how so much can lurk under the surface and ripple up like some monster from the deep, like a B movie (or Jaws. cue the music.). I do definitely know that to deny its existence is noBueno. It’s just not going anywhere until there’s acknowledgment. The cautionary tale of someone I know who, having lived through an extraordinarily difficult youth, refuses to meet the inner darkside. Who can only handle light, new-age, no-negativity, but whose bitter anger agitates toward an overwhelming rejection of people because they tend to disappoint. Strange unexplained illnesses spring up that can’t quite be explained. And that makes sense since the feelings have to go somewhere. It’s so easy to see it in someone else, but I recognize those tendencies in me. The desire to just move on because the pain of exploring where all that damned fear and anger comes from and then figuring out how to work with it seems inconceivably frightening. I mean, what if I never come back from the experience? I may just melt. self-destruct. disappear like a Spinal Tap drummer. I’ve been scribbling things about these thoughts forever. I think it works. I’ve pretended the fear monster is something outside of me and I’ve tried to discuss the situation. Sometimes out loud like I’m Jimmy Stewart in Harvey. I’ve tried giving it a name and letting it roam a bit. And, honestly, it’s a true thing: those emotions always sound scarier, bigger, more hungry for destruction when they’re locked in a closet. I’m not saying it’s pretty, but when Bruno (or Brunella depending on mood) starts to howl, well, sometimes I hide, sometimes I crack open the door, mostly I do both one way or another. And I do actually feel better after. Maybe a bit tired, but proud I listened.

The last concert I went to almost a year ago was Patti Smith at the Disney Concert Hall in LA with my friend Judy and her husband, Ian (hi, Judy). After the finale, Patti said something to the effect of Be safe and do what you can to avoid stress, cuz it can kill. As hundreds of us filed out, the air crackled with a high from the show and a weird disjointed sense of what’s around the corner? She and the band ended up playing San Francisco next, then cancelling the rest of the tour. We all ended up going home and going inside where, for the most part, we still sit a year later. A corner of hope is definitely peeling back ever so slowly. Vaccines (my dad got his second dose. YAYAYAYAY!), a new administration, pressure continuing to be focused and voices still raised for racial equity. Once I’d gotten through 24-hours of food poisoning, I marveled at how the body knows just what to do to move things along and get the bad gone. It just kicks into action like SuperGirl. I thought how great it would be if fear would be like that too. Just be gone. Work itself out. But, no, that’s a bit trickier. Takes a little more emotional involvement. I had a think about how much I’ve (we all) have been carrying in the way of extra fear these last many months. It’s worth noting. Worth celebrating when layers are lifted and also worth paying attention to when it knocks on the door. It’s got something to say. And better to listen than to just let it shout.

The other day, Dennis mentioned that I have a proclivity to worry. What? Me? I was stunned. Mostly because I had apparently forgotten how well he knows me and how badly I cover. Funny thing is, I’m not really trying to cover. And a ton of people who know me, also know that I have a tendency toward the worrying, although I express it as an abundance of emotional overachieving. At Hearst in my Assistant Managing Editor days, people would say, “you’re so chill.” Sure, as long as I had a sense that I could keep things in my line of vision, even if only out the corner of my eye. When deadlines spun out, my game face was weirdly even more chill, my nervous system not so much.

So, yes, I’m a worrier. It’s rooted in loosing control—a terrifying proposition. Luckily I found journalism, a career where there is a kind of invisible electric-fence boundary of rules: deadlines, style guides, production expectations. It’s not as if people couldn’t (& didn’t) fling themselves outside the boundaries on the regular. After all, I worked in the music business mostly. But for me, I could exercise some outsize risk, creativity, bad behavior inside the perimeter and feel pretty safe about it. At that time, I didn’t actually tell anyone about my control issues, but if they were paying attention they might have noticed the fear in my eyes when I or someone else danced too close to the electric edge.

I already had to cover for one habit that is patently anti-rock’n’roll, which is my absolute inability to be on time. Meaning, I’m always absurdly early to everything. I’m the one circling the block, fifteen minutes before the party, and still I’ll be the first one there. It’s not a good look. Back in the day, I’d show up at a bar twenty minutes early to meet a band. Not to put too fine a point on the ridiculousness of that but I was meeting a class of humans for which time existed fluidly. Clocks? Appointments? bah. I would sit and smoke (remember when you could do that? remember when you could go to bars?), sip a drink, and try not to feel like the person everyone was staring at and saying, “How sad. Look at her. Alone.” Of course no one was noticing, but it’s what I thought was going on. I made a real effort to understand arrival, or even better, being-late time, wondered if there were classes in that. But it never took. Later, my friendships included people who showed up when we all agreed. A lot of times I’d have already been there, but my fifteen-minutes early arrival was not painful. Still a little embarrassing, but again, I’m pretty sure I was the only one paying any attention to me sitting there. For the last eleven months, I’m the person lurking outside the Zoom meeting reading the message “Please wait, the meeting host will let you in soon.” And I still get a twinge of embarrassment when I read that, even though there is literally no one else around to notice.

