mas88's Xanga

I'm Moving

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 02:49:31 GMT

I'm moving. Not just from downtown to the upper east side.

But also from here to www.dailyangst.wordpress.com

After five years at this site...xanga has grown a little old and tired. Familiar, yes, but also...everyone else has left and it's lonely.

More to come. Trying to migrate the archive.

Wadden Sea

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 08:13:10 GMT

I'm in Denmark, still.

I've been traveling with Shay for the past few days, and have come to the conclusion that I can remain in one place for about three days before the jetlag catches me, and then it consumes me.

We were in Copenhagen, then train'd to Jutland, now back in Copenhagen. Things have started to look the same, everywhere in the world. DSB trains look like Metro North trains. Danes look like Germans look like Californians. The only place I can be relaxed is New York.

We went from Copenhagen to Jutland, literally across the country, to the North Sea coast. The land is incredibly flat; the sky unfathomably vast. The beaches are not marred with dunes in the way California beaches or Long Island beaches are--they are almost like moonscapes in their barren expansiveness.

I marvel, sometimes, at the pace of my life over the last few months. But also over the last two years. Two years ago, my brother was in jail and was a drug addict. Now, he's sober and on the dean's list. Two years ago, I weighed 88 lbs. Now, I'm running marathons and not waging a private battle for my life.

So, Jutland.

It's the strangest place, really. We went to kulturnatten, in the oldest town in Denmark. Steeped in Nordic history, we drank the spiced mead and watched the Viking passion plays. People dressed up in old costumes, asking us about their gods in languages we didn't understand because we looked the part; we looked Danish. People who looked and acted the same way people looked and acted at my aunt and uncle's church in Virginia; the same ways people looked and acted where I went to highschool.

People are all the same really. Communities are all the same. Autumn is the same everywhere...where it's cold, and people gather in community centers and churches and put on shows and listen to music and come together and noses run and cheeks are red and candles glow and the promise of holidays glisten in the distance.

We stood, the next day, on the shores of the North Sea, looking out.

"I swim in the Pacific in winter, you know," Shay said, removing her boots and socks; looking ridiculous in her borrowed fisherman's sweater.

"That's dumb," I said, hugging my coat closer around the zig-zaggy sweater I'd been assigned by our Danish host, looking doubly ridiculous in a too-big sweater that made my coat too tight, a slouchy beret, and expensive, buggy sunglasses. But I removed my shoes and socks too.

I remembered, a year and a half earlier, around the world, doing the same thing in the South China Sea on the shores of Repulse Bay in Hong Kong; now understanding the significance of all those things. Getting on a call to Hong Kong the day I signed the papers; now standing on the moon on the edges of uncharted waters.

It was a sort of baptism; a sort of purification ritual; a sort of stupid thing to be doing in the freezing weather with a marathon coming up.

"Doesn't it feel good!" Shay shouted from father out. It was a declaration, not a question.

"No," I said. I meant it.

It didn't feel good at all. But it was a necessary thing.

We emerged from the water; reshod ourselves; and felt warmer, suddenly, for having taken a dip in the freezing cold.

Giant Squid

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 17:44:07 GMT

I've been spending a ton of time in California lately, probably more than I have in the last decade.

But I don't feel any more connected to it than I did when I lived there. Sometimes, I just stare at people blankly, like, "Huh?"

I found myself, on Wednesday, sitting at LAX waiting for someone. I had a few hours. I was in Terminal Three, and there was no Fancy Lounge to which I could obtain access. I was in the Alaska Airlines terminal. Alaska Airlines kind of freaks me out. Their logo has significance, I'm certain. But it doesn't do it for me. And I can't get into their lounge. So it doubly irritates me.

I wound up in Gladstones instead.

The only things that Airport Gladstones serves at 10:38 am on a Wednesday are: fish, and booze. They don't have a breakfast menu; they don't even have a lunch menu. They just have a day-drinking menu. The front half of the menu is the "you may or may not get sick by way of frozen and defrosted seafood" side. The other half is the "you will definitely drink yourself sick" side.

