Cuba

The pictures kind of say it all: Cuba was magnificent. I booked the trip kind of last mintue and didn't have much expectation as I prefer cold, first world countries to travel to, but this place restored my faith in travel again as a means of feeling & spreading joy in the world. It was hot, there were power outages for days, the public toilets were the worst ever. So what was so great about it? The people! Kind, warm, open, generous even though they have nothing. Why is it that rich countries act the assholiest and the poorest places have the warmest people? They've basically got nothing but each other..and a day after I was home I was walking along a steet filled with shops and shoppers and Teslas and I felt sad. There weren't smiling cigar smoking people just relaxing on their stoops saying hi and trying to get a dollar off of you. In hindsight I wish I would have given them all of my dollars (there was nothing to buy so I came back with all of my money). I can't wait to go back, probably next winter and probably just do 5 days in Old Town Havana. I would even go on this trip again as it was so wonderful. But I should have researched it before I went and took only a carryon of SNACKS. THere was nothing to buy to eat! Only in the special white man restaurants did we eat like kings...but breakfest was gross & we had to eat it at 6:00am and that is really hard for me, as someone who drinks coffee for a couple of hours in bed and then goes on a long walk and THEN eats breakfast. I like I to wait until I'm really hungry. One sees how much this ridiculous 65 year old embargo hurts these kind people. My advice is to GO, until someone makes it too hard for us to go anymore!

Nebraska 1987

 

Downtown Omaha, 1980s

I have no idea if I've written about this before, but my post about a specific day in Rego Park, Queens in 1984 generated some high, anonymous praise. Just a few years later, in the summer of 1987, I bolted to Omaha Nebraska for 3 delirious months. I didn't bolt there from Queens, I bolted from Austin (again). I had moved to NYC from Austin upon college graduation in 1983, moved back to Austin in 1985, and by summer of '87 was in a bad spot with some bad habits and had to move away again. When I moved to NYC it was the actualization of a dream that I followed through with...but things did not work out the way I had hoped & I moved back to Austin to latch back onto my partying lifestyle with my hardcore scene that was still active here. I had 3 adorable apartments in the neighborhood I now live in again (very expensive, very quaint, near downtown), but my demons got the better of me, and I treated them with the only cure I knew at the time: running away.

I had met this awesome girl when I went to Ireland for the first time in the summer of 1984 (another dream realized), and we fell so hard in love with that tiny country that we stayed friends after the trip and talked every day on the phone and made plans to move to Ireland - it was my second really big dream (moving to NYC was the first one). She lived in Houston at that time and was from a big farm family from Nebraska. I moved back to Austin and she moved back to Nebraska after college in Houston. We wrote letters everyday and pined for Ireland and the boys we fell in love with there. We had a shared dream and it was intoxicating for us. I worked at boring, low end jobs and was partying a lot with my college buddies. I seemed to moving in the opposite direction of a young person who was forging forward with their life. (A side note: I am seeing lots of music right now during SXSW and seeing all these young kids play their hearts out in these bands and makes me reminisce about my youth and I feel such compassion for that lost girl. Also proud that I am sober and able to enjoy the music and the connections with people in a really delightful way.)

So after 3 years of intense partying and bumbling around dumb low wage jobs, I dumped my super sweet boyfriend and packed up my Toyota Corolla and moved to Omaha to live with Julie. Our plan was solid: save up $500 and move to Ireland - back when $500 was a fortune to me! The end result of that I'll get to at some point but the process of planning the drive, driving without gps or smart phone (seems unbelievable now!), being giddy with Julie through our letters (handwritten letters!) about our plans was intoxicating. Our plan was valid and real, but I was also "pulling a geographic", which in AA lingo means running away from your problems by moving across country...something I'm really good at and LOVE doing.

I pulled up to her house with my crumply sheet of handwritten instructions gripped into onto the steering wheel and we had a joyous reunion. I had a basement bedroom in an ancient house that was full of character and charm. Julie greeted me with a full bottle of vodka (my beverage of choice!) and we drank that and drove to the brick streeted downtown to hang out at the Irish bar there. I quickly found a Bagpipe band and joined them and bought a practice chanter and started teaching myself songs on that. I was going to join the Omaha Pipes & Drums! I met lots of cool people and got a job making sandwiches at the Irish pub during the day. The Irish lady there with dyed black hair hated me as all her regulars stared at me, this cute young, college educated girl who'd replaced some toothless old hag. She either fired me or I quit, and then I became a Merry Maid for a week or so, and that sucked so I went on to work in call center, which was really the suck. Omaha is full of these call centers, where people call 800 numbers late at night to order records COD over the phone. I've had so many crappy jobs like this, I should create a new blog called Marsha's Super Crappy Jobs. It would have many entries!

But those 3 months in Omaha were filled with magic too...it was the first time since those heady first years after meeting my bio-dad in 1979 in NYC that my life seemed filled with promise and I had dreams to look strive for...I can see now that I've had a lifetime pattern: find something I love and strive towards it, and if it doesn't work out or ends, then come back to Austin (or a mountain in Oregon) and just do regular life stuff until the next big dream pops up. It took a long time for the Antarctic dream to materialize, and now that that seems to be over, it's been tough coming up with something that I can be that excited about...but I really need something juicy that I can sink my teeth into dream wise. It has come at a great cost to be a dream chaser (no family, thin connections (or very deep brief ones), loneliness), but it has been a price I am willing to pay.

We were giddy about our Moving to Ireland dream. We only went to Irish bars, listened to Irish music, read Irish books...but I had met a guy in Austin before moving to Nebraska and he wanted be with me and was calling me every day and deep down I wasn't as brave as Julie about moving somewhere with no plan and so little money. I ended up moving back to Austin to be with the guy....and Julie moved...to Ireland.

I felt like a failure and a chump. I got a super boring job at UT and started reading A Course in Miracles just for something to latch onto. Julie wrote me letters and I sat in my windowless auditorium on campus, feeling like a loser reading about her adventures. I had my boyfriend, but was partying hard on the side and started hanging out with old punk rock friends and got back into the hard partying lifestyle. I was heading towards 30 years old and did not like the direction my life was taking...weekend blowouts with 24 hour vomiting hangovers and low self-esteem jobs that matched how I felt on the inside. My higher self knew I needed to change...and the 80's ended, and I got married in 91 and sober in 92. Divorced in 95 and then 9 years later I atone for my shame of not moving to Ireland by moving to Antarctica for the biggest and best dream ever that lasted over a decade.

There were 20 years that passed btwn my first trip to Ireland where I fell so hard in love with a country, and my first step onto the White Continent, which was the Real Dream materialized. And now I can afford  to do anything. I could easily moved to Ireland, I could move anywhere and do anything. Anything but the thing I would most like to do: return to the Ice. But all is good. The second tier dreams of world travel and free time I am most grateful for.

I'm a known coward in a coward's skin...

Written on 06/05/18 and never posted...just read and it seems really good!

Heavenly Father

Since returning from Taos I have continued my tradition of making drama out of nothing...the giddy few days after the return, the loss of something yummy/nervewracking, the emergence of something new and different and the obsession with this Bon Iver song that I can't stop listening to.

