#12 - Green Stripes is Playing

My dad had a friend, George. He was an eccentric character. Long scraggly beard, bandana wrapped around his forehead, always, causing and obscuring a wicked forehead tan-line. Baggy cargo shorts and not-new white tees. Camels. Coffee cans full of bottle tops whose rebus puzzles my brother Jason and I would delight in trying to decipher. He was unlike us.

He was unlike my father in most ways, too, but the two shared a love of folk dancing, and a life-long bond due to time as campers and later counselors at a boy's camp on an island in Lake Winnipesaukee. My world-class punster dad, if I have this right, resigned his time as counselor by offering the Camp Director a single bristle from a broom, declaring it "the last straw." I don't know what George was like as a teenager, if he was different before Vietnam, but as a dad-aged character, examined closely by this sheltered New England girl, he was the kind of guy who said he had to "water a tree" before peeing up against its roots, and gleefully pointed out chipmunks on the woodpile, doing what they do in the spring.

We LOVED visiting.

The camp had been closed for long enough for everything to be musty, but not long enough that you couldn't still find shell casings at the firing range, or sleep in a long-silent campers cabin, on dubious cots, in your very own L.L. Bean sleeping bag!

There was a big central activities hall by the main dock, which boasted a cabinet full of dusty board games, and a piano you could pretend to play, especially if you didn't know the meaning of being "in tune."

That main dock received the mail boat, and had an actual, full-sized diving board, which you could use if you were willing to penetrate the top few feet of sun-warmed water and descend into the freezing New Hampshire lake temperatures. We were. We did. That dock witnessed life and death moments, and the hall made me dream of rowdy nights of fun with imagined friends, laced with the heady freedom of summertime away from your regular life.

Best of all, if you knew the way, there was a tiny beach on the back side of the island, called Big Sandy. And if you knew even more than that, you could use two beach boulders as reference points, and swim out into the lake to form an isosceles triangle with them, and your thrilled toes would eventually find the huge submerged rock, where you could rest, in triumph, and then launch off again on the rest of your swim toward the floating wooden dock, which everyone knew about. Not like you kids, who also knew about the rock.

On one trip, there were enough "summer-only" residents - George was the island's full-time caretaker by that point, and had strong opinions about the recurring fair-weather denizens - that a friendly soccer game was arranged one day. Tween Devon did not find such a prospect "friendly" at all. Despite my dad and Jason's excellence and enjoyment of the sport, it was still... a sport. Which excluded it categorically from Things I Could Do Without Dying. I guess I was talked into going to the field. I know I was wearing a prized green and white striped polo shirt. I was in despair. 

But then, something truly awful must have happened. Like, the enthusiastic dad who was organizing the game officially assigned me a position, or some such horror. I claimed I was suddenly "so tired" and ran away to a nearby cabin to lie right on the guano-covered floor. I might have even convinced myself I was tired, or pretended to sleep. But of course, my parents saw right through my charade, and came to... rescue me, you might hope? Promise I would never again have to endure such an indignity? Nope. They had met me, after all. And with what I now enjoy imagining as Magical Parenting Patience, they talked me down (I am certain there was an ocean of tears, but that was par for the course - Look! A sports metaphor!) until I agreed to emerge from the shadowy four-bunker into the terrifying light of day, where every single person had just witnessed me run away.

I don't remember actually playing. It's possible, if unlikely, that I even avoided "whiffing" if I ever had to kick the ball. I don't remember, but I might possibly have had some fun. I don't remember anything but wobbling my way out of that cabin onto the field, chin up, if quivering, and the Enthusiastic Dad not missing a single beat. He just brightened, and said, "Green Stripes is playing?" And, albeit with a watery voice, I said, "Green Stripes is playing."

I will never, ever forget his kindness.

I have been striving to give people that much respect and acceptance ever since.

So here we are, kids. The last of my self-promised "writing projects" for the year. I've had the most ease (and if I'm honest, enjoyment) writing these memoir-type things, but I still really want to try my hand at fiction. I'm a bit mortified by writing about myself, and then asking people to read it. But the fact that a year ago, I hadn't really created anything all on my own, and now... I have, brings me a quiet, embarrassed pride. So, in 2023, I am going to take a writing course, and I am going to try writing fiction. And even worse, I'll need people to read it. Paid people, though - not you! Don't worry! Oh, man. Putting myself out there is hard.

Honestly, as I forge my way through this world, my chin is still often wobbling, even if it looks like it's held high, even to this day. But, my friends...

Green Stripes is playing.

#12.5 - Operation: Maybe It Won't Be Terrible

At the end of the second year of COVID, I gave myself the challenge of writing twelve things in the next twelve months.

Just because, and just for me. 

(Although my mother is more or less required to read them all.)  

But also because I needed to know 2023 would hold something that was challenging in only a personal way, not in a Sky Is Falling way.

I told this idea to a few people, and I mention it casually from time to time when people ask me what I'm up to, but I really solidified my commitment by saying it out loud to my friend Scott, who is basically a tall drink of empathy. 

Lingering outside the parking garage after coffee, which is what you do in LA instead of lingering by the stairs to a subway station, he told me about his new pursuit, and I told him about mine. Basking in the glow of his enthusiastic listening, I said "All twelve pieces could be under an umbrella title of... Maybe it Won't Be Terrible." We laughed.

(His venture involves him becoming even more adept at helping people. That path will be the opposite of terrible. His patients will be lucky.)

Well, Dear Reader, I've done it. I've written twelve things in a year. Some of them are better than others, but hey, that's how you learn, right? I'm quite pleased!

Maybe I'll continue these, or maybe I'll do a deeper dive into fiction, like, taking an actual writing class. Maybe both.

Thank you, ANYONE, who has read one of these. Scott Ferrara, Beth Lopes, Steve Wilson, and Mom, extra thanks.

#10 The New York Plaid

There is a Far Side cartoon showing terrified city dwellers in panicked flight, trying to escape a nuclear armageddon, while a dog stares at... nothing… on the ground in front of him. It's captioned "And then Jake saw something that grabbed his attention."

