Everything I Need To Know I Learned in Yoga School

I am reviewing local yoga, art, and acting classes for the Learning Guide Network, YogaLearningGuide.Com, and LALearningGuide. The following article is up at

http://www.learningguidenetwork.com/index.cfm?fa=show.Article&Aid=3936

Everything I Need to Know I Learned in Yoga School

I looked around at the motley crew. Would an outsider be able to guess our common endeavor? We were seventeen women, three men, in our twenties through fifties, of sundry backgrounds and occupations. The sari-wrapped Ayurvedic healer, the talkative schoolteacher, the timid social worker, the surfer-girl musician, the French dancer, the recovering investment banker who didn't seem to blink much, a couple writers, a smattering of us strategically unemployed. Bodies short and tall, generously rounded, wiry, muscular, soft and bendy. All of us assembled on the floor, cross-legged and suddenly shy, for the first evening of yoga teacher training.

Our teachers, Heather Seiniger and John Gaydos, introduced themselves and asked what had brought us to the Yogaworks program, a question that provoked an outpouring of love for yoga; my fellow students seemed to have either grown up on yoga, or happened upon it later in life, with all the trumpets of epiphany blowing. One girl cried. I am never going to fit in, I thought.

Yoga did not dot the North Dakotan landscape of my childhood, nor was it love at first sight. I took my first class as an undergraduate at Yale, and fell asleep. Three years later, I tried it again; I found myself in a gut-wrenching class at my gym and hurt for days after. But over the course of the next seven years, I discovered classes between the two extremes, and yoga transformed from an unnatural activity composed of an infinity of surprising and unreasonable poses into a usual comfort. I used to feel that it cracked me apart, and maybe it did; then I began to feel that it put me together. I took classes a few times a week, in New York and LA, in gyms and studios, interspersing yoga with cardio-intensive classes like bootcamp and spinning.

Since yoga seemed to have subtly worked its way into my life, I decided that the responsible thing to do would be to find out more about it. I would like to have the full story of each pose, and was interested in the idea of teaching…one class a week, or twenty, I didn't know. In my current home of Santa Monica, where there is a yoga studio on every block, I imagined there would be work; on the other hand, teaching could be handy skill to have in my back pocket if I found myself in a city where there was not such a bounty and I was left to my own devices.

The teachers at the Santa Monica Yogaworks studio I frequented always seemed to know what they were talking about. After power yoga classes at my gym, my often knees bothered me slightly, or I had lower back or neck pain, but I exited the Yogaworks classes without any such injurious consequences. The teachers there also provided instruction that made some previously unattainable poses attainable, though I didn't quite understand the how. How had this woman just gotten me into handstand? By what potion of words was I now lifting up into Lolasana (Pendant Pose)? That mystery attracted me to the Yogaworks Teacher Training. Heather and John were articulate exponents of the Yogaworks philosophy, staying on message that first night and over the twelve weekends that followed. They explained that Yogaworks is situated in the lineage of Krishnamacharya, who taught in India for the better part of the the 20th century. His approach evolved over his long life and spawned both Ashtanga and Iyengar Yoga. Yogaworks classes, then, aspire to be well-rounded and flowing, like Ashtanga, and to pay assiduous attention to alignment, in the manner of Iyengar. That combination guides many students into a strong and safe practice.

My teacher training classmates and I benefited from the ingenious pairing of Heather and John, whose styles and personalities complemented each other. Primarily a teacher of beginning yoga, John is relaxed and patient. With light, slow voice and gentle manner, he embodies a yoga teacher almost to the point of caricature; his lanky physique and whitening hair add to my suspicion that he is in fact being played by Christopher Guest. Brown-educated Heather, a petite but strong hardworker, always looks freshly-scrubbed. She primarily teaches private and advanced classes, and approaches the Yogaworks methodology from a fast-talking and intellectual angle. Both are knowledgeable, perceptive, and kind.

There are arguably 240 asanas (poses) in the modern canon, and endless variations. Over the course of three months, John and Heather were responsible for guiding us to a thorough understanding of roughly forty of those - eschewing the fanciest in favor of the safest and most beneficial asanas that can serve as the cornerstones of any yoga classes. Weekends were arranged categorically, into "Externally Rotated Standing Poses," or "Inversions," or Surya Namaskar. Our long practices were followed by a discussion of the featured asanas and practice teaching, which involved "looking at bodies." It was liberating, if odd, to be permitted to really look at each other; in most yoga classes, we are taught not compare to compare ourselves with others, to mind our own business, keep our gazes fixed.

Along with the new power of looking came the humility of being the one looked at. "Okay, everyone, gather 'round Amber. What's the problem here?" Heather waited for the verdict as the class gathered to study my slumped version of Trikonasana (Triangle). "Well, there's something wrong with her back and her neck," someone offered. (As class progressed, our ability to observe developed slowly, and descriptions became more sophisticated, more like, "She isn't extending evenly through all four corners of the waist, and her neck looks constricted.") That we all have different bodies was a boon to our studies; those of us who have tight hips, tight hamstrings, tight shoulders, or tend to hyperextend were each looked at in due course, serving as valuable examples and willing subjects for hands-on adjustments we could give future students.


The Yogaworks recipe for safe description of action that had bolstered me up into handstand, and encouraged so many other students to conjure up never-before realized asanas, relies on using the template of the body in Tadasana (Mountain Pose), and applying the general actions of aligning, stabilizing, and elongating the platforms of the body (feet and ankles, pelvic girdle, shoulder girdle) in that basic pose to all poses. Actions are to be described with active verbs, in terms of "rooting and rebounding," and "counteractions," and tersely. The Yogaworks language is precise to the point of mantra-fication; in fact, the series of directions for the chest and shoulders - "Sternum lifts, widen across the collarbone, shoulderheads back, shoulderblades widen away from each other and descend down the back," is fondly called the "Shoulder Girdle Mantra." It applies in nearly every pose.

Of the Yogaworks style, John and Heather often repeated, "This is a way." A way of doing a pose, a way of sequencing, not the way. Yogaworks students, for example, are not encouraged to bring their hands together for Virabhadrasana I (Warrior I) or Utkatasana (Chair) because, done improperly, or without complete openness in the shoulders, those poses can cause scrunching in the neck or overarching of the back. We learned to place "externally rotated standing poses" like Virabhadrasana II (Warrior II) before "neutrally rotated standing poses," like Virabhadrasana I (Warrior I), which are more effortful and harder to align properly. Pigeon pose, a favorite in many classes, is taught with extreme caution or not at all in Yogaworks classes, because it puts the knees at risk. Students like me, who had long been dismissive of props, found our arms strapped for Urdhva Dhanurasana (Upward-Facing Bow), and blocks placed under our hands for Parsvakonasana (Side Angle), to encourage safe alignment and length.

We met Tuesday nights for instruction in topics such as Ayurveda, Subtle Body, Anatomy, and Prenatal Yoga with a spectacular lineup of guest instructors. Chanting with the blonde-dreadlocked Suzanne Sterling was my favorite; she and her harmonium encouraged us to make noise and explore the full range of our voices. Because of her ebullience, I will frequent kirtans. Prenatal Yoga with Patti Asad was eye-opening (though I am newly hesitant about pregnancy, as I now have a vivid picture of what exactly happens in the body during its later stages). Russ Pfeiffer brought vitality to anatomy, passing around bits of a skeleton and showing us how to palpate our diaphragms.

Friday nights we discussed philosophy with John, first situating yoga in its historical context, then spending most of our time on Sri Swami Satchidananda's translation of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras.

It is a frequent mantra in the halls of Yogaworks that much of the yoga one finds at other studios is not yoga, is not philosophy (efforts like power yoga are much-maligned). Patanjali's Eight Limbs of Yoga is seen as essential, valued for the introduction of the behavioral codes the Yamas and Niyamas and, of course, Asana. Patanjali was the first author to suggest "postures" as an important part of the yogic path. I had never heard of Patanjali, and was moved to discover his simple and inclusive advice, though I was disappointed not to cover the third book in which he discusses such powers as levitation.

