Lily Life

signs for the blind

 i went to the  braille institute today.

it's for the blind.

blind people walking confidently around with their white canes.  some of them look quite sighted.  

some are handsome. some are old.  all are peaceful.  happy to be there.

in the braille institute blind people are king and everyone is Very Nice.  for real.   

a white-haired lady volunteer taught a "full blind" class of ladies how to knit.  she's been working there since 1975.  a student held up her scarf.  i didn't know if i should complement her on the color.  it was salmon.   

later they paired us up two by two and we practiced both leading, and Being the blind.  it was fun. disorienting.  

they tell you that if you are leading a blind person, you should be very detailed and specific about everything that going on in terms of anything that comes up.  different kinds of ground surface. hazards. changes.  you have to keep up a running commentary of all possible things, and they have to trust you completely.  

whew!

but...the guide tells us, everyone who assists the blind will develop their own personal style of how they deliver the commentary.  

hmm.  like a comedy sketch?  a routine?  what about the style of contemplative inner monologue?  

to listen to it, it's fabulous and frustrating at the same time.  sorta like hamlet. 

it reminds me of how, when i'm with my mom in the car, she'll randomly call out signs and warnings as we're driving by.  signs of auto shops and tanning salons.  traffic advice. "bob and barbara's shoe repair" "dew drop inn".  and "watch out that car's gonna cut you off."  

it's marginally irritating.  

but apparently, i do it too.  so i've been told. and...i'm guess i'm okay with that.    

i too love to call out 'tommy burger."  "baller hardware."  "speed bump." 

i think i'm going to like working there.  i like to call out signs for the blind.    

next time

i don't really know if i believe in reincarnation.   

what keeps all the parts of You together once you're back, floating in the cosmic soup?  is that You, too, or something else?  or is that stuff like the rice dough around the ice cream in a mochi ball?  do you become a karmic mochi ball and then eventually somehow find Your way into some other gestating being?  what happens to the dough?   

it's complicated. 

but i do like to think about what i would like to be next time if i get a chance at this Life thing again.

just in case, i'd like to have some opinions, in case i'm asked or something.  you never know.

so i'm thinking, next time...i'd like to be this dude:

how 'bout you?

i can't stop thinking about space steak

i read in the back of Harper's, the space where each month they have "facts", odd little tid-bits from the around the world.  it's often sort of highly sexualized. stuff like the nocturnal mating habits of deermice, and the uterine cavities of sharks.  

i love it.

but i don't think about them too much.  they sort of drift in and out through the shutters in my mind. 

(the size of a hominid's testicles relative to its brain.) 

however, the other day one little Fact grabbed my mind.  

they now know what space smells like. 

what!?!

NASA says that, "for [astronauts], what comes across is a smell of fried steak, hot metal, and even welding a motorbike."

wait...those are all...HOT things.  what's that all about?  space seems...so cool.

icy even.  i had imagined space to smell like talcum powder,  that's been in the freezer,  in a metal bowl. or like those alcohol-soaked cleaning wipes that come in a wide plastic jug.  cleeean. 

how do they figure that out? how do they sniff space?  how can anything have a smell that has no surrounding air to disperse its molecules through?  

i pictured a little robot.  he sticks his little robot arm out, and opens a little metal ball where his hand ought to be.   tzzzzzh!

instead of collecting a soil sample, he leaves his little hand open long to fill up with space air, and (*snaps*!) it closed again.

later, he opens his tiny fist, to a couple of waiting scientists.  the astro-scientists sniff...freezer burned broccoli?  no, no, no, wait.  a frozen marshmallow?  no. no.  fried steak. mmmm. 

i take back all those bad things i ever said about space.  i think i'd like it there...

p.s. my suppositions about how people sniff space?  all wrong.  read away, following le link, and tell me what you previously thought space would feel like.  hmmm?  

happy halloween

   i used to wait breathlessly for fall when i was little, rejoice when it arrived.  i remember thinking that i knew for sure when it was precisely fall when i needed to wear a sweater to walk to school in the morning, but when the sun had warmed the world all day, i could walk home again with bare arms.  

where is the sweater weather? oh, how i long for you!  

c'mon...all of my best, most fabulous clothes are fall clothes.  i look great in browns, rusts, and greens. my living room is arranged, year-round, for fall, directed to worship the fireplace.  i beg my mother to send me the colored leaves that my father picks up on his morning walks in virgina.  i keep the blinds pulled, trying to conjure up a make-believe, cooler world, from the inside out. 

