Getting the F*ck off my Knees.

On Friday night at 10 minutes to midnight sitting in my parked car outside my apartment building, I was scrolling through Facebook on my phone.  I usually do this as a 'before getting out of my car at the end of the night' ritual.  I don’t know why.  Like I’m getting a few minutes' alone time before I go into the house… but I live alone... with a cat. … so…  In any case, I came across a post about that evening's blue moon, looked quickly at the clock and exclaimed, “Shit!”

I shut off my phone, dashed out of the car up to my apartment.  I took off my heels, slipped on flats, grabbed my loaner tambourine and climbed excitedly and nervously up the stairs to the rooftop of my building.

Pushing open the door, I saw before me a whitewashed roof with long pipes and what look like abandoned solar panels.  Dropping my keys by the door, I carried my tambourine to the center of the rooftop, shielding myself slightly from the view of neighboring buildings, and turned around to see the full, audacious moon before me.  Then, I began to jangle the tambourine, and finally I began to sing.

...uh, what?

As I’ve come to the part of my recovery/internal work where we are instructed to “Humbly ask God to remove our shortcomings,” my mentor asked me how I’d done this step in the past.  I told her I usually get on my knees and say some kind of prayer. 

“Get the fuck off your knees!” she replied emphatically.

You see, I have a habit of being small.  Of minimizing myself, diminishing myself, down-playing and ignoring my own needs out of fear and, mostly now, out of long-grooved practice.  This habit of deprivation and hiding causes many problems in my life, mostly because I am surely aware that I am not “meant” to be a mouse. 

Being a mouse, though, often looks like me withholding my truths, not admitting what I really want from others and from myself and from life.  Things like. … I want to get married.  *gasp!*  It was near torture to say this aloud to her when we were discussing truths I never tell anyone.  It feels embarrassing to say it.  To feel it.  To want it.  “I'm a modern woman, proud brave able!  What a simpering, waif-like desire to have!,” goes my internal monologue.  And I wither to admit it to anyone else.

My mentor and I spoke at length that day, and she finally suggest-/insist-ed that I get a tambourine, dress up in something exciting and shout this truth, and all my others, to the heavens.

*Gulp*

So on Friday morning, two weeks after this suggestion, I finally obtained a borrowed tambourine (you’d be surprised how few there are around!).  I texted my mentor that tonight was the night!  And then I read online that it was also going to be a full moon, a blue moon in fact.  This seemed most auspicious.  (For a woo-woo hippie shit chick like myself!)

The evening found me on the roof of my apartment building, fresh from a salsa lesson/live music dance in the city, in a hot dress and pulsing with feminine wiles, furtively tapping this noisemaker in my hand, trying not to feel embarrassed.  

And then I began to sing.  I started softly and whirled myself into a crescendo, abandoning decorum, delighting in the jangle and thrill of the truth.  Gyrating, gesticulating, twirling around the rooftop, I sang loudly all the secret desires of my soul and my heart, echoing a refrain of, “I let go of being small!” and hammering wildly on the tambourine, an elegant, alight grin streaked across my face as I hopped lightly over the pipes, spinning around the roof until all my heart’s desires, all my tiny wishes I’m too ashamed to speak, had poured out of my throat and into the moonlit darkness.

Laughing, giddy, adrenalized, I headed back to the entrance door, calling brazenly to the bulbous moon: “Peace out, Blue Moon.”

Recalibrating the Bar.

Surely, normal is relative. I read some of my blogs about my past, and I think, Jesus, this is not what “normal” people have dealt with. I listen to some of my acquaintances share their histories, and I think, “Thank god things weren’t that bad with me.”

In some comparisons, my life has been saner and pretty charmed; in other comparisons, it’s been dysfunctional and tragic.

Yesterday, I came home from hearing tell of someone’s tragic past, “worse” than mine. Then I picked up where I left off in Autobiography of a Face, because surely the story of a little girl’s jaw sawn off through cancer is “worse” than my own story.

And I decided then, it is time for me to recalibrate my bar for normal and dysfunction.

I was feeling activated by the story I’d heard earlier in the evening. I was feeling protective of the children that story was being told to, and I was experiencing a hardening in my chest, made of anger and self-protection against the terror of that story.

And despite the fact that things in my life have been on the plus and minus side of well-being, I think it’s time for me to start marching toward those people and experiences that don’t trade in trauma.

There tends to be a uniting force among those in my crowd, knowing that we’ve, most of us, come from some kind of trauma. Wherever that may fall on the spectrum of horror. But, we feel an understanding with one another on the basis of a shared experience, and sometimes this unification posits us against more “normal” folk, folks who perhaps didn’t come from that seething primordial ooze.

The problem, and I’ve contemplated it before, is that when you trade in trauma, there’s no value in happiness. When you bond over tragedy, how do you boast your success?

Over the last few years, my threshold for violence and gore has lowered dramatically. Even “silly” crime t.v. shows that used to be my favorites, I’ve had to eliminate from my visual diet. I just can’t stomach them anymore.

As time has passed, I’ve become more aware and attuned to when those shows or images are getting to me – when I’m cringing, or closing my eyes – and I’ve taken note of those cues, and begun to drop them from my cue.

It feels the same to me with these stories that are around me.

I read Autobiography last night, despite knowing that I didn’t want to read it. The language is beautiful, the plot is compelling; by all counts, it’s a well-crafted book. But I don’t think I want to read any more – in fact, I know that, and I’m going to have to decide if I heed that information or not.

The same is true with some of the stories I hear around me. It’s going to be up to me to begin either seeking out or attracting into my life people, not who don’t have those stories of trauma in their past, but who don’t feel compelled to broadcast them. Who don’t feel compelled to do so inappropriately.

I am not saying that I will only surround myself with “normal” folks, or that the stories of our pasts are not important. I am, however, saying that my trauma meter is full, and I need to back away from media or people who will put it over the edge because of their own hemorrhaging boundaries.

I am, of course, an advocate for sharing of ourselves, as you've read over and over in my blog, but I stand behind the knowledge and hope that others click to read this on purpose, that this blog is chosen as a media source for them, that I'm not dumping it on anyone. I also think perhaps it is time for me to begin walking farther away from the retelling of these stories, as repetition keeps them powerful.

I don’t know what the line of balance is between honesty and appropriateness. But I do know there is one.  

Pumpktoberfest

I’m sure I write about it every year, but as the wafts of pumpkin spice glide out of my coffee mug, I’m moved to write about it again.

Fall. Fall on the East Coast. Growing up where Fall means a certain smell of chill and decaying leaves. Kind of wet, sometimes, the piles you’ve helped stuff into enormous black plastic bags that I’m sure are illegal in California by now. And heaping them into the street, spilling off the curb, where you and your little brother will take a bounding head-start and leap into the center of the pile, the slightly moth-eaten leaves enveloping you up to your shoulders, softening your fall and bathing you and your senses in its musty, alive scent.

