In case of KITTENS

The Litter

Where is the truth in the day,

this hot one, that suddenly

arrives from the past?

What does it mean that I was

a skinny, golden being then, with

light-filled bones?

My body was so pale and happy

to be lying in a litter

of new kittens.

Their shallow mewing breath.

Their tiny teeth,

blinking.

What house, the crumbling

sun porch?

What year?

I knew the smallness

of myself in the world, then –

Is that it?

Or the neighbor girls in lace

and gingham,

the obvious simplicity of life,

the wreath of time,

the neatly-tied bow of

memory?

Or is it just that I hadn’t met you yet,

and now yours is the life I stand

all my other lives beside?

Or that after bleeding for them in

the years since,

I’ve lost my compassion for cats,

and that’s what kittens grow into?

The mystery.

I am still lying here.

Their softness is still with me,

even now.

In case of TIME

We filled the house, its caverns

With breath and light and noise.

Its stony silence crumbled

Under the cheerful battering rams

Of our bodies.

Empty floors grew tables,

Books sprouted on shelves,

Beds and bedsprings creaked and bounced

Into being.

We loved that house into life.

And it will remember you,

Remember us,

As our only child,

Standing at our graveside in the rain,

Wind at its windows,

Lights on,

Fans spinning.

In case of VIOLENCE

Plague

I asked for pain

In the form of a swung fist, begged

For swelling plum and deep peach to crowd around my eye.

I wanted Sunday school, myself

To be eleven, hand shot up and smugly hyper-right

In all I knew. I wanted to throw a baseball

And devil take it, let it land, hit, or smash what it may.

And so, soul and bodily, I hurled it all away.

My cheekbone opened like a rose.

And yes, the years fell back, and stood to watch

But I cracked wide and broke

Against a truth of consequence and cost.

I read: even a plague of frogs is an act of loving grace.

(I will be something better for these bruises on my face.)

In case of A RED DOOR

It is all true

It is all true --

that thousands of fish have never been named,
that compasses point north,

that pi just goes on and on and on and on and on.

And it is true
that somewhere a man is buying flowers,
and a girl rides the subway, chewing a thumbnail over a book,
sparrows breed to make more sparrows,
and that cries give way to sleep.

It is all --
sea in its vastness
time in its fastness
heart in its fullness
-- true.

It is all true.

And it is true
that when you stand against my kitchen wall,
eyes fixed on a speck or some refracted light,
that you can see
a shimmering
blueprint
of another room,
another house, with
clean windows
a storm cellar,

and a red door,
that you will leave unlocked.

And the sun is a star,
our closest star,
that will not burn out in our lifetimes.

In case of ANYBODY STILL READING

the city that built the bomb

I remember the fight to keep you --
over gristled grilled cheese, blistered and black,
as thought it had been cooked on the griddle of the street.

You were a man from a mechanized city churning
in the desert --
like the city that built the bomb.

You toiled at a task you didn't understand, snapping and pulling
away from me
between bites of melted gold.

And I
wanted to wrap you in clean white sheets and
wanted to cover your hard metal eyes and
wanted to drown the day in ice, but

hesitated, suspended --
like the city that built the bomb -- by nightmares
of keeping a rattlesnake for a pet,
of waking up in fallout.

In case of ANANDA

I’m happy.

In fact, my new catchphrase is, “I’m so happy!” Ask anyone. I say it so often; it’s almost embarrassing.

But what I mean is, I’m joyful. Even on bad days, even on the totally shit ones when my head won’t stop pounding and my kids won’t stop screaming and someone’s eating pizza and drinking beer right in front of me (!), I’m still joyful. I feel like I know myself better than I have in years. I feel more alive, more aware, more at peace, and more at home in my own skin than I ever really have.

Because the world is opening up for me. Because I have nothing really, no money or fame, no power or influence, no stakes to claim in the present. I have nothing on the line, nothing to lose, yet I have everything to gain.

I plant my flags in the future. I aim for the horizon. And even as I do this, I know that failure can’t touch me, can’t stain me. Failure is life, it’s a part of life. Fine, so be it.

I am loved. What else do I need?