Also, they serve calamari in a giant martini glass. For some reason, I found this offensive.

There I was, overly tired, sitting in an Airport Gladstones, expecting brunch, instead faced with fish and booze. Elton John's "Can You Feel the Love Tonight?" came on the stereo. I burst into tears. Meaningful sobs. Me, blonde, petite, in a suit, glasses, hair in a chignon; briefcase, suitcase in tow; work splayed on the table...sobbing like a heartbroken teenager over "Can You Feel the Love Tonight?"

This is my life, people. It may seem glamorous--airport codes; jets; exotic locations--maybe you even think that I think I'm better than you.

Nope. I spend my time sitting in a goddamn airport fish shack, crying in my calamari.

Anyway. That happened.

I found my colleague; had my client meeting; made my way back to the airport.

It was weird, being ferried by towncar past the places that used to be somewhat familiar. Wilshire, Westwood, Pico. Past the Apple Pan; past Westside Pavillion. Beverly Glen. Past places I used to drive myself in my college car, with my college friends. Past places where I used to ride on sorority buses and past places where I used to sing silly songs and drink cheap drinks and wear tube tops and fight with my boyfriend.

Where I used to be a girl, uncertain, trying things on for size, uncomfortable in my own skin, constantly questioning my decisions. Trying to be a thing I was not. Trying to be a thing I never felt I was. Hiding behind compulsive behaviors and stuffing it all in. Stuff, stuff, stuff. Don't let it out. Take it all in.

And now...

A woman, in a suit, in a black car. Looking out over the alien landscape with foreign eyes...seeing it for the familiar/unfamilar thing it always was. Admitting, finally, with a sigh of relief that maybe all that trying to be a California girl wasn't for "nothing" but that it's okay that it didn't work out.

Back to the airport, a different terminal this time. And a prop plane, up the coast; then another towncar.

The driver, this time, was a retired television director; a man who had directed perhaps one of best-known talk shows in television history. We chatted. I always talk with people. When I was first married, I didn't talk with people. When I went through a lot of the hideous stuff of the last year, I was afraid to talk with people. But at the heart of who I am...I can talk to a fence post. Maybe it's part of being a writer.

We talked philosophy; French politics; age discrimination.

"You're not just a lawyer," he said finally, "You must write."

"Of course," I said. I'm so transparent.

He dropped me off at my destination, which has started to feel more like home over the last six weeks than either of the places I ostensibly "live." It's funny, the ways people make homes.

Home has not been much a part of the travelogue of my life the past few months. I'm experimenting with alterna-home. Trying to survive a world with minimal compulsion; trying to experience what it's like to live in the world of chaos with only my own routines--healthy-ish ones.

But I realized a few things. Letting myself feel things--really actually feel them--is probably not going to kill me. Even if that means breaking down crying over "Can You Feel the Love Tonight?" in an Airport Gladstones. Whether it was because I was exhausted, or homesick, I don't know.

Or maybe because it reminded me of when I was younger and had gone to the premiere party of "The Lion King" with Shay, and it was the summer right before we stopped being innocent and instead started going to parties, and were invited places, and my life became one endless stream of go; do; be...being served at dark cool restaurants on Melrose when I was way too young; a studio party at Chasen's before they made it into a Whole Foods (or was it a Bristol Farms? Whatever); nights in the hills, the canyons, on the beaches until the wee hours...

There was a lot that was idyllic, sure. But there was perhaps more that was dangerous.

And so, "Can You Feel the Love Tonight?" played, and drunk girls ate their calamari out of cartoonishly giant martini glasses, and the world kept on turning, and I had a moment in the middle of LAX.

When it happened, I texted a friend, to make sure I wasn't crazy. He called back immediately.

"Just so you know," he responded, "You're a fucking loon. Get some sleep. Take a valium. Have a drink. Whatever it takes. But if you send me another message about giant martini glasses and Elton John songs, I'm going to have you locked away."