I noticed the leaves blowing last night, and here, they sound different as they tumble across the pavement; they sound dry and tired, each one brown and curled up on itself. Back East, they’re still half-alive when they fall, some of them. So they lilt and are soft, and … colored. How many people must write about the color of the leaves, the ombre fade of red and orange and gold. There’s something about their display that radiates joy and change and marks something miraculous, something that we, as humans, have the unique privilege to recognize and admire.

Pumpkins start popping up on doorsteps. We hang Indian corn, the same set of three tied to our front door for as long as memory serves, and three small palm-sized pumpkins decorate our own stoop, before squirrels begin to bite chunks out of them, and a jack-o-lantern we've spent all day carving.

Fall begins the part of the year when I felt and feel most loved and normal and inviting and, again, loved. It begins with Halloween, and follows through Christmas (celebrated at my dad’s folks house, who are/were vaguely Christian). The time of year when we feel swept up in something, in something communal, town-wide, Jersey-wide.

We celebrated, we decorated, we invited, and we lit fires in the fireplace, and ate my dad’s pumpkin pie. Our one time of year when my family could gather together in a semblance of normality, and put on the most average and happy face we could, and it was all decadent. The feeling of it was.

The change of the season with its scent and sights, and the length of the days, the incoming dusk approaching like a secret to encase you. Creeping slowly closer and closer, but welcoming, the cool still amenable, coaxing and gliding you home in the dim light, toward a mug of hot apple cider perhaps. Maybe one of the gallons we’d picked up from our annual apple-picking trip, harvesting hoards of apples, plucked in those wire basket poles that my brother and I would wave menacingly at each other, slipping on fallen rotting apples in the orchard, filling up woven wooden baskets we could barely carry out.

It’s the change of the light and the scent that’s been my indicator these California days. It’s not the same as Back East, but there’s still the aroma of crispness and an excitement.

I will begin to buy all things pumpkin, like the rest of America. Like the pumpkin pancakes my friend treated me to yesterday, and the abomination of flavored coffee that I’m drinking right now.

I will use the pumpkin ganache cookie recipe that was given to me by a college roommate and make the pumpkin pie that my dad’s passed down through trial and error – a recipe that would never, ever, include “Pumpkin Pie Spice,” but itself includes about 8 individual spices, which I own expressly for the pie’s creation.

Fall is a time of coming back to center, of reigning in the resources. Of whittling down excess and getting the necessities done in the light of day. It’s a time that rings with good memories, full, warm, joyous memories. Fall reminds me of the earth, of how the natural world has shaped my experience. And it tastes like the release of a constriction you've held the whole year, the exhale and inhale of a breath you haven't dared relax to take. 

To me, Autumn tastes like love.

Are you coming?

Yesterday was finally the day. I’ve been with this cast for a month in performance now, and once, even twice, a weekend, they’ve shed their wigs and sweat-soaked costumes and gone out to the bar.

I haven’t been. Partly because I don’t drink, partly because it gets so late, and partly because I’ve just been kinda shy about it. And last night, when the venue was gonna be a gay bar to dance, I decided it was time.

Sure, it’s a Friday night, I’d worked all day, rehearsed and performed all evening, and I had to be up this morning to sit for a portrait artist at 10am. … but you know what? Yesterday was a good day, and I felt invigorated.

I found out that I got cast in another production at the theater where I’m currently running. I got the large important work project done, with a few hiccups at the end of the day. And I finally felt like I beat the solo song that’s been beating me all run.

It was a good day. And dancing sounded perfect. I dance like a white girl, but I have fun doing it. Though, granted, there were other white girls there who definitely don’t fit into that “white girls can’t dance” model! But just the vitality and joy and jumping and ear-wide smile and circle of friends who are together only for a brief period. It was awesome.

I used to go dancing once or twice a month. Then maybe every other month. And now, I’m lucky to go once or twice a year. I would never listen to the music in real life. I know maybe one of the dozen songs that gets played. But it doesn’t matter.

I toss my growing-in hair around, I bounce on the balls of my feet, and I pump my fist in the air when it feels like time.

And it does. 

Having My Cake and Eating It Too.

(Yes, I’m gonna go there. Bear with me!)

In 12-step recovery it is custom to acknowledge lengths of sobriety or abstinence. Within the first year, we often acknowledge monthly mile-markers, and after a year, we acknowledge annual “birthdays” or “anniversaries.”

Why do this? Why stand up in front of others and say that you’ve accomplished something? Isn't that selfish and self-seeking? Why does it matter?

Well, the conventional wisdom is that it shows others that it’s possible. You’re not actually doing it for yourself, although that’s quite nice; you’re helping others to see that “one day at a time” adds up to months, and even years. You’re offering hope to others.

In our “belly-button birthday” world, why acknowledge our birthdays either? I have friends who eschew celebrating their birthdays. Why celebrate? It’s not like you *did* anything. You just lived another day.

And, just as with recovery, to me, that’s the point these days.

It’s to celebrate and share the fact that you made it. That you are alive. You did do something: You lived.

A former mentor of mine used to call this our “precious human life.” A Buddhist, her meaning is how rare it is to inhabit a human form this lifetime. We could have been a tree or a toad or a fruit fly, alive for 24 hours, unconscious. But we’re not.

We’re animated, active, Fate-affecting. And Fate-affected.

We’re constantly learning and changing and fighting and hoping and loving and hating and struggling and triumphing. We’re constantly forming ideas of who we are and who the world is; where we are and where we want to be.

We’re creating our lives with every breath we have the privilege to draw.

So when a co-worker the other day shushed everyone as we wished her a happy birthday, saying she doesn’t do birthdays, I did whisper to her, But imagine the alternative.

We do fight to be here, conscious or not; every day, we are making a decision to try. No matter what that looks like, even if it looks like stagnation or the mundane. Even if we are the tired, poor huddled masses. We try.

The celebration of a birthday is an acknowledgement of a year of living. A year of something precious and rare and teeming with uncertainty and, hopefully, love.

Today, I turn 33 years old. I have survived alcoholism, dysfunction, gang rape, and cancer.

I have formed and smashed relationships. I have melted and embraced. I have survived my own machinations. And become a metallurgist.

I, my friends, am an alchemist. And I honor us all today by showing you:

We live.

And how!

With love,m.

So, How’s the play?

Oh, you mean that surprise piece of happenstance that's underscored how unhappy I was at work by how happy I am in rehearsal and performance?

That sudden flurry of activity that challenges me to quiet my inner critic and do what I’ve written here I’ve always wanted to do: perform and sing?

This universe of actor grumbling and sweaty mic packs and not enough room at the backstage table and no air conditioning and that railing that was never put in right and voice cracking and line flubbing and lighting failures?

Well, it’s fantastic!!