I am sitting here in my bedroom right now just sick over something that has or hasn't happened at work. I'm in this tedious and boring warehouse that I am able to make fun by seeing it as a way to get a workout every day. Two of us (the 56 year olds) work all day steadily and get heaps of work done. The two 27 year olds go on two hour lunches and giggle and laugh all day about inappropriate videos and crap they are watching on Facebook, while I am hurting myself wrapping pallets, panting, busy as F8ck. I can't blame this scenario on anyone as I have seen me do this many times: be a martyr at work while others are laughing and having fun. There is usually a breaking point where I blow up at the boss and shout at them for not making the others work...and while they agree that I am doing the bulk of the work, they are so rankled by my outbursts that I get a lower review than the slow moving and barely working ones with the lighthearted personalities. Boy what would that be like: to be lighthearted! I have no fracking idea! I take everything so seriously and treat the job like it is the most valuable thing in the world to me (sometimes it is the only really compelling thing I have going on in my life). Mixed in with this weird dynamic is some ear shattering classic rock that blares all day and a two-hour talk show in the morning that makes me very uncomfortable. I'm usually not overly PC about guy talk in warehouses but something is different here and I can't quite put my finger on it. So four weeks into trying everything I can not to hear this radio show that is insulting to women, I go to work prepared to give notice and find that the speaker has blown out and the sound is only from the computer and I think hallelujah! Later in the morning I feeling home free when the two young guys come over near me and are laughing about a video they are watching on their phone and turn the volume up really loud and I just lose it - but only internally, because this type of discomfort, of the toxic work environment variety is brand new to me and for some reason I am too afraid to say anything to the boss, who is very cool and a good person. I go outside at lunch, heart pounding and strident and call the person in HR who placed me at this assignment and just let loose...I tell him I need a different job and what were they thinking putting a woman in here. He tells me to finish out the day and he'll deal with it. Over the lunch hour I start to feel like a big ninny, like a puss, like I can't deal with my own shit, so I call him back and tell him I'll say something and he doesn't need to do anything unless I get back with him. I got back to work and find the afternoon going by easily and don't feel the need to say anything but all of of a sudden the guys look kicked down. The mood changes and everyone is silent and the warehouse is silent. Did they get a call and ass chewing from HR? They must have because everyone's acting very cowed and shamed. And of course, I feel even worse - I feel terrible that they feel terrible. But isn't that how women are programmed and taught to feel? I know I was. I was told that in no way can the man in the house be bothered at all and you must adjust every aspect of your personality to fit into what could be possibly acceptable to him. And guess what it was never acceptable...no matter how polite and sweet and obedient I was it was never going to be good enough. So I drag this miserable programmed self with me into every work environment I've ever been in...either the bullied or the bullyer...never having known how to be a team player, never having learned how to be on a team. God that's hard to write and it really sucks. It's not always black and white like that as there are many times when I'm just the happy superstar at work or just so content that I'm not really worried about anyone else. But sometimes this old sad self shows up and I don't know how to deal with her. I can quit. I can move. I can go on a trip. All these things help but they don't cure. I have spent 24 hours feeling really horrible about how I handled this. Why didn't I have the courage just to talk to the boss. Why did I go over his head so that they had to be reprimanded and are now walking on eggshells around me. When am I going to give myself permission to exit this incredibly old and painful story; and more key: what am I getting out of it. What am I trying to prove and to whom? I'm just filled with very uncomfortable shame about at the whole thing, where I should feel no shame. I did the right thing. It is okay for them to be uncomfortable and not just me. I don't need this job at all...I'm just doing it for "fun" and things got completely out of hand with my psychically. After the perfectly respectful and loving mother-womb bliss I feel in Taos to come back and be slammed into a work environment filled with loud toxic rantings that are based in degrading women. To be around people who make themselves feel better by making fun of others. I need to give myself more time to be put back together after Taos. 

All of these feelings of shame and unworthiness and isolation that come up around this stuff are really hard for me to deal with. The good news is I didn't drink over it. In my 20's I would have gone straight to a bar and gotten blotto drunk and gone to work hungover the next day so that the shame would have been deserved. In twelve days I will have 25 years of sobriety. There is not enough blogosphere to describe what all I've been through in this quarter of a decade, but for the best of it start at the beginning of this blog, where my cup runneth over with the kind of goodies I had been waiting for. It is so easy for me to see why people relapse. To have to try and ride out some of the stuff programmed into us is almost unbearable - and so much of it takes a lifetime to undo. This so insignificant little temp job at this dopey little warehouse had to power to tap into my blackest little spot, and fortunately, I have the tools to be able to deal with it. I always hoped that all this stuff would just go away but it seems to cycle around every once in a while. I only like feeling on top of the world and bursting with badass-ery, so when I'm knocked off that high horse I crumple like an abandoned child - the blackest of the black, the dark dark hole of self loathing that 10 years of Hindu meditation did not ameliorate.

But I did the right thing. It was on the same day as the metoo hashtag, and I was just sick remembering the awful harrassment that I gagged myself over because "he is almost retired" and "it would kill his wife.." that hillbilly horseshit that I listened to and let guide my decision to not report my attacker. Fuck that guy. I wish I would have punched him. But I'm a "freezer" - and cannot bite back. I can feel uncomfortable for a few days if it means these guys have been read the riot act...and maybe it's good that they feel a little shame too. I did it for the sisterhood.

The worst part of all of that is that I feel very alone in it - like I don't have anyone who has my back or is on my side. That is an ancient story too, and if I question it and examine it more closely I see that is actually isn't that true. I talked to so many people, so many women, and now bonding with the ultimate comforter - words flowing from fingers. It got me by when I was 8 years old and has not let me down in going on 50 years.

To be able to see that the shame is from not feeling like I did it perfectly...that I don't have to always be brave, and that sometimes brave was just a bravado face hanging flimsily on a foetal terror. So dramatic. Not on purpose. Just the way I am.

photo by Bret Bradford for Frontera Fest 24

It's been over 6 months since I've blogged and it feels like a lot has happened - a lot of it good and a lot of it that I will refer to cryptically as I have not completely processed it yet. My tiny house sold yesterday, almost after a year sitting empty for sale. I was surprised at the grief feelings that came up...but then it was a little home that I was very excited about and had totally fallen in love with when I saw it. 

I had been visiting the tiny house village for about 4 years off and on before finally buying this beautiful, sweet little house...I almost immediately regretted it, and had a two month overlap with my apt. I'd lived in for 6 years and was going back and forth like some super tortuous relationship between two lovers. It almost felt like the same kind of drama; and since I've been single for over a decade I can't really remember what all that drama felt like (except it would be intolerable to me now), but the pining and regret and remorse was very stressful to me. There were so many things to love about the tiny house! It looked so good and shiny and new and was adorable. Ugly things started to emerge: my neighbor let his dogs poop on the side of house every time they went outside...the management company was awful and unreachable and horrific. The little house was fragile and it wasn't a true lock and leave like this treehouse room I have now in Hyde Park. 

And then there was the community...it either had to be a perfect fit or it just didn't feel right at all. There was an initial 10 homes of people that really bonded, and new comers were treated warmly but perhaps not part of the "in crowd" - and the in crowd was not my crowd and it felt like the complete opposite of the way I felt when I went to the Ice I felt like I was at HOME - this tiny home community felt like a place that was scratching at my soul all the time telling me that I didn't belong so I tried to force myself to love the place and bond there but it was just crushing my spirit to be there. I did't feel like I was in Austin anymore - I felt like I had to choose: either my old fun Austin life, or Tiny House Village. It was only 15 minutes away by car...but that 10 miles went from city to unfamiliar country very quickly. Last February I went on a South America/Antarctica trip where I looked at Austin rentals every single day and had already visited the apartment I now live in before the trip, but it was still available when I got back and I started moving into it 2 days after I got back from a huge one month trip.