Bring on the failure! Come, storms! I’m alive; you can’t kill me. I’m alive and the universe cares. I’m loved; I’m invincible.

In her wonderful children’s novel A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Madeline L’Engle writes of a dog called Ananda. The dog comes in a dark hour into the lives of the characters, wagging her tail, resting her head on their knees. One character asks, “What does ‘Ananda’ mean?”

And someone else answers, “It means, ‘that joy in existence without which the universe would be lost.’ ”

Anyway. That may not be an accurate translation of the name Ananda. But that is an accurate description of what I have.

That joy in existence without which the universe would be lost.

And I know, of course I know, that dark hours lie ahead. But this is the joy I want to keep, the joy I want to remember. The joy of being this age, in this time and place, of waking to life and love, teaching and learning. Cooking and reading and serving coffee and grading papers and holding hands and playing music and writing writing writing.

Meeting people I can smile genuinely at, knowing that they are as important in their existence as I am. That they, too, have gold and purple flags planted on future hills, flashing in the sun. Future glory.

I want to give everyone my Ananda. Be Ananda. Look for it. Hunt for it. Grope around in your darkness. Hold your breath and dive for it as for a great pearl.

Let her come to you when you need her, wagging her tail. Let her rest her head on your knee.

Let yourself be loved. So far as I can see, that is happiness.

In case of FADE OUT

Something I’ve been coming to grips with lately –

Death is unnatural.

Don’t believe anyone who tells you that it is normal, that it is just a part of life. Death is not a part of life. Death does not belong here. Death of any kind – any kind – is wrong. That’s why it feels wrong.

If death was always going to be the end, if we were meant for death, we would not fight it so. We would not hate it as we do, would not thrash and cry out when we lose someone, would not spin in the deep whirlpools of grief. Human beings have a soul, some kind of eternal soul. We were not born to die. We were born to live.

I say this because I have seen so much death – not much physical death; I’ve been fortunate enough to lose only one member of my family and one friend – but I’ve seen a great deal of emotional death over the years. And I’m still fighting it.

I could tell here countless stories.

The end of my relationship with Michael.

The horrible loss that I see in some of my current friends.

The splendor of all of our childhoods, now past.

Everybody has these stories.

And maybe some people, perhaps healthy people, accept deaths like this and they move on. Certainly, I live day-to-day without much active grief. But for whatever reason, lately, I’m not okay with these things. I know they happen, I can’t fix them, they just are. Death just is.

And that's what I've been writing about.

In the last scene of my most recent screenplay, the one I'm working on with Sam, a man is writing a book review. He has just been visited by someone from his former life. This person tells him that the woman he loved, for all intents and puposes, is dead. She's not physcially dead, but she might as well be.

So here's what we wrote.

"Sam crosses to his window. The sun is almost completely gone. He watches it and begins to cry steady, constant tears.

After a moment, another low knock at the door. Faye sticks her head into the office.

With some effort, Sam pulls himself together.

FAYE

I’m sorry -- did you want to --

SAM

Yes. Come in. Let’s finish this.

She comes in and sits at the desk, snapping on the desk lamp.

SAM (CONT’D)

Where was I?

FAYE

The graphic fumbling of the heart --

SAM

-- of the book. Right, right. Of his own book. New paragraph. But the real loss here is ours, as Louden squanders his talent, the promise of his youth, and the delicate brilliance of his entire premise. This book should have been gorgeous. I wanted it to be. But it seems that all the richness of his first novel, all the glow and poignancy which so characterized his writing, is now gone.

Sam pauses. Faye looks up. Sam looks at her, then:

SAM (CONT’D)

New paragraph.

FADE OUT."

And that's how it ends.

But the real loss here is ours. The real loss here is ours.

So go ahead and thrash, world. I will for as long as I can.

In case of WOLVERINE

I love.

I love.

And it’s on nights like these that I love best, and most deeply, and most purely. George Winston’s “Autumn” is spinning languidly on the record player. I have a cup of cinnamon tea. And upstairs, Beth and Justin are talking, loving each other.

Just when I think I’m too hurt or too scared to go on, quiet moments like this come to me and I’m wrapped in a circle of unbroken love – my friends stand strong around me, my family clasps hands in a wider ring around them, and our God binds us all together. Nothing bad can happen to me. I’m safe.