The buoyant aura of hard work and camaraderie, laughter and support. Even when we’re elbowing for room at the table, or need to ask someone for the hundredth time to hold your wig while you comb the bejeezus out of it – you know you’re doing it in the service of something larger than you.

To be in performance is so much more fueling than in rehearsal – like when they described Sex and the City, they said “the City” was the 5th main character. In a live performance, the audience is also a character, a member of the staged community. “It’s a great audience tonight.” “They’re not really laughing.” “They’re so into it.” You measure your performance not necessarily by how much they laugh or applaud, but by what they give you and what you give them back. And sometimes what you get is bolstering, and sometimes it's not, but it's always present. Creating something that never was and will never be again.

Flubbed it tonight? Live theater! Try it again tomorrow. Got your ridiculously long wig stuck on a screw during an entrance? Have your co-actor unhook you and get on with it. Didn’t get a laugh on that line tonight? Do it again tomorrow anyway, because you think it’s funny. Try it differently. “Let’s get crazy,” to quote a line from the show.

In addition to all this, I’ve loved the backstage buzz. People are talking about auditions and other musicals, and arguing about their favorite. People are going over their next audition monologues and kibitzing about where they’ll audition next and who the casting director is and if you saw that one last play, and Boy Howdy what a success/disaster.

It’s thrilling to me! Someone so new to this world, it’s like drinking from an oasis. People are actually talking about theater, about acting, about what they’ll do next. And it’s inspiring me to continue trying.

I know it would be very easy for me to not do anything for a while, because of my upcoming job transition. But, this play is part of the reason why I’m changing career avenues. And much of the point of the changing avenue is to change my schedule to accommodate being in productions.

Hearing all the dressing room chatter about upcoming auditions, I find I want to do more. And, like I wrote yesterday, it could be easy for me to let this thread drop when it’s over – I know how to have a flurry of activity followed by inaction. But being in the belly of the action, hearing words fly back and forth and the encouragement and the excitement shared by the other actors… I’m demanding from myself that I make these outreach emails and audition calls now, before the play is through.

So, how’s the play? It’s changed and is changing my life.

It’s hard, and I feel inadequate, and I judge myself against more experienced singers. I dread these two lyrics in the whole show and challenge myself to not dread them, to be present and let it be what it’ll be because it’s not the all of who I am or what I’m giving.

The show is fun and takes effort and requires me to be present and accommodating and kind.

In short, the show requires me to live. And live bravely. Amen. 

In Training

Dear Blogosphere,

Apologies for the sporadic posts these few weeks. First there was sickness, then my mom in town, and then, of course, the Monday 5 a.m. shift at my gym.

And in thinking about the structure of the next few weeks, I don’t know that I can promise you anything more than a few pixels.

This Sunday began the first full week of rehearsals. 4 hours Sunday, 3 each night this week. And assumedly, each weeknight until opening night on September 19. It really is like a part-time job!

And so, I’ve come to think of my approach to this time as though I’m training for a marathon. To the best of my ability, I am going to aim to be completely conscious of the food I eat, the breaks I force myself to take from my desk at work, the sleep I manage to slip in between rehearsals and a day job.

I have this phrase I wrote down a hundred years ago that is taped to my closet wall and has taken me as long to come to understand and believe: Treating myself like a precious object will make me strong.

And I believe this is the perfect time to begin to implement “acting as if” that’s true (because, I somewhere believe it is). The body is a cautious and delicate scale. In these few weeks and months, I’ve gotten to see that my own scale is particularly sensitive (liver trouble, K.O.’d by a virus, my acupuncturist saying my body was ripe with signs of stress).

So, balance, intentionality. Vigilance. Yes, it’s the absolute busiest season of my work year – like a retailer between Black Friday and Christmas. But, as we’ve seen, I can’t show up to work if I’m not healthy, and I’m not healthy if I’m not intentional. So, I have to be my own trainer, stopping the clock to take a walk outside. Deciding, No, I won’t have 4 cups of coffee to power through my day. Yes, guy at the store who watched me put the apple back and reach for the organic one that’s a dollar more expensive, yes, I do need to eat this instead.

I’ve set up a “crash-pad” at my friend’s house who lives between work and the rehearsal theater so that I can go and chill out a few hours after work without having to either rush home and back or sit at a café and spend money or be interactive with anyone.

I’m going to begin going back to my gym a few mornings a week, instead of the once I’ve been doing. I’ve been meditating almost every morning for 10 – 20 minutes. And, we’ll see where the blog falls on the self-care scale, considering the few moments of sleep it ticks away.

Finally, I’d like to make sure that I get time in with my “brain drain” crew, spending an hour with people who normalize my experience and help my thinking to turn down in decibels.

"Meetings, Movement, and Meditation" has arisen as my prescription for health, and I am hoping to treat myself as the worthy patient and doctor of such self-care, which will enable me to show up fully, mind, body, spirit.

Because… I gotta tell ya, This shit is So.Much.Fun. !

Third Star to the Right...

Call me a navel-gazer, but as the Jewish High Holidays approach, I get reflective.

At work, I'm neck deep in preparation for them, and acutely aware of their significance on the calendar than I ever was: Two years ago, at the end of September, I was diagnosed with Leukemia on the evening of Yom Kippur, our "day of atonement," the day on which we are either "sealed into the book of life" for another year ... or not. It's a pretty significant day on the Jewish calendar, and I have come to hate it.

I hate what it "means," about being sealed or not into the book of life. I hate how much changed in an instant, with one sentence told to me by a doctor. I hate remembering the sore throat that began the whole prelude to my ER visit, which kept me working from home, and feeling so badly about it since it was a brand new job.

But, what remembering this day also does for me is cause me to reflect on what has changed, and what has happened in the two years hence. I have endeavored to create "a life worth living" for myself against all the internal railing and nay-saying, against all my own self-sabotage, against all the foot-dragging and self-immolation I had previously submitted to.

In the last two years, I have dragged myself kicking and screaming into a life I consider worth living.

This isn’t to say that I’d done nothing beforehand, but here’s a list of experiences I've had & actions I've taken in the last two years, post-cancer:

Hosted my Creativity and Spirituality Workshop

Began blogging daily again

Went to Hawaii for the first time

Got a bedframe for the first time since childhood

Sang at a café with friends

Joined their band on bass

Played shows out, nearly once a month

Started ushering at Music shows for free & have seen, among others:

     - Paul McCartney (about to see him again next week)
     - Red Hot Chili Peppers
     - Doors guitarist Robby Krieger play "People Are Strange" with Warren Haynes...!
     - About to see Dave Matthews

Bought a car

Celebrated July 4th near my old hometown with my mom and brother

Busked on the streets of Oakland and SF singing Christmas caroles

Got real headshots

Auditioned for plays and musicals

Got cast in 4 shows

Modeled for friends

Submitted photos to modeling agencies

Visited Seattle for the first time

Visited Boston to try out a new relationship experience

Dated with craziness

Dated with less craziness

Got laid well

Got laid poorly

Visited a best friend and her newborn baby for a week

Hiked Tilden & Marin

Took accredited acting classes

Took voice lessons
Flew a plane(!) -- and landed it ;)

Any of these things could have happened beforehand (and some were indeed happening, with less gusto, determination & regularity), but most of the activities on this list are new to me.