The amount of homework one must do to graduate from yoga school came as a shock. Weekly assignments consisted of Arrows of Actions (that is, drawing magic marker lines of energy for each asana, which I admit was fun), Asana Points (descriptions of the primary actions for each part of the body in each pose), Sanskrit Glossaries, Teaching Scripts, Sequencing, and Class Observations. In addition, there was copious reading: Anatomy of Movement (Blandine Calais-Germain), Heart of Yoga (TKV Desikachar), Light on Yoga (BKS Iyengar), to name a few. Our primary text, however, was a binder assembled by Yogaworks. The tome is riddled with misspellings and grammatical errors, but it is a treasure-trove of information, describing approximately seventy poses in great detail, and delineating the Yogaworks principles of teaching and sequencing classes of varying levels. One of these years, I will finish all the required reading.

Yogaworks Teacher Training students must pass an in-class exam, as well as complete a lengthy take-home final. My take-home test, at thirty-five pages, was longer than my senior thesis at Yale.

By far the most arduous part of the entire process was the practice teaching weekend that served as our grand finale: two days of two-hour practices taught solely by our class, two poses per person, as our teachers scribbled notes about us in the back of the room. Despite having practiced our assigned poses hundreds (thousands?) of times, we had by now all been imbued with a sense of the importance of the task at hand, and teaching in front of the instructors we had come to admire was an intimidating proposition. The first day, nerve-wracked students stood with arms crossed and collapsed into monotones; one woman froze in stagefright. Right became left, knees became feet, perpendicular became parallel, Sanskrit stuck in mouths, and class was joyless and stilted. I felt the need to break out of the mire of low-energy, and when it came time for my first pose, Marichyasana C (Seated Twist), I bolted up front and said a few words about the Sage Marichi, who did any number of fabulous things as the chief of the Maruts, the warlike storm gods. I think I managed to compare the spine to a spiral staircase, a barbershop pole, and a candycane. Afterwards, in the evaluation, John reminded me, "Energy is no substitute for good direction." It seems I had left out some pretty vital information about where the hands go and where the twist originates. "And maybe only one metaphor per pose,'" he suggested. Sigh.


Throughout everbody's evaluation, Heather and John zeroed in on useless words. "Do not say 'you're gonna,' do not say, 'you wanna,' do not suggest, 'maybe,' just say, 'step your feet hip distance,' " Heather urged. "Don't be afraid to tell people what to do. This is a criticism I got early on - another teacher who evaluated me said, 'You're too nice.' It was true." John added, "You want to take out the unimportant words so students can hear the important words."

"Remember, this training is only the tip of the iceberg," Heather said to all of us, which was meant to be reassuring, but made me feel like I had a long way to go before I should be allowed to lead anyone in a seated spinal twist.

The second day, however, class fell into some semblance of flow; many of us were able to smile as we taught, and come closer to a balance between enthusiasm and actually-helpful information--hopeful testimony to the speed at which one can become comfortable in front of a class. I was heartened.

After the experience of practice teaching, I regard my yoga teachers with newfound respect as they give--with expressive voices--the perfect amount of direction to get students into the next pose without breaking the rhythm of class, never confusing right and left, spending the right amount of time on each side, all while making changes to lighting and music and giving hands-on adjustments.

The only criticism I can levy at the Yogaworks Teacher Training Program is that it does not tackle the problem of "what next?' with any thoroughness. While there is a cursory discussion toward the end of the program of "The Business of Yoga" and Yoga Alliance registration, there is little guidance as to where to look for jobs, and certainly no help with job placement. None of the 200-hour graduates will be teaching at Yogaworks anytime soon; Yogaworks requires that one take the 300-hour professional program before one may be considered to teach there, at the rate of 30 dollars per class.

However, if I came into teacher training a little bit neutral, I left thinking that teaching yoga is one of the best things a person could ever do. The program sells itself. A greater understanding of anatomy, for example, led to a greater understanding of the myriad reasons to practice yoga. I had known that yoga made me strong and flexible and relatively clear-headed; I learned that it furthermore invites the parasympathetic nervous system to do its healing work, balances hormonal production, squeezes out and nourishes organs and cartilage, counters the effects of gravity, encourages great adaptability, and even hones one's "proprioception" - the internal awareness of the body as it moves through space. Teaching a class that proffers such benefits seems important, and a privilege. Now I cannot wait to get to teach… though I will miss teacher training.

I enjoyed the physically demanding weekends. I had been worried about canceling my gym membership and relying on yoga as my sole exercise, but was surprised to find my body much improved as the training came to a close. I felt open and resilient. While yoga does not sustain the high intensity of certain cardio classes, poses - like twists - that help with digestion streamlined my body, and embarking upon a daily inversion practice tightened my waist.

I will miss the weekday nights of arcane scholarship; yoga school sparked my mind to work in new ways - to memorize Sanskrit, meditate on chakras, to think in terms of planes of movement. It also created the space to connect with a common spirit, through the ribald kirtan and frequent quiet dance of simultaneous sun salutes, and through the soft ringing of a sounding bowl in our closing ceremony on the last day of class.

Yoga teacher training was an endeavor that stood apart from any other in my life; nothing else had required such full-bodied, thoughtful, wholehearted participation. I was sad and moved when our motley crew disbanded. I had fit in.

4:40 PM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

morning dream

My mother was throwing a party in our house, for all the children who had ever gone to her school, and our house was a haunted house. Children everywhere, teen-agers. I was wearing a black off-the-shoulder dress, and boots whose heels curved under like claws, making it difficult to walk. I visited my mother who was cooking in the kitchen, she introduced me to a small girl who looked like me. The girl seemed pleasant enough, if unconversational, and then she pulled the top of my dress toward her and poured dish-soap down it.

The girl was unapologetic and my mother was intolerant of my complaints. I walked outside in the night air, the hills were those dry and grassy California hills, and a light rain was starting. There was a small black monkey by the side of the dirt road, and I was the monkey, it was a good idea for me to be the monkey, because monkeys could be sad. No one would notice or mind, if a monkey was of a complaining spirit.

11:20 AM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Geography and Culture, Planet 3147

There are vagueries concerning certain states of the country that, on the map of the land in question, resembles the U.S.of A.--their borders are inexact, to say the least, and capitals unknown. The futher one strays, the more unexplored terrain one encounters, and the continent that bears a striking resemblance to your South America is a drooping triangle occupied by only rainforest and great dunes of cocaine. Central America, or its near-equivalent, is one long wedding party outdoors, in the dust, pinatas, maracas, castanets. The Africa-like continent to your right is roamed by safari beasts the size of cottages and cholera is rampant, mosquito nets hang down in the disquieting heat around bodies that toss and turn. Bora Bora could be anywhere.

At home, in the city you think of as mine, there are office buildings, in fact, skyscrapers, and cubicles can be glimpsed through their windows, but if one went in, one would find them empty, aside from the occasional copy machine, desk, pile of paper.

Perhaps because of a certain lack of capitalist focus and skill at free market enterprise, certain industries have failed entirely to develop. Factories churn out only dolls and buttons. Cars have no makes or models; there are just Big Cars and Smallish Cars, red, blue, and green cars. Farmers seem to have no interest in growing crops other than raspberries, butternut squash, and sunflowers.

Competitive sports have not been invented, mathematics is in a rudimentary state, to say nothing of particle physics or biochemistry. There are woefully few stars in the sky, and man has never been to the moon.

Certain innovations would impress the outsider; parallel parking has been done away with, and everything knows exactly when to turn itself off, from stovetop burners to headlights. And literature is quite advanced, though there is no spy-thriller genre, and the western doesn't exist, at least not in any recognizable form. (Cowboys do.)

A lack of phone savvy is culturally endemic. Telephones are handled gingerly, by a populace with a seeming inability to conceive of or adequately relate to any sort of actual "person" on the other end of the line, and everyone seems to be in a great hurry to get off the phone, although they all lack any clear concluding policy for their conversations, and flail about for minutes awkwardly before coming to a goodbye.