And with that safety comes the beautiful freedom to love back, to give back. You can’t pry yourself open; I’ve tried. The harder you wrench at your seams, the tighter they knit themselves shut. Nothing opens them but love. You do have to try, but you try with love. Not desperation. Not fear.

It’s a weird metaphor, but I feel sometimes like the X-Men. Specifically, I feel like Rogue. I feel like a poison to everyone I want to help, to everyone I try to love. I keep people away; I want to touch them, but touching them will hurt them. Sometimes, I wonder about the creators of X-Men and how they could be so awful to create someone like Rogue. She embodies, in one way, one of our most fundamental fears – that we are our own enemy.

But, in their infinite grace, the X-Men people also created Wolverine. And Wolverine heals. He can heal himself, yes, but he can also heal Rogue.

Wolverine can heal himself and he can heal Rogue.

He can touch her. Does she hurt him? Of course. Inevitably. But he heals.

God has given me dozens of Wolverines over the years. Maybe hundreds. He put the ability to heal inside everyone. Humankind is entirely made of Wolverines and Rogues.

Sometimes we’re more one than the other. That’s our war. But we fight it and so does everyone else. Everyone. We don’t have to fight alone.

And on nights like these, I’ve been touched by a healing hand, not a poisonous one. I’m wrapped in a circle of unbroken love. I’m open. I love back.

I love. And I'm not Rogue, tonight.

In case of ALCHEMY

At six, my body is a furnace.

I stoke it out of bed and coax up a flame in my eyes.

I send myself faithfully out.

I am the quiet priest of a quiet religion,

Cloaked in flannel and milk white fog.

At seven, I turn the key in the lock, brass to brass.

I fling wide the door,

Opening, open,

Before a morning has been sung hello,

Before a plank has been lifted or a nail driven,

Before a pen has touched a page.

My body is a furnace,

Opening, open.

By eight, I’ve already served bread to the jangling gypsy band,

Tea to the king’s mysterious wife,

Dark cups of blood to the usual ghosts.

I send myself faithfully out.

At noon, the sun is roaring with his golden mouth,

Opening, open.

I am tumbling in a sphere of metal and glass.

I measure ice and potion,

Weigh metallic heaps of dust,

Pour and chop and carry.

I coax up a flame in my eyes.

At three, I am a cog in the clock of time.

I’m pulling coffee from its dark bean fists,

Separating water from earth,

Sorting moons from stars.

More visitors cluster around to watch me work,

To trade their coins for cups.

I am the quiet priest of a quiet religion.

At six, the sailors come whistling in, homebound.

Beggar children stretch out their hands for hunks of cheese.

The king stops by to ask after his wife.

I kiss them all,

And turn them back to the door.

I am tumbling in a sphere of metal and glass.

By nine, I distill the day into night.

I float through the shop like a white moth in a cave.

The lamplighter comes by, singing,

Offering me his arm.

I turn the key in the lock, brass to brass.

I am a cog in the clock of time,

Opening, open.

In case of 2007: The Very End

They stretched out, stomachs full of warm coffee.

And this, she realized, this was how it would happen. How he would finally drop anchor, cutting those telephone wire lines that connected him to Hannah. Because of this, he would call her tonight and tell her, voice breaking, that he would not be coming back to New York.

She expected this knowledge to come to her with a jolt of vicious joy, but it didn’t. She felt only relief, relief that it would all be over and that he could join himself together again. His continents would drift back together, glaciers cracking, tectonic plates rumbling in reverse, molten lava bubbling back into the earth. This was a prehistoric morning, as he rolled onto one shoulder, sand sugaring half his face. This was Pangea.

“It’s the bluest thing I’ve ever seen.” She said, nodding to the sky.

He smiled, but didn’t reach for her.

A gull squawked nearby. They listened to it and to the thunder of the Pacific and the starting-up morning sounds of the pier.

She noticed a wild-looking man, shirt off, panting as he jogged down the shore.

“Crazy man dead ahead.”

He only smiled again.

The relief began to ebb as he rolled back onto his back. She felt the rush of time come sweeping up through history, yanking landmasses apart at their seams.

