Happy New Year

The last day of the year. Usually, she doesn't really get the
ritualization of what amounts to just another day moving into another
day. Like birthdays, it is not as if we are all suddenly one year
ahead. We got here slowly, inch by inch, and for how many of those
moments were we really present. Now, at the stroke of midnight, we
ridiculously try to make it all mean something.

This morning, she follows one of many unfilled promises to herself
this year, starting her morning by writing in the pink journal. Even
the color goes against all she was. This journal, started at her
birthday party, starting that brings her at once further and closer
to herself. Bound in a cocoon of grief, orphaned from all she
relied upon, the losses seemed endless. She curled up and spun a web
around her; she could not see the end of the line of silk, that
coveted material that only became a prison. It is all in the pink
book. The first journal with drawings, starting with the horse like
the one that she chose to leave behind in her dead mother's house
because she knew there would never be a place for it in hers; a
sunset or sunrise in black and white, an omen, perhaps; dresses that
flow with fun and femininity to be worn by a woman that men follow
and flirt with; watches keeping time; the non-vacation which ended up
like the whole year acting as what may remain a point of contrast for
her life, making everything afterwards richer, fuller, more
vitalizing and thrilling.

She opens the book on this last day and completes it. Already, she
can feel the fullness of the possibilities, all wonderful, waiting to
burst through that clock as it strikes twelve. Some of it has
already come forth. No one would believe her first holiday as a
orphan has been the best she can remember, truly understanding the
joy of the season, thankful for each moment of fellowship,
friendship, each twinkling light bringing gratitude to all we take
for granted, and the moment to be alone in this joy without the
pressure making it the perfect family gathering.

She writes her good-byes to the beginning of the end of her sadness,
of her longing. She castes off the last string of the cocoon that
forced to sit still for a moment and weep, then she flew away, her
eyes clear, drying in the wind, wings spread wide to allow her heart
to lead.

The value of two cents

"It's about 2% movie making and 98% hustling.  It's no way to spend a life."

-- Orson Welles

The fact that out of the entire two hour documentary about Citizen Kane this is the quote that most stands out to me explains everything about why I need to go back to teaching English.  Even in the public school environment, the place I chose to escape the hustling, the percentages remain the same:  2% for actual teaching, 98% for wading through the bureaucratic muck. 

Is there any business, any passion, where this is not so? 

Why do we do it? 

For that little 2%. 

Meeting myself

Somewhere in the chaos, through the intermittent back pain, through
the fantasies of wishing to quit my job, through the incessant
feeling of failure, there is the hope, the promise that it is all
changing.

I know what I seek and I know how to find it, but seem to keep
throwing up obstacles in my own way: throwing a party, obsessively
cleaning out and replenishing my home of stuff, looking for the
perfect balance, purging and feeding, until it is all just right to
do what I want.

Slowly, moments of inspiration reappear. Losing myself in a dance at
the rumba room. A 20 minute yoga practice where I can feel my body
open, the back pain gone for a moment. Glimmers of hope. It is a
start, just as this blog is a start. Back to writing.

Teaching filmmaking has sapped all my creative energy, all my feeling
of efficacy and enthusiasm. People are shocked. "I thought the
students would love that." I only wonder if it just a great failure
on my part. Then, I don't care. I know I want out. Let someone
else have the fame, the glory of teaching kids to be filmmakers. I
want to teach them how to read and write, because they can't and I
think that is sad. It was more work, in some ways, having read and
write at home more. But that was good for my mind, my soul, my
heart. I felt fed. Now . . . I feel I am being eaten alive.

Then, driving home on the back roads from East LA to Studio City, I
pass the border, the one store where the sign is in English and
Spanish, the shifting neighborhoods, and I pass The Big Fish all lit
up with Christmas lights inside and I remember the night of open mic,
the first time out with you and your friends, your enthusiasm at me
meeting them. That was also the first night I met you, my friend.
Now, one has cancer, the rest are married, and well, the others, who
knows.

I cannot drive through this town with some memory of you. The yous
change. There are many who are now memories waiting to be triggered
by landmarks of memories. The McDonalds on Highland in Hollywood,
the scenic view stop on Mulholland Drive, the Big Fish, the Christmas
Light show, the other scenic view stop on Mulholland Drive, the Shell
station on Olympic downtown . . . places that I never would think I
would have to drive by so often, places I never thought I would be
again. People I never thought would be mere ghosts in my life. Some
I miss, some I think of only fondly, some seem like characters in
some fictional tale I read.

Yet, somehow, this is what made me want to write today. It is a
step. I put on my red dress and looked fabulous for no one but me.
I write this today simply so I can remember this glimpse of something
that connects me to all these moments where I intersected with
someone that made me who I am now. It all means something, though
what i do not know exactly. Yet, there is comfort in it all.
Comfort in knowing my mother is laughing as I dance to a salsa
version of Copacabana, merging the childhood days of my sister and I
dancing to my mother's favorite album, remembering her excitement
going to see Barry Manilow in concert with her friend Linda, both
like two school girls, or like me going out dancing.

I live carrying on her memory, baking nutrolls and serving them up
to friends, old and new, in my home decorated with her angels. I
live, carrying on the memory, the love, the joy, that each of you
have taught me, present or not now, and there is still hope, even as
I close the door on the last guest and slip out of my beautiful dress
alone, I know nothing is forever and right now, that brings more hope
than fear.