Thankful

I have a lot for which to be thankful.

I've occupied this earth for some 40-odd years. And it's been pretty good. I have a remarkable, loud, funny family that I love beyond all. None of us make any sense by ourselves, but when you put us together we're a set. We fight. We love each other. It works.

I am thankful that I live in a time and a place where I can be well educated, have access to good doctors, work freely at my chosen profession and have a good, secure home and food on my table.

But there aren't sufficient words to express how thankful, grateful, blessed I am by friends. People I have never met have reached out to me from across the oceans and embraced me. Despite the differences in age, geography, cultures, sometimes even language, you have opened your hearts and you've shown me unconditional friendship and love. And just maybe we've been able to make the world a little bit smaller and a little bit warmer. My life has been filled with such treasures.

And for you, all of you, I give thanks.

Moments

Late at night, when I can't sleep for whatever reason... my mind starts wandering. I start remembering moments of my life, like a slideshow. That's what life is, really. Moments remembered, moments forgotten.. all strung together. The sum of one's existence.
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I'm five and in a tent with my brother in the back yard on a summer night, overcome by an uncontrollable case of the giggles because my brother farted in his sleeping bag and it sounded strange. When I hear the odd noise, I ask "What was that?" and he replies, quite seriously, "My butt."
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I'm thirteen and my Dad got me a job cleaning tables and serving desserts at the American Legion hall. One evening there's a big party for someone's 50th wedding anniversary, and the Legion hired a big band to play. I was in the kitchen filling water pitchers for the dinner, and one of the musicians was in there warming up, playing an old, romantic 1940's tune. I started singing along softly, and he stopped and came over to me. He said the song was "their" song, meaning the couple celebrating their anniversary, and he thought it would be great if I would be willing to go up and sing it for them, since the band had no singer. I was flattered and agreed.

After dinner was served, the tables were cleared for dancing. I had nothing to wear, so I went up on stage in my kitchen black pants and turtleneck. My father and mother looked strangely at me as I took the stage. The band began to play.

I will never forget the expression on my Dad's face as I started to sing. By the end of the song, both of my parents were dancing and weeping.

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I'm twenty-one and living on the island of Maui. It's early one morning and I'm on the phone with my Mom, looking out the window at the ocean, which is smooth as glass. Suddenly the water explodes and a gigantic, full-grown humpback whale leaps from the depths into the air. I'm struck speechless. It's only about 300 yards from the shore. I spend the next 45 minutes watching three whales play in the morning sunshine, describing the scene to my Mom over coffee.

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I'm twenty-four and I'm sitting in my doctor's office. She's telling me that the tests have found endometrial cancer in my uterus and she's explaining treatment options. My ears are ringing and my eyes won't focus.

---

It's three-fourteen in the morning, November 21, 2008. I can't sleep.

Summertime with The Sundowners (1997)

My apologies for the quality -- the VHS tape is starting to deteriorate and I'm really glad I got it digitized before it turned to dust. This is from the same gig as "Butt Nekkid with the Sundowners"

Butt Nekkid with The Sundowners (1997)

Que's Riverbottom in Burbank, California. Recorded in 1997.

That would be me singing "The Butt Nekkid Bare-Bottom Blues"

"at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, we will remember them.."

"They shall not grow old,
As we that are left grow old,
Age shall not weary them,
Nor the years condemn,
At the going down of the sun
And in the morning
We will remember them"

Laurence Binyon (1869-1943)
In Remembrance of our Fallen. Veterans/Armistice Day is November 11th

Priorities

One of my colleagues at work died at the office today. He was diabetic but in very good shape. The paramedics said it looked like a stroke, which has shocked us all.

It made me remember again how precious life and friendships are, and just how fragile we all are.

I have never met most of you, but I want you to know that all of you have become very important people to me. I care about you and I care about what happens to you, how you feel, if you're happy, everything.

Even if we never meet (but I really hope we do), it's important to me that you all know that.

Dark

There are things in this world that no matter how much support you have, no matter how many people you have on your side, ultimately must be faced alone.

Somehow you have to summon up the strength from within and nobody can help with that. It's easier during daylight -- there's always something to distract you, work to do, places to go..

But in the deep recess of night, you're alone with it; nothing to hide behind. Sleep evades you and you're left staring into the dark, mind racing, listening to your heart pound and those small voices in the back of your head whispering doubts and fears into your consciousness. And there isn't a soul on the face of the earth that can save you.

Finally you give up and turn on the lights to chase away those little voices. Open your computer, turn on the TV, anything to make a little noise to mask the fear hissing in your mind, the terror stealing in and picking pieces out of the edges of your reality. It helps, the light, the noise. For a while.