I was talking with a friend a few months ago, another cancer survivor, and she said that she feels complete with the world – that if she died today, she’d be okay with that. I noticed how not okay I'd have been with that; virulently not okay.

Granted, she’s about 10 years older than me, has a daughter, teaches in a way she loves, is married.

And I think those are key differences. Having created your own family, having a career you feel impassioned about. Those are items that are not yet on my above list, and I want them to be before I expire, thank you.

I do however, write this list to reflect to myself that there are things that I’ve done that are miraculous, fun, and inspiring for anyone to have done, let alone l'il ole me. I forget this, frequently.

It’s hard to admit this here, and it’s not precisely the entire truth, but if I were to expire sooner than later... Well, I won't say, "If I died today, I'd be okay with that," but that I am exponentially grateful for this role I’ve recently landed. To play in a musical, comedic role at a community theater is the cat’s pajamas. (If I have to go soon, I hope it's after we open!) 

When I returned from teaching English in South Korea almost 10 years ago, I said I was coming home to “break onto Broadway.” Then instead, I got sober!

And now, 8 years since then, I’m taking steps that are developmentally appropriate to that dream. It’s in the right direction, even if I never get there. It's my impassioned avocation, even if it’s not a vocation.

I do not wish to expire soon. I have more experiences I want to add to that list, and more sanity and evenness I wish to accrue. But I feel more comfortable now than I had been even a few months ago in noticing that I am accumulating the experiences that, to me, express a full and well-lived life.

I wouldn’t have as many regrets if it were to happen soon. I have a few regrets of things I’ve done & ways I've re/acted in the last two years, sure. It’s not as if I’m a saint, and sometimes I still choose experiences I know are more damaging than useful.

But instead of waiting to be "inscribed in the book of life" by some entity or religion or benchmarks of success otherwise prescribed to me by my childhood, my faith, my inner critic...

Instead I am coming to believe that I am following my own North Star: I may never get there, but I'm headed in the "right direction."

And for the first time ever, I deeply feel that. 

We Can Do This the Easy Way . . .

Why does nobody ever put a period after that phrase?: 

We can do this the easy way. Period.

I heard it again on a radio interview the other day: Well, anything worth doing is hard. It’s the hard work that makes it worth while. Nothing good ever came from taking the easy road.

Really?

Here is a brief list of activities that I find most worthy and fueling in the world:

Holding a baby

Making conversation with a child

Laughing with friends

Singing showtunes with my mom and brother

Singing camp songs while my brother plays guitar

Dancing

Not one of these things is “hard.” Not one requires advanced degrees, mountains scaled, or scars incurred.

Each of these things are, for me, Easy. Joyful. Miraculous.

This value our culture has attached to struggle and adversity and toil is sickening and disheartening.

Why would we try to do anything if we know we’re gonna get our butts kicked in the process?

Now, I know what they’re getting at. I know that I wrote just yesterday that showing up is hard and scary, so I don’t know that I have a soap-box to stand on here. But, I am tired of being harangued by the idea that I have to struggle in this life to do anything worthwhile.

That anything that comes easily, naturally, feels good, joyful or pleasurable must have a toll paid in flesh.

Sure, caring for children all of the time is taxing; and I’m not a parent, just an eager attendant and friend to others' kids, which demands its own responsibility. Making the time to show up with and for friends, and to maintain friendships does take effort. Dancing means making myself vulnerable to being seen, which requires taking a deep breath before diving in.

But it doesn’t follow that these things are struggles, adversities, or stories of redemption.

God, how we love a redemption story. We hate people who “have it easy.” We want to hear how muddy the water was you had to slog through toward your goal. We want you to express fear and isolation and doubt and a “dark night of the soul” before you are worthy of a story of triumph, joy and ease.

What kind of fucking schadenfreude society are we?

I “get” that we all want to feel a kind of connection with those who have struggled, because often we too find ourselves in struggle and we don’t want to feel alone. It feels disconnected to hear a story of ease, success, and Life’s mercy. Because we don’t have or believe we can have that ourselves. And so we want you in the mud with us.

Sometimes we do slog through mud. I get that, too. But not everything in life that’s worth doing requires that. Sometimes we cross the bridge, our toes are not calloused, there is no troll to pay off, and we simply arrive at our destination.

I know that doesn’t make great drama. But I’m not looking for drama. I’m looking for joy. 

My Brain Reads Like a Cafe Gratitude Menu...

I am pure, undiluted joy.

Honestly, you could culture my blood for Potions class.

There was an impromptu dance party.

I left an incoherent bubbling message on my mom’s voicemail, and called my brother, too. Who told me I’m awesome. And who I told back that he is, too.

For those who don’t follow my Facebook feed, I found out this morning that I got the role of Morticia in “Addams Family: The Musical.”

The one I don’t even know how I found the audition call for. The one I auditioned for this weekend to my own mediocre reviews. The one I was called back for, to my own mediocre reviews.

I’m sensing a trend here: What I think, and what reality tells me, may be two very different things.

And, here, for the better.

The astounding thing to me is this is the second lead role I’ve been offered in as many months. From, “you know your height gets in your way” to “please join us” … Wow.

There’s a quote that called me to sit for a moment in silence on my bed, breathing heavy from the fist pumping, Elaine-thumbs-out dance party:

Don’t forget to pause a minute and thank G-d for everything.

Thank you. Thank you, Universe, for conspiring for me. Thank you, Molly, for showing up even though you’re scared and doubtful. Thank you, FRIENDS, for receiving those phone calls and texts that ask you to send me love and support. Thank you, friends, for sending love and “likes” and hope.

I need you way more than you know.

And you always show up, which is marvelous – like, something to marvel at. Really.

The play will run mid-September to mid-October. This means that I will spend my October 7th birthday in performance.

I spent my 30th birthday with fondue and friends. I spent my 31st in a hospital bed, saying, "Next year: Brunch, huh?"

I celebrated 32, indeed, at brunch with a dear friend and her two kids whose laughter is part of my salvation.

And, god willing, I will spend 33 in pursuit of a dream I have let languish in a faded costume closet. The clothing of another woman in another life.

Life moves and shakes, it do.

And part of my work is to accept that these costumes, these roles, these friends, this love, this life … are for me, too.

Let’s throw open the doors, pull out these moth-eaten dreams, and hold them up to reality. They may be more solid than I’ve wanted to know.

