Apr

The Cottage on Cashio Street.

As the late afternoon sun descends, its rays catch the side of my face – warm, but not too hot. Directly in front of me, a lone, impossibly tall palm tree ascends up, up, up into the cloudless blue sky, stoic and proud, as though she were keeping watch over the entire neighborhood. The same gentle breeze that blows through my hair causes the palm fronds to rustle softly and rhythmically, the music of the trees joining the chirping of tiny birds and the occasional melody of a far-off police siren as this lazy late afternoon slides into evening.

As I sit on one turquoise mesh folding chair, my feet propped up on a second turquoise mesh folding chair, legs extended, gazing out from a white stucco patio framed by an impeccably-manicured hedge blossoming with pink and yellow flowers, I’m willing to admit that the view from here looks pretty good.

It wasn’t always this way. In fact, for much of the year that I’ve lived in this one bedroom cottage bungalow with its near-perfect patio, I didn’t enjoy or embrace my life here. I didn’t relax and I didn’t settle in. But now, as my second spring begins to unfold on Cashio Street, I find myself inching ever closer to something that resembles happiness. It’s a feeling that’s been foreign to me for so long, I’m not quite sure what to do with it. It’s a feeling that, if I’m honest, scares me a little. What if it’s not real? What if it goes away?

When I first moved to the cottage on Cashio Street, it was to seek refuge. My marriage was toxic, my life was a mess, and I was reeling from an overwhelming grief that I hadn’t been able to fully process or accept. I needed to start over. I moved in with some friends, temporarily, until I figured out what to do next. And then it happened: with almost zero effort on my part, this beautiful little bungalow materialized. It fell into my lap so seamlessly, it was almost as if fate had stepped in on my behalf.

At first, the sudden change was exhilarating. Both my home and my life were a blank slate, to be redecorated and refashioned in whatever way I saw fit. I had a new neighborhood to discover and a new life to explore.

But after the novelty wore off, reality set in. I was isolated, living far away from most of my friends in a city where perpetual traffic jams mean that even a separation of a few miles can present a serious impediment to regular social gatherings. The more time I spent alone with myself, the more I realized that I no longer knew who I was. My marriage had defined not only my relationship status, but many of my friendships and associations – both personally and professionally – as well. I felt adrift, homesick, and unsure of where to turn. I missed the places and faces of my past life and wanted to retreat back to the familiar and the known.

But I couldn’t. And I didn’t. Gradually, I began to seek out new ways to fill the empty spaces left in my life by the absence of so many people and things. I used this blog as a tool to write my way through sadness and loss and the changes I felt unfolding within me. Through my writing, I met a community of other writers, both online and in real life. A few months after my move, I went on a writer’s retreat in the San Juan Islands in my home state of Washington and was amazed to find that there were so many other people out there just like me: people who were brave yet broken, people who had profound stories to tell, people who found their solace within the safety of the written word.

The void still gnawing at my insides, I kept going. Along with a close circle of friends, I started a weekly creative workshop for fellow actors and writers. I reconnected with a college friend, joined her theatre company, and began rehearsals for an autobiographical solo performance show that will open this upcoming summer. I became a volunteer for an organization that works to empower teenage girls in L.A.’s underserved communities and I’m now a mentor to a fourteen-year-old girl who has plans to finish her first novel before she graduates from high school. Once again, I picked up an oft-abandoned screenplay loosely (or maybe not so loosely) based on the worst year of my life, but this time with a renewed sense of commitment and enthusiasm. I’m almost done with the first draft, and I’m planning to hold my first table read next month. And I’m finally – finally – in counseling with a good therapist.

I certainly don’t have it all figured out. I am a work in progress. Change is scary and it’s difficult, and some days are easier than others. But through stubbornness and persistence, I’m starting to find a way out of the darkness. I’m starting to find that this new, ever-evolving me is someone I actually enjoy spending time with. And I’m starting to recognize that caught as I am between impatiently pushing for a “better,” happier future and brooding over memories of a past that I can’t change, the only place I can safely reside, the only place I want to reside, is right here, right now.