There are people there that I love and miss, but I need to be in the center of town...center of the action! I will get paid for the house soon and will have enough money to buy a condo or I can just keep renting. I feel I need a big change...or maybe not a big one. I go to lots of rock & roll shows, have lots of friends I love seeing out at shows, and have a work tribe I have bonded with for 7 years now. I often think I need a boyfriend, but I don't really meet anyone who feels like a good match for me...I get crushes and flirt a lot and have some male friends I go do fun things with, but it has all been platonic. That is probably a good thing for me ultimately. I certainly got my fill of that kind of fun for about 40 years - I had more than my share for sure.

I am really enjoying being older and not having the concerns I did when I was younger...I am so blessed financially that I never take it for granted. I go on roughly 6-8 fabulous trips a year, my two NYC ones being a continual joy. A city that ripped me open upon first site in 1979 and continues to thrill me in 2024. I'll be there in a few weeks, and as always, it will be fabulous. I have Taos, which is always magical and soulful, and there will have to be some sort of respite from the summer...I was lucky enough to be in Copenhagen & the British Isles for two glorious weeks last August. I think it is one of the best trips I've ever done. I went many places in Scotland, Isle of Man, Liverpool, Dublin..it was so great...just everything!

I just looked up at my photo and forgot to talk about Frontera Fest. I had made this 9 minute film last summer that was okay but some people seemed to really go gaga about it. A friend of mine signed me up for this play festival and I thought it might be fun until I saw that I had to do all the technical stuff myself, spend a lot of $ renting a projector, figuring out how it worked, how I was going to turn it into a performance. Sweetly, about 20 of my friends paid 25 bucks to come see my do my 10 minute thing - and most of them left after mine and there were 4 more plays left to see...it was a month ago today that I did the show, and I am So. Glad. It's. Over!!!

I keep saying I want something BIG like Antarctica again. Actually, I just want Antarctica again. I don't think there is anything else like it. I keep thinking the next big thing is around the corner & I'm willing to settle for second best...but there is no second best. There is what I experienced working there, and there is everything else. There is See God Now & Purpose and Meaning and Deep Joy Everyday, and there is this small little world on top of that place that is just a world of people driving around and shopping and eating in restaurants. And I am one of them and it's okay but it is not The Ice. 

Here I am going on about the Ice again after a period of really thinking it was behind me and not thinking of it every single day. I have had some ecstatic experiences lately: Shane MacGowan tribute night, Alejandro's cavalcade of stars with a kiss from David Ramirez that I nabbed as he was walking off stage. Just this past week I got a big tattoo, had a fun lunch with a new girlfriend, and had two boys sandwich me at a screening of Wings of Desire - one of the most beautiful films ever made. One of them made hand dipped chocolate strawberries and I felt like I'd had a bit of romance on VD for the first time in 12 years (my last major boyfriend was über romantic)...all chaste of course, and filled with super juicy talk about the film and ultra woke politics afterwards!

So it seems like I have a pretty good life but I'm always wanting more...wanting that searing, blinding hot romantic connection that used to come all the time and now comes unexpectedly and SHATTERS me for 6 months. I never wanted anything more than I wanted Antarctica, but this past summer, I did want something that badly. I went through something I'd never been through before, and I'm just gonna leave it at that...but as long as I have trips to look forward to, I'm happy. That is my real home: doing all the planning and excitement about the trip, getting no sleep on the trip and feeling exhausted, and getting to have ecstatic conversations with people all over the world...

Damn I've written my way into seeing how great my life is...what a joy to have the gift of automatic writing bring all the things you need to you.

 

Back Home

Antarctica

back in Hyde Park

Easter with my friends grandson

I have moved again. I know, dear reader, that that the previous post had me in acceptance mode around my  new home situation, but my Self could not abide by the many confusing and frustrating elements of tiny house village life. Like a bad relationship one knows one should leave, you keep justifying why it's still okay to stay...saying things like: well the drive isn't that bad, I can stay another year and see how it goes (a classic!), maybe I'll fall in love with it again. But from the MOMENT I moved into the house it just felt wrong all around. It wasn't a slightly off kilter feeling or a small thing bugging me deep down that I couldn't identify, it was pure flight mode limbic war in my nervous system that was a giant flashing neon sign that said STOP! TRY AGAIN! WRONG! And that is okay. Because I am so good at moving and have a low tolerance for shit that doesn't work - I gave myself full permission to move out as soon as I found something in town I wanted to move into. I started looking for apartment near my old apartment probably within 3 days of moving into the tiny house. So why did I buy it? I thought it was what I wanted. I was taking a chance on something. I knew I could afford the gamble.

I moved into Tiny last Sept and was very busy with Election work until Christmas. I went on my annual birthday trip to NYC and then visited my folks in Houston. January was going to be when I looked for a new place to live. But I got a wild hair the day after New Year's and was flush with cash so signed up for a South America-Antarctica trip for the whole month of February. When I have the time and $ to travel I can't not do it. And why shouldn't I? I hate to miss any part of winter in Texas, but I knew I'd eventually go on this trip and have to face the Antarctic as an outsider. I'm glad I went on the trip. It wasn't near as fun as last year's Viking passage (my favorite: Iceland, Greenland, all of Eastern Canada) but I needed to confront the morass of feelings, bust open the pining bubble, face the loss. I wasn't crazy about Argentina, and the Antarctic part I wrote about on my secret blog (and may do a separate post here), but Ushuaia, Patagonia and Chile were all magnificent. I had been to Punta Arenas before when I deployed to Palmer Station, but seeing it 14 years later was so wonderful. I could handle the intense feeling of sitting on the dock where the vessels were that only us few prized and special workers got to sail to the station on. I looked for the Palmer or LMGould (rusty research vessels) but didn't see them. I saw the USAP logo everywhere and felt a little sting of rejection, as I have been trying to get back every year, but when I made the decision to be grateful for the 8 seasons instead of being bitter, my attitude changed. It had to. I have a friend I worked with down there who can write one text if she wants to go back and is immediately handed a contract. Myself, and a lot of others I know are just not wanted down there anymore and I have to accept it. I am a fantastic, superstar worker, but I am also difficult to work with. I have been told that enough to know it is true, and accept it. There are places were my style fits. I'll go into the incredible PIA I was on the trip in another piece, so this will focus more on my move back to the center of town.

When I got back from S. America I dropped my bags in my house (no sleep for two days)...laid down for a minute, then drove into town for the Parlor show and a film at AFS. My routine was to leave the tiny house after morning coffee and writing time and spend all day in town staying busy doing fun stuff and coming back by nightfall. It was really hard sometimes as I had a couple of hours to kill between events and didn't want to drive out there and back. Sometimes I would drive out there just to be in my home and relax, but then I wouldn't come back out to town, as the drive back in the dark could be very hairy. It's only about 10 miles from where I sit now, but it's out in the dark countryside, with lots of traffic and no freaking lights on the roads. I had seen this adorable apartment (where I now live) in January, and told myself if it were still for rent when I got back (from my month's long trip) I would move into it. The big plusses for me were that it is a tiny complex owned by a couple that I can talk to and who take meticulous care of it. It feels well loved, and the unit I am in was specially remodeled for their daughter. My big top floor bedroom is a large square room with a giant queen bed where I can see tree tops and beautiful old Hyde Park homes. I am in the heart of Hyde Park - I can walk to two grocery stores, walk to my favorite weekend pizza joint that has daytime live music, and have a gentle bus ride to downtown if I want to see bands. It is beyond perfect. It is expensive, but everything is here now.

I realized that the first address I had in this neighborhood was 40 years ago, 1983, the year I graduated from UT. I have had 4 or 5 other apartments in this neighborhood, and it has been an interesting adjustment to move back to what was previously a student and punk rocker filled neighborhood. The homes here cost over a million dollars, and my tiny, bare bones complex is filled with working professionals instead of students. I have spent my last 7 years in Austin forming a lifestyle here that is pretty fabulous after the 6 years in a mountaintop cabin in Oregon. It was the right decision to move back into the center of town.