And what does this have to do with worry, you might ask. Well, when I dig under how I present myself to the world as all fine, all in control, in fact so in control I’m early, I recognize the layers underneath. The top one says, “I’m competent. You can count on me. I will not fail you.” That sits on “I don’t want anyone to doubt me, so I will keep it together. Do what is needed.” Next under is “I won’t let you see me falter or fail because I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed.” Then, “I’m afraid if you’re disappointed, you’ll leave me.” And, finally “please. don’t leave.” Rinse and repeat.

This is my shadow and I’m glad to know it. We all have them. I’m no therapist-to-all-mankind. No therapist at all. But of the many decades living with myself, it’s good to know what’s there. The places I’ve gone to try and get purchase on these inside moments have ranged. There’s been the professional talk-therapy route. Awesome. I’m a big believer. There is writing: My lifeline, My blood. There’s also been the support of friends and being honest about what’s happening. Also great when you make sure you trust those people. And I’m lucky to have many many that I do who are not afraid to visit the dark and the light with me.

The latest This Jungian Life (yes, I know, I should marry this show I love it so much) talks about … well, it talks about a lot. The title is Self-Loathing and it’s very amazing. One thing that stood out was the idea of inviting all those inside voices out. Find a quiet time to listen to them and just say “Yes, I did that. I was a part of that. It’s okay. What can I learn?” and know they’ll come again and I won’t necessarily like it, but I’ll be better for it. How will I welcome them? One thing about these past many months where we’ve all been inside is the fear and the sense of being out of control. How to make friends with those things? When I read about the people disappearing into dark holes by way of online groups (cults, militias, echo-chambers of fear) because they feel as if those are the places and groups where they’re heard, I think of how isolated we’ve been and how if someone’s searching for a connection, there are so many places to jump. And in no universe does it work to belittle or shame. Believe me, I’ve made too many mistakes not listening. I’m sure I’ve patronized. I’m in a place now where there is no possibility of conversation around political topics with a family member because there is fear around the emotion of where it will take us. This makes me sad, but I also realize it’s about listening. And really understanding that there are (many) things I can’t control. This is life, I’ve shown up early. Now I just have to wait, listen, learn.

Ah, miPeople, I’ve got a problem. A consumption situation having to do with books. I can’t stop bringing them home. Yes, they require slightly less caretaking than kittens, so there’s that, but they do need to have space made. Although once you’re done, you can pass them along to others—definitely not a thing you can do with kittens. Redlands is littered with Little Free Library’s, those wonderful wooden houses outside of homes and businesses where books are given and taken. I’ve done my share of dropping off and picking up. My latest acquisition, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe is something I somehow didn’t manage to read during my journalism days, even though the curriculum was nutty with Wolfe-ian new journalism moments. The cool thing about these little structures is that each have a general theme regarding the genres offered—I don’t know if they mean to, or if the books all just scurry around after dark looking for their kindreds. The one on San Gorgonio Drive caters to the littles—the twelve and under set. I picked up A Judy Bolton Mystery: The Forbidden Chest by Margaret Sutton (circa 1953) over the summer because it reminded me of the beloved Nancy Drew’s I consumed as a pre-teen. I then felt a little guilty that I was possibly depriving another curious age-appropriate person from grabbing it. I may returned it after I’ve relived my girl-sleuth days.

The lil’ library outside the Olive Avenue Market coffeehouse features a lot, a lot, a lot of textbooks. Yep, students shedding things that were so last semester while grabbing soy lattes and oatmeal chais. There’s the religious-slash-self-help receptacle on Cypress Ave. with a more pop-centric selection (where I got Tom) catercorner. They wink at each other, the one trying to give advice to the other. The other rolling its eyes. And then there’s the actual real AK Smiley Library, a most beautiful structure that also has a friends of the library bookstore downstairs where you can buy books with the money going to support the library. It’s closed right now due to the COVID, saving me a few dollars. All these moments are catnip and even though I’ve still got Christmas book booty to read along with an entire shelf of loot I transported from NYC, still I carry on picking things up here and there. My virtual shopping cart for the nearest indie bookstore in Riverside has a few things in it, my LIBBY and Cloud Library accounts have selections on the shelf waiting for checkout. When do I think I’ll read these? Well, actually, given the evenings of our Covid era have been pretty blissfully free, I’m making some nice headway. But still. I’ve. Got. A. Lot. Of. Very. Good. Books. to read.