Opening Night

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 14:09:57 GMT

I went to the opening of the Metropolitan Opera last week. Such is just another day in the life of a crazy person. Me, Martha Stewart, Tom Brokaw, and my friends. Whatev.

I love opera. Love love love. The season opened with Tosca, staged starkly, strangely. Perhaps not the finest showcase, but I love Puccini; love Karita Mattila. More importantly, I love a good excuse to wear an evening gown.

Alice and I met at the opera house and ventured to our seats. A certain (non)society blogger was just...everywhere I looked. Everywhere I went. Go away. You don't belong at the opera. You and Mischa Barton should have shared a towncar and just...taken yourselves somewhere irrelevant.

Not to be snobby but...the certain blogger was just standing there with a camera screaming at people, asking what the name of the opera was.

Maybe I am just snobby.

I digress.

Opera. I love the sight and smell and sound of the opera house. I love the surge of the music; the swell of the company; the seemingly impossible done with the setpieces and staging. I love the sad, sweet sounds of the strings and winds and each individual orchestra piece as they steal their own surreptitious solos throughout the night.

And I particularly love the Met--with its weird light fixtures, and its churchy smell and threadbare carpet.

I could drink a case of that smell, and still be on my feet.

I told my friend Frederic I was headed to the opera--a small private (non)joke between us--and he admitted, finally, that he didn't actually hate opera after all. In keeping with his foppish personality, hating opera was contrary, a thing that did not belong. The thing had to do with me.

By opening night, I was sick of men and their (non)jokes; didn't have time for all of it anymore. Thank goodness the opera was Tosca; thank goodness it was girls' night out.

I love the tragedies; I love the lovers. I love the Italian operas--all set in France, for some reason. I hate the French ones, the German ones. Too...too...pianissimo, as a whole, maybe. Maybe not the right term, but that's what comes to mind.

In my turning, churning life, there is not much time for socializing. There is not much time to feel...like a person; a woman; a human being. It was nice to remember that my body takes female form. To zip the gown; to have the ladies in the office squeal and wish me a Cinderella good night. To touch up my make-up and run for a car on Park Avenue before the tires squealed for Lincoln Center and the red carpet.

Woman.

We sat at dinner after the opera--Me, Alice, Allyson, Mel C.--and I did the thing that I always do. The annoying thing of menu substitutions. "Do you have scotch?" I asked the waitress sweetly. I have recently become a scotch drinker--turned on to it by an education one night in sweet, light single-malts after almost a decade of turning my nose up at the bitter, peatmossy things that Andrew insisted upon. As if the burning would make him more...whatever...first when it went down, then when it came back up.

The waitress had to go check. She didn't have what I said I'd drink. "Sherry, then?" I asked. She had to go check again. She sent the sommelier over instead.

He poured me a Lustau Fino, a dry sherry, not something I'd normally drink, but he was charming and it was delicious.

Alice hated it. She said she'd cook with it. I shot her a dirty look.

Then, to the menu.

"I feel like moules frites," I said. It was the second time I'd said that at Bar Boulud; the second time I'd said it when it wasn't on the menu. I asked after it anyway. Moules frites I would have.

I swear to you, I'm a 65 year old woman. I drive a sedan; I drink sherry; I demand off-menu bistro fare at 11pm. I am the kind of pain in the ass that usually carries an AARP card.

My blackberry had been going off all night; the parties on the other end not understanding my American WASPisms, my subtleties of trying to beg off of continuing to answer questions into the wee hours. I can be too subtle, I think. I say things like, "Wherever will we put more chairs!" in a way that is most definitely not a question when I don't want more people to attend a meeting or join a group. I say things like, "The lights are going down at the opera," when I want someone to stop bothering me. I expect people to take exceptionally subtle hints.