You know you have to face it, sooner or later. But not tonight.

PEACE

I have always thought of myself as somewhat of an intellectual. If there's a problem, I have always been able to muddle my way through and figure out some kind of logical solution, or at least an acceptable solution.

There are things in life, however, that defy logic. That have no solution. They just are. They aren't problems or issues or anything that needs to be fixed. They just ARE.

I have wasted a great deal of time fighting this. It didn't feel natural - everything is supposed to have a solution. Everything has a yin and a yang and a balance, right? It is our nature as human beings to try and make sense of things we don't understand and to look for solutions, even if there is no problem in need of solving. We dislike not being in control.

But the truth is, we aren't. In control. There is no control; we are hurtling willy-nilly through space and time and have no command as to when we become and when we eventually are no longer. We are born without our knowledge of being conceived; we live through the grace of our own free will; and when we die, we're usually snuffed out rather abruptly and without ample enough warning to fix everything we broke while we were here.

The fundamental problem with learning, knowing, and finally accepting this fact is that the knowledge inevitably comes to us far too late to be able to relax and simply enjoy our lives. It usually takes facing our own mortality in some fashion or another to have the mere idea of non-control pushed into our consciousness. It takes quite a bit of internal arguing after that to believe it; and even more to accept, if not actually embrace, this hard-learned lesson.

Now, I have heard that the true knowledge of one's own finite existence is a cathartic event that fills one with peace and tranquility, That one gives over to the Celestial Design Committee, God, the Angels, whatever, and is filled with existential bliss and joy. Make your peace, give over... it's all good and beautiful...

Bullshit.

Trust me, when you're looking at the big door to the other side and you have all sorts of unfinished business behind you and all sorts of life left un-lived, all sorts of loves left un-explored, places you wanted to see, people you wanted to have a freakin' cup of coffee with... you grab onto the doorframe with your fingernails and toes and fight with everything you have left for one more damned minute.

Reality

Fantasies are wonderful. They can help you tune out the mundane, the unpleasant. If you're lucky, you can ride them for a time -- maybe long enough to make your world a little less lonely, a little less harsh. Maybe remind you that you're alive, at least for a while.

But they end. Reality, as it will, creeps in and cracks that fragile magic world. Sometimes shatters it with the blunt force of a baseball bat.

Hopefully you will be left with something good to remember. A page in the book of your life that you can turn back to from time to time and smile, and feel the ache of the bittersweet longing that will inevitably accompany the memory.

They always end too soon.

Hello...?

Sunday afternoons for a writer are lonely.

Granted, the uninterrupted block of time is more than welcome. No phone calls, emails... nothing but a whole ten to fifteen hours to do nothing but write.

The problem?

It means I have nothing to do but write.

Friends and neighbors know that I'm unlikely to answer the phone, respond to instant messages, texts or emails... much less be agreeable to going out, so they don't even bother anymore. This should be a good thing; I should be grateful to them for being so supportive. Don't get me wrong.. I am grateful for their support. Really.

But it means I feel obligated to write. Oh, I get sidetracked. The dog needs to go out, there's a load of laundry that needs to be folded, I should call Mom. Maybe I should check my website and see if I've had any new hits, do I have any voicemail? Oh, there's a great movie on...

You see, writers, as much as we're driven to write, are notorious procrastinators. To actually sit down and concentrate on nothing but writing means that we actually have to face the demon that resides within; that creature that fills us with fear that we'll have nothing, nothing of any value to write. That our life's work is crap and it won't sell and the publisher will run us out on a rail and have us blacklisted so nobody will ever work with us again. So we look for distractions. Any distractions. Bless my friends for being supportive, but I sometimes really wish somebody would call me up and save me from this mental torture.

But I still won't answer the phone.

Time

Time's funny stuff. When you're anticipating a happy event, it always seems to take forever to arrive. Christmas, to a little kid, is never going to come. I guarantee that same kid's parents are thinking, "Christmas? Again? Already??!"

But when it's something serious, it becomes a 'deadline'. Who thought of that word, anyway? Tax deadline. Those two words are enough to keep the most stalwart of us awake at night. And deadlines creep up on us far too quickly, and no amount of preparation can help us feel confident when the deadline arrives. I think it's the word.

Dead. Line.

In Merriam-Webster's Dictionary, 'deadline' is defined as "a line drawn within or around a prison that a prisoner passes at the risk of being shot." Cross the line, bang, you're dead.