it's crazy living here, in los angeles, the land of one and a half seasons.  i feel lovesick;  i know the object of my affection exists, know it's name, it's face! but we're torn apart from it, by distance and time.  (*sigh*)

i like to think that fall misses me, too.  

once again, halloween is upon us. one of my very favorite holidays.  it's not so much that i love what halloween seems to be here.  in la-la land, of course, the de rigueur halloween fashion is to dress as slut-ily as humanly possible without getting arrested for public indecency. i outgrew the need for that particular brand of attention many years ago.

but i do love the possibility of crisp air, the tiny, waxy foil-wrapped hershey's chocolates (oh, mr. goodbar!). the wind blowing the (few) fallen leaves in an eerie symphony  i love watching the most dreadfully tacky scary movies all day, every day, and i love the houses with front yards set up for spooky scares with giant, web ensconced spiders, and foam tombstones.  

just the idea of halloween is almost enough to be able to remember the smell of fall in the air.  almost. 

happy halloween.  

self defense

i did a lot of work around the house this weekend. besides the usual scrub down of the kitchen, and chasing the broom around the house for awhile (as my mother would say), i made my own laundry detergent. that's right.

and then to house some new baby plants, i decided some clay pots needed a face lift. so i got out a tin of white paint that had been sitting outside for probable three years, and i opened it (*gaspcoughchoke*) and once the fumes passed, i saw i had inside a substance which resembled nothing as much as frosting. mmmm.

so i frosted up a couple of pots.

while i was finishing up, a bug was heading right for the wet paint so i nudged him away with my toe.

he suddenly pulled himself into a little ball and starting popping up several inches and falling down again. and Pop! again.

i thought "how ridiculous. what an utterly useless defense mechanism. even if it scares your opponent, you're just injuring yourself."

and then...the embarassment set in. who am i to judge another creature's self defense? oh right, because all of my defense mechanisms are so totally fantastic, adaptive, and non-injurious.

ahem. apologies to the tiny critter. pop away, dude.

sometimes i don't

sometimes i don't know how i've gotten here

i look around, surprised, and think,

"who knew that this is what my life would lead to? all those random choices, and now...this."

the good thing

no, the great thing, is

i always like what i see.

The Fisherman

My man is a fisherman. In fact, I call him... The Fisherman. I call him this because he at his very happiest when he is fishing. Hell, if I were as good at fishing as he is, I'd spend my days in the river too.

The Fisherman is a very Good man. He loves my cat. Is kind to all strangers. Loves slow old country songs. And can split a tree into logs to keep me warm in the winter.

Not bad, eh?

But yesterday, the reason I loved him best...?

I was exhausted, and badly needing a day in bed. I was laying there, like a dull, aching potato, sprawling with the cat. So I called out...

"Fisherman?" in my best I'm-in-need-of-being-babied voice. "Can you pick me out a movie?"

I have a rather eclectic collection of VHS tapes that I dearly love, so I knew anything he brought me would be okay, but in the Blah i was in...? Very little would have made me perfectly happy.

And then, he brought me "Tango & Cash". If there were any moment in my life where I felt more gotten than any other...? That might be the one.

Oh, and best line from T & C? Stallone is Tango, the tough, Armani wearing, stock market playing, Super Cop. He pins a villian up against a wall, and looks down at a plate of pasta the man was about to eat. "By the looks of your diet, you're not interested in counting calories. Is that because you're too busy counting the money you were paid to SET US UP?!!"

Aaaaah. I love it.

But not nearly as much as the man who knew I would love it.

Thanks, Fisherman. You've got it, mister.

another day

who ever came up with the song "rain, rain, go away. come again another day" ?

were they crazy? had they ever listened to the rain? the thunder? watched lightening?

i say, "bring it on!"

the dog and the papa have gone home. the fisherman's napping after stacking concrete blocks and splitting wood all morning to help the neighbors.

earlier i bought a flowered tin button box full of random and dazzling buttons from a roadside antique dealer.

it's just me here alone in the hunting camp, with the ducks on the curtains, and the sony Trinitron circa 1982 beckoning me to watch videos.

oh yeah, and the pouring hard rain.

another day? are you kidding? today is just fine by me...

pudding

i don't normally drink cheap white wine over ice in the middle of the day.

but the fisherman told the dog earlier that she couldn't have beer until noon, and it's already after 2.

see what happens when i come here to camp?

brains + camp = pudding

mmm. i really like pudding.