I think about this cartoon at moments in my life, such as my first trip to San Francisco, when I spent half an hour trying to capture macro images of tiny succulents planted on the side of a hill, and only when my back required straightening did I turn around and behold... The breathtaking San Francisco Bay. Bright blue skies and wind-whipped water, occasional sleek clouds racing across the sky like a varsity rowing team, the Golden Gate Bridge, luminous in the afternoon light. Alcatraz! Or moments like today, when, a full year after my friend Hillary gave me a moth trap due to an unfortunate situation with a wool rug in our building, during which time I'd checked on it frequently and been smugly pleased that I had not a single moth, I discovered the trap had a protective film you had to peel off in order to expose the sticky entrapping surface. Or the time Steven told me the bright green sports car in front of us with the eye-like headlights was called the Lamborghini Kermit, and I absolutely, 100% believed him - I mean, It looks like a frog. A fast frog! All this to say, there are lots of things I don't notice. But the things I do? I notice 'em hard.

When I first moved to New York City, I felt like I was nothing but eyes, noticing everything. And one of the things I gave my full attention was The New York Plaid. (You probably thought I was going to talk about the World's largest collection of cast iron building facades in SoHo, or that the price of a slice of pizza and the price of a subway ride have historically stayed in tandem, or that the idea that skyscrapers can only be built where the bedrock is nearest the surface might be a myth! Nah. Who had time for such things?) This plaid, though, this plaid! It was often in scarf form, but spotted also on hats, coats and umbrellas, and it was for sale on every street vendor's cart, many a store window, and wrapped around a truly surprising number of necks. And because it was so ugly, I assumed it was some insider "you have to be a New Yorker to understand" thing. This beige plaid scarf. Maybe it was a NY sports team's colors. In which case I'd never find out, and just live with the delightful mystery! What a glorious city.

Eventually, some number of years later, I pointed out the NYP to someone, who said, incredulously, "...You mean, the Burberry Classic Check?"

I have formed other opinions about Burberry since. But I still hate beige.

Sigh. Burberry calls it "tan." It's still hideous.

One of my favorite Ani DiFranco songs from these early years in New York has the line "...when I look down, I just miss all the good stuff. When I look up, I just trip over things."

I'm trying to strike a balance these days. Macro photography AND the awareness that the sky is falling. Passion for my beliefs, but space for the chance I could be wrong. Hope that there's a public square where we might actually learn big ideas from each other, where there's also a delightful little Tom Otterness creature. I try to keep my eyes and ears open. I still treasure the tiny and the ridiculous. I hope to look New York Chic photographing those tiny succulents, with the help of my vintage Burberry bowler bag. Which is red.

Oh, by the way, regarding the images I pull for these posts, I do put some effort into finding ones that are not copyrighted, although, to paraphrase what my friend Kelly Wolf wrote in her blog, Powered by Dragons, since I'm not making any money off this, who would really care? However, I bet Burberry has a legal team, so... voila. Proof that I did NOT miss a calling as a visual artist.

#9 - A Winding Path to a Straight Seam

For various trivial reasons, there are a number of straight seams that need to be sewn in our household. An intentionally too-low shower curtain rod, and unintentionally too-large pillowcases in our favorite sheet set are the main culprits. But you never know...one day, there could be a trouser hem. Life is full of surprises.

I have found myself sheepishly asking my tailor for these very simple fixes over the years, every time secretly thinking "I really should be able to do this myself." After all, my mother taught me to sew when I was in 5th grade, when I was obsessed with Laura Ingalls Wilder, and needed a gingham dress and matching sunbonnet of my very own. 

So, if I could make (or help make) a dress at the tender age of ten or eleven, surely it's re-learnable! Surely, I can sew a straight seam with all my acquired worldly wisdom over the past....(inaudible) decades.

A month or so ago, after our old sheets disintegrated, we decided to splurge and buy TWO new sets! So now I had to take in four pillowcases, carefully providing my tailor with one she had shortened/narrowed from Queen to Standard years ago, so all she had to do was copy that one. Seemed simple. When I got them home, I realized she had only shortened them, rather than also reducing their width. Steven took one look at them and said "Well, she needs to fix them!" Steven is from Straight-Forward-Landia. I am from Never-Make-A-Fuss-Landia.

I considered taking them to someone else and just re-paying for the whole job, but I jammed some steel into my spine, and went back to request she do the additional seams. Now, English is not her strength. Tailoring is! She's great! But English, not so much. So I probably only made vague gestures when I dropped them off, assuming she'd know I meant "Match this in every way." She had not assumed that. She flew into a snit. I flew into a snit. She refused to do the additional seams for anything less than the full amount she'd charged before. I agreed, feeling like a sucker, snitted my way out the door, then snitted myself right back in, told her I'd changed my mind, and marched my too-wide pillowcases right back home, where they mocked me from the top of the dresser for a week or so, until I broke down and (drumroll please) bought my very own sewing machine! Which sat in its box, mocking me, for another week, while I realized how utterly intimidated I was by this theoretically simple task.

A task with which I also, apparently, have some additional issues.

In addition to being part of the first U.S. generation to earn less that their parents (woo hoo!), I also squeezed into a gap in history between "typing is for secretaries, and I ain't gonna be no secretary" and "Oh wait, EVERYONE is gonna have one of these computer thingies, and we'll do EVERYTHING on it?" My indignant, resentful left-shoulder demon steered me furiously out of the path of "women's work," and I have to admit, it has never completely left me alone.

(I feel that I should name that left-shoulder demon. Groucho seems indignant and resentful.)

((I guess the corresponding rational, clear-eyed right-shoulder dweller needs a name, too. Sigh. Let's go with Gracie.))

I sometimes have complicated feelings about what being a woman means in our society, as lucky as I feel to be one. I chafe at the things we women have to do biologically, and I positively bristle at the societal restrictions that typically accompany our biological destiny. Perhaps women who want to be mothers have a more complicated, nuanced point of view about this. They certainly have a tougher job than me, and I can't possibly presume to speak for them. But even the juiciest, most delicious Earth-Mama of them all, on a weepy day when her tits are killing her, and everything from her navel to her inner thighs feels like it's rotting from the PMS, but who still shoulders the majority of the household duties and other invisible work both at home and in the office... even Earth-Mama gotta have her bad days. Maybe it's just Groucho talking.

(And then on top of it all, there are laws, laws preventing us from having 100% control over what happens to these bodies of burden!? Rise up, Sisters. Broomsticks at dawn. Ahem. Poor sewing machine. It's just trying to save me a few bucks at the tailor's, not foment a revolution.)