He sat up and it was going.

He grabbed his phone, checked the time, said, “We need to move your car.”

And it was gone.

They stood, brushing sand off their bodies, and turned their backs on the Pacific. Their shadows stretched behind them.

And by the time he finally reached for her, she took his hand in full awareness that there was no Pangea. Not for her anyway. His hand, clasping hers tightly to help her over the dunes, was no more than an apology.

In case of 2007: Fall, Exercises

When I was seven, Jurassic Park was released into the world. Of course we weren’t allowed to watch such things. My sister was nine and even she didn’t see it until two years later. For some reason, though, the stories I’d heard about the movie haunted me. I saw clips, little clips about it on TV. I drew pictures of dinosaurs, and my older cousins terrorized us by hunting us down as raptors.

I don’t know if it was this way for everyone, but that craze seemed to last forever. It was four years later by the time I actually saw it. 1997. We were in the basement. I’d long since gotten a minute-by-minute retelling of the movie from my sister. And, even so, the film surpassed what four years of an overactive imagination could create. I don’t remember if this is true, if I said something about it right then, or if I could pinpoint that moment as being when I decided to make movies. I was already a writer. But Jurassic Park set me to fire.

*****

On Christmas Day – I was probably about 14 – my mother told my grandparents that my sister was a better writer than me. I don’t know if, even then, my dreams of writing had solidified. But I know now that writing has always been so entangled in every part of my soul. It was the way she said it, a slight incline of her head at my own false assertions. I was trying to impress upon my grandparents just how talented Lisa was. But when I said she was better, I didn’t mean it.

My mother meant it. I don’t know if I so much cared about being worse than Lisa – she was older, of course, and she was Lisa. It was just an assessment of me, by my mother, that declared me unfit to pursue my deepest longing.

*****

Three swings, all about a foot from the ground and then one baby swing, dangling by wound up rusted chains. They’re framed in yellow, garish, bright, rectangular. Someone built this playground, but they forgot the grass. Instead they’ve tried to keep the city out with chain-linked fences, drab brick, and dry mulch.

Spider-vein cracks in the greentop suggest earthquakes, past and future. In the inescapable angles of a Los Angeles sunset, towels sway on the clothesline.

No one but me knows this family has a baby. What a thing, what a beautiful chore, to roll up that last swing, raise up the baby so she can fly, suspended, tiny fists waving, all almond eyes and black bean little toes. She can sway, dancing, to the tumble of sirens.

I want that. I want this – four swings, a slide, four walls, and a city to keep at bay. And the breath of a baby in October. And a pumpkin.

I demand that, if I can never have the grass.

In case of 2007: Midnight, August

I once said that God must be a city built on the shore. I still believe that’s true. He must be cliffs, so strong and solid. He must be a roll of dark mountains, ferny and alive with unseen vegetation, the sound of crickets and the damp smell of fog.

He said a city set on a hill cannot be hidden. I still believe that, too – now more than ever in the murk of this particular Malibu evening. He is light, stronger than neon and fluorescent pollution, the clear ring of a bell against a low urban and suburban buzz.

And the Franciscans must have known, to have so well followed His example. To fortify themselves here, surrounded by the ocean – the blue and thick gray, a vast and melting nebula. At night, it’s not alive, not moving and certainly not audible above the Pacific Coast Highway. It’s inanimate, a dead thing, swirls of anesthetic and comfortless sleep.

This. Here. This is where we make our stand, toes at the edge of this. Not conceding anything but in plain sight, in piercing gold, a hiccup in the droning ocean flatline.

God’s hand will reach down from His city and plunge into the water and fish out buildings and SUVs and great fistfuls of humanity, wrench them, dripping mire, out of the abyss. He will invite them, longingly, with a searchlight beam in high, clear soprano notes, undulating, rapturous. He will speak in his booming voice and it will resonate in the chests of men and they will drag themselves up from the sucking tide and begin the climb to his city.

God is a beacon.

And it's for us to walk along the shore, pointing and saying, "Look, look!"

In case of 2007: Mid-July

Danny to me in the video store: “Why not get this one?”