We finished the meal with several interruptions of me rudely tap-tap-tapping away on the blackberry, as I so hate when others do. Then came a suite of complimentary desserts from the maitre d', with whom Alice is friendly...shared plates...cremes and fruits and curls of chocolates...mmmm

The girls deposited me in a taxi and I headed back downtown...grateful for an evening out, but with my head in a bit of a sherry-and-opera mist, suddenly hyperaware of the fact that my pace leaves me unsteady on my feet sometimes.

Existential Barhounding

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 03:52:35 GMT

I was in Las Vegas the other day.

I should back up. I am always "somewhere" the "other day." Seriously.

Last week I was in New York, San Francisco, on the Monterey Peninsula, Los Angeles, Las Vegas. I should have been in DC on Sunday night, but that would have meant eight (different) airports in a week, and that was too much, even for me.

But before I got to Las Vegas, I was in Los Angeles.

I hate Los Angeles. I love-hate Los Angeles. Los Angeles is...triggery...for me. I say it in my way of a woman who took a year off of life and traveled the world, and wrote, and went to therapy like it was a full-time job. All the cities I frequent are full of ghosts, but Los Angeles is where I came of age in a body that I long ago sloughed off like a cocoon.

So the canyons and the sunsets sometimes take on a homey-sinister cast--much like they do for anyone else, but they somehow feel uniquely strange to me...a non-native daughter. A woman constantly in and out of her own skin.

Regardless, I was in Los Angeles for a day, coming from the San Francisco area, en route to Las Vegas. So there was a night in Los Angeles, then the next morning I was on a hideous Friday morning Southwest Airlines flight to Las Vegas. Those are the flights where they serve beer for breakfast, and even the flight attendants would be decked out in Ed Hardy if they were allowed.

But it wasn't until I was leaving Las Vegas that things got interesting--wandering around the airport with the friend with whom I was traveling. We were looking for a bar. It was when we were leaving the California Pizza Kitchen in search of a nightcap less toxic than the Center Seat's Little Helper (i.e., vodka tonic served in a giant tumbler--my nickname, not theirs) that we discovered McCarran airport has an abundance of slots and shops...but a dearth of watering holes.

We wandered.

One other thing that is important to note about McCarran International Airport is that it is a hellhole. No offense to you denizens of Las Vegas. But your airport is terrible. I can't tell whether it is a casino or a hotel or an airport or what. Maybe that is the point.

My flight was in the new(er?) portion of the airport. My flight was a red-eye. And I have been working a lot lately, which means I am not getting a lot of sleep, regardless.

The waiting for the flight became an existential slog from one end of the terminal to the other--playing slots and searching for a bar that did not exist ("Are we going to get a drink at Gordon Biersch?" "Do you want to get a drink there?" "Yeah, I think I want another drink before the flight, do you want one?" "Where is it--the Gordon Biersch?" "The terminal is not that big!" "I know but I can't find this place" "It's like the Brigadoon of airport bars...")

The conversation chattered on and on as we trudged aimlessly from one end of the airport to the other, pumping bills into machines, on the off-chance that the machines would spit paper back out.

Las Vegas has removed the enjoyment from playing slots.

One must understand this. The machines still make the clanging noise of distributing coins upon a win. The machines still have handles, levers to pull to spin the wheels with the "Bar" and "7" and the little cherries printed on them--whatever they mean. But the machines neither churn out coins, nor do they permit the game-player (on most machines) to pull the lever.

What is the point?

There is no point. This is a game of put your money in and hope that money comes out. This is like feeding money into a soda machine with an "out of order" placard on it, pushing the coin return button, and sticking your hand in the change cup, hoping for a quarter.

You get nothing, no matter what. But maybe you get lucky, once.

Back and forth, back and forth...bank of slots after bank of slots.

I turned to my friend.

"You know, when I was in law school, I had a layover in Vegas. I put like, $0.75 in a machine as I ran through the airport, and I won hundreds of dollars."

It was the wrong thing to say. She wanted more, so we continued to play. Dollar after dollar. All in search of a drink that was not forthcoming; waiting for a flight that did not appear to be getting any closer at a time that was not nearing.