Somewhere along the way, my scout-like enthusiasm for knowing how to do a super useful thing like sewing got dampened by... an irrational fear of agreeing to be a woman in the world as it is, I guess. Honestly, you'd think there weren't real challenges in my life, with the number of additional ones I dreamed up for myself. Where were you, Gracie?

But. There is one thing I cannot abide, and that's not having a jigsaw puzzle to do. And there isn't room on the table for both the sewing machine and the puzzle. 

So. I took the machine out of its box. After three days of moving it to various places around the apartment (dining table, coffee table, arm-chair, floor), and ignoring it, I finally set about to wind a bobbin. I'd watched an instructional video; read the manual and everything. Now in front of a finally plugged-in machine, with threading instructions finally edging out angst about gender roles in my head, I clicked the bobbin winder into place, and put the pedal to the metal. (Or, nervously nudged my bare toe onto the plastic pedal and hoped not to kill myself or break everything.)

Dear reader, I wound a bobbin! It was bottom heavy, like the video had cautioned, so I cavalierly THREW AWAY yards of the 50 cent thread purchased by my mother... in the 80s maybe? and tried again. It worked! Clearly a superhero, I tried my luck threading the top bit, then with 17 deep breaths, and 27 re-readings of the instructions, I folded a dish towel in half, and across it...sewed a straight line! I was flushed with triumph.

So, I did the only sensible thing, and packed it away immediately, to the loft this time, where it mocked me for an additional two weeks until...last Saturday, the time had come.

I watched a video. I measured. I marked. I waited until Steven left the room because I could not possibly endure an audience. I wiped my sweaty palms on my pajama pants. And then... I HEMMED THE DAMN PILLOWCASES! I used two different types of stitches! I remembered to cut the excess from the correct side, instead of completely destroying them!

Steven and I rushed to the bed, put the pillowcases on, and beheld... normal, correctly-sized pillows. Unremarkable...except to me. (Well, to us. He witnessed me pushing that rock up that hill.) I gazed for a full minute, before calmly going to the closet to retrieve my next jigsaw.

Today, 8 days before the midterms, Steven surprised me with t-shirts. Mine says My Body, My Vote, and his says Vote Like It's 1973. I could weep. The man knows how to pick a present. They're unisex, so mine is a bit shapeless, but when I rolled up the sleeves it looked much better. I thought...I could hem them! It's a good next project for my sewing machine and me. (Remember Ladies, even when we take to the streets in fury, it helps to be pretty. And to smile.) ((Alright, simmer down, Groucho.)) 

Come on, Gracie.  

We'll show 'em women's work.

#7 - Staying Out Of The Sun

I have a very loud mental jukebox.

I'm not in any way the boss of it, and it is often hilarious (as well as bewildering) to me why it plays what it does.

It also has a No-Sleep-For-You mode, where I'll wake up in the middle of the night, and the lyrics to a particular song will be running over and over in my head, but tuneless, attached not to their original rhythm, but to my sleep-slowed heartbeat. The same few words, over and over, thudding against my skull. It's super fun. 

Lately, the jukebox has been feeding me the phrase "looking out of the window, staying out of the sun" from Don't Cry for Me, Argentina in Evita. (Remember, I'm not the boss. I do love that musical, though. Don't hate.) And as annoying as the jukebox can be, I do sometimes try to figure out what it might have to tell me.

There are, of course, two ways to stay out of the sun.

Lloyd Webber & Rice's Eva Peron was speaking about a metaphorical hanging back from life, of which of course, I am also sometimes guilty. But the way I see it, the literal sense of staying out of the sun involves the former sense. And that's where it gets tricky for me.

Let's say, just for example, one is fair-skinned, light-eyed, and has a history of various types of skin cancers in the family. That person should probably do all the sensible sun-avoiding things, just as she has been told to do, and has understood are the right things to do, since she was a child.

Especially now that this theoretical person has all sorts of visible sun damage all over her face, neck, chest, arms and hands. That person oughta cover up. Stay inside.

But... how can we stand to live like that? Aren't we supposed to roam the great outdoors, fighting SAD, brewing up some Vitamin D, connecting to the grand and glorious Earth? Isn't being locked away inside the worst punishment for us poor little humans? I don't want to be precious with the outside of me, to the detriment of all the good stuff inside - the joy, the mischief, the memories made from a life lived wild and free. I can't think of anything sadder than pressing my face against the glass of a door that's not even locked... just in case. Just to arrive at the end of it all less scarred, less spotty, having received all the gold stars for prudent choices.

But... I've also watched skin cancer take a bite out of a thigh, sink inward into bones then up into a brain, eat through a face and bleed into lymph nodes. I know it can mow us down.

Obviously...sunscreen, hats, shade when you can, nothing between 10 and 2. I know, I know. It's not really a question, it's Tug-of-War. Between soaking in the brief, precious, dwindling light - and using the information we know to be true; believing the science, if you will. Every time I am in the sun, every single time, I am aware I am taking a risk. And yet it seems I absolutely will not stop. Sunscreen, hats, shade, I know.

I was driving to the studio the other morning, listening to an NPR report on the already inevitable 10-inch minimum sea-level rise due to melting ice sheets in Greenland alone.

Later that day, I came across a pun-heavy "controversial...though plausible" digital model of what Los Angeles would look like if ALL the planet’s ice were gone. Venice is part of the Bay of L.A., of course. Orange County is, cutely, The O. Sea. Baldwin Hills becomes Baldwin Island.

Steven and I are - on a humankind time scale - among the last people who will live right here, on dry land this far West on this continent. Maybe people born in a few hundred or thousand years, people who will never have known the planet we were born to, whose communal stories will reflect a world that we see as dystopian and disastrous... Maybe those people will never have read "Thou, Nature, art my Goddess." Will never have dreamed of a "St. Tropez Tan." (Just checked - the elevation of St. Tropez is 49 feet, so...probably not.) Maybe they will see spending the day outside the way I see smoking 3 packs a day. 

But I live now. And the stories I was told as a child were of epic adventures in a world where the enemy was not... the world. And in these just-the-beginning-of-the-end times, if that’s what they are, the longing to feel the wind in my hair is much more powerful than logic.

Everything is easier than letting go of what we love. Even glaciers melt at a less glacial pace.