When people talk to each other in person, they miss great quantities of information, but they enjoy watching the each other's faces move.

Women have hair that is either very short or very long, and a penchant for off-the-shoulder cotton dresses; they vaseline their feet at night. Sunglasses are heart-shaped.

The national cuisine is some fusion of what one would think of as Japanese-Indian-Thai-Midwestern.

News comes out once a week. That is possible since global conflict is virtually nonexistent, and the leaders profess to be "just really sorry" about the warmongering attitudes of their predecessors.

There is no equivalent for certain lewd words, which seem not to exist at all, while other words proliferate--microcosm, fancy, metabolize, exemplar, vitriol, burnish, oddity.

Unfortunately, this world isn't very funny, no one is very keen on jokes. Or neck kisses.

I have put my pointer down. It comes back to me. The music! On an evening stroll, one might notice that there is a street musician on every corner. That all bikes have baskets. And if one stays up late, one may notice there is no 3 a.m.

Who isn't sleepy? But everyone is writing a book.

Everyone loves my love. There are statues of him in town greens, and he is oft mentioned in treatises on the nobility of the soul.

Sometimes I think there is no point to what I do. The similarities will remain similarities and the differences will remain vast. If I wanted to, I could untether myself from that place and claim the world I stand upon for mine. And indeed my world is close enough that it could be this world, this world if dreamt, hardly learned, or misremembered.

1:16 PM - 2 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

LET GO.

My heartrate has increased, which I attribute to my love scaring me. He convinces me he has fathered multiple children or will die at 35 and I believe him and cry. Am I gullible? Or of all people for me to believe, shouldn't I believe him? Isn't it wonderful that when I listen to him, I let go of all skepticism and suspicion?

He startles me. I am painting and he says, "HEY!" and I bolt upright and scream. And return to my painting. And he pounds his hand on the table! I bolt upright and scream. I return to my painting. He drops a book onto the floor! I bolt upright and scream, angry now. This happens in the space of five minutes. This happens all the time.

"Who else do you think is here? Don't you know it's me?"

He laughs at my highstrung reactions. Even my reflexes are overdramatic, he says.

What does this prove? I think it proves that I can concentrate myself into obliviousness, and that I am relaxed, entirely off-guard, when I am home with him. He thinks it proves that I do not yet expect him, that I am not used to living with him.

I am and am not. Time bends and folds. Shifts and giggles.

Close one eye and a year is long, close the other and a year is nothing.

"I love you," I say.

"Since when?"

"Since St.Patrick's Day."

That was when he was still practicing his policy of "politely ignoring' me and long before he started to invite me over so we could sit on opposite ends of the couch. But I tell you it's true.

St. Patrick's day is about when life split into the before-him and the after-him. There was a reconfiguring of the calendar, with new feast days. I have told him that the before-him time was dark and I clung to cave walls at the strange sounds from beasts and storms. The after-him time is civilization, with grapes on the vine, astrolabes in the windows, laughter in the streets.

There are only a few things to salvage from the old life. Love you choose a ship, and let all the other ships go down, and don't mind. You despise the time you spent aboard other ships, the time you wasted playing shuffleboard. What were you thinking?

(The language of love and religion is metaphor full of new kingdoms and ships...)

It is not just that I spend most of the day with him, I spend most of the day attached to him, walking, leaning, almost falling, refusing to let go, like a drunken sailor.

I feel like I have been tightly braced. I have expected things to be hard, expected that I need to be tough. The realization that this is no longer the case was the greatest of releases. I poured out. I drained. I sweated and I cried (quite a bit, and I was never a crier). I thought, this is how people feel when they Give Themselves To The Lord. When they apologize, sincerely apologize, for every wayward thing that came before.

I feel softer, I feel always moved. I sleep well.

"Why didn't you find me earlier? What took so long?"

Ignorance is no excuse. I feel profound regret for not having begun walking from North Dakota to Maryland many years ago. A young thing, in touch with the universe, still trailing clouds of glory, I should have had a better homing device. Should have wasted less time.

Or at least once I found him in LA of all places, said, "I am here to spend my life with you. Would you like some ice cream?" Instead of being indirect and waiting for the acceptable time of declarations.

But I didn't want to scare him.

Now I don't think I could. Bodies are always finding new ways of disobedience. I noticed this more under his audience... All my nightsweats and hiccups and pimples and periods and ingrown hairs and lopsidedness and antibiotics he witnessed. And he kept me. The day I moved in, I swore half my ripped contact was stuck and floating in my eye, and with a great deal of speed and heroism he brought in the brightest light and fingered my eyeball. I was embarrassed and grateful.

But the shock of being witnessed fades. One can't keep any walls up forever or alter-egos going constantly. One gets used to being observed and lets go.

"You are letting go," he points out, running his hand over my stubbly calves. "It's okay--I'm letting go, too," he adds, and takes another spoonful of Chubby Hubby ice cream.

I say, letting go is a virtue and privilege. I think of Occam's Razor, and love as a paring-down. A shaving off of the inessential, the excess, the useless: the insecurities, the hang-ups, the expectation of an end…

He makes me think, what else do I need? What do I want in my days over time? I add things carefully. He makes me think about my life deep and long, I look to the floor of it and the horizon line.

I am less scared than I've ever been of what will become of me. I'm not sure why finding him means I get to let go of worry, pull those tentacles back and in, but it does. I look at his gift of a face and my eyes relax. In fact, I would say I feel very at peace in general now, very melt-y, at least until SOMEONE decides to make a very loud and sudden noise...

**********************************
"It doesn't need to be loud and sudden; you jump when you come out of the bathroom see me in our room."

"Yeahhhh...." I give. That has definitely happened.

*********************************

He warns me now, circumnavigates my jumpiness: "Baby, I am coming up the stairs..."

5:29 PM - 2 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

Hangman

Notes for upcoming blog on indie horror film experience:

*Car stopped on way up Tahquitz Peak. I cried on the phone and waited for help. Strangers stopped. It was nice, in a way. People care. The producer was a tardy rescuer, finally my car just started again. I should have listened. It is not a roadtrip car, and looks out of place in this mountain town.
*Got to an abandoned soundstage. "Helloooooooooooooooooooo.."
*Found a scraggly buch of mountainmen....the crew!
*Director got us lost on our way to the actors' house. We finally found it. I took the good room. I wrestle with this. Letting go of sweetness. I will not be sweet and unhappy. I will stand up for myself and be somewhat happy.
*Working from 5 or 6 am--driving to location in pitch blackness over winding mountain roads--- to 7 or 8 pm.
*No cell phone service at location.
*Running, running, running in the woods. The body taking care of the acting.
*Fear of ticks. A fog of gnats between me and the actor I am looking at soulfully. Buzzing in my ears.
*Frustrated with disorganization of production, who knows what scenes we're doing when? but then I add my own disorganization to the mix--I hit a tree backing out of the driveway, I lose an integral hoodie, I scratch my own face when I am being startled at a fake gunshot.
*Trees and more trees. Stars and more stars.
*A cabin they fill and re-fill with fog.
*Wishing for the first time in my life that I had a smaller part. SO I COULD SLEEP. Falling asleep on a table. Falling asleep everywhere.
*The issues I have with trying to look good for 12 or 14 hours. The makeup artist learns my face, where I peel, that my eyebrows tend to droop if she is not mindful...
*Getting to know everyone really well. Feeling like I've known them forever. This many hours working together, and sharing a house, equals a lot of lunches.

9:09 AM - 4 Comments - 3 Kudos - Add Comment

Lately

There are things you should know.

The relief I am feeling now. The shards of anxiety. Daytimes, my body buckles under the heat. The nightsweats mean what? I collect theories.

I found a trailer park I want to live in.

Blogging occupies an uncertain territory of intimacy. I reveal the personal, without admitting the most personal. I admit the lesser crimes.

I see why old people cry. All the time. They have toughened up, and a kindness reminds them that they dont have to be tough. Their guard drops and they remember what it was like to be a child, to be loose, souls flapping freely in the breeze. Here I feel so free my soul drapes over the couch like a concubine.