Finally, a directory.

The bar was in the one lobe of the terminal we had left unexplored; a tiny wing. The map had been printed upside-down.

Chi-ching! Ping.

To the bar. To Gordon Biersch.

But the wing was gated off. Closed. There was no such wing. We'd trudged through the airport for two solid hours; lost $45 into the vast depths of the machine known as slots, and NO GORDON BIERSCH?

What the hell?!

By that point, our flight was finally being called, and the several glasses of wine we'd managed to imbibe during the trek had taken the edge off the week, the day, the hours.

I woke up in New York at 6am with a spectacular headache, forgetting that Las Vegas is almost two hours closer to Manhattan than is San Francisco; the memory of an all-evening walk through McCarran still imprinted on my feet.

As we climbed out of our coach seats, my friend's shoe snapped, as if to protest the long, ridiculous night we'd had of making laps around the airport and playing slots; bitching about a place we could not locate; reminiscing about the Vegas of times gone by...

Like retirees lapping a shopping mall.

Towards

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 02:57:32 GMT

I've been on the road for weeks. Mostly business, with a little pleasure thrown in.

I was in California last week. The week before that. And the week before that. I've been in California more in the last month than I have in almost a decade. I was also in the Bahamas, but my passion for turquoise waters, sable sands, and reggae should be...obvious. (The reggae, less obvious). It was a celebration of my time in Africa a year ago, with Ali. We missed the sounds--the bullfrogs, the drums, the buzz. Even the burning garbage-petroleum smell of the developing world.

Anyway. Work, work, work. My life has become a travelogue of airplanes and airports. The sounds of a 737, 747, 757, 767 -- the whole Boeing fleet; next, the Airbuses, the A320s, the A330s; then the MD-80s, God forbid; then the sleek Embraers and Canadair jets. I know their sounds, their lists, their roars and groans. What sounds normal; what doesn't. The ways the planes bounce and flex. I've learned what to expect in mid-air.

I keep waiting to write until the urge for something profound or interesting to strike, but it's not coming. Or it comes, and it's only a snippet.

What of a personal life? Should I write about my personal life? What personal life?

I'm a private person. Very private. Unrelatable, in a way. Always going, doing, trying to be all things to all people.

("Private?!" he said, "You're over there bloody...twittering!")

("Yes," I thought, "But even my parents don't have my street address." I'm remarkably easy to find on the internet. Almost impossible to pin down in real time. Are you my friend in real life? Do you ever know where I am on a given day?)

I meet people in my travels all the time--in airport lounges, on planes--and sometimes, I wonder what we are all running from.

I used to think my need to achieve was somehow compensatory. That I was atoning for something I had done; that I was making up for something I was not. That my movement through time and space was to get away from the things I could not be and would never become.

But am I running? And if so, from what?

I don't know.

I am running. In the literal sense. I'm running the New York City Marathon, a thing I swore I would do ten years ago. I made this list, you see, of things I intended to do over ten years--most of them so unrealistically specific that no one in her right mind would ever try to accomplish them. Get married by X age; go to Georgetown Law or Michigan Law; finish college early; ski the Alps; and so on and so forth.

I haven't lived or died by this list. I've lost it, periodically, as I've said before. But I came back to it, on New Year's Eve, right before I met my friend F at the Apple Store for our ill-fated New Year's moment and I rang in the New Year on the downtown 5 train.

The last thing left: Run the New York City Marathon.

Fifty things distilled down to one last moment--November 1, 2009.

Imagine that.

Anyway, I had mentioned this to a group of people over lunch one day, and the notion had struck one of the women. I didn't understand why it had struck her so profoundly. Months passed. She came up to me yesterday.

"Your comment about your list struck me," she said, "I didn't tell you at the time, but that conversation took place about two weeks after my son lost his long-term girlfriend in a car accident. I told him and his friends about your list, and I want you to know that your idea gave hope to a whole group of kids."