I cannot shake the thought that wine's to be drunk, days are to be seized, joy is to be chased before they tuck you in with a spade. (Spot THAT musical theatre reference, homies.) Surely, it's my age. Surely this is part of finally realizing this isn't a practice run. And that I have no idea how much time is left. And that even if it's a lot, it's not... a lot.

This guy named Stephen Sondheim (maybe you've heard of him?) wrote a song called I Remember, sung by a young character named Ella who has been living indoors as part of a secret hidden community, and hasn't seen the sun since she was six. (I bet her skin looks GREAT) I've always loved it. Plenty of longing and hope and loss - and right in my key. It ends like this:

I remember days
Or at least I try
But as years go by
They're a sort of haze
And the bluest ink
Isn't really sky
And at times I think
I would gladly die
For a day of sky

Yeah, Ella of the Night People. I think about that trade all the time, too.

#6 - The Mentor

When I first came to Los Angeles in pursuit of TV and film work, I began to notice a faint... dying of my soul, perhaps? So, like any migratory creature, I followed an inexorable pull. Mine took me to the theater.

A few years before my cross-country move, I had met a delightfully eccentric actress while spending the summer performing in a Shakespeare festival. She told me if I ever came to Los Angeles, I had to get involved with her theater company, which to her husband and her was not merely a theater company, it was a religion!

In hindsight, and out of context, that sounds more than a bit red-flaggy, but if you'd met this pair, you'd accept it as their unique brand of enthusiasm. And in truth, many of us displaced theatre kids found in the company, if not a religion, at least a home.

Because the company focused on process as much as performance, there were tons of opportunities to play. Script analysis, table reads, staged readings, festivals of readings, the occasional full production. I moved to a new apartment for a number of reasons, but chief among them was to live less than a mile from the theater. I had found a reason to stay in LA.

In fact, during the first full production I did there, a handsome British guest artist walked into the black box theater, and, I think we can agree he changed my life. He'd been a coaching client of the Artistic Director's, and she convinced him to come do a show. I have her to thank directly for meeting him.

We produced a new musical, and I was cast! The Artistic Director said she loved my singing voice, thought it was wonderful and interesting. My heart was hers at those words. One night, we had a one-on-one, post-rehearsal, sort of extended coaching session with wine in teacups, where she encouraged me to go further, play more, be more in my body. She said we could create a tour de force performance. I was in the midst of a terrifying breakup, and was so grateful to have this outlet, to get to sing, and get to grow.

I was also, around that time, in need of a job. After a restaurant gig was abandoned in favor of a temporary office job, which in turn gave way to some desultory personal assistant work, I was struggling. I wanted to do the next play, but I knew I needed a job, and what brand new job would give me the flexibility needed to accommodate the rehearsal schedule?

Well it turns out, the Artistic Director needed some data-entry type help in the office, and I could do that! So I now had an artistic home, an acting job, and a day-job, all in one. 

And that's when it got complicated.

I was incontestably an adult by now, and should by any measure have been capable of maintaining professional and personal boundaries. But I wasn't. I was so far away from certain aspects of maturity that it would take me years to even recognize them, let alone take steps on what I suspect will be a loooooong road to reaching them. I know that is true about me.

What was true for the Artistic Director, I don't know. I can't in any fair way speak for her, nor do I have the right. I will just say that between the two of us, we were unable to communicate effectively and generously. Maybe we were both "accidental administrators" at the root of it, not really cut out for the rigors of fundraising and diplomacy. Certainly, her responsibilities were massive. The pressure to not only keep a tiny theater company afloat during a recession, but to grow it into a top-tier, professional organization business-wise, not just artistically, would have been intense for anyone. 

It got bad there in the office. There was another young woman, my friend, also working full-time in another support role, plus several education-focused staff members who stayed only a short time. But for my friend and me, it was rough. We could not please our boss. We could not defend our inadequacies, and we both took it very hard. We walked on eggshells, which sometimes helped, and sometimes made it worse. Once we were accused of thwarting her at every turn. 

I remember going on runs in the morning, having imaginary arguments with my boss where I defended myself brilliantly, all the while making my deeper point that everything I did was my attempt at doing the right thing. That I truly cared about that company. That I was only human. But I could no sooner have worked up the courage to say any of that out loud and calmly than I could have flown instead of angry-jogged.

I cried at work sometimes. Other company members saw, and it was embarrassing for everyone. I cried on the way into work, or after work. I started taking a natural supplement "chill pill" to avoid anxiety attacks. One day, I had to share a car with my boss, and I took two "chill pills" and stumbled through the day in a thick fog. I was terrified of her, and furious at myself for being unable to either make things better or get out.

About two years in, as the company and staff grew, a sort of civil war began between those company members who wanted to remove her from the top job, and those who supported her. It got ugly. Murkily, poisonously ugly.

At the helm of the "remove" camp was one of the pillars of the company, who left my friend and me out of it as much as possible for as long as possible. An act of kindness for which I will forever be grateful. But even if we'd had no part in raising the army...everyone knew. Everyone had seen us cowering. There was no doubt what side we'd be on.

There was a company meeting to let people on both sides speak. I cannot imagine how - out of an empty auditorium - I managed to put my stuff down in the row and seat right behind where she would sit, so that when all eyes turned to her face, either in support or in censure, my own face was right behind hers. I was mortified, horrified, but I thought switching seats would be unforgivably provocative. I could hardly breathe.

There was an email to company members written by a passionate defender of hers, telling all her opponents to examine our souls. The Board stepped in to douse flames and provide structure. There was a vote. The "removes" were in the majority.

She called a final staff meeting. In attendance were me and my friend, our two interns at that time, and a Board member. My now departing Artistic Director announced the results of the vote, and then said to my friend and me something like "Well, you got what you wanted." I felt indignant (among other things), because I hadn't been at the helm of this movement, I was just one of the most battered buoys in its wake. Out of my mouth came (to my eternal awkward shame) something like "I hold myself innocent of that accusation." I guess it's amazing I got out any words at all. She then turned to the two interns, both of whom were devoted students of hers, and told them this was a true peek behind the curtain. A much more profound understanding of the dynamics possible in a small membership company than they could ever have expected, and that she hoped it could somehow serve them down the line. They were devastated. And I believe that was true, what she said. A harrowing lesson, indeed.