I paused, biting my lip.

Danny, YOU could be biting my lip right now, I thought. Let’s go. Let’s tuck ourselves into a closet somewhere and you can kiss me as hard as you want.

But maybe it was something in the neon blue lights or the DVD he was holding. He just raised his eyebrows and waved the movie in my face.

“I don’t want to.” I said. “That one’s lame.”

“It’s funny.”

“Who wants funny?” Yes, I said it. Sarcastic and mean, just like that. But, you know, don’t get me wrong. I was in favor of funniness. I’m a funny girl. Danny was just not getting it.

He sighed and put the boring movie down.

The point was: we were young. Do you know how often you get to be young? We were young and on that particular night, we looked amazing. My hair was down, brushing my shoulders. Danny’s collar was open and I could just see his collarbone, curving beneath his skin. But it wasn’t just about making out, either.

I just wanted Danny to realize that we were young. That it was a night in July and there were crickets chirping out there in the darkness.

He was standing there, holding a romantic comedy, and probably not thinking about it. He was probably thinking about popcorn, probably about work in the morning, and, yes, probably about sex – but only in that brief, idiotic way men typically do.

He shoved his glasses up the bridge of his nose. I adored those glasses. They were part of his charm.

Somewhere, someplace, there once were two young people. And they went to the beach on a July night and wrestled in the sand. She rubbed sand in his face and when they tried to kiss they knocked their heads together. And the next morning she woke up with her hair in knots and her shoes soaked in seawater. And then he wrote it or she wrote it or they told a friend of theirs who wrote it. And that’s where Danny’s lame movie came from.

Danny wanted to watch something someone else had lived. And while it might make us feel good for a while, really, it would just get lost in translation. Because probably they didn’t even really knock their heads together when they kissed, but the person who wrote it decided that nobody would believe it if they didn’t knock their heads together. Because the truth would actually seem less realistic than the cute quirkiness of people who can’t kiss right. Good kissing is so done. The time has come for bad kissing and knotted hair and shoes that smell of the sea.

To Danny, it didn’t matter what had happened to these people. It only mattered what the writer wrote and what the two beautiful actors did. To Danny, that was all there was.

And he just stood there, lanky, glasses glinting in the fluorescents. For God’s sake, I know why he wanted that movie! Because he was only halfway on the beach, had only one foot in the closet, only one arm draped (very loosely) around my shoulders.

I wanted to know if Danny and I would ever knock heads. I wanted to do something that would make a good movie later.

But, at the end of the night, Danny and I watched his lame DVD. And, five years later, I wrote something I just made up.

And Danny and his tall blonde wife thought it was great.

In case of 2007: June

I guess we’re never promised anything. Not even this: the chatter of strangers and the silent bumper car collisions of their spirits. I’m writing a paper, ironically, about the function of religion. The airport is perfect for it, seemingly so ordinary – women staving off old age with too-red lipstick, little girls in Barbie shoes, heavy bags slung over shoulders.

This is the church of travel, the sanctuary of transition, and the harried flight attendant is our priestess. This businessman takes communion in his coffee.

I wonder how many souls are as deeply entrenched in living as I. How many are as determined to consciously breathe and to know the flickering red-yellow-green-go­ of passing moments? Oh, Creator of the air in which we’re prepared to trespass, send a tremor through space. Send turbulence or déjà vu. Send words to accompany my expansive ache.

This, then, is the function of religion: to explain the boy who wears socks with sandals, the striped ties, the thick blood/glass eyes/brittle marrow of passing bodies, the answer to Eliot’s overwhelming question.

The answer (with as much precision as we’ll ever get this side of a downed 747).

I find myself in love with the most unlikely people.

Oh, painted toes, round glasses, braided hair, and rustling newspaper – know that steel and sky only imitate a deeper motion. Know that it is only love that holds you aloft. Know that we’re never promised anything.

Not even this.

In case of 2007: April and May

I get the feeling I’ll look back on this and either remember how and not why, or why, but not how.

*****

Circumstantial evidence:

1. I am wearing a pair of his socks.
2. The movie is stopped somewhere in the middle.
3. I have no idea if it’s rainy or sunny.
4. The fridge is empty.
5. My earrings have disappeared.
6. My fingerprints. Everywhere.
7. The corpse, still warm, in the middle of the living room floor.