The moment stopped me. It had been a throwaway moment at that table--me prattling about a thing that was profound, and somewhat private, not thinking that others would understand the profundity. But somehow having made a connection with one person nonetheless. I am not an intimate person. I am not a hope-giving person. I am...a bitch.

I thanked her, and she thanked me, and we moved on. Changed.

But I realized then, that I am not running away. Travel; movement; chaos. I am running towards.

Chapters

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 04:59:58 GMT

My favorite book of all time is Harriet the Spy.

It was my first chapter book. My mother gave it to me when I was six, and in Kindergarten, and was being sent to first grade for reading.

Now...let's get this straight. Harriet the Spy is a 280 page book. Yes. I was reading like that when I was six.

I was a spontaneous reader. I taught myself to read at about age 3--that's actually something about me that I've never shared. I remember the moment I realized I could do it. I was in the car with my mother, driving past a freeway onramp and a fast food place, and then it struck me--I could read the freeway sign as my mother read it out loud. I was surprised; unsure of it. But I remember the moment it happened; I could tell you where I was, what the sign said.

Through Kindergarten, I sort of "pretended" I couldn't read. I remember shuffling out the flashcards with 3 and 4 letter words on them; sitting out by my parents' old pool. NAN CAN READ. Et cetera. I was so impatient to be a reader; to show off the skills I'd had for so long.

Kind of funny. This is also why I'm a remarkably good speller, and never learned phonics. There was no need. The concept of "sounding out a word" made no sense to me.

I love to read. I'm very attached to my books; to the experience of books. I'm one of those people who has piles and piles of books; all dog-eared; all worn; all marked up. I can tell you about who I was with when I was reading my favorites, where I bought them. There are usually notes and slips of paper in the pages. At my parents' house, I was going through some old, hardbound Tom Wolfe tomes and out fell this beautiful, precocious poem I'd written (never sent) to my first love.

My life is in books.

It is hard, these days, to be away from my books. To have a sad pile of volumes about law and management in the corner, and to have naked walls. Hotels, planes, airports. It's funny now, because when I travel, the thing that gets sacrificed is a book. Computer--check. Binders, files, datebook, wallet, blackberry, iphone, passport--check.

Book? No.

But, Harriet the Spy. Of course, I have a certain amount of love for it because it was my first big book. Also, because there's something about Harriet that I always related to, even from a young age. The action of remembering things by writing them down was already so ingrained in me by the age of six, that the experience of reading a book about a girl who did exactly what I did, and felt the ways I felt, and talked the way I talked was...liberating.

As many of you have correctly surmised, my personal life is in shambles. In no small part because, about a year and a half ago, Andrew began going through my black notebooks. He had been reading my notes, reading my life, taking from me the thing that was most private and personal--my daily thoughts and feelings and observations; my little bits of unfinished fiction. Tromping through the intensely personal and delicate parts of a heart that has always felt...a little different from her peers.

For a woman who has meticulously journaled and catalogued and written about her observations and the mundane, wonderful and awful parts of probably the last 25 years of her life...this was...devastating.

So it was nice, really, to find my old book. To see my name, handwritten on the inside cover; to look at the hash marks where I noted how many times I'd read the story. To reacquaint myself with a story that gave me so much comfort as a kid; that reminded me that my way of seeing the world and taking it in, processing it--not so peculiar after all.

I read this great NPR article about the book, recently, which was part of what made me think of it. And re-reading the story again, I realized that nothing had changed, mostly. I was still the same girl I was at six; still had the same fears. Was still wrecked by the same things.

I'll never stop writing, you know. I'll never stop making notes, and keeping scraps, and drafting bits of fiction. I'll never stop turning people into characters to make them easier to process in my own head. That's just me, that's my way.

The beautiful thing about being different is that with each one of these hurts comes wisdom; comes more information about how to operate in the world that is sometimes hostile to my observations, to my musings, to my notes.