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I used to be a gal who read seasonally, meaning I liked to have a big book that would last me throughout a three-month span. In the fall of 1986, I’d been in NYC for two years and had just started interning at Rolling Stone. My book was Anna Karenina. Loved it! Fashion, furniture, passion, and some bigger themes too. Total disappear-into type of book and an excellent contrast to the view outside the bus window on my rides home to the Lower East Side (I enjoyed the bus, and in a different way, the subway, but I usually split up my MTA choices morning and eve). Speaking of Tolstoy, in the summer of 1999, I was reading War and Peace when I ended up in the hospital. Obviously I was desperate to know when I’d get sprung. When I asked the doc, he said, “before you’re done with your book.” I was only halfway through. Believe me when I say that at that moment I wished I’d been reading a pamphlet on bird watching. (Suffice, I was only there for a couple of chapters, but whenever I’d look at that book on my shelf it would always remind me of that stay. I’ve given that book away.) Another NYC formative book was Metropolitan Life by Fran Lebowitz. (And if you click the link on that title, you’ll see why I shouldn’t have given away my hardcover edition. Holy cow.) This particular tome made me realize I had come to the right city. For those who don’t know Fran and her amazing caustic Dorothy Parker-meets-Oscar Wilde wit, there’s a Netflix Martin Scorsese doc Pretend It’s a City, which is a great crash course in her. In it she talks about her passion for books. That she owns over 10,000 of these bound adventures and they all live with her in a West Village apartment. When I heard that, I didn’t feel so, er, vast about my collection. And when she talks about how she can’t throw away a book, I can relate. That’s why those Little Free Library’s are the thing.

When I worked at the Hearst tower in the land of magazines, a ton, a literal ton, of books would be delivered to various editors for them to consider. We had a giveaway table—maybe more like a nook area in the pantry—where the castoffs would end up. So. many. books. would end up there. A good many of them would end up under my desk waiting to go through the do-I-really-want-to-carry-these-on-the-subway method of culling that would determine which would make the journey home. Books are bulky. A lot of us were excited about that giveaway nook. People would travel from floor to floor perusing the various giveaway options. The Oprah floor was hands down the best, altho my pass didn’t get me access to that space so I’d have to wait for their semi-annual sale. I knew I could avoid the Road & Track floor but Harper’s Bazaar had a nice selection of how-to (makeup, nutrition, fashion, relationship-snagging) stuff. My friend Diane was very talented at lining up books in the giveaway area that would make you laugh. You’d be waiting for your coffee to drip out of the machine and stare at a row of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, I’ll Be Happy When, You Are a Badass, Get Out of My Head. She was very good at this and I miss those moments. I also wonder where all the book deliveries are ending up now that no one is going into the office. My best scores were multiple copies of Fleishman Is In Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner that I gave to as many friends as I could. People either loved it or went meh (I loooved. still do.). Also Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid was a great grab.

Jeezuz, I could go on and on about the power of stories and reading. How everywhere we travel, we scout out the bookstores (hands-down, best area I’ve been to so far for books is Óbidos, Portugal, mainly because the town was declared a UNIESCO “City of Literature” in December 2015, and is silly with innovative ways to present books: a church, a wine store, a hotel). But suffice to say that during these times of trauma and drama and hopes and dreams, disasters, delights, do-overs, and decisions, a book is a swell companion for escape, knowledge, and just plain fun. Now that we can see into everyone’s living room via Zoom, the book I’m seeing a lot of is Obama’s newest A Promised Land. Dennis just started it last night and it’s one of those big, boomin’ seasonal-size books. Maybe it will be my springtime.

I’d love to know what has taken you away lately (or what you’re looking forward to).