a lazy day

it's been declared a Lazy day.

it's suddenly hot and sticky out, and the wind has gone away to blow somewhere else.

the green around us is less intense, but more sodden with steam and insects.

papa's whacking the weeds, his favorite pastime.

i've made tea, screwed back up the faceplates for the outlets and switches that i took down yesterday, and industriously decoupaged with magazine photos. and later i plan on putting in some rather serious hammock time.

the dog's littering the floors i swept with toys and food and bits of debris.

and the fisherman's fixed a light, made a water-bottle fly-catcher, and later he'll go fishing, with a beer in each pocket of his vest. that's what a fisherman does.

lazy lazy lazy. i have no idea what day of the week it is.

but i'm too lazy to get up and look at a calendar.

the best sound in the world

i'm here, in the green green country, summering in the adirondacks.

my very favorite thing has been happening all morning.

it's been Raining. the best sound in the world is the sound of the rain on a tin roof, especially here in the childhood place of my sweetheart, the Fisherman.

we sleep in what is called the hunting camp, which is really an ancient barn from lord-knows-1800's, which was wasting away somewhere up the road, then was transported here to stand between the wetlands and the one-lane blacktop road. the hunters come here every hunting season, and they drink and eat and get warm by the woodstove after a long day of stalking animals. but when we're here, it's our home.

the bed is in the loft, under the knotty beams that run the length of the barn, sloping down with the eaves. the light coming in from the window is sublime. it's the best place in the world for sleeping. and today is the best sleeping of all.

the fisherman's asleep. the papa's asleep. and the sweet little baby dog who lives with the papa now just curled up in the basket up at my feet and went to sleep.

i love this emerald kingdom of trees, and turtles, and water. the fisherman is so happy here, a fish in his favorite water. my brain isn't very sharp here, but i think that's a good thing. he's always telling me to not worry much, just to be in the present. and Here, the mind and the heart just seem to mush together, melting away anything that feels like worry or fear, leaving only a calming love and peace, and that has to be the best feeling in the world.

Komfort and Klonopin

The day arrived of Joan's memorial. I woke up early, around 6 my time. Shuffled around the house for awhile, watched Maz give her cats both medicine, then feed them separate food, then go outside and feed the stray kitty who lives under the apartment building next to the laundry room. She feeds him every day, and every day he hisses at her.

She reads the paper, I write in here, then we figure it's time to go to the store and buy food. When I ask Maz what she wants, it's Entemann's. Funny, cause it's not what I would have said, but suddenly it's the only thing I want.

It's comfort food. We bought two kinds.

A couple of weeks ago, one of my other closest friends knew I was sick with a summer cold, and showed up at my house, with, yes, Entemann's. Nothing like a giant sugary pillow-soft cream cheese stuffed danish to shove the blues back down there where you won't feel them anymore.

After the danish parade, however, I realized, heart revving, that I had only half an hour to get ready for the service. I rushed around, and thoughts of who I might see, what I might feel, who I was then...all of it flooded in. A little overwhelming.

I got made up, ditched the blouse that made me feel like an old lady, put on perfume, and last but not least, as we headed out the door, in what I'm not embarrassed to describe as a state of mild panic, I ate a Klonopin right out of Maz's hand. I felt like one of her cats.

At the service, two people did a scene, holding those small Sam French scripts, from "Same Time Next Year", a sweet melancholy play. And eight times ( I counted), eight times in the scene, the word Comfort was used.

I guess I wasn't the only one who needed it that day.

Home: Joan

Let's face it, coming home just cracks my brain open in a strange and unstoppable way. Maybe this time I can stave off the craziness.

My parents actually aren't even here; they left town the day before I got here, and I'm staying with one of my oldest friends in the world, Miss Maz, and her two sweet kitties.

But somehow, even in this airconditioned apartment, on her flowered sofa, with her marble coffee table and the pretty little things she has gathered over the years, I can feel the Feeling I have about this place crouching outside the sliding glass door, panting, waiting for me to come out and play.

I can feel it in the heavy wet, humid air, in the show the trees make turning their white sides up in the wind. And in the way that I never have any absolutlely ANY clue where I am when I am here. My inner compass is blindfolded.

I'm here this time, this sticky June weekend, to face and pay homage to my past. Specifically my high school drama teacher, Joan.

It was the 80's and she was Awesome. Her favorite word was "panache". She wore huge silver rings on her long fingers, and her fashion was High, cut in the inverted triangle of the times, supported by some serious shoulder pads, in the winter covered by giant swirling capes. She smoked cigarettes almost constantly, 100's, and her nose, when she smoked, tilted up into an enviable patrician profile.