Yep. I think there’s enough to convict me.

*****

One line slashed down from his collarbone to his hips and ribs materialized around it. His frame bled and grew, budded into shoulders, deepened into almond colored skin. I watched with fascination as Eric blossomed beneath my gaze. He seemed to me to be a man of clay. Ash and bronze and pyrite.

The earth moved beneath me and beside me on the living room floor. He yawned once, curled himself around my body, and kissed the small of my back.

I ate Cheerios (witnessed his birth.)

In case of 2007: Early January

He hunches sideways in the chair, long backbone wedged at an awkward angle, arms folded gracefully over the left armrest. I watch; my eyes trace the angular lines of his body, making a mental sketch of this pose in crude slashes of black ink and red lipstick. I will remember him in this instant – the minute threads of tawny hair, the freckle constellations, the feathery eyelash shadows on his cheeks. No one else can have these details; these are visible only from the precise distance between my eyes and his.

From his glance, I realize my locket has fallen open. I snap it shut.

Deep breath.

Like bad actors, we’ve lost our place in this conversation. We fumble with our scripts. The audience grows restless. Coughing. Programs rustle.

“I’m growing a thorn bush,” I begin.

His lips twitch slightly, listening.

“I’m still mad, I mean. At Bobby. I’m mad that I’m not over him. I thought I was. But this thorn bush has been growing. I realized it.”

The eternal theater critics lean forward in their chairs.

“When?”

“He made my sister cry,” I say, plowing ahead with my monologue. “She was visiting and they talked – they were friends, you know, before. I went to bed. She woke me later, crying. She’d just believed in us so much and had never really had a chance to grieve about it. It made me mad. Most of the time I’m like the Queen of Hearts, you know? Paint the roses red. But every now and then, just for the hell of it, I go over and – are those thorns? Shit!”

He smiles. I’m on a roll.

“I don’t know. At first I was mad because he didn’t hurt me worse. He could have been cruel. Maybe that would have made this easier. But even if he had been, I wouldn’t have believed him. I can’t make my heart believe him. Which means that I’m living in this thing that isn’t true. And that pisses me off.”

He absorbs this, then asks, “Do you think you’ll get back together?”

New territory.

I improvise, “Part of me thinks so. But another part of me tells that part to forget it. It won’t happen. I don’t know.”

“You told me that love sometimes dies.”

I look up at him quickly.

“I don’t believe that,” he reassures me. “But you do.”

“Hm.”

Silence. I bask in the glow of his faith. He is suddenly so old to me. He is ancient and I am ancient. And we go on, walking, talking, our ancient hands clasped firmly together. The veil of the other life hangs paralyzingly close. The watchers hold their breath.

But my coffee cup is empty.

We are so young. I let it go. Sand through my hourglass.

A shining, beautiful grain of sand.

In case of 2007

Today, while I was tidying up my room in anticipation of Jans coming tomorrow (!), I found an old spiral-bound notebook. As most of my notebooks like this one tend to become commonplace books – that is, full of everything from writing to doodles to class notes and phone numbers – I was intrigued to discover that this particular book contains a pretty accurate reading of my entire life from the year 2007.

2007 was an eventful year. It started with an incredible secret fling (as I was rebounding from my breakup with Bobby), moved from there into our mad and manic production of Flutter, took an unexpected twist in my romance with Eric, dipped low into a lovely, languid summer in the Pinery with Jes, then wrapped up with my last hectic semester of college at LAFSC in Hollywood.

Plus, add in there my sweet friendship with Jeremy McDaniel, visits from Tyger and Margie, a whole crammed month at Act One, and the perfect marriage I found in Kevin, Katherine, and Rian.

2007 was maybe the best year ever.

And so, for the next few entries, I’ll be posting some long lost essays and scrawlings I found in the 2007 notebook this morning. I know they won’t mean as much to anybody as they mean to me, but I thought you might like to come with me on this trip to the not-so-distant (but distant enough) past.

Enjoy.

In case of SANDCASTLES

I think I gave up my search for identity a long time ago.