I have pioneered an especial list of keys to happiness. I plan to write my own self-help book. My formula is the result of having had too many subpar days. I took a tally and found that that the days when I felt at my best, In Place, amounted to not that many. I was stomach-achy, sore, tired, hungover, my eyes itched, I had a headache, I hid often.

I have reset the controls of the experiment, changed variables like location. In LA, there are more days where I feel In Place. My formula, not to undercut the sales of my forthcoming book, mandates sleep (7-9 hours), exercise (1-2 hrs), food (reasonable amount, as little sugar as possible, and little bread, as is sleep-inducing), water (10 glasses minimum), 1-2 caffeinated beverages, 1-2 aloholic beverages, and seeing a lot of the colors blue and green (20 acres, this counts sky) each day.

I used to promise many books. I remember all the books I had coming.

In college I thought I was writing Mancatching. A tongue-in-cheek bible for seduction of the opposite sex whose first chapter, Lying About, detailed not only what items to leave lying around ones room, what books to leave spreadeagled, what textures to have handy, but also what to lie about. I lost spirit. Could never have followed my own rules. The book evaporated from me. A shame because I think it would have sold well and helped many.

I wrote a book in high school about a king who followed the cord of a soda machine around his small planet, to see what it was plugged into, having many adventures along the way. A plebeian named Ned followed the king following the cord, and had the same sort of adventures again, his way. I typed it out, and illustrated it, and lent it to my boyfriends friend. It blew out of his car, page by page, then all at once, and was gone forever. Rob. His name was Rob. I hate myself.

I had no shortage of inspiration then. Ideas were as common as glass.

I am noticing my changes. I have fewer ideas now. I can feel dark patches in my skull. I work around them. Accommodate my own weaknesses, make lists, tease myself. Most of the things I have lost I dont mind, most of the things I have lost deserved to be let go.

I am always afraid, and with good reason, that my life as it is is unsustainable. I am reaching out of it, to try out other lives. Interviewing for real jobs. Wandering around trailer parks. Thinking about the yard ornaments I would be able to plant if I lived there: oh, flamingoes. I could roll and stack my tires. I could climb to the roof. Park on the grass. Oh, yeah. I can see it. Can see me there.

1:42 PM - 5 Comments - 6 Kudos - Add Comment

And Strong Emotion

I grew up to stories of children drowning in grain. Children going down in silos. Grain is like quicksand, and if you fall in, dive in, toe in, for an experiment or a dare, it will suck you under, and the more you struggle, the faster it will swallow you, and everyone on the farm will look for you, then it will hit them--the silo, and they will climb up the ladder to the door at its summit, and enter, and stand on the metal landing, and look into the hot, faint light, and out of the hill of grain, see your small hand reaching, rigor mortis stiffened.
************************************************************************
K. and I fought today. This does us both in. We are the backbones to each other's days: if it stays bad what then? It hasn't stayed bad; it clears; today I think we talked through and got somewhere, out. But in our short months together, the fights I have had with her, not barbrawls, not hairtuggings, or namecallings, but fights still, pile higher than all the fights I've had in my life thus far, hay-baled, combined.

Relationships exist to help us with other relationships. What we learn over here we bring over there, and we layer; each relationship, worn over the other, simultaneously, covers the gaps left by the other, fills in the worn-through patches. Enough good ones and the whole self is covered. But we have been minimalist, have not layered up, and there is skin exposed, there are needs unaddressed.

Our chief area of nonintersection lies in our different approaches to our emotional lives. Hers is uninhibited, and swoops from exuberant to volatile. Fast. I see the value of reigning in; I wait for spells to pass, hope whatever bruhaha is fleeting. I would prefer to keep people at arm's length than to be rattled by them-- a lot of my friends have been once-every-two-weeks friends. That strikes me as just close enough. Aren't most people this way?

I think she thinks, I know she thinks, I am a cold, dry planet. But I never thought myself a stranger to strong emotion; I go glum, moony, anxious. But I do not cry often. Or go looking for the trainwrecks. Because it is true: put your ear to the earth and you will hear trains, and the earth shaking, no doubt about it, and that all could sound troublesome. But what are you doing with your ear to the earth? There are always trains, and the shaking is normal, just what happens when they traverse mountainpasses. What you are making yourself worry about does not mean a wreck; those sounds are ordinary as day.

I try to tell her where I am from. Why I am the way I am. Here is her family: loud, open arms, ruckus, admonishments, fights, forgiveness.

My family would call them dramatic. I would envy the conversation that I know must take place around their tables.

*******************************************************************

This is who I am: I grew up to stories of children drowning in silos. Children trapped in refrigerators, suffocating. I love North Dakota. It is full of space. Around the silo, nothing. Around the refrigerator, nothing. The rare trauma outjuts. That is my emotional life. Peace except the silo, except the refrigerator. Those are crises yes but rare. They exist amid non-crises, amid undemanding fields, expanses of wind, isolated in a world that is mostly undulating calm.
******************************************************************


So these stories are doubly revealing, first as metaphors for the rarity of trauma in my inner landscape, second, for how they were told. An uncle, or great-uncle, or grandfather, would parse them out, slow, unfussy, without sensationalism. This is what has happened. Matter-of-fact. Children drown in grain, and learning that was like learning any other thing, learning to tighten shoelaces from the bottom up.

My mother's side of the family made more of a display. My grandfather, in Fargo, would sit in his tweedy armchair in the dark den that smelled like old pipe smoke, look in the direction of the TV, and tell my brother and me about his best friend, when he was in the Navy. Their big boat stopped hard, the friend fell overboard and was gone in minutes. A fin. A quick swirl. Glimpse of a limb at an impossible angle. My grandfather would glaze over, go somewhere inside, even as he sped up his words, repeated himself for effect. My brother is still scared to death of the ocean, the sharks in it. My grandfather knew how to torture himself, in this way.

In that house, other emotions boiled up, among my mother and her sisters, their mother: undercurrents could become outercurrents. But that was not my house.

My house in Bismarck was nearer to my father's side of the family, a stoic bunch from the German-speaking enclave of Napoleon. Holiday dinners were prepared efficiently, distributed in one sprawling course across the table, ingested and cleared at record speed. Occasional attempts at conversation: weather, illnesses, the priest at church. Am I wrong to remember little being expressed? You know this: once at Thanksgiving my grandfather said to my grandmother, "Almost this much snow in 'fifty-six, Maggie. Wasn't that the year of the stillborn?"

None of us had known about the stillborn. But Maggie, my grandma, spent the Depression cutting the heads off her own chickens, and is not one to be pitied. She looked down in front of her at the slice of the apple pie she made as the conversation ponied on. She ate the pie, helped clear dishes, clucked around the kitchen with a rag until it was time to get in grandpa's car and let him drive her home, as he always does, slowly, with the greatest of care, only occasionally hitting stationary objects. What happened inside her? I am left to imagine that, after grandpa's loaded sentence, there was, in my grandma, a great inner sweeping, an internal tidying-up. I can hear her saying to herself, "There is no point in being upset over that now." I swear she wasn't. She understood, forgave.

Of the demonstration of honest-to-goodness UPSET, from my parents, in my youth, this is all I remember, in the rough order of occurrence;

1. Two spankings from my father--Both when I was about five--Once, when I wanted to put on a dress and dance to the Dolly Parton Show; once, when I ran away, at least three blocks from home, for at least an hour.
2. My mother cried when she slipped on the basement steps. I brought her ice.
3. My mother gave me the silent treatment and looked at me as though I were a demon inhabiting the body of her sixteen-year-old daughter after a mother-daughter trip to Minnesota during which she read my diary and discovered that I was at the tame and happy beginnings of sexual activity. It was the diagrams that got her. She asked me to tear out the pages. I refused. It was research, and well-written.
4. My father cried when I came back from my first semester at college and seemed ungrateful.

As for familial demonstrations of LOVE, we were not a huggy bunch. And word-wise, there was no need to declare the obvious. I knew my father loved us because every weekend he took our cars one by one and filled them up with gas.