She directed plays in the big fat high school auditorium. A holy space with wings, and flys, and big heavy curtains. It was my Church.

But where life really happened for me was in the classroom.

The shabby cluttered glorious mess of a drama classroom. It was there that Joan worked the real magic, and challenged us all every day. We worked on tough scenes, crazy experimental theatre, performance art. She let us light shit on fire in there. We told the truth and cried (of course). We played only parts that we wanted to play. For some reason, she let me work for months on the part of a young black man who had just killed his mother.

She also gave me my first true comedic part, on the big stage, and let me find out I was funny. I won my first acting award under her tutelage. She let me be the editor on a script we worked on, and co-write a play for us all to do. There were no limits. And...we belonged. To her. To ourselves. To each other.

The relationship I had with Joan was not uncomplicated. I wanted to please her, for her to like me, to approve of me, to think I was a good actor. Some days I was mad at her. She knew how to intimidate, and seemed to do it if she thought it would be good for us. She treated us like adults, and we did our best to deserve the respect.

In the end of high school, I turned away from her somewhat, in confused teenage rebellion, dropping out of a play, disagreeing with decisions she had made, trying to find my own artistic moral center. But I still showed up in class every day, still longing to wring every drop of experience I could from those classes, from the proud, stylish artistry of Joan.

I never thanked her, never wrote her a letter to tell her what a profoundly positive influence she was on me. Chagrin is a bitter pill. Maybe Joan just knew.

My whole life, every time I've done something with "panache"...? It's all Joan.

It's not all craziness.

where 'you been all my life?

i've been gone for a while, it's true. sometimes opening up your life will do that.

my life is different now than it's ever been before. thank god. without change, life just stays the same.

but here's what i've learned lately. that when the present somehow does not match up to my previous vision of what the present would look like when it was still my future...

(does that make sense?)

...i'm not so quick to catch up.

i struggle. i make a fuss. i withdraw. there's temper tantrum or two.

all before i get it together and realize that the present, exactly as it is, is way better than i could have imagined.

i've gotten all caught up on details, and lost sight of the bigger picture.

what can i say? i'm a little slow.

thank god finally the universe is beating it out of me. by providing daily, in spades, evidence that my life now is far richer and abundant than i ever knew it could be.

my friends, my family, my house, my cat...

let's face it. i've got it pretty great.

there's a man living in my house with me now, in our house. a fisherman, to be exact.

sometimes now the dishes stay dirty. sometimes there's a mangled copy of 'sports illustrated' and a baseball wedged into the couch cushions. sometimes stray white socks show up in surprising places.

but really, who cares? if i spend the rest of my life rinsing whiskers out the sink and closing the kitchen drawers, so be it.

the fisherman helps make life such a better place to live, i'll take it. i'll take it all.

and by the time i've finished puttering through the house, picking up things here and there, seeing evidence of a boy in the joint, who cares if life looks like i thought it would?

this is way way better.

where 'you been all my life?

house

it's been years now i've been living alone. since i was married an eon ago. heck even when i thought (once upon a time) about maybe what if i married another guy...i still wanted to live in my own house.

by myself, that is. you think i would have noticed that meant the relationship was doomed. but, no.

my beloved house is dear to me. the other night when i called to say i was staying home instead going to a friend's house, my friend suggested that i have a "date" with my house, to honor my last few nights alone in it. "what? and light some candles...put on some marvine gaye...see what happens?," i asked.

"'sure," he said. not that it would be a foreign thought to me. just last week i had such a surge of gratitude that i actually hugged my house. i grabbed it by the doorframe and pulled it to me, embracing it with a gush of love. "i love you! oh, house!, i love you!"

truth be told, i bought this house fully intending to share it someday. it never occured to me that it would only be me inhabiting this place. there would be another person. i was sure.

so it is with great excitement that i look to the next piece of my life: i'm going to join the fisherman.

after months of being mostly apart, with brief interludes of living together, we are now to be together. for a two-week stay in the adirondacks, then a month-long trip across america. to sleep under the stars, from sea to shining sea. at the end if which, he will be joining me, here in my beloved casa.

the last few days, keeping in mind how the world keeps changing for the Remarkable Better, i've romanced my house to smithereens. i love it love it love it, i love the creaking floorboards and the light and the way the air moves through.

but now the best part off having the house is...

now i get to share it.