Thank. You. 

Hum a few bars?

There’s a famous story in our nuclear family history:

My brother was maybe five years old. He swaggered into the room. Feet planted, arms wide, he opened his lips and belted, “GOTTA DANCE!... Gotta Dance, Gotta Dance, Got ta Daaance.”

This, friends, is a move from a song in Singin’ in the Rain. My family trades in musicals. Broadway and movie musicals. On frequent rotation in our VCR were Singin’ in the Rain, Meet me in St. Louis, Calamity Jane, On The Town. Eventually, there’d be Chorus Line and Cabaret with their more "adult" themes; even Flying Down to Rio and Top Hat, from in the Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers oeuvre. My mom, brother and I would trade lines like currency, like code, and for us, they were.

All four of us together, with my dad, weren’t a family of deep conversation. Instead, we’d throw these bones of reference to one another as a note of connection and a wink. One commonly used phrase in our house was, “What’s that from, again?” We were almost always speaking in movie lines, not just musicals. Watching movies was what we were able to do together, to spend time the 4 of us, without having to talk, but able to be in the same room at the same task.

Unknown is what might have happened if we'd allowed my dad to join in on the impromptu a cappela fun. We always cut him off, because he couldn’t sing a bar; the trees weeped. But he could whistle, and play the harmonica, and there’s even an old banjo lying around that apparently was his in his younger days.

But, for the most part, it was me, mom and Ben. Trading lines, lobbing tunes to one another, volleying them back, and joining in. So much of my growing up, I see us, in and around the kitchen bursting into a melody. Me, on the melody, actually, and Ben on the harmony. I never had quite the ear for harmony, and he did; still does.

For my bat mitzvah party when I was 13, instead of the DJ party most of my friends requested, I wanted to see a musical with my friends. We lived a short drive from Manhattan, and many of my friends had never seen a Broadway show.

We went to Phantom of the Opera. In a short party bus, about a dozen of us rode into New York City with Nightmare Before Christmas playing on the thick, boxy t.v. screens, since it was mid-October, right after my 13th birthday.

My mom and I’d created gift packages for my friends, little heart shaped wicker boxes with a fake rose with a plastic water droplet on it; a cassette tape of the soundtrack; and a mug with the Phantom mask on it that turned from black to white when you filled the mug with something warm.

I was extraordinarily lucky to have been to some shows already, my aunt, a stalwart New Yorker taking me to see Guys & Dolls and later, How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying starring the inimitable Matthew Broderick (if you think him singing Twist & Shout in Ferris Beuler was something… well, I assure you, this man has charisma. And talent.)

But the Phantom theater was magnificent. There’s an enormous chandelier that crashes into the stage during the middle of the play, and we were sitting right behind it, this wide, gold, frail thing about to murder the ingénue. For a group of giddy, hopped up tween girls, this was a pretty cool experience. Well, for me it was, anyway ;)

Musicals are in my blood. I was raised on their fervor, their simplicity, their saccharine lyrics. And I love them. I know they can be cheesy and I know it “doesn’t make sense” that people bust into song all the time. But, you see,

In my house, we did. 

Card Reading

I had very specific plans for when I came home last night: watch Apollo 13, “take care” of myself, and go to bed by 10.

Only one of these happened.

For most of the day, I was out & about in lots of conversation with lots of people, expending lots of up, outgoing energy, and I wanted to counter it with some quietude. Before coming home for the evening, I was in a coffee shop, finishing up some extra work, and addressing cards for some friends.

I didn’t have the address for one, so I texted her for it, and told her that I must have 10 of her envelopes at home with her address on it; in fact, I had one of hers on my mantle.

She asked me which one, but I couldn’t recall exactly, and told her I’d send her a photo of it when I got home.

This, was the first domino toward the hijacking of my evening.

I did come home, take a photo and send it to her, a lovely decorated envelope with stickers and curly-cues and kind words, like all of hers. Next to it on my mantle (well, the top of a bookshelf, really) were a card from the director and one from the assistant director of the play I was in in April, with deliciously glowing, appreciative, complimentary, and supportive words. Such kindness and such a reflection of my being “seen” by them, in one of my aspiring avocations. The last one up there was a thank you card from my best friend on Long Island’s wedding, thanking me for being there and what a treat it was to have me there, literally in her bed, the night before the wedding, and helping/watching her get ready the next day; that it wouldn’t have been the same without me.

You can see why I keep these things.

But, it was also time to probably pack them away, do some cleaning. And I wanted to send more photos of my friend’s envelopes to her, since I knew she was in a space to need her own (literal) sparkle reflected back to her. 

And, down the rabbit hole we go, into the desk drawer where I keep cards, envelopes so I can remember return addresses (yes, I know there’s a better way), and art inspiration bits, like postcards from galleries or pages torn from magazines.

I’ve known this drawer needs attending to. If, god forbid, I were to croak, it would be hell for the person cleaning it out, and I know they’d just trash the lot, since, who keeps someone else’s old greeting cards.

But, also, it’s unusably full at the moment. Because in it, too, are all the cards I received when I was initially diagnosed with Leukemia in late September 2012, and also a host of them came in around the Hanukkah/Christmas season that year.

I’ve been avoiding having to carve through them. Because how can you discard those messages?

When I was sick, I lined all the cards up on the walls of my hospital room. I taped every single one up around me, to remind me of the network of support and love that I had. Each card, a message of love, faith, healing, fortitude, just for me. You couldn’t come into my hospital room without immediately knowing that I was loved. And how f’ing important was that.

This was not the room of a dying woman. This was not the room of a woman told she had a 40% chance of living through the next 5 years, even with treatment. This was not the room, either, of a woman who looked like a patient, despite the baldness, weightloss, and IV stuck into my arm and chest. I wore jeans and a sweater, like everyone else. I was a human, not a patient. I was a woman loved, not a pity case.

How rallyingly important was that to know, feel, and remember every single day.

But, when the trips to the hospital were finally over, and it was time to reacclimate to living in my apartment full-time, what to do with those cards?

I’m a keeper of things. Sentiments, magazine pages, interesting rocks I find on a mountain or beach. I wouldn’t say I’m a hoarder, but I do have a bag of gently used tissue paper in my closet … but it’s folded neatly and in color blocks, so it’s okay, right?!

I also have a bag in my closet of the covers to theater booklets of plays I’ve been to; movie stubs; plane tickets; the brochure for a place I went camping or an attraction I toured.

The trouble is, I’m not a scrap-booker, so I just kinda carry this bag of non-chronologically ordered “crap” with me from home to home. But, that’s okay. One day, like the cards, I’ll go through them.

But, last night was for the card drawer.

It was slow-going. I had to take a deep breath before taking the rubber band from around the batch of 2012 holiday cards. I knew this was going to take a while and probably bring things up.

But I began. And with each card, I was reminded of why I’d kept them until now.

