The Messy Middle

I had every intention of writing an essay for my memoir today.

AND THEN I DIDN’T.

(Spoiler alert.)

Because I didn't know what to write about and I convinced myself that other work was more important and then a friend stopped by with something called hard seltzer and, as it turns out, hard seltzer has alcohol.

Now it's almost 5 p.m. and I haven't started my essay and there's hard seltzer and eggnog and a Christmas tree that needs ornaments hung in an attractive yet unstudied manner.

I'm officially in the No Man's Land of this memoir. Until this week, I had a list of stories to write and rough drafts to edit and the process had some momentum.

Now I'm in the messy middle, where I don't know what's next. Where I have to dig around in my stories and my emotions and pull out something honest and vulnerable and true and entertaining to read.

No pressure.

Precisely why I started a Patreon page for this book writing process. Because now I have to write an essay for next Friday. I can't let fear take over. I can't decide that it isn't important or it's too hard or let myself wallow in the "I don't know what to do" phase. I have to keep showing up. Because the fifteen people who are subscribed and supporting me in this process mean I can't put this project down for a month or a year or a decade.

It’s a blessing to have support. This may be the first time I’ve used the word “blessing” without sarcasm or irony. But I’m sincerely grateful to have people on the other side of this process who are helping me stay accountable to myself.

Writing about the ghosts of my past is challenging - and then you get to the actual ghosts my life story somehow contains. (I admit, there are more than I would have expected.) Not to mention all the other multi-dimensional weird that I’m trying to put into words.

I’m like Ebeneezer Scrooge over here. Only with more ghosts and less money.

So this week it didn’t happen, and that’s okay. Being gentle with myself through the artistic and creative process is essential. Man, I can be a real jerk to myself sometimes and that helps not at all.

Next week it will. Because it has to. There’s a certain grace in the “well, it just has to.”

In lieu of a book essay, here’s a festive picture of our cat, Sera. Please note her adorable paws.

A Red Wall Named Jack

An ode to San Francisco, written in May of 2010 for I Live Here: SF.

Someone once told me that I live a charmed life. Since this was in a job interview, I can only assume that my resume writing skills are truly formidable. She was right though, especially when it comes to address. I’ve lived in some good spots – Manhattan, London, and Florence (if you want to be generous with your definition of “lived in.”) But this eccentric grand dame of a city has always seemed brighter than other places. Even when socked in by fog. Anyone who gets me started on the subject of San Francisco better have some serious time on their hands or no compunction about telling a bright-eyed, ever-so-slightly obnoxious history geek to shut her flapping trap already. I tell people about how the Flood Building (where I worked for five years) was one of the few buildings left standing downtown after the earthquake and fires of 1906. Next comes a detailed dissertation on the Gold Rush-era ships buried under the Financial District. Soon I’m pulling out my iPhone for an enforced viewing of a streetcar making its way down 1905 Market Street, complete with witty commentary about how nimble early San Francisco pedestrians were.

Born and raised amid the suburban strip malls of San Jose, San Francisco was my first real city – it’s where I saw my first show, first recognized my brother’s tender heart as he sobbed at his first glimpse of a homeless man, ate seafood on the wharf. At eighteen, I fled to New York for college and developed grand plans to live abroad (and in Vermont, for some reason) before putting down roots in San Francisco. But after graduating, I moved right back to the Bay Area and was drawn up the Peninsula like a homing pigeon to its grain-filled roost. San Francisco sucked me in ten years ago and hasn’t let go since.

One of my favorite things to do is step out my front door and start walking – three blocks up the hill to Alamo Square Park to dodge tourists and nuzzle any unwary dogs who stray across my path, down the hill to Haight Street for sausage and beer, across Market to lie on the grass in Dolores Park, clutching a morning bun and listening to the buzz of conversation above me as the sun seeps into my bones. When my life feels like it’s careening wildly off course – as life tends to do – I’ll find myself roaming park trails, staring at my green sneakers and puzzling through some overly contemplative thought process. (Known euphemistically as Figuring My Shit Out.) Soon I’ll find myself staring out over the city – the glossy buildings of downtown, church spires wrapped in fog, the Golden Gate in the distance – and thinking, “Even if nothing else in my life is going right, at least I have this. At least I live here.”