I thought I was going somewhere epiphanal with this post. I certainly woke up with that on the brain. Just remembered - I usually travel a lot when I have time off, but have signed up for two different classes that meet 3, sometimes 4 night a week. I am feeling trapped and unfree (ancient, trauma-track response), but I have been telling myself for YEARS that I need to take advantage of the riches around me for learning new stuff. I used to be a prolific painter who had my stuff hanging all over town. From the late 80's until 2003 or so I just drove my art from one location to the next - I sold a TON of it - and have a couple of "collectors" who have several of my pieces. I never took my painting that seriously, it is easy for me to do and I insist on finishing a painting in one sitting. Ironically (because I don't consider myself a serious painter) I use oils so I can keep going back and touching up and working on things. I do tap into that incredible creative place when the painting starts to reveal itself. I dont  draw or do sketches, just throw paint directly onto the canvas and see what happens. But unlike a lot of my painter friends, I do not crave painting or do it at home when I'm alone. It's only exciting when I'm doing it surrounded by other painters. So I signed up for this no instruction studio class where we just paint together and the teacher engages with us if we want to. The first class was a joy...that creative person in me just dying to get out...and not just with the process of painting but the interaction with the other artists. These other folks are serious painters. They had chops, and photos, and giant landscapes, while I'm doing my fat dragon babies that I hope look edgy but end up looking like cartoons. Oh well! No matter how much I have tried to quash and hide the soft and cute and whimsical side of me, she always shows up. Yes I drove big farm tractors in Antarctica with the men and was known as the resident badass city girl (the other women had grown up on working farms) who took to operating a front end loader like I was born in one. But the side I am always trying to hide shows up on the canvas - I will do a painting and think it is really dark, Eraserhead-ish (which is what I am ALWAYS going for) and then have some nice West Lake Hills lady buy it (and several others) for her toddler's room.   The brush doesn't lie!

Unlike painting, I think my real voice comes through in writing. This is purer, easier to do (yet harder to start), and puts me into the same delicious zone. Writing is like sitting down with my wizened old self (or like a pencil in the hand of God as Mother Teresa said), and painting is more like being tossed into the unknown and working my way through to the other side. I always start panting when the painting starts to come together...as if my soul is trying to get my heart and mind to catch up with it. So, the painting studio is one evening a week, and I signed up for a filmmaking intensive for 6 weeks that will take up a lot of time. The classes will be in the same building where I got my filmmaking degree in 1983. It's stirring up a lot, as making films was really hard. Not the creative part or the story telling, but the technology (and mostly, the working with others). 

My apartment is directly behind a little backyard house that I lived in with my mom and sister in the mid '60s when my mom was single, between husbands. I have very few memories of that time, but they are seem somewhat sweet - I see that little house everyday when I walk down the alley, and wonder why, me of all people, who wants to be as far away from everything she knows for as long as possible, has moved back the spot where she was born: a few blocks from the actual birthing hospital, and a rock toss from the shack home. It seems like I am always searching for a home...in October of 2004 when the C-17 touched down on the Ice Runway I felt more at home than I ever had. I am the type of traveller that feels most at home in a city I've never been to before. I am never at home. I am always at home.

 

Tiny House and Thirty

 

I just bought this tiny house - about 6 weeks ago. In that 6 weeks I have gone through a huge gamut of emotions and some serious buyer's remorse...over the past year I have curated this very interesting life: lots of rock and roll shows, lots of juicy contact with new friends that I see when I go out, good movies at the film society and epic, epic travel! I went on a 24 day cruise that circumnavigated Iceland and traipsed through Greenland, Newfoundland and Labrador also. It was just incredible - very fun all of the time. I got back from that trip end of August after a brutal Texas summer...I was so miserable and was so happy to be somewhere cool.

When I got back from that trip I had my September Taos painting workshop looming on the horizon but I didn't feel like going. I hadn't had that much fun in May, but I had had a deep process in the painting. I thought about it for a few days and then decided to save the money and not go...so I was looking at two weeks before my job started and I came out to look at the tiny homes here at the tiny house village that I had been looking at for several years. I looked at a few for re-sale, then I came and toured ALL of the brand new homes for sale on the Farm side and was seriously thinking about a couple of them. I went home and mulled over all the info...and just felt like I wasn't ready...none of them seemed perfect enough. But I had seen this one house that had a for sale by owner sign and no one was talking about it - so I was sitting around my apt trying to figure out what to do when I saw that I had taken a photo of the sign and called the number and a guy who the owner hired to help out (not a realtor) told the price and I gasped - it was 30-40K less that than the brand new ones, and had some add ons that are pricey and I really loved. When he sent me the photos I was like I Want to See it Right Away! Short story long: I saw the house on Saturday a half hour before the open house was to start, and on Monday I was at my bank wire transferring the $ to the owner's bank account. We both had a week off of were getting everything buttoned up FAST so it was mine...by the next day it was my house. She handed me the keys and a giant binder with all the manuals and I had met some neighbors...for a solid week before work I moved carload after carload of stuff over there...bought a bed and a little couch and made it live in ready. It was adorable, but something didn't feel right...

By the friday after I bought it I spent my first night there...I was uncomfortable and didn't sleep well, was cranky in the a.m because I had no coffee. I raced back to my apt and felt like I was coming back to my HOME...my sweet, giant quiet apt I had live-in for 6 years....the longest I had ever rented an apt. I had never had a lease for more than one year..then I owned a house for 9 years, a condo for 4, rented in Oregon for a couple of years, and bought the mountain cabin and lived in it for 3.5 years and sold it a few years later. 

I came back Saturday to stay here and there was a loud party at the Mexican neighborhood attached to this one and I freaked out...I packed up my stuff and RACED back to my apt. For the next few weeks I would stay at the house for a few days, just JONESIN to go back to my apt. In my mind and heart that apt. was EVERYTHING to me...it was my new Antarctica! This special, deeply soulful home for me that I needed to get pack...I went on a whirlwind of activity based in fear: going back and forth with apt. management on leaving or staying (they management sucks bad so that is why I was going to leave anyway)...looking at apts. near my old apt. so I could have my super convenient place to live. I pined for that apt. and my big bed and private upstairs like  a homesick child. I have never actually been very homesick...but I was homesick BAD for that apt. In the midst of working hard, looking at apts., having a realtor on standby to sell the house before I even moved in, I had lunch with a friend who said "you never have to spend another night there" and that made my body relax so much that I just stayed in my apt. a few days...what happened after I got that huge dose of permission is that I became curious about the house: I thought about it's brand new cuteness...the over the top beauty of the design, the sparkling new washer and dryer and icemaker, the no shared walls, my own little parking spot right outside my door...close to town, but also sort of in the country. I am sitting here now and I love it..but my heart and soul went though one of the saddest and toughest times ever with this change.

I was so afraid I was going to have to change my personality, give up my rock and roll lifestyle, sit out her and be fat and hang out with boring people...it felt so far away...but it isn't...I am right in town..just a few miles out east...

The second issue is the front door, back door! The front porch is gorgeous and all the neighbors walk around and visit each other and gossip and they are not my people...I had been making myself go out front and hang with them and bond with them and I felt like I was supposed to be doing that. But when I come in and just hang out in my bedroom like I did when I was in my apt. I do much better and feel more true to myself. I have done somethings to try and fit in and they have made me miserable. I have to really listen to my guy and stay inside if I don't feel like interacting with them. Not all the houses have a back entrance...mine is my saving grace - I even have  a full, private back porch. I open the blinds in the morning and sit in bed, drink coffee and look out the window at people walking by...I am getting more used to it. I can stay in town after work and go to a show, movie or meeting.