Here’s the one from my college classmate, now in LA, saying she’d enclosed a gift card to Trader Joes.

Here’s one from a former colleague saying she loves getting the bloggish updates I was posting then to my lotsahelpinghands website.

Here’s one handwritten from an Etsy company saying “a friend” was thinking of me and wanted me to stay warm. This, I remember, accompanied a package of 6 “chemo caps” ranging from thin to thick, the one I wore most, a fuzzy leopard print that kept me feeling fun and warm. I still don’t know who sent those, as there was no name. Thank you, whoever you are.

Last night, with each, if I knew the sender and their cell number, I took a photo of the card, and sent it as a text with a note of thanks to them. Each text, a reminder to us both of what friendship means, even for people who aren’t close.

It was nearly 11 when I finally decided to stop. I’ve barely made a dent into the drawer. But was able to cull a few things out, deciding that with some, having a photo of them now is enough.

At the closing of this activity, I found myself in soft tears of gratitude. So many people surrounded me with love. With funny cards and sentiments, with crazy wacked-out envelopes, with heartfelt messages of hope and healing. And only a handful of these folks were people I keep in regular touch with. So many people came out of the woodwork to support me.

I was told once during the time I was sick, that I had no idea how many people were rooting for me. I agreed. I knew I had no idea, and I knew that was astounding and one of the greatest showings of human generosity that I’ve witnessed.

I had priests, rabbis, Muslims, and Buddhists praying for me. My mom’s hairdresser and my Aunt’s student. I had a class of kindergarteners praying for me.

I remember, too, when I was sick, trying to figure out how I could send thank you cards to everyone who’d contacted me, but I could only handle a few.

In this retread through the cards, in sending them back out to their sender with my note of thanks, I hope I am closing that loop of love, and letting you all know:

Your prayers worked, and I love you back.  

"Only Her Hairdresser Knows For Sure!"

I am likely not the only woman to tear up at the sighting of a gray hair on her head. But I may be one of the few who wells up with tears of gratitude.

Yesterday, during my morning primping, I noticed a gray hair. I usually don’t pull them out; this isn’t the first I’ve noticed. But this one, I decided to.

About 5 inches of silver, shiny, light-catching hair. 5 inches that have grown back since it all fell out from chemo in late 2012.

Call me crazy, but I’ve never been scared of going gray. I had none at all before cancer, and several now. But, even before then, I always thought of it as a rite of passage. As a crowning achievement, really. You’ve made it. You are alive to go gray at all. You are passing into the stage of life that is for richness, boldness, satisfaction, self-esteem and a greater degree of self-assurance.

If there’s anything I’ve learned from reading about aging generations, it’s that so much of our self-questioning begins to fall away once we reach “a certain age.” We begin to think less about how others see us, and more to question what we want to leave as a legacy. And this brings with it so much reflection and truth-finding.

Who wouldn’t want to age into that category?

Surely, you don’t have to turn 50 to begin to assess your values and your desires for the remainder of your years. Like me, and surely others, you can do that at most any age. But it helps to have some experience behind you to make those choices from a place of peace, not fear.

The first memoir I ever looked at, I didn’t read.

I saw it on a shelf in Borders (when it still existed) about 7 or 8 years ago. I noted the title, looked at the flap, and went on with my day. But I never forgot about it, and last year finally picked it up to read.

The title? Going Gray: What I Learned about Beauty, Sex, Work, Motherhood, Authenticity, and Everything Else That Really Matters. A woman’s exploration of what that means to “go gray” in our culture and society. A lifelong hair dyer, she made the decision to give up the illusion, and embrace whatever lay under the chemicals, for better or worse.

Author Anne Kreamer looks at the history of dying our hair; goes “undercover” as a woman trying to reinvent herself to re-enter the workforce to see if image consultants will tell her to dye her now growing-out grays (none do); and comes to discover that with her new look comes a new clothing color scheme, and a new confidence.

She also doesn’t purport the superiority of letting her hair grow out. She talks with successful women who do and don’t dye, and let’s them have their experience. All she can speak to is her own.

Surely, it helps that she goes gray in a “nice” way, with silvery and dark chrome strands. Which is much the way I anticipate I will.

With my dark coloring, I imagine that I will go silver, instead of stale gray, or as my mom describes her (dyed) fading blond: dirty dishwater.

So, that "beauty in the beast" helps my acceptance, I’m sure.

But what brought me to tears yesterday as I stood there, admiring this newly-found strand, now plucked and held like a precious object in my hand, was the reality and giddy reminder I feel every time I find one: I made it. I am alive to have gray hair.

I’m alive to see what will happen with it: if they’ll turn out all spidery texture and I’ll lament I ever praised finding them. If I’ll consider dying it after all. Or if I’ll love every single thread of life these gray hairs represent.

I tear up when thinking about this, because it’s true. Because, like someone admiring a sunset, or their sleeping child, or the taste of a food never eaten, it means I’m alive. Which itself means I have a chance and a choice to make my life whatever I want it to be.

My gray hair represents possibility, transformation, and authenticity.

Who wouldn’t rejoice? 

Not Knot.

Last night, I listened to a woman share her intense pain and entanglement with her past. In listening to her, I realized something crucial for myself: I don’t actually feel that way anymore.

Despite the trailing tendrils and my habitual gnawing back at it, my past and I are actually not so enmeshed anymore – at least, as I listened to her, not nearly as much as we were. No. That’s not accurate. We’re just not. It’s there. I poke at it, like a plate of live octopus bits, still wriggling on the plate, long after everyone’d finished jamming them into hot sauce and tried to chew and swallow before they attached to the inside of your gullet. (Uh… See: My years living in South Korea for reference!)

But, I poke at it, and if I do, it’ll squirm. But for the most part, my past isn’t a thing crawling toward and suffocating me anymore.

Listening to this woman, hearing her say that she can’t seem to get under her past, I realized very clearly that I have. Again, it’s there, but it’s not a shackle around my ankle anymore; it’s just some dust I can kick off my shoe.

(Apparently, this'll be a metaphor-heavy blog!)

I have liked to think that my past is something I’m still slogging through, carrying around behind me like a behemoth, its hot putrid breath at my neck asking me how it feels, whether I am able to ignore it now, How ‘bout now, Now?

I’ve liked to think that my past is still a quicksand pit I’m wading through, slow as molasses, fetid and shoes lost.

But, something about having this woman’s story as comparison (not better or worse, simply different), I got to see into a mirror that I haven’t been able to hold up for myself.

I am not there anymore. I am under my past. I’ve excavated, charted, spelunked and had more than one canary die down there with me.

But, in the end, in the now, we’re kind of done there. There’s a cave we’ve dug down into, we’ve opened the land around it, we’ve cared and cleansed and ameliorated the land. We’ve begun to forget that it was a horrid, dark, and dismal place, now in the open space that we’ve created from it, and we’ve used that dank soil to plant new things. Exposed to the sun, it’s something new, now.