I am not saying that I was not a whirlwind. As a teenager I sopped with tears. I learned in college hugging and airkissing, to speak more, to unwind myself before people, to watch them unwind. Like a natural I learned how to freewheel in anger: at my first boyfriend I slammed doors. All the time. I feel bad about that.

But, at first with considerable effort, and now easily, I have dropped the doorslamming. Long gone from North Dakota, I have romanticized certain lessons of my midwestern past--understated trauma, practical love. Hurt that is snowplowed out, gone by the time you come back inside.

I have romanticized the landscape. Now, the sun is almost always setting over the straight horizon, the occasional silo dots the view, the occasional refrigerator tilts on the stretch of land that the government is paying the farmer not to farm. Can't you imagine what it is like to long for the nothing, the nothing in all directions?

6:05 PM - 5 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

Night Out

7:57 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Vegas

7:40 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

CHASTE

Dedicated to J., with apologies for any misquotations. He may amend below.

***************************************************************

In my adolescent summers, I traveled from park to park with the Shade Tree Players in a green truck which, when unfolded, became our stage. Behind the curtains of our low-budget stick-shift children's theater, in dressing rooms full of spindly junior high limbs, wizard hats, and matching T-shirts, rampant desires criss-crossed and V'ed...

The best thing on our astroturf-covered stage--I was not alone in this opinion-- was J., a boy a with a wolfish grin, a talent for teasing, and a young mastery over the power of direct eye contact. He talked about sex a lot, I thought. I couldn't believe he'd had it. He was a year older but might as well have been a decade past me. I had a big, crippling crush. I remember listening to music at his house, arms folded over my legs, almost unable to speak.

Or was that later?

I remember less the short spell we actually dated in high school. My life was a blur then: elevated, busy. I didn't know where I stood. Over lunch today in Venice, ten years later, more, he told me stories.

"And your bathrobe. You would come to the door in your bathrobe. And wet hair. And stay that way."

"No!!!!!!!!!Why?"

"You said you were comfortable."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be. That was a real highlight. And I remember stroking your waist. And you looked at me and said Whenever You're Ready."

"AAhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!"

Suffice it to say, this lunch was a real mindbender. I do not remember this, and am prone to disbelieve, or admire?, these actions. This doesn't GO with my self-perception-- Not only have I never been a bathrobe person, I swear, but moreover I remember myself being resolutely chaste, the last of my friends to lose it, naïve and easily scandalized.

"But we didn't ever do anything." I knew that much and I didn't understand why if I was coming on to him, if he liked me, if any of this was true.

"Now I'd go for it. But then I didn't. I just put you on this pedestal. I couldn't do anything to you." (I liked that first part. The being on the pedestal part.)

"But it sounds like I was very clear."

"I still didn't believe it. You are touchy-feely...with everyone, and then sometimes so aloof. It's hard to tell what's going on. "

This is odd review for me to get from an old almost-lover. Especially now. What J. said made me realize that A) Honesty is not necessarily credible, or enough. Honesty you can hide behind like anything. But chiefly B) that perhaps, even while too stupidly open in a lot of ways (this thing that I do practically daring the world to harm me, yes, I know about it), I might in other ways be closed and putting out there, into the universe, a pointed untouchability, something willfully obtuse.

But who doesn't invite and stave off at the same time? Push and pull? I actually think this resistance is wise 99 percent of the time. It wouldn't do to ooze sexuality, who wants to. I am still mostly Catholic and have errands to run. AND want most of the world to stay a genteel distance away. But sometimes....

This conversation was helpful, in a solutionless sort of way. J.'s recollection of events brushes some disparate strokes of green into a vine; a new pattern emerges out of the wallpaper of my man-life. That could be...Was that it...Was that me?

11:26 PM - 3 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Faster

We set out to fast for ten days and almost made it through one. I can't believe all you master-cleanser people. What are you thinking? We drank the quart of salt water, and several servings of the lemon/maple syrup/cayenne pepper drink, and within a few hours we felt headachy, nauseated, and pathetically immobile..not to mention really hungry. We made it to the bank, that was our activity for the day, and let me tell you: it wasn't easy. Then we came home and read to each other, from "Einstein's Dreams" and "The Unbearable Lightness of Being." That part was nice. There is something so comforting about reading out loud, being read to. One relaxes and becomes all ears. Then we watched the Daily Show, but such was the malcontent within our bodies, and the distraction within our minds, that we barely laughed. Then we gave up and ate soup. The best soup of my life. Split pea.

I have decided that life has enough obstacles in it without me adding more. I and my delicate constition will have to continue on in our comfortable, impure state. Perhaps with the resolution to eat a few more vegetables.

11:29 AM - 3 Comments - 6 Kudos - Add Comment

Girls with Auras of Disaster

Throughout life and especially now, I have been surrounded by girls with auras of disaster, small and large auras, small and large disasters. Am I one?

How many lost wallets, stovetop burners left on, exterminations, times ambulanced, pulled over, kicked-out, do I need under my belt to count as one? How many sets of keys need to disappear? How many papers does the computer need to eat?

Am I one? I am certainly familiar with the state in which one thing goes wrong, and then another, and I can't concentrate, I unhinge, I reach that elevated plane of disaster. I swirl in that, I have swirled like that, not paying attention, asking for trouble.

The last four days alone have included upwards of five hours of extreme lostness on the road, an empty gas tank in the middle of the desert, a car we could not find in the parking lot, police pulling shotguns on me and my co-actors while we were trying to shoot a liquor store robbery scene, and flat tires.

More evidence, from last 8 years I lasso into my adulthood, in favor of my being a girl with an aura of disaster:

Kicked out of host family's house in Italy
Kicked out of prison guard's apartment in Williamsburg
Taken in ambulance to hospital during opium party
Experienced frequent breaking of toes
Fired from Romeo and Juliet
Fired from As the World Turns
Plagued by mice
Plagued by bedbugs
Clogged toilet by flushing bottle of saline solution
Tore off bumper on borrowed car
Broke keys twice in lock of borrowed car
End up crying pretty much every New Years Eve
Horrible driver
Don't really have 'job' as such
Don't really have 'home' as such
Don't really have 'car' as such

You will notice that all these things are not things that I caused directly; some are things that happen around me, to me. Those count. Girls with auras of disaster provoke the world into misbehaving.

But this is all a sliver of the picture. A different sort of resume would have me looking better.

List of Undisasters:

Have people willing to lend me their couches and cars
Find myself often being the calmer-down
Pretty much every relationship has been pretty sturdy
Pay my bills
Return 90 percent of books to the library on time
Return 80 percent of movies on time
Return 70 percent of phone calls at some point
Go to gym
Save my receipts in a special envelope
Cupboards are stocked with groceries, plenty of toilet paper/paper towels
Take care of home repairs promptly
Am on-time or early
Am tidy where it counts
Prescriptions are refilled
Laundry is done
Dog is walked
Am well-groomed, well-hydrated, and disease-free
Have enough stamps

How can one have an aura of disaster if one has groceries, the major household appliances are working, and the bills are paid? Furthermore, I have not lost my wallet in a really long time, and I can usually find my keys after less than 15 minutes of searching. Oh: I was not a teen-age mother. Catholic school drummed into my head that that would be the worst of the disasters that could befall me and my child. And I made it. I was not that disaster.

In California, I have been cultivating inner peace, trying banish the frenzy I felt in New York. But I find myself bookended by girls with auras of disaster.

My roommate comes home from work in a tumult late at night, her storybook hair wriggling with her in upset, cheeks flushed, green snake-charmer eyes flooding with tears. Crystal's disasters are disastrous, and unchanging, and every week there are more tears shooting up from the same geyser, the same story eats its own tail, we are back where we started. I burn incense, open windows, ring bells in corners to clear the upset from the room. "You were sad there", I show her where she was sitting on the floor, and wave my incense over the spot to dispel the heaviness there. She watches.