In the every day world, we use the term cavalierly as a way of describing a finite time frame. "I have to turn in this report by the five o'clock deadline, or there will be Hell to pay." But really, what's the worst thing that can happen? You'll get sacked? I seriously don't think your boss will come into your cubicle and shoot you in the face.

Still, the concept of time is very relative, and its definition changes throughout our lives. To a ten-year-old child, five years is an eternity; of course it is. It's half of her whole life. But that same person at forty will view five years as a very small amount of time indeed. Now it's only an eighth of her life. And ten years after that, it's only a tenth. By the same token, a single day can feel endless, but a year goes by just like that.

Deadline.

I really don't think I like that word.

Transitions

Life changes. I know, duh, right?

Sometimes it changes in ways we weren't prepared for.

I've been going through one of those transitional periods for the past several months.

And now I find myself with lots of time.

Milestone

Yesterday was the 20th anniversary of the day I drove into LA for the first time. I arrived on July 4, 1988 at about 9:20 pm, just as the fireworks at Dodgers Stadium were going off. At the time, I considered that a good omen and thought to myself, "gee, they could have just baked a cake.."

Ironically, I celebrated my 20th anniversary as a Los Angelino in another state. I flew to Santa Fe, NM after work on Thursday -- needed some rest and relaxation and really needed some time to myself. One of my friends at work said that spa visits and massages are the female version of hiring a hooker as a tension reliever. (She may very well be right.)

Last night I sat on the balcony of my room with a bowl of fruit and cheese and sparkling water and watched the fireworks in Santa Fe. I had forgotten just how DARK night is -- the city lights in LA overpower the stars and are so bright the sky only goes gray at night -- it's been so long since I've been away from LA on my own with time to contemplate such things that I forgot the stars were up there at all.

Today I'm taking a yoga class and I'm going into town and having the tattoo on the back of my neck re-colored. My little mark of impetuous youth has faded to fuzzy black & white and looks like one of those WWII tattoos you see on an old man's forearm and I want it to be pretty and bright. I feel pretty and bright, so I want my 25-year old tattoo to be pretty and bright, too. Maybe after that I'll see a movie.

The Letter - Revisited

Hey readers... remember this post back from June 2003?

I finally feel comfortable enough after five years to send it to the President of "The Studio". I emailed it to him this morning.

And it felt good.

Double Zinger

Last night I was in Hollywood with some friends and there was this guy at the restaurant that I knew... it took about 20 minutes to place him, but then I realized that it was somebody I dated about 15 or so years ago. I remember that he had a very high opinion of himself. He obviously recognized me because he kept looking over at me with a quizzical look, but it was clear to see he couldn't remember from where. I was dressed to impress in black skinny jeans, strappy high heels, a low-cut black tank and a tissue-thin wrap, with my favorite silver handcuff necklace and big silver hoop earrings. If I say so myself, I looked hot.

Fifteen years ago, this guy broke up with me over the phone, because (quote), "You're too rough around the edges. You don't fit the image of the girl I think I should be with. I mean, you drive a Volkswagen, for Chrissakes."

Whereas I hesitated for just a moment, and then said, "Well gee, Tony, that's too bad... Because I give great head." and then I hung up.
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Skip ahead to last night. As I was leaving, I walked up to him -- he was in a big group of about 10 guys. "Hey Tony, how've you been?"

Tony: "I knew I knew you. Did we fuck?"

Me: "Classy, as always. No, we didn't..." then I leaned in and said, "You know, I still have that green Volkswagen."

I waited until it dawned on him by the look on his face that he remembered me. Then I ran my tongue over my bottom lip very deliberately, smiled, and walked away.

I have a confession to make...

Wow. Already the end of March. It's been a very long time since I've posted, but then life has been a hub of activity. And I gotta admit, I've been cheating on you guys... I've been keeping another blog.

I bought a new car. (See photo). Actually, I put it on reservation on March 26th, 2007 and was on a very long waiting list for a whole year.

One year and a day later, the dealership called me to tell me it had come in. I picked it up yesterday afternoon. It's called a "Smart Car" (here's a link for those of you who don't know what that is).

Don't get worried about Barry, my Volkswagen. I have no intention of getting rid of him. I've promised him that after 385.000+ miles, he deserves a well-earned rest. I am planning on having him completely restored and will drive him once or twice a week and keep him safely in the garage and rub him with a lint-free cotton diaper to keep the dust off. He will still work in movies and TV, and will always be the first love of my driving life. I've just adopted a sibling for him, that's all.

By the way, the new guy's name is Maxwell. Maxwell Smart.

Now all I need is a shoe phone and a cone of silence.