But maybe...just maybe...if some of the people who go looking for trouble in the written word would stop searching for differences to drive a wedge into, maybe the poignant novel that brought me so much comfort at age six wouldn't need to be by my side so constantly twentysomething years later.

"Little lies that make people feel better are not bad, like thanking someone for a meal they made even if you hated it. But to yourself, you must always tell the truth," notes Harriet's nurse, from a distance, later in the novel after Harriet's notebook is ravaged by her classmates.

My narrative is not always pretty, or perfect, but it is some kernel of the truth of the moment I'm living--some days good, some days bad--and I am constantly grateful that even in chaos, I seek the truth about the things that I am experiencing.

City on Fire

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 00:34:39 GMT

I am in California. California is on fire.

I traveled here for work in the middle of last week, and I have to be here for work through the middle of this coming week, so I took the weekend to see my family, some old friends, and to do the thing that I have been intending to do since I was a small child.

Shay picked me up after my days with the client, and we drove from the Coast to the Central Valley. Late. Stopping along the way for Starbucks wifi; etc. Getting the job done. She had no idea what she was getting herself into.

I've spent most of my life wanting to climb Half Dome. Looming large over me like a granite monster--the inaccessible, inescapable hulking hallmark of my years and youth spent in California. When I filled out my Facebook "25 Things About Me" survey like every person of a certain age did over the last six, nine months, I said, "I'm going to climb Half Dome this summer." I've been saying it like a mantra since the beginning of the year, and the sound of my own voice has crescendoed from a dull roar to a plaintive, ghostly moan over the last few months.

It was not a question of if, or when...it was a statement of must, and NOW.

As we drove sideways across California, "The Circle Game," from Miles of Aisles came on Pandora on my iPhone, played through the radio. My favorite Joni Mitchell album; the song--a snapshot of my teenage years. The song had played on my first date with my first love, who went on to break my heart into a hundred thousand pieces. At this crossroads, I wondered, will there be new dreams, maybe better dreams, and plenty, before the last revolving year is through?

I cried. I drove and I cried, in the safety of the car. First dates; first loves; a lifetime of firsts and I didn't and don't want to have to go back to firsts. I wanted to have it figured out by now.

Once in Yosemite, we set out at 5:45am, after a night in the Curry Village tent cabins. And we climbed the Mist Trail then summited via the cables about six and a half hours later.

Standing there, hovering over the edge of that rock; holding myself up on the edge of the world...I realized that nothing would ever be the same again.

The trek is very physically demanding. It's about 18, 19 miles round trip, if you're going from Curry Village to the trailhead, up and back. It's rocky, uneven, most of it is a sheer vertical climb at relatively high altitude.

The valley was on fire. A controlled burn, angry and out of control, raged on the mountain side and into the valley. At night, the trees and hillsides had glowed red and black. Shay screamed; I wanted to snap photos. Smoke billowed up to the summit as we stood and looked out.

Everything's on fire, still. Prometheus, unbound. A fire to bring back. Bring back to where, exactly?

We climbed back down and drove back down the state to Los Angeles. Me, jet lagged; work-worn; travel-worn; homesick.

I'm homesick. I've never been homesick for a place like I am for New York. I'm a grown-up in Manhattan; my life is in New York. My friends; my dogs; my can openers; my steak knives; each and every one of the things that I had always dismissed as "just things," and now I crave with a passion like none other. The shoes that I only wear a couple of times a year. My stuffed monkey. My cashmere shawl from Kashmir. Every little glorious thing; every detail; I miss it. I want it. I want my argyle socks, and my ski gloves, and my Kate Spade "Sam" bag that I haven't carried in almost a decade that my imaginary future daughter will thank me some day for preserving (and that used to be terrific for sneaking upright Starbucks cups into movie theatres and concerts, back when I went to movies in theatres and saw live shows).

I want to kiss and hug and touch all my things and say "Thank you, things. Thank you for existing, and anchoring me, and being MINE. All mine. I am so blessed to have things, and to be and to exist and to have one place to go to, and one place to be, and to not have to run around any more. To exist in just this one place, and not fragmented all over the country, world."