This woman earned her devoted fans every bit as honestly as she earned her strong detractors. I can never be unbiased, but nor may I fault those who stayed with her. I vowed to say nothing negative about her in public. I slipped up sometimes (badly once, and the look on the face of the friend of hers who overheard me haunts me). But my silence was not truly kind. And my refusal to say the words fooled no one. Still, the silence was better.

Once, years ago, she said "Drop by drop, knowledge comes to the unwilling." That is one my favorite things I've ever heard, and a saying I sardonically apply to myself from time to time. In many ways, she was one of my greatest teachers.

Two summers ago, I woke up to an email from a very dear fellow member of the company, the subject line just the ex-Artistic Director's name. I instantly clicked, sensing... something. This company member was reaching out to make sure I'd heard about our former leader's death. Her shocking and much too early death. Of all the many things I am grateful for, her making sure I heard the news from a compassionate friend before I saw it on social media will remain on my short list. She used the phrase "Weird, sad, unresolved." Well, yes.

The Artistic Director had kept her illness a secret from all but (I presume) a close few. To think that someone who loomed so large, in good ways and in bad, to so many could just suddenly be gone was disorienting, and even more unmooring than life during the first summer of our pandemic already was.

The love between us had been lost years before. But still....  She used to be my mentor. One of only a few people who have ever taken me under their wing artistically, even briefly. And that was a thing I had longed for - a mentor, a guide. I was so proud of being admired by her in return. And even though I was half of our tango... I'd never set out to be her enemy. I was so angry in those days, so indignant, but it's clear to me now that I was also heartbroken. 

Calls came in all day from a few people who'd been on my side of No Man's Land. Stunned former trench-mates who couldn't say anything out loud. This woman left behind plenty of truly and mutually beloved friends and colleagues who absolutely, positively did not want to hear from the likes of us. So we stayed low. Talked to each other about our disbelief. Processed or mourned in a complicated, private way. I guess that's what I'm still doing. Mourning, defending, forgiving.

I don't know if our relationship could ever have been repaired. I might have hurt her as much as she hurt me, and it seems like a steep, steep hill to climb from the valley on my side. Would we even have tried? I honestly don't know. Probably not. But the total impossibility of it now... it's an odd, endless limbo.

I do know I have learned to never let a dynamic like that grow between a boss or any colleague and me again. If that has added to some of the callusing of my heart, so be it. I have grown up. A little. Drop by drop, knowledge comes to the unwilling.

#5 - The Lady on the Skateboard

OK, it's not actually a skateboard. It's a OneWheel, which is kinda like a skateboard except it has one pneumatic Go Kart tire in the center, instead of 4 clackety wheels in the corners. It's electric. And has "gyroscope technology" or something. Like a Segway. So it sort of balances for you, once you can balance on it...and it sort of goes forward for you, as long as you know how to make it do so.

But I called it a skateboard in the title because a) not everyone knows what a OneWheel is and b) even if they did, picturing it in any relationship to me might cause cognitive dissonance to the point of distress.

There's an amazing video of Brenden Schurmeier winning the 2020 OneWheel Race for the Rail, which has a mountain trail for a track. When he skids to his triumphant halt, he throws his helmet up about a mile into the air, fueled by whatever the extreme of "stoked" is, jumps around and hugs his buddy Bhodi for a while and then catches the now asteroid-velocity helmet again before jumping around more, with champagne sprayed all over him and everything. It's peak OneWheel badassery. You can watch it here: https://bit.ly/3yr8xSN

I am unlike Brenden.

My husband Steven got a OneWheel for himself after a hot and cold relationship with an electric skateboard which deprived him of surface bits of his knees and ankles enough times, he finally broke it off for good. I thought maybe that would be the end of that, and he'd go back to modes of transportation with protective infrastructure that increased as the speed increased. Walking: shoes! Bike riding: helmet and reflective vests! Anything faster than that: thousands of pounds of steel with crumple zones! But no. He found another electric rolling thing, that goes even faster, and has extra bounciness for floinging you right off and into the path of oncoming cars.

He did look pretty cool on it, I must admit.

But I said, Not For Me Thankyouverymuch. I did agree to an electric scooter - like a Bird, but you own it, and it folds in half, and if you can lug it up the stairs to your day job, you can commute like the cool kids. I actually liked that a lot. You absolutely have to keep both hands on the handlebars at all times, but if you do that, it's pretty stable, and still in or adjacent to the realm of cool.

So we'd zip up and down the boardwalk, him swaying to the reggae in his AirPods, me with ears perked to danger as I followed just behind. It was great! But it was not to last.

I don't know when the rumblings first began...I probably pretended to be sleeping in order to have plausible deniability. "I'm going to get a OneWheel for you," he claimed several times while indisputably in my range of hearing. Eventually I had to respond. I said no. I said, "It's way too scary, and I am afraid I will kill myself, and so I won't use it, and it's way too expensive for something I'll never use. No, please."

Of course he got me one.

Now, we'd been married somewhere around 10 years at that point, and even without having hit such a milestone with anyone else before, I had a strong inkling that when your partner finds something entirely new in his life that brings him joy, and his impulse is to share it with you... well, you'd be churlish not to.

So I strapped my ex-ballerina, never sporty, not-so-young-anymore body, and my brain full of inherited fears of permanent physical pain, anxiety about things I'm bad at, and general semi-paralyzing terror into elbow pads, knee pads, a helmet, and wrist guards, and went down to the parking lot for my first lesson.

I fell off right away. I made noises in the squeak category and in the grunt category. But, by the end of the first lesson, I could...kinda do it. There's a photo. I look...not half bad. I was greatly encouraged. (h/t to Covid for making the parking lots completely empty for a few months so I had an amazing place to learn and fall off really close to home with no cars whizzing by.)

The first few times I fell off I had a gigantic panic response, where I basically lay there motionless and breathless, doing a mental scan of my injuries and how quickly they would get me out of ever doing this again, ever. I was fine, though, except for a few scrapes, and my number one fear of re-twisting the ankle I annihilated at age 21 and which has never been the same, didn't happen. 

After scraping my ankle when I fell off in sneakers, I now only ever ride in high tops. After skinning my knee while temporarily parting from sanity and riding in shorts, I now only wear a pair of Steven's old jeans. I call them my Emotional Support Jeans, and I love them. It's usually chilly at the beach, but even when it's not, I ride in long sleeves. No elbow scabs either, thanks. Long everything is also good sunscreen. Blessings abound.