(I do like me my extended metaphors!)

(Though, actually, I’ve done this exact work in visualization meditation over many years, opening the cave of my pain and my past, exploring, mourning, and later watching flowers begin to sprout where there was only hurt. I’ve done this work of opening my past and my pain up. It’s finished, or as finished as it can be.)

So, I got to see something yesterday that I haven’t been able to see yet: The truth.

As I listened with compassion to this woman tell us, tearful and anguished, that she is so knotted with her past she can’t see her way out, I wrote in my notebook:

            My past is really not that knotted anymore.

                        Actually.

Band Aid.

You know, it was right around a year ago last June that I stood up with a group of 4 other people and played bass with a band in front of actual people in an actual venue. – I’d started playing in May.

This month, I’m being invited to do so again.

I’ve picked up my bass literally once in the last 6 months, since our final show on New Year’s Eve, or the final show I played with them before I left the band to pursue theater.

This switch, this focus of my energies in one creative direction (one that I’ve always wanted to pursue, but never let myself try or admit or commit to) has turned out pretty darn well in these last few months: I got real headshots, auditioned about a dozen times, performed in one play, one staged reading, and am preparing as the lead in a play at the end of the summer.

These are all great things.

But I miss the band.

I miss the immediate gratification of playing with people. I miss the noise, the movement, the sound, the collaboration. I miss the laughter.

Theater is performance; being a musician is a performance; but there’s a difference. The former is literally more staged. It’s not like I have acres of experience in either, and maybe I simply fell in with a great group of people for my first band – which I did. But whatever the formula is for happiness, I felt that when I played.

A friend once asked me what it was like to play with the band. What it felt like. And I took her question with me to band practice that week, and noticed how I felt as we fiddled and fixed and went over and over and moved into a rhythm, and went totally off the reservation with funny lyrics and made-up progressions: I was smiling. I was bouncing on the balls of my bare feet – the only way I could practice – and I noticed that I felt content, engaged, in the moment, fun, funny, “on.” That’s what “happy” felt like.

Next Sunday, I’ll get to practice with a new group of folks, a friend and his friend, to prepare for a potential show in July, before my theater rehearsal gets going. I’m feeling nervous and jittery – wanting to get the music charts NOW so I can practice, be perfect, be better – because if you haven’t followed along, I’ve only been playing a year, and not that consistently at that!

I want to build my calluses back up. I want to remember where C is on the fret board. I want to bounce on the carpet in my bare feet.

I love this theater stuff, … but I love the band better.

(P.S. I’m just reminded to reflect that it was only a little while ago that I wrote here that I wanted to “band” again … and here it is. Word.)

Those Three Little Words.

I said them.

I can’t believe I said them.

It was my turn, my turn to say something, and I could feel your eyes watching me, waiting, and I just blurted them out. It was just what came to mind as I sat there in those few silent beats, my thoughts whipping from one thing to another, the split second where a thousand things could have been said, but instead of anything else... I said those three little words:

“God is Love.”

Oh, god! Did I really just say that?? Did I really just say the words that for years, eons it seems, I’ve gagged at, rolled my eyes at, laughed at, scoffed at?

Did those words really just pop into my head and out of my mouth? Oh god, I’d take them back, but…

I have despised this phrase: “God is Love.” The first time I heard it, I think I vomited in my mouth a little. It was so despicably saccharine and hippie and idiotic. There have been few phrases in the whole English language that have caused such antipathy and revulsion in me than this one.

“God is Love,” ew. Really? Just, Ew.

But, the first time I heard it must have been nearly 8 years ago now. I was 24 when I first heard it; I’m 32 now, and apparently, somewhere in that time my rejection of that phrase, that idea, that sticky ewwy gooey warmth, has softened.

This is as much news to you, as it is to me.

I sat with a group of folks yesterday morning, and at the end of our time together, a piece of paper with affirmations printed on it is passed around. You can choose to say one of these, or make up your own, or simply pass. There are phrases like,

I am enough

I have enough

I do enough

There is enough time

There is enough love

There is enough money

I am right where I’m supposed to be

My life works

I am not my income

I am not my debts

I am lovable exactly as I am.

At various times since I’ve sat with this group, different phrases have appealed to me. Some don’t, sometimes I make my own up. Lately, I really like this line from another part of the literature which reads, We will come to recognize a power greater than ourselves as the source of our abundance.

I like this, because it means I’m not the source, I don’t have to wrench or squeeze or wrest things out of life. I also like it because abundance can mean so many things, and affect so many areas: The Source of my abundance of: The physical, financial, emotional, locational, material, spiritual, comedic, familial, romantic. Of my thought life, my priorities, my perseverance, travel, prosperity, boundaries, action. Abundance of my vulnerability, intimacy, sexuality, authenticity. My focus. My laughter, my joy, my health, my vitality.

A power greater than myself is the source of all these and more, because surely, I am not the one who makes my heart beat, the trees flower, or puts those two new kitchen chairs out on the street just when I was thinking of needing new ones. Something else, just the anima of life itself, or simply gravity that causes the moon to phase, is greater than me, doing things without my hand, and offering me more than I've begun to know. 

But. God as Love?????

Ick.

And yet, it happened. The sheet with the affirmations passed around to me, it was my turn, and as I scanned the list, none of them spoke to me, and I was in the act of passing the sheet to the next person when those three little words escaped my lips.

I was taken aback. I was shocked at what had happened, what must have transpired in almost 8 years. I said something I thought I would never, ever say. Didn’t ever want to be like those saps who say things like God is Love.

And yet. M’ F’er. I did.  

Yo' Mama.

Apologies, reader, for the rain delay (lack of blog) yesterday. It was this wonderful Spring rain in the morning, and instead of sitting at my stoic kitchen table, and peering out the window while writing morning pages, meditating, and composing a blog, I took my mug of coffee into my studio’s bedroom/living room, tucked myself into the corner of my couch against the window, and sat next to my cat on the arm of the couch watching the rain make everything greener.

It was warm and cozy, and I just couldn’t bring myself to break the calm of the spell. The sound of the rain, the steam from the mug, watching my cat’s chest expand and contract with each breath. Oh, calm! How I miss you! Oh, rest, you ineffable minx!

I let my thoughts roam over the landscape, and thought how I missed my mom, when she was here last, and sat on this very couch with this very cat. And so, I called her. – Strange and funny thing to do, eh? Think of someone, and actually call them? Not text or poke or email – but make a phone call – God, it’s luxury and connection incarnate.

I knew she’d just returned from her annual trip with her beau to some Caribbean island (Back, Envy, BACK!), and even with only a half hour (barely enough time for us to scratch the surface of a conversation), I called to find out how it went.