By contrast, K. experiences few disasters. 'Charmed' is a patronizing word, one that gives its owner no credit, so I won't use it, I will rather say that as a result of who she is, her organization, her strategies, her vitality, the slope of her uphill battles is not that steep. Most days she is happy and functional. But a small thing stop working, a computer won't rev up, a window won't roll up, and her face goes blank, cheeks flush, she reaches for the phone. She catches flight, hang-glides, goes up into a panic. She manufactures disasters puts them where most people wouldn't have thought they belonged.

I know fewer men like this, fewer disaster-boys. I attribute to men a steadiness, sort of rational continuity from day to day. Men, to my mind, move more slowly, whirl less. With women I feel an elevation, I scramble up; with men I feel close to the earth, mud, moss, caves.

Maybe this isn't true. Maybe there are plenty of steady women and tornado men; maybe it is that I am attracted to women who are a-swirl in something, and to men who aren't.

It has always been this way. These girls now and their emotions, and I and my flat tires, have got me thinking about the histories of disaster.

This is a long time coming: Lyric. When she died two years ago, Jerry said, honestly, accurately, "I am mad at her. She never watched out."

I met Lyric at Yale when I was a junior and she was a freshman. Jerry, my best friend then and now, directed the two of us in a one-act play where we kissed.

Being near Lyric was disorienting, like being awash in something. We had lunches for hours that I didn't notice passing.

Long legs, breasts like cantaloupes, a small-chinned alien-round face. Lyric's red lips pouted roundly under a short, slender nose, her large blue eyes spent most of their time wide open in wonder and encouragement. (Those eyes could capsize ships.) Pink eczema patches dotted her fair skin all over. Fine strawberry blonde hair fell quietly to her shoulders. For a voice she had a low intimate one, with a catch to it---a voice that could explode into the most welcoming laughter you have ever heard. I felt very singular when I was with her, she spoke as if revealing secrets, with an attention that never deviated.

Lyric managed to be both wholesome and cosmopolitan: she grew up in the midwest, moved to Casablanca for high school. She dressed loudly and moved vigorously, never prey to the lethargies I get into, or the closed-down walk. Her walk was an announcement.

I think of her as broad, expansive. Her arms open, she would stride into rehearsal and into Jerry's arms, kissing him on both cheeks, exclaiming, "Mon chere!" bubbling with enjoyment. She did the same thing to me, I suppose, when I think about it--the kisses and French exclamations and hot arms. I just was too caught up to notice what exactly was going on as it was happening....She was like that with people, fairly jumped into arms, rushed in.

She would rush here, and rush there, be late, turn in sloppy papers late, learn lines barely if at all, but she, in her ebullience, managed to get everything pulled off somehow. One night she called up the local radio station in New Haven to make a request--I wish I could remember the song she wanted now---and she ended up dating the station's intern, Bobby, to whom she talked on the phone. He had been captured by her voice, and she dove into the adventure, attached herself to his hip. While none of her friends at Yale understood her attraction to Bobby, a stocky thirtyish "townie" who didn't seem to work, at the same time no one could picture her dating one of the small, sensitive college boys who decorated campus like cerebral flowers.

Lyric and I were both on the unserious side of the student body, and when I graduated I bequeathed to her my collection of college knick-knacks: disco balls, fish nets, whips.

I moved to New York, our friendship on hiatus until she graduated and moved there, too. She shacked up with Bobby--now her fiance-- in a flat in Williamsburg. I was disappointed to rarely see her alone; Bobby accompanied her everywhere, even to auditions, watching her like a guard dog.

One day in spring, this was 2003, a year after her graduation, she called me to tell me that she had moved out, that she had broken off her engagement to Bobby. Our mood was celebratory as I brought her to a casting with me; I was supposed to bring a "real friend" for a contact-lens commercial. The casting director wanted to see us interact and talk about ourselves. Lyric and I laughed and laughed, and she told the casting director that she had just taken off her engagement ring. She showed the camera her left hand. "Look, as soon as I took it off my eczema cleared up!"

We window-shopped afterwards, walking down Fifth Avenue, and over a lunch at Union Square--decadently sharing wine--we made plans for all the things we would do together now that she didn't have a man hoarding her up. She glowed at all her prospects. She had rented a room in an apartment in Chinatown, and her mom was coming into town to watch her "Law & Order" debut.

Two evenings later, the phone calls started. "Is Lyric okay?" I turned on the news. Lyric was in a coma. The story was revealed sensationally in tabloids over the next couple days, Lyric's headshots the cover of the Post, the Daily News. Inside, pictures of Lyric and Bobby smiling together, pictures of blood staining a doorstep.

Bobby had followed Lyric home from her restaurant job in Soho to her apartment in Chinatown. In the vestibule of the apartment building, he took out a gun, shot her in the face, and then shot himself. Lyric's mom came running down the stairs, put Lyrics head in her lap, yelled, "Someone shot my baby in the eye!" Bobby died instantly; Lyric lived two days on life support before her organs were culled for donation.

The funeral filled the Brooklyn Tabernacle, the church Lyric had taken to attending. No mention of Bobby. Just Lyric, her love of Jesus. My friends and I shook the hands of her family. It was shaking the hand of her mother that broke me.

A dozen of us who had been close to her in college lunched on Smith Street. The mood was somber, delicate, warm.

To Jerry's anger: it is true. She was never cautious, never vigilant. That is what an aura of disaster springs from, isnt it? A lack of vigilance. A way of leaping in.

After her death, reporters swooped in to investigate Bobby. Apparently he always had a gun with him. And the fact that he was a drug dealer eluded Lyric for the entirety of the three years they were together. I am mad at her too, for not knowing better. But nothing anyone dug up indicated that Bobby would be capable of or interested in making such a violent gesture. It was Greek in it's grandiosity, it's futility. No one ever thought Bobby would be that dramatic.

The casting director sent me the audition tape; Lyric and I turning in profiles, three-quarters, showing our hands. When I watch now I try I look for it. Can I see her aura of disaster? Can I see mine?

12:39 PM - 4 Comments - 6 Kudos - Add Comment

SHOOT

My agent Julia called me a few weeks ago. This was unusual because she has assistants, and I have a manager, and my manager has assistants, so there are many links between us, and we never talk. But her friend had written and was about to direct a short film called I SEE U. It would be very little money, but he's a good guy, works on a lot of stuff, he has big plans for this project. Would I audition?

I auditioned and got the part. I was Natalie, "bookish, hip"; I and my boyfriend Peter catch an armed robbery in progress at a liquor store, and follow the robber to his house, where he shoots Peter. I know, I know. But some of the dialogue was cute, and I got to be real dubious-like, a Scully to Peter's Mulder. I got to say things like, "You're an idiot," "Who do you think you are, Jack Bauer?" and, " I hate you. "(That last was my add.) The shtick of the project was that all the action would be shot either on the Treo, or AS IF with the Treo, in approximately real time.

I can spend a day shooting this, I thought, that's fine, no big sacrifice, whatever, something might come of it. But there ended up being two more days of trying to cast a Peter, and a rehearsal day. I was growing resentful of the time the film was absorbing, time which made it impossible not to notice how unmagical the premise was. Worse, after all those hours with the director, I realized I didn't like him at all. His knobby face was always covered with a sheen of sweat the temperature failed to explain. He kept pulling his shirt up, as if to air out his flacid hairy stomach. His lips couldn't close over his buck teeth. And he kept using the word "titties," "titties this" and "titties that" as in, "You dont have to show your TITTIES on that line but I need you to turn on the sex appeal..." I kept thinking he was wrong about everything.

Today, I show up at his house at 6:45 a.m. for the much-anticipated shoot, Coachella-tired and fairly unprepared. The director tells me he is already stressed out, because the guy who was supposed to play the Latino Dude, the robber, had had his car stolen in Long Beach, and was stuck there. As my makeup is being done at the dining room table, however, the director springs up from his chair---he has the idea that he will have his young neighbor, who was set to PA that day, be the robber.