In the beginning, every tiny bit of uneven surface sent me into a panic. "Way too scary," I described graded curbs and driveways. "I'm not having any fun at all. This is too much for me," I said of the flat grassy field. Perfectly smooth pavement is great. Bumpy terrain - not so great. Bumpy, rocky, twisty mountain off-road races at top speed in shorts? Horror. Leave it to the delightful lunatics like Brenden.

But I gradually got better. On Thanksgiving of... one of those Covid years, I hit 300 miles and Steven took a photo of me in triumphant silhouette at sunset. At present, I have over 500 miles. (Steven has over a thousand because he was born without the Fear Module or something. Also he just really loves it.) And I hardly ever fall of any more. I still get the "whoopsy daisy" thing in my stomach on many a ride when I feel a scary wobble or a child runs into the bike path like a video game character, but I've managed to not hit a single one of them, and I haven't been flung off the board on even the most knee-rattling bumps on my route.

I'm even commuting to the studio on it these days, while Steven needs the car every day to drive to his editor's. I'm just tearing through the 500s at this point. I think it'll be time for another triumphant sunset pic when I hit 600.

One day, he and I swooshed down the bike path, past some teenaged boys, who were openly admiring of the aura of cool that surrounds Steven as he surfs the streets. Riding his slipstream / coattails, I heard one of them say "Oh shit, that's a girl."

Even now, pride fills my chest with embarrassing fuzzy warmth when I think of that. I looked cool enough that teenaged boys thought I looked like a dude. Can you say "hashtag goals" when it was you doing it?

Most of the time, though, I'm a pretty nervous rider. Some would say uptight, and I would just remind myself of those teens. But it's true. I'm too...shall we say... sensible of my own mortality to float down Ocean Park during rush hour with anything other than Serious Concentration at all times. I've still never put music into my AirPods - I only wear them so I can hear the warning chime if I hit my designated top speed, or if the board is sending me a warning message. I think that's fine. Next pandemic, when all the cars are stuck at home again, I might do it, though. It looks really groovy. 

Today, I had an absolutely lovely ride home via the Eucalyptus Trail, as I call it, in Marina del Rey. Dappled sun, not too many people, the air redolent of that amazing tree. And I realized, this feels like when I was a kid, and I learned to ride my bike with my hands off the handlebars for a few seconds. Oh, the freedom! The surprising triumph at being good at something physical! But this is no-hands all the time. And as one of the least likely purchasers of a OneWheel (my demographic buys them for her sons) I just feel lucky to have been invited to this party, grateful I said yes, and whatever is the middle-aged lady version of - Totally Stoked.

#4 - To Sasquatch, Love Dog

Dear Sasquatch,

Do you know Chekhov's play, The Three Sisters? You made me think of it, so much so that I dug it out of the bookshelf to re-read it. Three displaced sisters, longing for the home they left behind. A home farther and farther away in the rear-view mirror, less and less the place they remember, more and more a dream.

I'm not sure which sister each of us is. Probably a combination of Masha, Irina, even a little Olga, in a pinch. I won't say who I most resemble. And I don't know it about you.

I do know we share a longing for a metaphorical Moscow. I've never seen it in another so clearly as I do with you. It's not attractive. Even though you are. We are. Maybe this longing is the worst of us, not our secret strength. Maybe you and I each have a thorn caught between two ribs, all the way into our hearts, maybe.

Maybe it pierces all the way through us, and stakes us to the uncrossable wall to the past. Hearts stapled to brick. 

You instant friend, ally, mutual admirer. Mostly still a stranger, and yet, I recognize you.

That Psychic who cornered us got me thinking.  When she treated us to her Astro-Logician, Cosmographer insights - for a long time - a looong time (That girl could talk)… Was it your will or hers that kept us by that coffee shop? Why did we stand there, staked through our feet to the sidewalk this time, while she peered into your soul and guessed the lyrics to your "I Want" song?

Whether she peered into me, and read my song, I cannot say. I refused to say a word. Maybe she sensed I couldn't stand it. Maybe she was absolutely, ludicrously full of shit. Or maybe, when you confessed your secret Moscow, you gave yourself away, and she only saw as much as I did. You gorgeous, brilliant, magical thing…throwing away time on sighs and backward glances.

Maybe I didn't even need to speak for her to see the same in me.

Let's escape, Sasquatch. As the memes say, there is still time, and we are not too old.

Meet me anywhere but Moscow. Let's long for where we are. Let's let joy pin us to this spot.

Your fellow dreamer,
Dog

#3 - Smooshed by the glass of liberation (a short one, I promise)

You are not the only thing
I’ve killed.

Why just this morning,

I murdered a silverfish

with my bare thumb.

And I’ll do it again.

Horrid silverfish.

I've watched belief in me

die in people’s eyes.

I've taken a machete

to unrequited love.

It only sort of worked.

I have buried a friendship.

I have faced down a fear.

I accidentally killed

that beautiful tree

I was only trying to prune.

Oh, I still ache over that one.

Cars, crashed.

Bridges, burned.

Hopes, dashed.

Lovers, spurned.

I’m no worse than most.

And kinder than a few.

A friend to spiders!

When I’m just about 

to step into the shower.

I re-dress to save you.

I get a cup and a card.

It usually works.

I’m sorry, my little terror.

You were too quick.

My glass, too slow.

I meant you no harm.

(a 10-minute poem)

#2 - Jeepers Creepers (the Cautionary LASIK Tale)

If I've got the facts right, I was born extremely farsighted, with amblyopia in the left eye. According to the National Eye Institute, amblyopia is a breakdown in how the eye and brain work together, meaning the brain doesn't fully recognize the input from one eye, causing it to rely more on the stronger eye, and letting the weak eye, just sort of coast. The journalism division of my brain uses my left eye for background, maybe. But it's not a trusted source. There was an astigmatism in the left eye as well. According to the Mayo clinic's website, an astigmatism is an "imperfection in the curvature of the eye that causes blurred vision." It strikes me as kind of funny how vague I am on the details, but I guess, what is water to this little fish? 

They're pretty green eyes with dark blue rings around the irises. They just didn't work that well. Especially the left one.