I love talking to her. Sure, there are times when it’s grating, and I have to remind myself she’s human with flaws and working on them. But, on the whole, especially these past several years, talking with her is more refueling than it is draining – which is a gift.

She’s just hilarious. Our conversations meander, and side-track, and disambiguate, and non-sequiter, yet always find their way back, like six degrees of separation. It’s these things that I know I’ll miss most when she’s gone. And why I’m trying to get what I can now, to call, and make plans to visit, and email when I can.

Call it morbid, call it realistic. I just want to store it all. Engage in it all.

Coincidentally, one of the anecdotes from her trip was about interacting with the armed guard at the airport, the process of going through customs and homeland security, and the stark seriousness of it all. And, so, as she is wont to do, she planted a funny sentence into the bleak and rote exchange with the check-point guard.

He cracked a smile and then cracked wise. Suddenly, it was an exchange between people instead of objects.

I told her how synchronistic it was that just this very week I wrote a blog about learning from her to talk with strangers, to make our interactions with one another just that much more engaged and alive.

I shared with her my own story about being in Port Authority around the Bush Iraq invasion, and bantering briefly with a guard walking through the orange-tiled halls about exchanging his gun for some flowers.

I love that she does this, and that I do it, as I wrote the other day. It’s part of what makes this life worth living and engaging in, part of the surprise of being alive. When you engage, you don’t know what will happen, you’re rolling the ball onto the Roulette wheel. Maybe the person won’t want to play, maybe they’ll look at you with a “look, I just want to clock out, please stop talking to me” impatience. But, perhaps, both of your days will be lightened just that little bit. Maybe, in fact, it’s the only time you talk to someone all day, as can happen in our disconnected world of modern conveniences.

I asked my “intuitive” once what she thought about my moving back to New York-ish to be closer to her, since sometimes it really is painful to live so far away, to not get to pick up the phone and say, hey that movie’s playing on 72nd tonight, wanna go? Or, I just saw this exhibit is opening at the FIT Fashion Museum, meet up this week? Or, can you come with me to Sephora, I need to find a new blush?

Honestly, it pains my heart to not get to do that with her.

But, my intuitive, whenever this was, a year or so ago, had a pretty logical answer: If you go, you’ll be her caretaker, and that will not be good for you.

It’s true. There’s a fine line from being involved to being too involved, and there’s a pattern of being her caretaker that I don’t want to repeat from my childhood. And it’s a role I know I can easily fall into, without strong enough boundaries: Love as Caretaking, instead of Love as Equanimity.

The jury has been out indefinitely on my move back to the East coast. It doesn’t have to be New York. It doesn’t have to look like moving into caretaking distance. It can look like, "I’m coming down or up for the weekend, let’s do stuff," which is easier than "I’m taking a cross-country flight."

Luckily, I am not in charge of my destination, I’m only in charge of doing the work. Perhaps my boundaries become stronger, perhaps I am better able to stay out of the grooved rut of caretaker. And perhaps they don’t, and I allow myself to say, That’s okay, Mol.

But, on a rainy Saturday morning, I can still give her a call, and we can laugh, meander, and enhance one of the cherished relationships I will ever have.

Being There

See, there’s two things I’d forgotten in all the sturm&drang of rehearsals & work & sick & crossing bridges & lack of down time: I’m actually good at this acting thing. And I enjoy it. 

In the maelstrom of preparation, I forgot why I was doing this.

As I sat in our reserved cast seats in the front row of the audience, watching the other actors before my scene perform, I got a few minutes to gather myself, and reflect. Something the director said during the “let’s get PUMPED” speech before we got into costume helped to remind me: She said, This is for you. This isn’t for your friends, your parents, your partners: This is for you.

This is for me, I repeated to myself. I remembered that this isn’t for a resume, for a good story to tell when I’m older; this isn’t for accolades or for money. I am doing this acting thing, because I enjoy it. Because it’s FUN. Because, once I do get through rush hour traffic from Berkeley, once I do find parking in the Mission behind some dude drinking Steel Reserve and selling electronics out of his car, once I do get upstairs through the weird haunted building, I come to a black box theater.

In that theater, I’m there to have fun, to enjoy myself, and to share myself. I’m there to engage in something I thoroughly enjoy, just for the sake of it. How fucking novel.

It was and is nice to have been sought out during the wine&cheese reception after the show by a cute little gay boy and his girl friend, to have them sidle up during a conversation with a beamish grin, and tell me how great my performance was. That they got chills. To ask if I did that thing with my hands on purpose, and wow, you did? Wow. That was so great.

It’s gratifying to know that something that I actually enjoy doing is enjoyed and appreciated by others—that’s true, too. (We are only so spiritual!)

But then, isn’t that the point of theater, too—to affect another person. To affect an audience, to help them experience something? Sure, Mol, sure. Yes, you can enjoy the accolades, too. As long as they’re not what’s driving you.

In the chaos of rushing to work, to rehearsal, to home, to do it all over the next day, I began to feel weary. I began to feel like maybe I’m not cut out for this—that maybe this hustle is a younger person’s game. Maybe it’s too late for me to be high-tailing it all over creation in service of a pipe dream.

I really was beginning to wonder if I would audition again.

Part of my delay/hesitance recently, is that I knew I was in a production that was taking all my time & memorization space. Part of it is that I know I’m going out of town in April, and didn’t want to audition for anything new when I’ll be gone. (Cuz, it seems to me that working actors can’t really take vacation…)

And, part of it was/is just plain exhaustion and feeling grueled instead of fueled.

But, I am getting to see that perhaps this is just part of the process. Part of that “put in the hard work to enjoy the results” thing that I’m so loathe to do most of the time. HARD work? Meh.

But, perhaps that’s what’s required here, to get the feeling I had last night. Sure, I fucked up some lines, but people didn’t seem to notice. I still got to feel the sense of “right place.” In the chair, on the stage, in front of lights so bright you can only make out shapes in the audience; hearing the sound cues, the mounting tension of my scene, the mounting tension I bring to my scene. Getting to be there, getting to sit in that chair and show you what I’ve got – It was... well, enlivening.

There’s a phrase I’ve heard to name those times when you are so engaged that you feel out of time, out of the chaos of place, when you are so in something that “time just flies,” – it’s called being “in the flow.” When you are so engaged in what you are doing, when you are so enjoying what you are doing that you are somehow matching the heartpace of the Universe. When for moments or even hours, you just feel in it – your speed aligns with the speed of life, and you flow, you coast, you glide.

In it. To be IN IT. In life.

There was a moment, too, as I sat in the dark audience awaiting my scene that I remembered something I sometimes do: I survived cancer to be here, and I am HERE. Staking a claim. Making a name. Claiming my own.

The gratitude I felt to get to be in that PUMP YOU UP circle before the show: All chaos, time pressure, toll bridges are lost – and I’m just there.