As if on cue, Herman and his mother, who is dropping him off, walk in. Herman is a 16-year-old Hispanic kid, with braces, a limp handshake and a shy demeanor. He has never acted before. The director quickly apprises him of his new role, hands on both his shoulders. "You are going to be our thug today, ok? Being the star of a movie, trust me, much better than being a PA." One of the producers and the DP put different caps on Herman's buzzcut head, trying to see which of them makes him look most thuggish. "What would you wear if you were getting up to some badass shit?" they ask him. "I don't know..."He shrugs helplessly and looks across the room to his mother.

Driving Peter and me to a liquor store on Santa Monica, the director gushes about the casting change, "This will be great. A whole new angle. A kid with a gun, that's scary, you know, because he doesn't know what to do with it!"

We rehearse in the liquor store, blocking our entrance and the ensuing hold-up. The director tries to coach Herman into sounding fierce. Herman gives it a heroic go, really wanting to please him, but he is stilll hard to hear when he pulls out the gun and says to the owner behind the counter, "Money in the bag!"

About 20 minutes into rehearsal, two cops bang in through the door, back to back, their shotguns pointed in opposite directions. "Everyone down!"

"This is a movie!" the director yells.

"Down, down, down!" They yell louder, not listening.

Peter and I crouch down, then scramble outside, where we find an army. About 15 cop cars that I can see, lights on, flank the liquor store and block the street, along with dozens of cops, aiming at least thirty shotguns in our direction. A fire truck sirens in behind them.

"Hands up! Hands up! "

"Against the wall!"

I face the wall, hands up, peering around occasionally to try to count shotguns, to make sure of all this, wondering mostly, At me? How are these pointing at me?

"Turn around!"

From my position I hardly get a glimpse as the cops take a handcuffed Herman out of the store and insert him into the back of a cop car. "He's my responsibilty! This is my project!" The director yells. Cops run into the liquor store, casing it out.

Shotguns come down. Police come over and handcuff us all roughly. Keep us facing the wall. Each of us, Peter, me, the makeup artist, the sound guy, the director, has a cop at our backs.

This lasts some time. Peter and I look at each other. The cuffs are heavy on my wristbones. The West Hollywood Sheriff shows up, slamming his car door, castigating the director:" You don't think to get a permit! This is why you need a permit! We almost shot the kid in there!"

And the director says, "I know, I fucked up, I'm an idiot."

Then the cops assigned to each of us approach us, pads out, to take our information. I don't realize that I am scared until now--I can't remember my address.

"If they're all on the movie we can let them go..." Someone says, after a while, after the director trying to explain the nature of the scene to them. My cop undoes my handcuffs. I move my hands in front of me, and see them shake. How odd, I think, I don't feel any different than I usually do, but my hands are shaking.

Slowly, the mass of cop cars taking over Santa Monica Blvd disbands. Only about six cars and a dozen officers are left as a woman from the sheriff's department writes the director a ticket. The officers speak to us more amicably now that they have ascertained we are not criminals. We ask about Herman, and find out he was brought to the station. "That kid was seconds away from getting shot. Serious. Five more seconds. He wouldn't put down the gun..."

We hadn't been in the liquor store at that point to see Herman "resist arrest," but apparently he hadn't understood what was going on, and kept the gun--which was real--- in his hand even as the officers had their guns drawn on him.

The director, before going in to try to right things with the store owner, tells the DP to drive Peter and me out of there, and we hop into the van. Which, for a topper, doesn't start. As the van is getting a jump, I send picture messages over my phone of the cop cars that are still rallying around the liquor store. I talk with my cohorts about Herman, who got arrested on his first acting experience ever, when he had just been expecting to PA for his mother's friend. We remember the Latino dude who was supposed to be there, whose place Herman had taken. "Thank god he had his car stolen! That was the best thing that ever happened to him!" someone said, and that is probably true. He could very well have gotten shot; he looks many times more vicious with his muscles and occasional tattoos than young, vulnerable Herman.

What am I thinking about now? How people just go along with things. How they take the gun, or learn the lines, or go to the liquor store, don't ask questions. How many of us are willing to compromise ourselves in the hopes that someone's vision will end up being worthwhile.

I have been thinking about praying, about what happens when I direct my energy toward specific wants. Lately, my wishes have been granted as if by ironical genies. On the way to Palm Desert, to stay at a friend's over Coachella weekend, I was having such a nice drive with Crystal that I wanted to keep driving. I wanted to stay in the car. And we did--we missed many exits and overshot our destination by about 70 miles, and ran out of gas in the middle of the desert, ultimately saved by a trucker.

After Saturday's Coachella, exiting with the droves after Daft Punk, one girl in our party made plans for us all to meet some men at their hotel. I didn't want to go. One of the men kept bouncing up and down, hugging me, saying, "Isn't this fun?" and shooting me with a water gun. Why would I want to go anywhere with them, let alone their hotel? But that was where we were heading....until we couldn't find our car. Anywhere. An hour of wandering, and eventually Phil, a helpful Canadian, took us home, so we could come back and look for our car in the morning. Annoying as fuck to be traipsing through thousands of cars, sure, but hey: we didn't have to go out with those men.

And today I didn't, didn't, didn't, want to make this film. I wanted to sleep, anything else. I didn't believe that Peter was my boyfriend, hadn't made any decisions on how to turn up the sexiness in the "titties" scene, was unsure of a lot of my lines. It was all nebulous. And while facing the wall handcuffed was humiliating, and the shotguns got to me, and my wrists still hurt, well, hey: I didn't have to make the movie.

12:30 PM - 8 Comments - 14 Kudos - Add Comment

For the Edification of Future Lovers

We all have certain paperwork with us at all times. Drivers' licenses, car insurance information, medical cards, and our relationship histories. We call our relationship histories our "maps," and we ask for them from each other at our first or second dates. A few tremulous souls ask to see them before any date at all, a few defiant lovers never look. Our maps are not maps as such, though many come with diagrams. They consist of a general overview of our relationship information (pie charts, grids, tallies), followed by specific opinions and post-relationship polls. These pivotal testimonials are faithful recountings given in the calm after the storm. A month or two after we are vacated, we and our relationship habits are reviewed by our past lovers, and their words are appended to our maps, for the perusal of our future lovers. The surveys arrive in the mail care of the Bureau of Future Lovers' Edification and Equity, or FLEE.

People, after centuries of unnecessary blindness, at last began to grasp the injustice of information being known but not shared. Are we not entitled to know what it is we're getting into? Of course. Can we trust a person to reveal him or her self accurately? Of course not. People rallied behind podiums, in front of statues, obelisks. "For foreknowledge! For foreknowledge!" they chanted, and their chant became a roar. Signs jutting in the air showed stick figures holding hands or strings of joined paper dolls, representing a persons past and future lovers banding together for a common good. "It takes a village to raise a relationship," became a ubiquitous bumper-sticker.

And so FLEE was founded. Legislation coasted through in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act, helped by the fact that one or two senators had been recently burned by romance. "I wish I had known, I wish I had had the tools to know what was very likely coming, and now, with FLEE, we all will have that opportunity," said Sen. Dorgan (ND), looking down, moved. "We should all be contributing to the wellbeing of the future relationships of our partners by offering our insights and opinions today."

Who could argue?

All of us are charted territories now. It is only fair. We have mapped the world. The sea floor is known. The surface of Jupiter. Of course we map each other.

Can you imagine: An explorer explores a coast. Avoids wrecks for a time. Then, one day, hits on a particularly perilous stretch, sharp rocks scathe the underbelly of his ship, which goes down. Somehow he is saved. He returns to England, to Portugal, to whatever exploring nation he came from, returns to his cottage, eats soup, looks out the window, tells no one. Tells no one where the sharp rocks are. Is he not guilty of all future wrecks? Other explorers set off for the same coast, no map in their hands. Would you not hold his selfishness against him? Would you not blame the travesties that follow on his silence? Why should only the defeated explorer know--the explorer who will never go back?

Mapping is a duty. Information is a right. And if the next explorers get books of maps, and one map says the shoreline is a high ridge to a forest, and one explorer says the coast is smooth an sandy, and one explorer says there are whirlpools between this and this time, between this and this isthmus, and another explorer says the currents are safe, take them down all the way, the problem is the hurricanes in May, well then, the next explorer knows that this territory has not been accurately charted. That no one has figured out the edge of this continent. That really someone ought to.