One day at a time, as they say.

Until next time, friends.

11 years ago Short URL 13 Comments

Los Angeles/Me/Well-Being/Writing

Change/Extra Dry Martini/Living in the Moment/Los Angeles/Sarah Kelly/Starting Over/Writing

Mar

Putting off tomorrow.

“Procrastination is the thief of time.”

-Edward Young

Over and over and over again over these last two and a half years, I’ve reminded myself how precious time is; that it shouldn’t be wasted. After all, I’ve seen it in action: the way a mere phrase or phone call or the briefest of moments can permanently alter every cell in your body, so that afterwards you never think or dream or breathe the same way again. I don’t need anyone to tell me that all we have is this moment, this one, right now. I already know.

And yet. As I sit here, writing this to you, I am – at this very moment – procrastinating. I am putting off doing things that are important to me. Even after I resolved that I wouldn’t, I am still finding ways to stall. I am making excuses. Why?

I have a plan. It’s sort of epic. Can I tell you about it?

Ever since my mother died two and a half years ago, a story has been kicking around inside of my brain. Scenes of it play in my mind like a movie. It is a movie. Well, not yet. After mom died, I wrote the story in fits and starts – sketches of scenes, bits of dialogue. But I couldn’t really get a rhythm going because too much was happening. I was too messed up. I couldn’t see it or admit it at the time, but I was. My dad was sick, my grandmother was sick, the person I loved most in the world was abruptly gone with all kinds of questions surrounding her death, and oh, on a side note, my personal life was an utter disaster. My world had flipped upside down.

To make everything worse, I couldn’t write. I felt stupid, clumsy. My tongue was thick in my mouth. Words were stubborn, refusing to string together to form sentences. The thing that had always come easy for me, the thing I’d fallen back on when all else failed, had suddenly become impossible.

But little by little, it started to come back. I started writing again. And over the last two plus years, I have written a lot. I wrote while my life changed. I wrote through all kinds of moments – heartbreaking moments and sweet moments, laugh out loud moments and joyful moments. You see, once you get through the worst part of a trauma, once you realize it won’t actually kill you, once you realize that you still care enough to pick yourself up and keep on living, you become capable of experiencing profound joy. And it’s often joy where you wouldn’t expect it: in small, seemingly insignificant moments that you never even realized were beautiful until you looked at them through the lens of loss. Even though you’re sadder and more broken, when you laugh you really mean it, and when you love you really mean it, and even though you wouldn’t wish what’s happened to you on anyone, your dirty little secret is that you don’t want to go back to the way you were before, because the old you was oblivious, fumbling around in the dark, while this you is awake to everything. And once you’ve woken up, you can’t go back to sleep.

But this is not meant to be a blog about loss, it’s meant to be a blog about procrastinating. See? I’m doing it again. OK, to get back to the point: the story that has been kicking around in my head for the last two and a half years while I tried and failed at writing it is finally taking shape. It’s a screenplay of a movie that is based upon my life.

The story is set in Olympia, Washington, the town where I went to high school and where I plan to film the movie. That’s right, I’m going to make the movie myself. I know just enough about producing films to be terrified of how much work it will be, how much money it will cost, and how much I still need to learn. Basically, I know enough to know that I don’t know enough. Not yet.

But in allowing myself to feel overwhelmed about the filmmaking part before I’m even there yet, I’ve been putting off the step I’m on now, which is sort of crucial: finishing the script. I’m self-aware enough to recognize my own resistance, and resistance and I are currently locked in a daily tug of war. I’ve got post it notes with motivational sayings all over my house, an accountability circle where I bring in pages of the script every week, and plans for a table read of the full script in May. But every day when it’s time for me to sit down and do my work, I’m like a petulant child who doesn’t want to go to school, looking for any excuse I can not to go.