I love that San Francisco is a city of adventurers, hearty spirits that can’t be put down by earthquakes or fire or the tragic closing of Roland’s bagels. San Francisco embraces people who know exactly who they are – and offers them stores full of shiny white platform go-go boots in a size eleven and apartments where purple stone lions peek out from Victorian facades. I love San Francisco’s vibrance – technology and history set off by Hunky Jesus competitions and massive pie fights, and all of it surrounded by unexpected flashes of blue water and red bridge. I love taking the cable cars and sitting next to Indian women in bejeweled glasses who squeal with glee as they spot the guy with three pets – the rat riding the cat riding the dog – ambling down Powell. I love walking down the Embarcadero at night and looping up to Chinatown where the red paper lanterns flutter in the breeze. I even love owning seventeen Old Navy sweatshirts because the schizophrenic weather patterns defeat me over and over again, even though I really should know better by now, and my options – yet again – are spend $12 or freeze.

I still cling to visions of a farmhouse in Tuscany or spending summers in Spain, but I can’t imagine leaving San Francisco for long. Because I love this city in a way I’ve loved nowhere else.

On Moving In With Another Human

I just moved in with my boyfriend, a rather annoying term for a 41-year-old but there aren’t any clear, less-annoying alternatives.

For two people in their forties, neither of whom have lived with a partner type person in over a decade, this is a big deal.

We’ve had to make room for grief, blow ups, and whoops-didn’t-know-that-was-still-there past trauma along with my dishes and big red chair.

(The cats, on the other hand, have been entirely unaffected. One could even say insultingly blasé. Dear cats: You should be made aware that I am an utter delight to live with. Please be appropriately grateful for the opportunity.) (The cats are not grateful.)

We are a loving, well-matched, and (I have to say it) rather adorable couple.

We also have our share of challenges. Sometimes we fight and I think "Why am I doing this?" And then sometimes he rubs my head when I'm anxious and brings me a pumpkin curry when I'm hungry and I think "Oh, that's why."

It’s the little things, the small daily choices, that make all the difference. That build trust for two people who haven’t been given a whole lot of reasons to trust in the past. We’re like scared cats, inching out from under the bed, like “Hey, maybe this isn’t so bad. Maybe I will survive this. Maybe I’ll even get salmon and belly rubs.”

We’re breaking out of our comfort zones, learning how to live with another human, learning how to be real partners, learning how to be tender with each other’s sensitivities.

It’s not for the faint of heart. Which makes sense because life is not for the faint of heart. Love is not for the faint of heart. Our lives and hearts are growing and strengthening, and I give us credit for that.

So here’s to us. And to you, for whatever ways you’re growing and strengthening and loving right now.

Forest Primeval

Sometimes I talk about magic the most when I’m feeling it the least. Not because I think, “Hey, today I want to be a liar,” but because sometimes when I call up magic, old fear and programming and external cultural bullshit comes up too.

Which is why I have to feel what I feel and do what I know to do to adjust: dance around the house, sit with my back against a tree, find a swing set, feel myself surrounded by white light, walk through a primeval forest.

If I’m not too mean to myself and don’t push, the magic comes back when it’s ready. 

Goats and Blazing Infernos

I don’t know if you’ve had any reason to look at the California fire maps recently, but if you have, you might notice that a large portion of Sonoma county is currently on fire.

Since we live right on the edge of the evacuation zone, our household has expanded from two humans and two felines to nine humans, four felines, and two canines. Which is two canines more than our cats find appropriate or acceptable.

The three evacuated equines are being housed elsewhere, luckily. But we did go visit with an entire bag of carrots.

Much happier, post-carrot.

It was my brother’s job to fight forest fires, about ten years before the California wildfires went biblical. His job description sounded like my literal definition of hell: Hike ten miles into the wilderness with all your equipment on your back, and then face a blazing inferno, knowing that it’s in your job description to deal with said inferno.

We’re now in the third year in a row of epic, once-in-a-lifetime wildfires. Hundreds of thousands of people have been evacuated, more are without power, and the fires are still raging. I’m glad it’s not my brother’s job to deal with this any more, but the people who’s job it still is are battling hard.

All the guidance I’ve been getting lately says celebrate. Which seems a bit tricky under the circumstances, both logistically and ethically. But maybe that’s the very best time to celebrate - when all circumstances appear to point you in the other direction.

So Here’s Some Celebration. And a Picture of a Goat.

This morning, we learned that one of the houses we feared had burned down is still standing - an actual miracle, given that it’s smack in the middle of multiple fires. So all the people staying with us will probably have homes to return to. We still have power, when much of the region doesn’t. Other people made dinner last night, and when I woke up this morning, the dishes were already done. And I got to meet goats!

Who quickly lost interest in me when it was determined that I had given all the carrots to the horses.

Unimpressed.