The first thing that made me go in shock about this place was that a few days after I bought it a FIREPIT was installed directly in front of my house. Everyone but me loves this...all I can think of is noisy people - it looks like a KOA campground out there - fucking hell! It might be okay...it might get used in the winter and people might be quiet at it, but if they are loud, I am not going to like it.

When I decided to stay out here and no go back and forth to the apartment, things got better for me..I accepted that this is my home...this is where I live...when my job is over I will decide if I want to stay here or move back into town...or move OUT of town. I have fun trips planned next year! Taos in May, British isles in August, and I'll throw in a couple of New York and Alpine trips to boot. May fly to Pittsburgh to go check it out - but Austin has been really good to me these past 6 years...just lots of epic fun and lot of super busy going out and having a blast. I love my life.

And yesterday, I had 30 years continuous sobriety. Hell Yeah.

Hard 29

Since my last post a lot has happened! Not a lot that I will write specifically about (I bet I do...wait for it!) but something happened on August 21st and I'm coming out the other side of the 3 month emotional bender feeling pretty confident and unscathed. I was in this princess play that was amazingly fun and rewarding to do. It made me realize how much I love being on stage. Originally I signed up just to be an extra or a stagehand but ended up with a spotlight solo as apparantly I am a very good performer, and better yet, a good song interpreter on the fly. 

We had our first performance in July and our second one on August 21st. I had just gotten back from a super fun road trip to NM and wasn't really looking forward to the second performance but put on a ton of make-up and fancy clothes and dragged myself to this place really far down south and had a really great time. Afterwards I felt engergized by the performance and decided to go see a band of old freinds that was at a club that I'd never been too as it's so far south. That is where the Big Event happened. Six weeks of delerious and tortuous passion. Twelve pounds lost. Many cigarettes smoked. Emotional sobriety challenged and then tipped over into obsession. I had prayed for this. Be careful what you ask for! 

Something split inside of me and the protective steel wall was down and I let love in...let it in too raw and unguarded but I dove in head first as I hadn't pressed up against anything like this in many, many years. I was sunk. I was hooked. He might as well have been a tall gorgeous crackpipe. The good news is I've been single and serene (relatively) for so long that I can only handle emotional upset for a very short time before I take action. The action was a full withdrawel, a boatload of unexected grieving and tears, and a stretching of my emotional landscape. So many good things happened: I learned that I am still sexy and desirable and when I wear bright red lipstick I might as well take a giant dogcather for all the boys that come after me. It was thrilling and fun. Plus I got back into the live music groove and saw lots of incredible bands and met lots of really cool people. I was around a lot of drinking, a lot of drunks, but my sobriety was never compromised. My sanity was shaken, but I'm back almost 100% I think. 

Somewhere in there I got a 29 year sobriety coin. November 1st, 1992 is my sobriety date and I'm starting to see that that is not a small thing. My Spo keeps telling me I have a lot to offer and to say so I went to a giant packed auditorium last night and was the first person to talk and I had the group in stitches...man when I heard that first laugh I was off to the races with the joking..the next 50 people that shared were heartfelt and choked up. I felt strange and separate - why do I never tear up in meetings? Well I did it and then second guessed myself for the next 2 hours whether I was a real memeber or not. C'est la vie... 

I had also gone to Taos for my painting workshop and because it was shortly after a particularly fabulous hang with Aug. 21st man I was obsessed the whole trip and somewhat miserable. I wasn't laughing...had no buddy until I met this awesome 25 year old kid who became my bud and we went to the local bar and had a blast the last night in Taos and I FLEW back to Austin (in my car) to hope to run into le person. County work started back up so I had full days of laughs and companions to talk about this ridiculously OTT crush with. They put up with me. They laughed and joshed around with me. And by mid Nov they were letting my bawl on their shoulders. Man I have a huge support network here that never ceases to amaze me. I love my work and my co-workers, I love my handful of freinds, and I love my live music scene. Covid made me appreciate this stuff even more as I wasn't able to travel for two years. I've been to NYC now 3 times since covid begain and always always love it. 

I saw Hamilton on my 61st birthday...I am still swooning after the play and have a ticket for the show here in a few weeks. During the grieving I was doing over This Thing I Really Wanted That Didn't Happen, I had some beautiful moments: really listening to songs I never listen to and hearing the lyrics on a level I never listened to music to before. I would hear a song about heartbreak and sob and feel that this person had to have gone through the exact same thing to be able to write this song. I listened to stuff in a whole new way. I had a hard time reading as nothing I would read was as interesting as what I was going through. And I was terrified of going back to my old life. 

I was terrfied to go back to the spinster biddyhood of knitting and binge watching in sweatpants. The crush showed me that. I'm still out there, in the game, willing get my heart bruised, willing to risk being a fool. I have 5 planets in Scorpio: it's how I'm made. I love risk and drama and dreams and destruction and anything that makes a good story. And this is a story that I think I should have many chapters of in my story bank but something was different about this one and I haven't quite put my finger on what it was. The depth of feeling and the richness of the emotional intimacy was brand fucking new. I cannot ever remember having a connection like this with a person. Ever. And that is a good thing. To know that I can still feel this way about a person. So what I am going to take with me is some new things to do - go out more, stay home less. Drag myself out even when I dont want to go - because how many more years am I going to be able to go out and dance like a fool much less get in the "pit" like I did last week! 

I will get beyond this. I bounce back faster than the average bear. Resilient as hell an old friend used to tell me about how quickly I moved on. And I atill have myself, my dignity intact - I didn't give away the one thing that used to be the first thing I would give away. I was honest, I showed up but didn't chase, I kept my cool and when he appeared to bail, I bailed. I fell in love with the fantasy of a life I wanted that seemed beautiful and romantic and better than the one I was living. The one I am living feels okay right now...I have some new dreams...and they are very exciting to ponder!

West Texas (I also went to Santa Fe)

art installation in the desert

my beloved Antelope Lodge

rainbow

Marfa, TX

the coolest store ever!

Haven't been our here in around 15 years and it has been a terrific couple of days

 - that old West Texas spell has been woven into my bones again...pre-Antarctica, this was the place I fantasized about moving to the most...and lots of Austin ex-pats have moved here. I could easily afford a house out here. And it feels different coming out here with more amenities and stuff to do, and with more money being poured into the area by rich folks coming in with fancy shops and re-habbing old buildings.

I went to Santa Fe first but that deserves it's own posting...or maybe not...I was with friends there so had a very different experience than when I'm on my own like I usually am when I'm out here. This is my first solo trip without Fergus...I spent more time out doing stuff than I would if he were in the car...but not that much more stuff...it would have been difficult as it's not cool enough to have the windows up and it rained so much I couldn't have left the car windows open. 

What feels really different this time is that there is no urgency to moving out here...I know that when the times comes (if it does)...then I can relaxedly move out here and do my artwork and watch beautiful sunsets. But will I like that? What I've loved most on the trip is the driving...getting from point A to point B in a luxury car and really enjoying the drives...I like the intensity of these road trips...it really suits me. I notice that I like to be interacting with people a lot in shops and during transactions...I probably over-visited with 4 shopkeepers today, but I did buy something in every shop so I guess they were okay with it. There is just so much to talk about as I've been coming here so long and watch the changes.