What the hell is my problem? This story is important to me, and I want to tell it. Yes, writing it is hard. Yes, certain scenes aren’t coming out the way I want them to, at least not yet. But I’m making everything so much harder than it needs to be with my acrobatic stalling techniques. If writing this script is the thing that matters most to me, why will I do nearly anything to avoid working on it?

Maybe it’s the fear of failure thing. Maybe it’s the fear of success thing. Maybe it’s the fear that I’ll actually accomplish my goal and after all the blood, sweat and tears, I’ll get to the other side of it and realize that this process didn’t heal my life the way I’m hoping it will. Maybe I’m afraid that no matter what I do, nothing will ever change.

I think to some degree, my resistance is probably rooted in all of these things. But even though I’m scared, I’m also stubborn. I’m going to battle through this, just like I’ve battled through everything else these last couple of years. Because for all the challenges that lie ahead, I refuse to believe that I could have treaded through such deep water simply to give up. Our heroine battles through the worst experiences of her life, stands upon the precipice of utter despair, and then – throws in the towel. Now that would make a lousy movie.

If you’re anything like me – if you’re feeling overwhelmed by a big dream that you badly want to accomplish but don’t know where to start or what to do – this is what I suggest: start small. Break down your big dream into as many small tasks as you can, and just do one thing at a time. Do one small thing every day that keeps you moving forward. Don’t worry about what could go wrong in the future – it either will or it won’t and you’ll deal with it when you get there. Just do what’s in front of you every day.

Now let’s see if I can take my own advice.

Until next time, friends.

11 years ago Short URL 237 Comments

Los Angeles/Me/Olympia/Opinion/Writing

Dreams/Extra Dry Martini/Filmmaking/Loss/Olympia/Procrastination/Sarah Kelly/Time/Writing

Feb

Jet Lag.

Just over a week ago, I penned a hopeful dispatch from London’s Heathrow Airport in the pages of my journal.

It was afternoon, and I was squeezed into a tiny table at a crowded café in terminal five, scribbling notes about my trip as I waited for my flight to Los Angeles to begin boarding. After two weeks in Europe, I was homeward bound, and I was more than ready to return. I was ready to return to my life and to once again take up the big, important projects – both career and life – that I’d been putting off. I was ready to hit the ground running with a renewed sense of purpose.

And return I did, after a sleepless ten hour flight, a terse exchange with an LAX cab driver – who kicked me out of his car after he learned I’d be paying my fare with a credit card – and a foggy few days spent trying to catch up and reintegrate myself, amidst strange sleep patterns and cloudy, confused dreams in which I existed both in the place I was and the place I’d been, simultaneously. Palm trees in Prague . . . what the??

But my jet lag wore off. And reality set in. And as it did, I found my sense of hopefulness waning. It became difficult, once again, to keep my spirits up.

My post-vacation hangover made me realize something simple, yet true: it’s easy for me to feel optimistic when I’m away, because it’s easier to look at my life for what it could be, as seen from a distance, than for what it actually is, when it’s right up close. Strolling the banks of the Thames or the Vltava, bundled up against the February chill, my L.A. life looked like some sort of sun-soaked dream. A dream that I couldn’t wait to return to.

But my actual L.A. life isn’t exactly a sun-soaked dream. It is much more difficult than the palm trees would have you believe. It’s full of traffic jams and smog and grown up decisions and a high cost of living and endless bills to pay. It’s creative burnout and failed relationships and an ongoing struggle to make peace with my past. More than anything, life in LA. these days is a struggle to figure out who the heck I am after I’ve been so many versions of myself and none of them have worked out.

Yes, I am feeling sorry for myself. And yes, it’s disgusting. Let’s get real for a second. I’ve just returned home to Los Angeles, which, weather-wise, is pretty damn pleasant compared to what most of the rest of the world is experiencing in late February. I just spent two weeks in Europe on an incredible adventure – the type of self-indulgent trip that most people only dream of. And all around me in this sprawling, massive, city, there are reminders that my life, for all of my complaints, is not really that bad.