I spent a lot of time weeping this week. Apparently when oxygen is not flowing to your brain because you’ve been holding your breath, as I had been since Wednesday January 6th, the in-and-outtake of air begets big emotion. (I mean, honestly, I’ve been breathing pretty shallow for the sake of humanity since January 20, 2017, but that’s no surprise to anyone who knows me or has shared in the sense of emotional WTF-could-he-possibly-say/do/bully/defile-next defensive crouch we’ve been living with since January 2017.) Sooo, as soon as the door opened on Lady Gaga coming down the Capitol steps to sing “The National Anthem” on the morning of January 20, my breath caught and I just knew I’d be ugly-crying in relief and happiness within seconds. Then, when she dipped the note and swept her hand back toward the Capitol flags during “…that our flag was still there” I was a goner. By the time my new in-awe-of person, Amanda Gorman, stepped up to the podium and spoke her poem “The Hill We Climb,” I might have been a puddle on the floor. And I’m not gonna lie, I’ve watched and re-watched her speak a half-dozen times, including this Ted Talk. I’ve also learned a bit more about her in general, which has grown my astonishment exponentially.

Ultimately, what I loved about Inaugural Wednesday 2021 was the power of voices, of words, how we honor them and the people who speak them. Also the fierce unyielding power of women (but more about that later). And while there’s no doubt at all about how much work needs doing, if I’ve learned anything from the last four years, it’s to not take anything for granted. A silver lining: because of the emotional cruelty delivered by the last administration, I started supporting people and organizations beyond lip-service because I had to do something. I felt impotent watching families separated at airports in the first month, kids put in cages soon after, white Supremacists emboldened in Virginia and elsewhere throughout, and on (and on). So where before I lifted up causes and groups in a “you’re great, I believe in you, please carry on” kind of way, I was spurred on to spend more time, money, and attention because of T’s administration.

Feeling the deep despair I did after that election, I became involved with Girls Write Now because I knew without a doubt that these were the voices who would be speaking far into a future where I no longer existed. I didn’t know what to do with the fear and cynicism that had crept into my soul and while I didn’t want to lay that at the feet of the high school girls in the program, I selfishly wanted to see what they might have in mind to get us through the next years. Sure, I was brought on board as a mentor, a noun that according to Merriam Webster means “tutor/coach/trusted counselor or guide” but I gotta say that in the two years I spent with the young woman I’ll call A., she guided me as equally as I her. We explored our fear together. It was real and palpable and wanted owning. There is never a place for darkness to be hidden and we were lucky enough to bring it out, cut it open, marvel at its smallness and hugeness, then we washed with some light in the form of words. Drip-dried and started again. I was also able to understand that cynicism is an old game, and I’m not talking about age, I’m talking about attitude. Cynicism is poison because it’s an emotional shrug. The inner version of whatever. A giving up because there’s fear of going deeper. A refusal to do the work to see something differently that will open up some emotion. I found that out because by being around A. I saw that it was a fool’s game I played by slipping into the cynicism pool. It was not helpful to her or me and that meant neither of us could move forward. How can you talk about the future if you already think the future is doomed? I couldn’t sit with her, listen to her, and hope for any amount of joy in her future if I thought it was all darkness and damned. She didn’t want that and even in the challenges she’d been through, there was a movement toward personal and collective agency she absolutely expected to happen. She’d gone through middle and high school doing active shooter drills. She learned how the earth would be altered drastically, horribly by the time she reached my age if huge measures weren’t taken now. At one of our sessions I actually apologized for the mess that my and past generations had made for her and hers. She laughed, then said something to the effect of “Yeah, thanks for that, but we’re smart, we’ve got this. We have to.” Broke my heart.

Amanda Gorman was a part of a similar Los Angeles–based group called WriteGirl and as I listened to an interview with her mentor, I heard the same sense of respect and role-sharing. The she-got- something-from-me-and-I-from-her mentality. These are our ladies of the future. And on the Inaugural dais last Wednesday, the women did shine. The different generations taking my breath away. I’m all for the men accompanying those fierce women, but that’s not where I’m shining the light in this piece. There is the most fantastic essay in the NYTimes, “What Is a Teenage Girl?”. In it, the writer Samantha Hunt just aces it. Gets to the heart of the feeling, or rather, Feeling with a capital F. Why that emotion has been so shamed in the teenage girl. I won’t do any summation justice here. Just please to click on the link and read it! But I will quote one line: “Feeling things is an act of bravery.” And to that I say yes, I’ll keep trying to do that. I’ll not hide the tears of relief and the hope for what comes. The grit of work yet to do and the need to keep coming back, away from the abyss of cynicism. There’s no doubt I’ll be returning to the words of inspired young women whose bravery in being is ongoing and that I need to be active in supporting. In that, there is no question.