And on this trip I've been dreaming a lot...sleeping deeply and dreaming a lot..a certain kind of dream that I haven't been having before...dreams with the same theme: of really wanting to connect deeply with someone in an intimate way...since things have opened up and we were maskless for a a few months my life was really ramping up in the going out and meeting men area. I was having a lot of really good intimate connections with people and feeling like something could happen. There was one particularly good night where the flirtations was strong and intense, but he said he wasn't "really single" so no numbers were exchanged but I ran into him a few other times at shows and meh. Then I met this tall tattooed German guy who was striking and intense, and we really bonded over some deep intimate talk of what it's like to be OLD and single. I dunno - I don't know what I want..or maybe I just haven't imagined it yet...maybe I just haven't opened myself up to the possibility that there is someone out there who wants me exactly like I am...someone easy and fun and laid back and loves to laugh. Someone Texan and goofy but hip and darling too...and most of all, someone who treats me like the one he's been waiting for all his life. The beloved. Now I read a lot of Rumi and Hafiz and do all the spiritual practices that tell me that the one I am waiting for and the beloved are MYSELF, and sometimes I really feel that. Sometimes when I'm "on the beam" I really feel at one with the universe. I feel on the beam on this road trip. I get to perform again this weekend. I get to do fun stuff and travel. I get to love the people I love. I get to drive to Alpine (via Lubbock, Santa Fe, Cloudcroft NM) and it's an easy trip...very very easy. And I relaxedly get to decide if I'd like to buy a home here. It could be really nice! But 3 hours to the airport! Oh well, that would be another road trip!

 

Sixty

first mad dash

first MoMA visit in 30 years

Happy Birthday to Me!

It was a difficult decision, to decide whether to go to NYC for my birthday. I have been going the last 6 years or so and it had become a tradition that I treasured. I was really worried about traveling during covid, not worried about getting it or doing anything I wouldn't usually do, but worried about being checked up on and forced to quarantine in my hotel. I went on a huge driving trip during the big summer surge and was met with nothing but smiles and open arms everywhere...across many states. I decided at the last minute to take a chance and go...when I made the decision I was ecstatic! I was not going to have a sad 60th birthday in Austin where I can't have a gathering...I was going to do what I always do (minus seeing a play) and was going to do all the things the ny website asked me to do (except stay in my hotel room for 4 days). I took a test before I boarded the airplane and was ecstatic to be doing the airport thing again. I LOVE airports and just going anywhere really on a plane. The airport was empty, the planes were empty, and LaGuardia was pretty much empty too...I was whisked to my hotel quickly and dropped my bad and did my usual mad dash around the Murray Hill neighborhood that has started to feel like my vacation spot. I grabbed a veggie slice and then hoofed it around Grand Central, Bryant Park, Times Square and then through Rockefeller Center on the way back to my hotel.

It was different, but still wonderful. Some things were so much better: no lines at the museums or bagel shops. I had a blissful day at the MoMa where it was dotted with visitors but not the usual giant lines I see every time I walk by it. Bryant Park was bustling with skaters and open air shops and restaurants so I would sit there in the evenings and have a hot chocolate and watch the skaters (i.e.: resting my dogs). I grabbed food to go mostly except for the day Kate came into the city, where we dined at several outdoor venues...our favorite bars were closed (where she has a cocktail and I have a fizzy water and just enjoy the ambiance). We stayed on the lower east side and it was abuzz with young rowdy folks. I had gone to the Strand one evening and had a delightful time there, but when Kate and I decided to go there on a Saturday evening there was a line around the block. There was a line to get into Uniqlo when it opened, but for some reason I have no desire to shop for clothes anymore. But I was looking for something special for my birthday, as I usually buy a play ticket or something nice for myself.

On my last day my flight wasn't until 5:00pm so I had plenty of time to do stuff. I walked  up to 5th avenue and took a right and thought about going to the Park (which I never go to) as I was just trying to vary my routine. I walked in front of Trump Tower and always glance over at the heavily armed guards..and then saw some men in bright blue scarves standing in front of some construction scaffolding letting people know that the Tiffany's store was open even though it had some construction going on around it. (For the past several years it seems like every other building has scaffolding and construction going on around it). I have never gone into that store as I feel I look too scruffy for them but I saw this touristy couple go in and I just followed them in. I was gleefully escorted to the floor of items that I said I could afford (just the silver please!) and these lovely ladies fluttered around me as I looked at all the nicely made and reasonably priced pieces. I had a hard time picking something but decided to go small and got a charm that was inexpensive and small but is in their traditional design with  a modern twist to it. I hung it on the charm holder necklace I was wearing and after paying they asked if I wanted a box but I said I would take a bag. The blue bag! I skipped out of the store with the bag on my arm and felt that I had given myself the best 60th birthday present I could have ever had...and not just the bauble from Tiffany's.

There was a time when I couldn't imagine that I would ever be able to afford to fly to NYC and stay in a decent hotel and just do what I want for 5 days. I mostly just walk around, but if I want to spend money and eat out every day and see play I do it. If I want to buy myself treats I do that as well...but these short trips to ny are a symbol of something big for me in my life: they are a symbol of my having agency over my own life, of me doing exactly what I want to do and psychically and psychologically freeing myself from the scarcity and stinginess that is in my lineage. Why is it any better to have money sitting in a bank rather than to spend it on small things that improve the quality of my life SO MUCH and make my mental health and self esteem plumper.

When I lived in ny I would often look at all the apartments and wonder how someone was able to afford to live there...wonder if there was something wrong with me - and I found out there wasn't. I just had to work hard for a really long time and make this a priority in my life. 

This is 60 for me- this is better than I thought it would be...

 

5009 Miles

I prepared for a few days after worrying for a week or so wether I should go on this trip at all...was concerned about covid, people's reactions to me traveling, how safe it was out there, etc...but I knew I would not be able to keep myself from blazing across the country to Oregon once I gave myself the go ahead...I needed to be with these sweet mountain people who loved me dearly...

I got up at 6:00am on July 29th and drove to Amarillo and spent the night...drove out to the Cadillac Ranch and took some photos...the next day was a long drive to Flagstaff and after checking into my hotel did a quick jaunt down town to walk around...wasn't much going on so pretty much stayed in hotel room and ate noodle bowls I brought with me...knew I'd be getting up early and the next day's drive to Atascadero was super long and stressful, but I had a friend there that I've know for over 20 years and it was so great to see her and have a nice meal outdoors on a cool patio with her and her husband. I decided to stay an extra day there and not drive...so we had a super fun day driving around the central coast and visiting all the little towns. And I stayed in this lovely downtown boutique hotel and just loved every minute of being away from Austin. The next day I drove to Rocklin (outside Sacramento) and stayed with my friend Steve and had a wonderful day where I felt just so taken care of and such a warm sensation of being with someone that I've known and loved for a really long time (I always tell people he was my best boyfriend ever). Steve has a big heart and presence and takes care of those around him well. I hung out at his wonderful comfortable home with his dog and sweet 4 year old son Jasper. At first I thought I wouldn't be able to handle staying at someone's house, especially on a couch in the living room, but as soon as that warm family glow spread all over me I knew I would stay at Steve's. I slept like a baby and awoke to his sweet doggie sleeping with me and drove to Bend, OR to break up the drive. I could have driven straight to Welches but didn't want to arrive at my hosts house too early and had heard great things about Bend. It was a mistake to stay there - Bend is a shithole and my cheap hotel's wifi went out around 7:00pm and I had kind of a meltdown which turned into a grieving session that lasted in me bawling for hours. At first it was just frustration about not having internet and really being sucked into Hell on Wheels again, but then I was forced to confront those juicy old deeply crusted over wounds/desires that seem to only emerge with a 5 day 80mph road trip. It's happened to me on every road trip: I spend most the day in euphoria/raptor like focus on the road...followed by a gradual falling apart and vulnerable period where I feel sad and weepy. All ancient grievances are re-hashed, and only when I park and get into the hotel am I relieved and hunker down for deep sleep. What happened in Bend was some familiar stuff I've been dealing with for a few years with therapists in Austin; also a love jones that had me spinning in Austin and took 5000 miles to forget about. But then something very familiar happens at the end when I think all of my unhappiness is a particular person's fault: I unconsciously open my computer and look at the McMurdo webcams and go into a zone of what it is I am really grieving - missing the place that gave me everything...gave my life 24/7 badass meaning and purpose and joy every day. Before McMurdo I dated big tattooed guys/bikers to feel badass...then I got to become that badass I tried to get on the outside...she lived in me and just needed a place to manifest...this is hard, this time of year as people start to deploy, as I see pics of people in Christchurch getting ready for that C-17 ride to the Ice runway...something I got to do 7 times (1 time was by boat)...a situation that still rips my heart out every time I think about it because I miss it so much. I have a job now that almost gives me that much satisfaction, but it barely rates in comparison. It's a familiar patten when I start to feel sad: let the feelings overtake and dive deep into grieving, cry long enough to realize I miss my home. I still apply every year for positions, but have fallen out of the loop and much younger people deploy...and I keep trying to make my life here feel like the one I had there...and I have a very good life here, but it is hard for me to accept that the best is behind me...I can't even imagine there could be something that could be that fulfilling to my being, but maybe I should start trying to believe that there is.