But if every map has taloned sea monsters jutting out from its waters in a certain patch, if every map says between this time and this time don't try to pull into shore, its not safe with the tide, if every map says all the berries on the rocky outjutting that you will want to eat because you've been months at sea and are at the beginnings of scurvy, are poisonous, well then, you listen. This territory has been mapped and re-mapped and everyone agrees. And there is an archipelago to the south, you can see it when you squint, that looks better. You should go there.

At front, a diagram of our body. Erogenous zones. Circle the good parts. X out the zones to avoid. "Do not touch her feet/touch her feet." Let the next man know.

Tallies: number of important relationships, number of heartbreaks, number of partners.

Pie charts: It usually hasnt worked out because....Divide the pie. "Fell out of love, went crazy, moved," etc., what have you.

Averages: Duration of relationships, frequency of sex, of orgasms, of fights.

The questionnaire:

When X got made, the following usually happened....
Xs pet name for me was...
The nicest thing about X was...
The worst thing about X was...
The nicest thing X ever said to me...
Worst thing X ever said to me...
My chief complaint about X is...
Good luck with....
Reason given for end...
Reason suspected (if different)....

Then the essays. The exes each write a couple pages, sum up their experience of you. If their commentaries are too acerbic, FLEE sends their paperwork back for revision, until it is tempered by the perspective of time, and reads as fair.

It's nice. I like having been charted. Sometimes I page through the testimonials when I need to remember who I am. My sins, my virtues. I forget.

I watch you read my map now. I am relieved to have it; I can no longer handle it, explaining myself. I have grown too vast. My behavior is a sprawl. I don't remember what happened anymore, or why. But these men wrote when it was all still fresh, and they are probably right. Who ever knew me better?

Make your conclusions. And I will look through your maps, dog-ear the pages, jealous and thankful.

11:51 AM - 4 Comments - 9 Kudos - Add Comment

Studybug

I was an uptight teenager. I didn't mind studying, I minded what happened when I didn't study. A shade of ill preparation, and anxiety would snowball down all my hills, pin me from the waist down in an anxiety-avalanche. So I was never ill-prepared. I studied. A prim and resolute despot, I demanded absolute silence. Which was not hard to come by in North Dakota, in a house that was a chain of warm rooms, my family usually tucked into the den downstairs, or the kitchen, leaving the rest to me. Though I had a couple dining room years, bent over the big square table in a room full of family photographs, I usually chose to take over the living room, books and papers strewn across the weighty desk I worked at, on the floor around me. This desk faced a large thick-paned window overlooking our side yard, our quiet street, the white storybook house just across it. I rarely looked up, however, except to register the quick fall of darkness, and to estimate from the arrival of my parents cars the time that I would be interrupted for dinner. I remember a lot of spaghetti. I ate fast. No one made me help wash up; I had important things to do, I went back where I was needed, to my stack of books.

It didn't occur to me that there were other things to do, at least not Monday through Thursday. I never felt bored, never felt that staying in with my books was any hardship, never felt like I was missing anything. I don't think I did. What was out there? But inside....All my homework memories are tinged with a happy glow, as if a fire was always going next to me. I had pet study positions; I did my assignments and re-wrote my notes curled over my desk, made my study guides sitting on the floor at the coffee table, reviewed my work sprawled on my stomach in the middle of the living room. My mother never complained about being assigned to quiz me from the study sheet I put in her hand. We sat on the loveseat, our feet together. Sometimes I would take an hour off for a favorite TV show, LA Law, Sisters, ER. Then go back.

This was all my idea. My parents never told me to take all those classes, to get straight A's or else. That was all me. I don't really remember a single 'showing the parents the report card' moment. I wasn't after their praise. I just wanted to get everything right.

Something happened in college. I threw in some sort of towel. Assignments were sprawling. Papers huge. Meanwhile, every night seemed like it could be capped with some sort of social adventure. I went out, I think a good amount. After all, studious as I was in high school, I never could have managed to count as one of the smartest at Yale, and I've never been one for self-torture, for engaging in battles I have no hope of winning. So I didn't. I still remember the walk from my mailbox to my dorm room when I opened the envelope of my grades and realized the consequencelessness of B's. I saw them swim on my report card. Foreign things. But they didn't do anything; nothing changed; I was still okay.

And since graduation, I have lowered the bar further. There have been weeks when I have been deluged with auditions, but distracted by real life needs (to make money, to buy toilet paper, to feed myself, to talk to the insurance lady) I haven't been able to prepare. I have gotten into the habit of telling myself, "You will do what you can do, and that will be good enough."

This new idea of "good enough" was something to relax against. I told you, my portrait painting instructor told me, "80 percent and you have a likeness." Meaning dont get stuck on the drawing, you have a painting to do, and 80 percent right is all you need, you will have conjured a good impression of your subject, the portrait will stand. I have applied that mantra broadly. Getting a cockney accent 80 percent right by the next day is an accomplishment, on a night out, being 80 percent fun is an enjoyably hittable mark. 80 percent I can do.

In sum, I have moved the dartboard closer, enlarged the pool-table pockets...I have made the game easier on myself and have let myself go. And I think this is progress. There was no need for me to be the taskmaster that I was in my youth. In addition, I have come to yoga, come to meditation. I can calm myself down. I know how to visualize myself a pillar of light. And you, I can make you into a pillar of light. And if there is friction between us, spidering between our pillars of light, I can clear it. I can sent my roots down into the earth, and stay unrattled in crowds this way. I touch the crystal around my neck, finger the sandalwood bracelet on my wrist. I breathe now, sometimes heavily.

But last week, my tools for coping, my new low bar, were nowhere to be found. Saturday morning I was to take the CBEST, the 4 hour standardized test one needs to pass in order to become certified as a substitute teacher in California. My first such test in ten years, and one that, if I failed, would shame me considerably. To be deemed unqualified to substitute teach? So there was something at stake.

But the night before the CBEST, my roommate, bless her, threw a dinner party. I came home at nine, ready to whip out my books and go to bed by 11 so I could wake up a functional person at 6 am. And there were people.

They were not loud per se. And Crystal gave me a plate of lobster that was astoundingly good. And it is not really my place. I am Crystals non-leaving and grateful houseguest. But the sounds coming through my door were of the irregular and persistent quality that prevented me from getting from one end of a practice math problem to the other and overrode my rational understanding that anger was inappropriate here.

Sequestered in my permeable room, I called K. who, in a sort of role reversal exercise, worked on calming me down. And for an hour or so, I recovered my inner peace. But midnight came, the guests still there, none of my math problems done, and I arrived at an advanced state of panic. "How am I supposed to do well?" I asked God, rattled by injustice. I suspected sabotage on the universal level. I cried and held my knees in.

Eventually, I gave myself over to anxiety dreams, waking up in the small hours of the night to practice what I would say to the proctor who would catch me sipping orange juice on a bathroom break from the no-food-or-drink test: "I have low blood sugar. I cant go for four hours without calories." This feels true, I told myself.

I woke up blurry at 6, and drove to the test singing, even though I didnt feel like it, because it wakes me up and staves off hostility. The test was attended by a mob--that represented a real cross section of humanity---at a shithole of a school. When I tried to shift my creaky desk, my hands touched stalactites of hard gum on its underside.

50 math questions, 50 reading questions, and 2 essays later, I left feeling a weight lifted. Feeling okay.

But mad at myself, for having not come far enough to put tests in perspective, to turn my back on panic when it's at the door wanting in. For becoming again that little girl who, if all distractions are not under lockdown, becomes a stresscase. I also surged with an unexpected love for my home, for my parents, who let me get away with being a tightass for that many years, who acquiesced nightly to my insistence on peace and quiet, who were never obstacles to anything. Who now, who ever again, will devote themselves to humoring my obsessions, to making my life so easy?

9:52 AM - 3 Comments - 5 Kudos - Add Comment