So, back in Los Angeles...

I hadn't told anyone about the climbing. It seemed like such a personal passion; such a ridiculous thing. I have to slay a dragon, a demon--an 8,800ft, granite beast.

Then...I saw my old, old friends. Family, and also women I had been friends with in a past life. I am always so afraid of judgment, but I realized that the essential parts of me are parts that are from the time when I wasn't afraid. Back before anything had ever happened to me. From the days when I was innocent and trying to figure things out.

My friends...they're so beautiful. Women with children; mothers. Sometimes I think there is a sense that I judge people who choose to stay in Los Angeles, or in the suburbs to do the thing that I couldn't do...but it's just an acknowledgment of self. Sure...there's plenty to critique. Is anyone fully happy in the suburbs? I doubt it. Is anyone fully happy in the city? I doubt that too.

But my experience is city living, and for what it is, and for what I am, I love it. And it makes my youth in the 'burbs an easy target.

No one knows this but...in the piano bench, at my parents' house, right in the center of everything, still, there is my three-ring notebook from my freshman year of high school, with all the notes, and comments, and names and handwriting of all the women who were at my house last night. Women I haven't been in close touch with in years, but whom I treasure dearly; who I hold in my heart as people who shaped who I am today.

It's funny, really, the way that people leave handprints on each other's hearts. How we are all connected in ways that we never expect.

So here I stand. At the threshold of what seems like Hell: the state around me bankrupt and burning to the ground; it has been weeks since I've been home for more than a night; I have no idea where any of my stuff is...

And I'm sure I'll be okay. I've found the fire; slayed the dragon; climbed the cables; thrown off the chains.

First Movement

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 03:39:06 GMT

Blog migration issues.

Stay tuned.

That's part of the delay in writing.

To The Lighthouse

Sat, 15 Aug 2009 15:51:11 GMT

The weekend before I was married, I biked to the lighthouse on Block Island.

Pedal, pedal, pedal…white capris; pink tube top; strawberry blonde flapping in the Rhode Island breeze. All the innocent-hearted promise in the world in pink and white and blonde.

To the lighthouse.

He and I stood, together and apart, at the top of the hill, looking out over Block Island Sound in our last unwed weekend moments, wondering what the future might hold. We could see New York from where we were standing; the Atlantic. We could see the rest of our lives.

And then…

Time.

Last weekend, to Montauk.

Shay, Clementine and me. A trip ten years in the making, we ventured from the city to Long Island. Clementine, engaged, had just bought a house and a car—the car I used to drive, a Volvo station wagon.

Californians, the both of them, with their California accents, and the way they put the word “the” in front of the names of highways. Clementine has lived in New York for just a shade longer than I have—maybe a year; nine months longer—but my mothertongue is not west-coast speak. Short and long vowels in places that made me a non-native even when I was young….ahrange; sorahrity; woter; et cetera.

But we drove, last weekend…women apart for ten years…to Long Island. The LIE to Montauk Highway. Women, dogs, and a purpose.

Saturday: to the beach. Amagansett, crowded. White and pink skins; tanned skin; every person a variation on the same theme. The beach an infinite variation of the same theme: all there for the same purpose—to impress or not impress but either way, to affect the affectation of not being affected. And to wear a straw hat.

That night—dinner at a roadside beach place. Fried clams, my favorite--fried clam strips--like we used to get at Cape Cod when I was a kid from the places that looked like Fotomat booths. But first…to Montauk.

To the Point.

They didn’t know, didn’t realize.

So we drove, again. Drive, drive, drive.

Montauk Highway, to the end. To Block Island Sound, rounding the point, wondering about the dinner, and the promise of the evening; thinking only in shades of the next moment, the next hour, the evening. That was all there was to think about, because that was all there was.

And there we were, through the looking-glass.

And me, after all these things, after the becoming accustomed to the aloneness these few years anyway, on the other side of Block Island Sound.