Let me explain.

From what I remember from Psychology 101, generally speaking, most people form their identities during their teenage years. They actively wonder who they are, what they will become, what their role in the world should be. They collect some ideas, choose some childhood experiences that correspond to and support these ideas, and sort of build an identity foundation with these large granite ideological blocks.

And from then on, it’s all just pebbles, really. Little stones here and there, whatever you can make stick, whatever you assign meaning to, whatever is the same color of granite you have already…that’s what you use to build the rest of your identity. Occasionally, you get some bigger stones – like at major life events – but mostly you build with small rocks from there until the end of your days.

But…

Sometimes I feel like I’m made entirely of small rocks. Where are my cornerstones, my irreplaceable truths? Who am I? What has formed me? What do I believe? I have no idea. I’m like a child in a sandbox that builds something gorgeous one day, then knocks it down and starts over the next.

Gah, stupid metaphors. What am I really saying?

Okay…

I gave up looking for Tricia. I gave it up long ago. I don’t know who or what she is, and – to be perfectly honest – I don’t care.

I suspect that this is abnormal; most people don’t live this way, they walk with both feet on the ground. One step leads to the next, one foot is always in the past, one foot moves ahead into the future.

Me? I jump.

The past is gone, over. It’s nice to look at and watch, to bring out and listen to as a favorite song or movie, and I cherish the people from my past, I do. As for the future, it’s exciting. I can’t wait to find out what’s coming…

But the present is always this detatched, suspended leap.

And I am always a different collection of experiences, the important ones are interchangeable, the sad ones don’t matter, the bright ones have faded. I can have or have not, I don’t care. And if I do care, then I care for today, or for this month, but next month I won’t. I will look back and say, “At that time in my life, I cared deeply.” And that’s as far as it will go with me. Already I will be devoting my attention to something else.

Former versions of myself seem like strangers to me now. I have some things in common with them, but I am not them anymore. And I don’t miss them. I miss very little. I need almost nothing that I don’t have, now, at this present moment. Plus, I don’t remember much. I think the memories might be in me somewhere, but I have to go actively hunting for them in my mind.

The point is…

I let go. I don’t know how not to. I let go of everything and everyone, beautiful or ugly, joyful or painful. Either “Tricia” is buried so deep in me I can’t see her or feel her, or she is always on the surface and shape-shifting too fast for me to know her well.

(And so if you love me, hold on to me. I just don't know how to hold on to you.)

In case of BOB DYLAN

Well. I’m back. And even I can’t believe all that’s happened in the last couple months. I’m reeling in the shock of it, the joy of it, and the mystery of it all. My life is radically different…and amazing.

Here’s an enumerated list.

1. Screenplay. I finished my screenplay, the screenplay that kept me away from this blog, on June 22, and I sent it off to Forceful that night. (Still waiting to hear from him, so don’t get excited.) Looking back on that process, though, gives me great pride. I worked my butt off. I wrote daily. I wrote pages and pages and scenes and scenes that wound up in the trash.Sometimes, I would sit and stare at my computer for hours without writing a word. At other times, I would write ten pages in two hours.
   
   To borrow an idea from Madeline L’Engle, I feel more NAMED. I feel like a radio, picking up waves, playing the song of the universe. I feel like I know what I’m supposed to be and do. I feel strong, important, alive. Pages and pages of more thoughts on this later, inevitably.

2. Good food. Shortly after I quit writing on this blog, I came down with some kind of strange internal disease. After some debate, days of pain, and a trip to a doctor, I decided it was linked to my gallbladder and/or pancreas. Obedient to research on the matter, and at the suggestion of the aforementioned doctor, I cracked down on my diet. No more two cups of coffee a day. No more fattening foods, including chocolate and all forms of refined sugars. No more beef or fowl, and no dairy or eggs, even. Nothing processed. And I became a vegetarian – well, more like a vegan – for two weeks. Not a single slip. The pain wasn’t worth it.
   