But wait, I was writing about my road trip, which was one of the best trips I have every taken...so I get to Welches at about 10:00am and my host is playing golf and his wife is gardening. I have a lovely little room in their beautiful home on the river. I am euphoric driving over to the RV park I lived in and just traveling that familiar little road in the beautiful forest...I was so unhappy there most of the time but I love going back...what I didn't realize when I moved there was that I would form this community of people that I love - that I feel so close to - that can't wait to see me and welcome me like a beloved relative. I spent 10 days at my host's home and it was delightful...I saw so many friends and went to Portland and then when I left I had another exciting road trip with some wonderful discoveries: Helper Utah and Canon City, CO...two fantastic little towns that need to be visited again. The joy of the trip has evaporated with some realities of being back in Austin. I am happy to be in my apartment and be free for a few weeks, and then back to work for this insane presidential election.

I was so happy for the 3 weeks I did this trip. It could not have been better...next time I just need to make it longer...I had been planning to do this ever since I got the gently used Lexus as a gift. She performed beautifully. I had a mission, a goal, a destination, and all of it was wonderful...I just feel so loved by that mountain. I just can't live there full time.

Nineteen Eighty Four - Rego Park, Queens

It's fall of 1984 and I'm living in a basement apartment in Rego Park Queens. I found it by looking in a newspaper, finding an agent and giving my parameter of $500/month rent max. I still remember this unusual guy and he said "I have a PALACE for you..it's an enormous PALACE! He drove me to this kind of ugly 3 story newish building in the heart of Archie Bunker style Queens houses. He took me to the basement, and it was indeed, enormous - enormous and fully furnished with a vintage 50's stereo cabinet. There was a little window over the bed that let in light from the backyard and he sold me on the value per square foot. Also it was close enough to a subway stop to get me to my job at 61st/Madison so I signed a years lease. Without going in the stürm and drang of my first few months in the city, here's the cliff notes: I moved to NYC upon graduation from UT in late summer of 1983. I stayed on the Upper East Side with G for a few months and decided I needed to live on my own. I had mailed out tons of resumes to film companies and got a few letters back, and some calls (pre cell phone and internet days kiddies!). I ended up getting a job with a high end watch wholesaler who had been handed my resume because it said I spoke French, and the company was based in Paris. My boss was a chain smoking, smolderingly handsome Portuguese man named Carlos. This was my first non fast food, first big girl job, AND it was in NYC and I was excited/nervous. I wanted to be perfect and was terrified of authority and of making mistakes. A condition that would haunt my work life for many years.

For six months I went to work 9-5 every day in stomach clinching fear, mostly hungover, and not knowing how to do my job very well (and not knowing that I needed help or how to ask for it). I had only an electric typewriter, and my boss would yell at me constantly and was always on the phone schmoozing to people in French or Portuguese, wrapped in a cloud of cigarette smoke. He was trying to get his watches in all the high end retailers in the city and I was writing the letters to the head buyers. He said they looked like crap and made me redo them. I sensed that he liked me and was trying to have a jokey and fun time with me but I couldn't go there. I was a highly boundaried (not in a good way) employee who felt I was so below a boss, and deathly afraid of making mistakes. I can't even really remember why I was so scared but I think I had to do a lot of accounting stuff with an adding machine (10 key by touch!)...and I am not confident with my math abilities so when I didn't know what to do instead of asking a question I would just get scared and hide what I had done. Carlos would eventually find a mistake and blow up at a me. After he blew up he'd be over it and ready to joke and laugh...whereas I would be completely traumatized and would not be able to recover until I plunged into the Irish bar across the street from my office every evening. (The antics at this bar I could write a book about - I had to stop going because of how much trouble I got in).

It was unfortunate that it took a very long time (my last boss I was terrified of was from 2000-2003), but I no longer cower with bosses. I have several male bosses now and I get up in their faces and bare fangs if they overstep. I say NO a lot. And it works. They respect me. O the suffering I could have avoided if I'd learned this lesson as a wee one. Punch back at the bully. But to continue...

I hated going to the office and just got sicker and sicker fantasizing on how I could escape or quit. It never occurred to me that I could just quit - I was so obedient and conditioned to focus on a powerful and scary person's needs and to squash my own that that was how I was at work. Outside of work I had boyfriends, lovers, friends come stay with me from out of town, wild debauched early 80's new yorky stuff (white) all around me and had what I thought was fun at the time, but looking back I think I was pretty lost and just didn't know it because I was so busy feeling like a trapped animal by day and going wild at night. I recently told a friend who knew me at this time (he was in grad school at NYU) what I was doing on my weekends and his mouth was hanging open in shock. He got serious about his studies after we hung out my first few months and I was off onto the dark after hours underbelly at night.

I am finally getting to point of this long (yet endlessly interesting to me) and rambling post: one Sunday about six or seven months into this job I decided I was going to call in sick on Monday. I had never called in sick to work (and now, 36  years later, can count on the fingers of one hand how many times I have called in sick, and most of those times I was not actually "sick"). Something in me just said fuck it I need a break from this relentless cycle of hell of this confusing job world. I was nervous all day planning how I was going to do it and what I was going to say, and early Monday morning I left a message on the office answering machine that I was feeling ill and wouldn't be in. Then I unplugged my phone.

I had noticed one of those old art deco single screen movie theaters in my neighborhood and that was where I was going to spend my day. I decided I would go to the afternoon feature no matter what the film was. I was a terrible film snob at the time and did not see current Hollywood fare but told myself I was gonna go no matter what was showing. I walked to the theater and bought a ticket for "Footloose". I remember how cheesy and goofy the film was and how silly the music but I didn't care. I had decided I gave no fucks for Carlos and his stupid watches and this Monday was my own and he didn't own me. I wish I could remember more about the day but what I do remember is going back to my basement apt. and seeing the red light on my answering machine blinking a bunch. I had about 14-30 messages from Carlos. He had been compulsively calling me all day, utterly dependent on me and my cheap labor (I had looked at the file of applicants when I applied for the job and they had all asked for twice to three times as much money as I had). His calls were ridiculous and creepy...acting like he wanted me to call and talk about what I was doing (so weird to me), but he was scared I wasn't coming back. He needed me. And I had flipped him off by being not contactable.

