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 A COLD UNIVERSE

The older I get the more I wonder if life might really be all about sex.

I’m not sure who said that to me first.  That life is actually all about sex.  I read it somewhere, I think, or heard it in a movie.  Anyway, it’s a catchy idea, you’ve gotta admit.  Life = sex.  It’s got a nice ring to it.

And people certainly do live like that’s true, sometimes.  Let’s take one of my co-workers, for example.  Which one of these, do you think, is his favorite thing to do?

a)      work at the studio

b)      crack

c)      his girlfriend

Well.  Okay, I admit it.

Between B and C, it’s a toss up.

And Oggy?  Well, after trying a long distance relationship for a while, he decided it would be better to date someone locally.  So that’s who he’s sleeping with now.

Not that he bothered to break up with the long distance girlfriend, mind you.

And meanwhile, all I’m doing day after day is researching photographers as potential clients.  And what do you think this research has led me to?

You guessed it.  Lots and lots of pictures of mostly naked people.

Which brings me full circle back to:  life = sex. 

It does, right?  It must!

Sigh.

I have lots of ideas about sex.  What it is, what it isn’t.  What it means, what it doesn’t mean.  I’ve built these ideas from books I’ve read and people I’ve talked to and the handful of things I’ve actually witnessed and experienced.

But what I keep coming back to is that sex, boil it down, probably just satisfies that human desire to be in contact with other humans.  Even if it’s only physical contact. 

And when humans are most open, most intimate, most together…ladies and gentlemen…we call that love.

I’m not naïve enough to believe that sex and love are equitable.  But from where I’m standing, they’re born from the same two things.  Thing one:  the desire not to be alone.

Thing two:  the fear that we might be.

And if you have something to believe in, some reason to believe you’re not alone…then life, for you, is not all about sex.  At least, it doesn’t have to be.

But if you have nothing to believe in, if you’re a man at the mercy of chaos, a figure alone on a distant star in a cold universe…then you will reach out with every part of you to be touched.

And even those of us that do believe in God need that, too, sometimes. 

In case of THE KGB

My boss is Bulgarian. And 90% of my job is handling him.

When I first met Oggy, he was very off-putting. He shook my hand, very obviously checked me out, and then monosyllabically answered what I thought were incisive, conversation-starting questions.

The second time I met Oggy, he asked me about my boyfriend. I told him my boyfriend lives in Australia. He looked wryly at me and said, “So you don’t have a boyfriend.”

Of course, now I know: that’s just Oggy. He’s incredibly racist, sexist, and wildly inappropriate. He likes to insinuate to clients – clients! – that he and I are sleeping together. He openly hits on every woman we meet. The hotels in Vegas? He says they have too many black people, so he doesn’t like to go there.

He drinks. He throws fits. He can’t keep track of any part of the business and insults his employees. He cusses out telemarketers.

But the really crazy part? I love him.

He’s hilarious and brilliant and colorful. His past – from what I know of it – has been full of great pain. And yet he keeps a sense of humor. As quick-tempered as he is, he’s also quick to forgive. And he’s full of love for his son, his daughter, his new grandson, his on-again-off-again girlfriend, and even his ex-wife. And he would never fire me. Never ever fire me. Only if he couldn’t pay me anymore.

There was one night in Vegas when Oggy and I maybe each had one cocktail too many. So we were striding, laughing uproariously, through the casino in the Golden Nugget. Oggy asked me if I’d seen the tigers in Vegas. Tigers? I said. No.
He held my arm. “They have tigers everywhere here. You should see them, the lions and tigers.”
“And bears?” I said, being witty. “Oh my.”
He didn’t get it. But he did stop the nearest casino attendant. Just a random guy there by the slots. “Where are the bears?” He demanded. “We need to see the Las Vegas bears!”
“Bears?”
“We know you have bears!” Oggy said. “Tell us where they are!”
“Maybe in the zoo?” The guy said doubtfully.
“It is her first time in Vegas.” Oggy explained. “She wants to see the bears.”

But then, before waiting for an answer, Oggy steered me on and off we went.

At the elevators, I said I was going to go up and go to bed. “I’m leaving you,” I said.
“Why?” He whimpered.
“Because I don’t love you anymore.” I said.
He nodded sadly. “Already you don’t love me anymore. Okay. But, please, do not take the children!”

I laughed.

When people don’t remember him, Oggy helps them out by saying, “You remember me. I am tall, blue eyes, blond hair, no accent.” Then they laugh.