   After that, I started working little things back into my diet. Cheese came back. Fowl, so as to get my protein. And by the time my sister’s wedding rolled around, I was doing well enough to eat cake at the reception. The gall bladder/pancreas thing? Pretty much gone now. However, what I found out through the whole thing was that GOOD FOOD MATTERS. Giving up eating shit was like…well, torture, at first. But after a while, I felt so good that I stopped craving the bad stuff. I feel lighter, better, healthier. Plus, cooking is AWESOME. So much fun. And I love knowing what’s in the food I’m eating, you know? Let’s hope this lifestyle change is here to stay.

3. Michael. Michael came to California on June 23, and then we both went to Ohio on June 25. Getting to see him, here, in my world? Indescribable. So good. SOOOO different than I thought it would be. (In this case, the “good” and the “different” are unrelated, “different” being fundamentally neither positive nor negative.) I just can’t get over it. I’m dating him, and we’re happy, but we can be such strangers to each other at times. It’s been eight months now – going on nine – and how can I learn so much that’s new, really new to me? And the new things are delightful, wonderful, but NEW?!? How can that be?
   
   As Michael say, “It’s like knowing half a person. The half I know, I know very well. But the other half has been so hidden until now.”
   
   In any case, we are learning. And we’re excited to be learning. Onward and upward!

4. Lisa and Lin’s Wedding. What can I say? It was beautiful. It was incredible. It was just about perfect.
   
   It was also 100% STRAIGHT CRAZY. The days leading up to the wedding were some of the most stressful, busy, manic days of my life. The sheer number of crafts and projects! I can’t even describe it. But was it worth every minute?
   
   Yes. Yes and yes. A thousand times over.

5. Job. Well, it happened. Oggy let me go.
   
   It was kind of mutual, if you want the truth. He and I discovered months ago that I was wrong for the job. When he hired me back in January, he thought the studio needed someone administrative, managerial. But as it turns out, the studio needs someone sales and business. I’m not that person. I’ve never been that person. And I’ve never claimed to be. So it was only a matter of time before Oggy’s need to pay his bills won out over his love for me. This happened on Tuesday, July 7. Less than a week ago. Incredibly, though, I already have a new job. It’s nothing fancy; it’s at a cool little coffee shop here in Monrovia. It’s part-time. It’s minimum wage. And it won’t fix all my problems. But I’m so happy. In all honesty, Oggy did me a favor.
   
   Plus, now I may even be able to go back to teaching my kids. Can you imagine? Serve coffee to hip locals? Teach my beautiful, inquisitive Asian children? Do you have any idea how fulfilling that would be?!? I should have quit at the studio long ago.

Which brings us up to where I am now. What do you guys think?

That’s right…

The times they are a-changin’!

In case of DESPERATION

Every November, Jans writes a novel. 

She makes me jealous.  She inspires me.  She shames me.  It’s an incredible feat, and one that she has somehow pulled off for the past three or four years or something.  10,000 words in a month.  Amazing.

Now, I’ve never read any of these novels.  Jans, to the best of my understanding, keeps them under lock and key.  So I don’t know much about their quality, except that I’m sure the writing is superb, even if the story lags a bit in places.  The writing is the point, anyway.  She writes for the sake of writing.  Because it is in her.  Every November, Jans writes a novel with desperation, as though her life depends on it.

I’m only now beginning to realize that it does.

A few weeks ago, three and a half now, I befriended a man who writes for a living.  We’ll call him Forceful.  And what Forceful has been teaching me is that a writer who doesn’t write every day, who doesn’t write like her life depends on it, is a sham.  A writer who writes casually, as though she has all the time in the world?  That, my friends, is not a writer.

So for the past three and a half weeks, I’ve been working on a screenplay.  I came up with the idea, developed it, and dove into writing it within a handful of days.  It consumes me.  The screenplay is all there is.  And, in case I ever for a second forget that, there’s Forceful to kick me in the ass and make me go again.

So that’s where I’ve been.  I get up, shower, breakfast, work, home, dinner, and WRITE WRITE WRITE, then Michael, then bed.  In fact, it seems the only time I have to breathe is lunch.

So I’m sorry that it’s been almost a month since my last blog.  I’m sorry for all of you, because I’m being a bad friend.  But I need to do this.  I need to quit whining and be a writer.  I need to write.  Forcefully.

I'll be back when it's done.