Despite what my parents recall as a horrifyingly incompetent and off-putting first eye doctor, who, through the fug of cigarette smoke in his exam room, wheezed at them to abandon all hope for my vision, I had a pretty successful course of treatment. Since my father had overcome a similar eyeball situation in his own youth, he was delighted to completely ignore the guy, and find doctors who actually knew what they were doing. So, I got glasses when I was two or three, wore an eyepatch as directed by Dr. Rice, my wonderful Optometrist at Emerson Hospital, got soft contacts at twelve, and... wore 'em. They were great. Cleaned 'em in a bubbly fizzy cup at night; quick saline rinse; I could see fine and I got to adolesce without nerdy glasses in junior high and high school. And at ballet, where all that spotting would whip a tortoiseshell frame right off a kid.

I still had glasses as a backup, nighttime reading, etc. Trusty old things. And for many years, I guess almost 20, when I was going to a play - or a movie, but most importantly to me, a play - I would wear my glasses instead of my contacts, just so I could take them off and use my super-power of farsightedness to actually see the actors' faces. It was wonderful. Tiny, subtle facial expressions in a spotlight. In a crafted, collaborative moment of trying to capture and share the human condition. Sigh.

The Event that happened to change all that was LASIK. There are people, or at least meme-creators, who say you should never regret anything you've done, because there was a lesson you had to learn...or something. Respectfully, I disagree in at least this case. I regret having done this.

Here's what happened. I went to two recommended surgeons in Los Angeles. They both said no. I was too high-risk, first because of the strength of my prescription (around a +6), and second, because farsightedness is far more difficult to fix than the much more common nearsightedness. (Nearsighted eyeballs are long and skinny, so "shaving them down" is a piece of cake. Farsighted eyeballs are short and fat, so you have to, sort of.... pinch them in and up. With lasers.) The astigmatism in my left eye was a bonus hurdle. But I was determined because - ohmygod - my boyfriend at the time, Sharp-Eyed Matt, wanted us to backpack through South America for a year, and he really foresaw the inconvenience of the bubbly fizzy cup and saline rinse. I can't blame him, much as I'd like to. I look back in horror at myself for risking something as precious as my eyesight, MY EYESIGHT, so as not to impede a backpacking lifestyle that I, in no way, wanted to adopt. My god. I was born with a backbone. With bravado to spare! I made all the neighborhood kids put on Really Rosie in my backyard, but I sang all the parts from behind the big tree. (I mean, I also played Rosie, of course, in front of the tree.) But can you really trust the neighbor kids to do it properly? Anyway, where did THAT kid go? My parents are both incredibly smart. And sensible. And supportive. And... appropriately wary and cautious with big decisions. How could adolescence and internalized fairy tales have reduced me to an essential invertebrate willing to do anything a guy wanted? A guy who, if you've been following, Dear Reader, I secretly hated.

(Although I am thoroughly enjoying unjustly excoriating him in these posts! I'm still the bad guy here, it seems. Ah well.)

I persevered. I found a third surgeon at a big LASIK center down in Orange County who said yes. He did caution me that it was possible, maybe even probable, that after the first round of surgery, I'd need a "touch-up" to perfect my vision. I said, "Whatever, let's do this." I drove down to Orange County. Real Job Matt didn't come up from San Diego. Because of a really important work deadline. So I rolled up, having been advised they can give you a Xanax to help you relax, but not to worry, it's really very easy and straightforward. However, on the day, and I forget why, they wouldn't give me a Xanax. (Just for the record, I had never taken one... I've taken them now, though.) So, thrown, I tiptoed into the Bright White Laser Room, and lay down on one of two beds in the large space. They gave me a large grungy stuffed green frog to clutch for comfort. There was another patient on the Bright White Bed across the room. 

They numb your eyes, and cut a flap in the outer layer of the cornea, which they then lift up and prop open, presumably "Clockwork Orange" style, while they laser the rest of your cornea into a new shape. The flap plops back down and protects the inner reshaped part of the cornea. More or less. You're awake, but never in pain. If you're lucky, you've had a Xanax. As they do each eye, they put a bunch of pressure on your eyeball so it goes all black & white TV static in your vision, and you can't actually see, except for a point of light you're told to focus on. There's the laser machine itself, which is a loud bulky boxy thing, and a Laser Wrangler, who is possibly The Well-Reviewed Surgeon himself, and at least one nurse, possibly two, who I never saw arrive. They were just suddenly there, after I could no longer see, urging, in worried tones, "LOOK RIGHT AT THE LIGHT! LOOK AT THE LIGHT!"

Now, when there's someone rodeo-ing a bucking laser over your head, you kind of don't want to move a single muscle, even your lips, even just to say, "What do you mean, Look Right At The Light? AM I NOT? Am I doing it wrong? Please tell me if you're just encouraging me to keep doing it right, or if I'm doing it wrong! I don't understand why you sound so worried!!!" But you don't, because if you breathe, move a hair, you're afraid you'll be made blind.

So, there's that fear.

Afterward, I think they shuttled me to a pre-arranged hotel room. They said it's totally normal for everything to be blurry that night, but it'd be a lot better in the morning, and then it'd gradually get better from there, over the weeks or months, but maybe a little longer for me, since I was a such a tough case. My eyes might be a bit dry. My night vision might be a blurry for a while. And that night, I was indeed quite blurry, but not so much that I couldn't look up the poem that suddenly flooded into my mind, Invictus, by William Ernest Henley. I called Busy Matt to tell him I'd survived, and to celebrate our success. To tell him that I was "bloody, but unbowed." He told me he didn't really care for old, grandiose poetry. More of a modern poetry man, himself.

I drove home on the 405 the next day. I couldn't read a thing. I had to stop for gas, and I couldn't read... anything. The meter, the instructions. I guessed, and got gas in the car, and made it home.

For years, if it was dark out, I couldn't read anything at all. Saying "turn left on Centinela" was useless. I needed to know how many stoplights ahead the turn was. (FYI, there's a bank on the corner of Centinela and Venice... money... cents... I've put symbolic signposts on corners throughout Los Angeles to find my way.) Every light had a halo, or a double, sometimes both. One night, I turned the wrong way off the freeway. I ended up in a neighborhood I didn't recognize, but what I could clearly sense was that I was afraid to get out of the car there and ask for directions. I'm ashamed to say I pulled my hoodie up, and just kept driving, making random turns until I found the freeway again. Not a big fan of feeling that helpless.

