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.