Then he says, “No, I am only kidding. This is Ognen Borissov. KGB.”

In case of OLD TRUNKS

When Bobby and I broke up, I took back Disneyland.

Disneyland was our thing – one of our many things.  And, of course, you know what I mean.  Couples (relationships of all types, really) collect distinguishing marks and memories.  A date here, a movie there, a song.  You keep and horde these things, set them on the shelves of your heart, and revisit them with sacred awe.  You polish them.  You listen to them.  You pull them out and drink of them together.  You keep them, like trophies, on the mantle. 

But when relationships go wrong, you trash them.

These things – restaurants you ate in, music you love, quirks and passions held dear – they’re suddenly ugly.  And those things not made ugly are, at the very least, painful.  And so you kill them, smash them up.  At the very least…you put them away.

But when Bobby and I broke up, I took back Disneyland.

He couldn’t have it.  It was too much fun!  It was too precious.  No!

So I embarked on a wild fling and took the New Boy there with me.  We stood in lines with our arms around each other and had our photo taken on the Mark Twain.  We kissed on rides.  I wrenched Disneyland, which was fast sinking into the quicksand of my breakup, back up into a safe place in my heart. 

But there are things in this world that are lost and gone.  Probably forever.  I couldn’t save them.  Or I didn’t want to save them.  Natalie Cole.  The Nightmare Before Christmas.  That little Italian restaurant in Pasadena.  The rock of Gibralter.  Glass.  Red tide.  (These are my memorials.)

And last night, I went back and listened to Michael Buble.  And I realized that his music, too, is gone from me.  I love Michael Buble!  But I don’t have anything else to tie that music to.  So it’s gone.

But.  Okay.   

Here’s the good part.

There are infinite number of things in the world.

There are always more songs, more places to go, more discoveries to make.  There are new memories in store.  There are new things that we can call ours.  Ours! 

And I don’t forget the old things…I just put them away.  It’s like cleaning out the trunks of your childhood.  You have to move all your old toys and books to make way for your new clothes.  Your new books.  All the NEWNESS that life wants to hand you.  Fill up the shelves of your heart again!  Put new golden memories upon your mantle!

And even if you have to, at some point, again throw the new things out and again put the new things away…there will be newness.  NEW newness! There will be new things even then.

As Oggy always says,  “This is how it goes.  We are human.  If we were robots it would be different, but not as nice.”

Life.  Newness.  This is how it goes.

In case of STARS

On January 19, I interviewed for a job at a commercial photography studio here in Monrovia.  

The position?  Marketing and Operations Coordinator.  

And what is that, you ask?  Well, it’s a real person’s job.  It’s half marketing and half running the studio on a day-to-day basis.  It’s something that involves business cards and travel and interactions with other real people.  In short, it’s a job for which I wasn’t remotely qualified.  I couldn’t imagine why they’d called me in for it and I didn’t feel like I interviewed very well.  But, surprisingly, they called me in for a second interview that Friday.

On January 26, they offered me the job.  I took it.

And I’ve been running to catch up ever since. 

Full-time work means that I can pay my bills.  It means food in the cupboard, savings in the bank, student loans dwindling month by month.  It means that I can settle into a routine, work during the day, come home, and write on my screenplay, industriously pursuing what I really want to be.  It means that I can put “Marketing and Operations Coordinator” on my resume and go from here anywhere that I want. 

And if that were all, it would be more than enough.

But, in this case, it also means that I can walk to work.  It means that I have the freedom to do my job independently, listening to music, without a hard ass boss breathing down my neck.  It means that I can take long lunches in the sunshine as long as I get my work done.  It means measurable progress, feeling fulfilled as I watch the company grow, and strategizing for myself a plan to make it grow even further.  It means that I get to spend my time with a crazy Bulgarian, a wonderful man that makes me laugh, a man that is thrilled to let me take vacations.

It means I get to go to Australia to see Michael.

Oh, life! 

And it’s not perfect; nothing is perfect.  Some days will be hard and I’ll come home tired or unhappy or both.  And this job won’t make me rich. 

But it will sustain me.  It’s a gift from God, after EIGHT INTERMINABLE MONTHS of silence, of scrambling around in the dark without coins enough even to buy a cup of coffee.  I feel stunned and smitten by this new chapter in my book.  I don’t – can’t – understand God’s overflowing blessings, the immeasurable grace that has followed me so long.

When I wake up now in the mornings, I have somewhere to go.  I have something to do.  I have someone to be.

God help me, I’m seeing stars.