It gradually got better. I stopped having to use punctal plugs and apply eye drops every hour as my eyes got some level of moisture back over the next many years. These days, fifteen years later, I still can't sense distance well at night, so changing lanes on the freeway takes some white knuckling, but as long as I don't have to read street signs at night, Waze and I make it across town just fine. Some days are shit, where one eye just won't focus at all, and some days I stop in my tracks, amazed that I can suddenly see EVERYTHING. Oh, and when I get just slightly choked up by, like, a cat commercial, there's a tiny amount of tears that, just for a minute, smooths out the surface of my eyes, and for that minute, I can see ...  individual leaves on the trees across the street, just one each of letters on a page, my cuticles, the surprising quantity of dust everywhere. This is what makes me hope I'm not actually losing the power of sight, optical-nerve-wise. Just...terrain-wise.

Modern Poetry Matt was dismissed, and I met this gorgeous (if blurry) new guy, Steven, who really deserved someone who could actually see him, he's that gorgeous. I like to think I "see" him in the ways that count. He's great.

About my eyeball terrain. It was immediately clear that the "possible touch-up" was really a required full second surgery, as my vision was much worse after the first one. I was less farsighted (only around a +3 - goodbye, actor-seeing superpower) but my eyes were left like an in-process street repair, with steel plates stuck clumsily to the road with globby strips of asphalt. The re-surfaced cornea was now so bumpy that it, by itself, refracted light. They determined on my check-up visit, that, yup, they only got about halfway through the correction, but... didn't they say?! You can only ever hope to do three degrees of correction per surgery. Didn't they say that? (They had not.) But, oh heck...wouldn't you know it... there wasn't enough cornea tissue left to attempt a second surgery. So... sorry?

What else? Glasses no longer do much, because as nicely as they bend the light as it comes through the lenses...the light still hits my bumpy corneas. Still, I'm grateful for the amount they do help.

I subsequently went to some very expensive specialists, one of whom gave me hard contacts. Now, those worked! They rigidly smooshed my eyeballs into a smooth curve, and I could see every single thing! However, since the surface of my eyes was Triscuit-like, they were excruciating. I suffered through them on occasional special events, only to squirm while I learned the truth about everyone's wrinkles, including my own. Eventually, I let them dry out, and threw them away.

One specialist, Dr. Super (his actual name), seemed like he would be my new Wonderful Optometrist. Maybe it was his South African accent. But one day, he nervously spun an awkward metaphor about how, if my eyesight were like my favorite hobby, running, as time went by... about ten years or so, I'd no longer be... running. I don't know if meant to imply I'd be blind within ten years. My hearing disconnected from my brain as if it were... my left eye.

I fled, and never went back. I found a new eye doctor, and made Steven sit in the exam room with me, in case my brain short-circuited again. New Doctor has never told me I'm going blind. He's just told me I need to wear glasses at all times, because if anything at all happens to my right eye, I'd be, I guess, left with only an unreliable narrator to explain the world. So I wear glasses. All the time. He's also forewarned me I will not pass my next driver's license exam, but that there's a special doctor's-note carve-out for people like me. It's in his file for me, under: To-Do. (After I squeaked through my latest license renewal, he said "They passed you? They shouldn't have." Good times.)

I did investigate legal action at the time. I learned that most lawyers won't take on any medical lawsuit...something about $250,000... Googling that now, I see there was a law on the books capping damages in California for medical malpractice cases at $250,000, and that wasn't enough money for most malpractice lawyers to bother themselves with. Plus, we'd need another doctor to go on record saying it was actual malpractice, and that was hard to get even if, like, a kid died. It was tough terrain for an hourly non-profit fundraiser to navigate solo. Somehow, I backboned them into refunding the surgery cost, and paying for that pair of $1,000 hard contacts. But I had to sign away my right to ever litigate further, if and when I mastered both our healthcare system and our legal system. 

I carried on. The blurry new guy became my boyfriend, then much to my delight, my husband. I dreaded going places where I might run into people I knew, because I couldn't tell who they were across a theatre lobby, or the street, or the room. I was mortified to think I might be blanking people, right to their faces. I wonder how many moments I plowed over into the snowbank of that fear. How many missed opportunities to connect with people. Luckily, Steven knows to do a big embarrassing wave if he goes into the movie theatre before me, while I do a precautionary pre-movie pee. Without the Martha Graham, I would never find him.

My friend Kristen and I just shot a video tribute for our friend Natalie's birthday. I know she hates doing things like these, but she loves Natalie so much that if we took it seriously, she'd get all choked up. So I tried to save her with cheesy comedy. I wrote a script. We each had 4 lines, and then we'd say "Happy Birthday, Natalie! We love you!" together, and hopefully it would be all cute and stuff. My lines were setups for her responses. Easy peasy...I'd make it as easy on her as I could.

We got our friend Sal to shoot the video. We were both holding our lines. But when it came to the magical "go time" I confessed I wasn't going to be reading mine. (I mean...it's 4 lines...which I wrote...) But Kristen wasn't thrilled that she'd be reading off the page and I wouldn't. Unbeknownst to us, Sal had already started filming, and here is what strikes me about the pre-roll: I said "I can't read it" three times in the first two seconds. 

Now, one time, maybe, to make Kristen not feel bad that she'd be referring to her script. But three times, in immediate succession, while bulldozing over the cute quip Kristen was trying to make?

If I were a person who didn't like me, or didn't know me, I'd think "Ohmygod WE GET IT. YOU CAN'T READ. Geeeeeeeeez! Calm down, lady. You want a PRIZE?"

If I were a person who did like me, I'd think "Oh, sweetie. You seem really anxious. I think you need to address this. I hope there's something that can be done."

If I were just me, I would spend a good half hour afterward trying to trim out the first 1.8 seconds to leave in that cute comment Kristen made, while editing out two of the "I can't read its" but would be unable to do so because... I couldn't read the screen. 

Here's where I shouldn't fail to mention that I make my living from reading, ha ha ha. But as I have been learning, much of our reading comprehension is shape recognition. The shape of words. And if we're familiar with the shapes of enough of them, we just scoop up their meaning as we fly on past. So somehow, it is something I can still do. 

See, this is why this one is hard. There's no cool epiphany. I haven't discovered some miraculous new eyeball technology that can make it all go away. (Although, I mean, lemme know if such a thing exists.)  There are just aloof eyeballs, and choices I wish I hadn't made, and walking right past possible friends on the street. I hope that's as bad as it gets.