I did not call back, and don't remember exactly what happened when I went back but shortly thereafter I got the euphoric news that the company was being sued and they were high tailing it to LA in 6 weeks. I had an out! Carlos begged me to move to LA and offered to buy me a car and partly subsidize an apt. I said no, but that I would go out to set up the office for two weeks. It was a hideous/hilarious two weeks of me staying with some friend of his (and her kids) in Beverly Hills, walking to work dressed in all black, having to hide in the home as there was some ex driving by threatening to shoot everyone in the house. I hated LA and knew that I would. My last day of working for Carlos ended with me treating my hostess to dinner, and while at this fancy restaurant she was telling me a story about a recent date she'd had (I had just drained a giant smoothie from a glass-this is important), she was describing his physical appearance saying he had a "lump" and I said where was the lump? And she said no, what is the word for it (English was not her first language) and she stood up and pantomimed a person with a bum leg. And I said do you mean a "limp?" And she said YES, A "LIMP!" We started laughing so hard that I started gagging...I still had smoothie in my throat when I started laughing and the gagging turned into I was going to throw up...she looked at me in alarm and held the empty smoothie glass under my mouth for me to hurl into. I filled up the glass to the brim. Goodbye LA! Never heard from Carlos again.

Yesterday when I was thinking about this memory before my writing class I started googling stuff in Rego Park, and I think I found the little theater I went to. Just like before I moved where I am right now, I have getting very very sentimental about a place I have lived before...looking at the house I lived in on google maps and seeing my subway stop. I don't know why this memory is so compelling to me but this is the 3rd time I have written it out in several weeks...it feels like time again to jettison the cobwebbed Austin life of the known and move across country again. And why not? I never lose anything when I do this -.  I just seem to gain, and I must be wired so differently than most people as they say they cannot imagine "uprooting" and moving somewhere and leaving all their friends. This is my soul's magic place...gleefulling getting rid of my stuff, packing my car and moving across county. If I have ONE friend there I am good - I will start forming a tribe or life pretty quickly...the clan I left behind in Oregon are some of the dearest people to me on earth. Six years in Oregon - only fond memories (though my diaries from that time show a screeching internal hellscape).

As a solo movie goer for my entire adult life, and as a daughter of a mother weaned and raised by solo theater outings (she has told me she went to the movies every day after school) it was (and still is) a solo act that has seems to have a high feminist and self care component - it's an act of courage for people who say they could never go by themself, and in these times especially, a few hours that one is utterly unavailable.

Postscript:

Some other things that happened at that first NYC job: I was sent on missions to interesting places all over the city for various errands. I slinked around inside what felt like the walls of Grand Central Station to find this ancient darling man in an ancient dusty office repairing and tinkering with old timepieces. I was sent to Hell's Kitchen (early 80's, scary) with a suede briefcase filled with expensive watches handcuffed to my wrist up a rickety walk up next to an abandoned building to meet "some guy" who wanted to buy "some watches." I was sent to luxurious high rise offices with views of the city that made me swoon. Carlos' famous finance (main model on the Price is Right!) came to the office and Carlos called to tell me to hide his condoms and cigarettes in his desk. Janice glided in and threw her mink into my arms. These are the things that stick with me...it was all good - the horrible and the beautiful. I almost miss being that naive and young and being so besotted with a place that I would put up with anything to be there.

Twenty Seven

This is kind of a goofy picture of my face but I couldn't really see the screen very well on my phone as it was leaning on a tire outside my improv studio. I get excited about Halloween and cold weather and autumn (and going to NYC next week!) that I decided to get dressed and do my annual birthday photo. I'm fatter this year, but don't really care, as why the hell should I? I went to my 40 year high school reunion and saw my demographic: I look pretty good for the mileage.

I got gut punched pretty hard seeing people deploying to McMurdo but sucked it up. My cabin has sold, I have exciting travel on the horizon (though I've been everywhere I want to go so am revisiting some favorites), have loads of work and some super fun creative outlets. I want a dog so bad it hurts - but the intoxicating freedom I am experiencing not having one overrides that desire.

I feel kind of self conscious writing this as I know someone is actually reading it now...when I go back and read some of these postings I cannot believe I wrote them as I don't remember writing them and they seem better written than I remember. I have been going to this writing class at a Zen Center  that is in a part of Austin that I lived in while in college and I can feel the ghosts of that time when I walk around this area. I am having such a nostalgic trip here in Austin and it has been 3 years now that I've been back. The writing we do is prompt style, where we go in cold, get a  prompt, and write for 30 minutes, then sit in a circle and read it to each other. I write so fast and furiously that I can barely get everything out that I want to say...then there is a lull around the 20 minute time...then a burst of blissful coming together of the piece. The best part is when we get to read aloud. It's exactly the same stuff I write on here but I am reading it to strangers. Something happens when I read this stuff to people who don't know me (and one person there knows me fairly well)...I notice that what I've written takes on a life of it's own and changes as my voice rounds out the words...sometimes I edit as I'm reading, and my voice gets much more powerful (and doesn't quite sound like "mine" anymore) as I get to the end. When I'm done reading I feel like I've climbed a mountain...and I see the faces of my peers and everything is different. What I have written has changed in the reading of it, and more importantly, in the landing of it upon the ears of the others. I can see, or rather sense in a rather strong way that what I have written has had an effect; it has had impact. And the impact seems more ephemeral or dare I say, "spiritual" than some sort of concrete impact. I'm not explaining it well, but when I start to read what I've written aloud I feel some sort of cosmic shift in some sort of internal/collective universe. The meaning, the loadedness, the shock value, the trauma and tragedy of what I've written recedes into the background and there is a stillness that I guess can only be said to be the present moment. What I've written is no longer me or mine, or necessarily a true document of a past event, but more like a smoke signal sent up into the air to intermingle with the millions of other words people are writing down everyday...I feel a peacefulness and relief that I am not unique  and my stories are not hard facts...they are just a part of the big cosmic swirl.

I just finished driving a giant cargo van for 3 weeks during early voting and Election day, and am now pulling out the sites. I went through a major meltdown about having to drive the van in Austin traffic but I did it and felt a huge surge of pride each day that I parked at the county and successfully rocked my shift and unloaded my van. I spend a lot of time doing very unusual and unique things in this job - like going into tons of elementary and middle schools and churches all over the county and smelling the smells of an old school and feeling a warmth for the young children. Today I barged into a church and people were huddled together fretfully praying and in another room people were making lunches for meals on wheels and me and my co-worker were strapping down tables onto a giant metal box and making a lot of noise. Knowing that this job will have lots of work for 2020 would be the main reason that I would stay in Austin another year...this job is almost over for a couple of months, the weather is gorgeous (40's and rainy), my improv class is really fun, and recently a man told me with the utmost sincerity that I was an "incredibly beautiful woman." I immediately made a face like "gross no I'm not" and then caught myself and really let myself take it in that it might be true. I was feeling close to him and then I pushed him away. I feel the lyrics of the song "Desperado" imprinting on my soul and my heart seems to be incased in a block of ice : you better let somebody love you before it's too late. I used to so easily be able to melt into the arms of another person, and now it feels like something I need to go to college to learn how to do again (and is it even possible for me to do again, and more important: is it something I actually even want to do again.) I've been single so long that I've gotten really good at it...like I could teach a masterclass in it. What would it be called...How to Date Yourself...How to Do Everything Yourself...How to Travel the World by Yourself and not feel utterly awkward at tables full of couples...blah blah blah.. the list goes on...onward!