As I scribble these words into my journal, I’m sitting in another café, half a world away from the one at Heathrow. But you can’t really call it a café: it’s a Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf. Right in front of me, in the middle of the afternoon in broad daylight, is a most unfortunate business transaction: an exchange between a prostitute and her pimp. She: edgy, nervous, eager to please, fingernails caked in dirt (that’s how close she is to me) with a tiny, scruffy dog in her lap. He: cold, disinterested, rude, and treats her so callously, it’s obvious that he sees her as nothing more than property. My stomach turns and I try to pretend I don’t see them, but it’s impossible. I feel guilty for obsessing about my own stupid problems, ashamed when the girl’s eye briefly meets mine, and then sad, as I look away and cast my eyes downward, toward the floor.

The best thing about my trip to Europe was that it reminded me of the carefree, hopeful girl that I used to be when I lived in London as a twenty-one-year-old college student, when the world stretched out wide in front of me, when possibility seemed limitless and I still believed that nothing bad could happen to me. The worst thing about my trip to Europe was that I returned, knowing for sure that I am no longer that girl.

Real life is very unlike my European vacation, and much more like the scene I witnessed at the Coffee Bean. It confronts you with its realness, with its complexity. Sometimes it’s gritty and sad. Sometimes it forces you to look away.

Every time I leave town, I’m happy. For a time. But then I come back, and the old problems are still here, and I’m still here. And time is passing and life is happening all around me. And I’m not really any closer to figuring it all out.

So I have decided that it’s time. Time to say yes to the here and now – even if the here and now is gritty and difficult and real. Even if it makes me sad. It’s time to commit and connect to my real life in a way that I’ve been avoiding. Time to buckle down and do the hard work. Because you can’t correct what you don’t confront. And the hour is growing late.

This might be the craziest adventure yet. Wish me luck?

Until next time, friends.

11 years ago Short URL 18 Comments

Los Angeles/Travel/Well-Being

Adventure/Europe/Extra Dry Martini/Heathrow/Los Angeles/Reality/Sarah Kelly/Travel/Writing

Dec

Away.

There was no parking on the good side. I was pretty certain there wouldn’t be. By the time Zoe picked me up and whisked me away from the cesspool that is LAX, by the time we drove back to my tiny bungalow, by the time we sat parked in the driveway chatting and catching up – me recounting stories from the long weekend spent getting reacquainted with my childhood home of Anchorage, Alaska – and by the time I’d deposited my bags inside the dark, quiet one bedroom, it was past eight-thirty. Well after most of my neighbors would have returned from work and claimed all of the good street spots.

I drove around for a few minutes anyway, vainly hoping I’d get lucky, but there was nothing to be found. Not for many blocks, and not on any of the streets that I deemed ‘safe.’ Ah, the beauty of L.A., with its sketchy neighborhoods rubbing elbows with the swanky ones. Just a block or so south of my Beverly Hills-adjacent Orthodox Jewish hood and a girl could run into trouble in the form of pawn shops and liquor stores and the questionable characters who hovered outside of them. No thanks.

So I gave up and returned home, setting an alarm on my phone as a reminder to move my car early the next morning for street cleaning. I scanned my apartment with weary eyes, suddenly feeling colder than I had during the nearly two-hour walk I’d taken with my sister Marion around Anchorage’s Westchester Lagoon, blanketed as it was in snow and ice. I surveyed the fridge – empty – and leafed through a stack of mail containing mostly bills and credit card applications, and mercifully, one honest to goodness greeting card filled with holiday cheer in the form of metallic gold Christmas tree confetti, a card that peeked out from the pile of useless papers like a tiny beacon of hope.

I eyed my suitcase with dread, not wanting to settle in, not ready to unpack. Should I open my computer and catch up on work email? Oh please, not yet. With no good options, I picked up the phone and ordered takeout from the Indian restaurant down the street. As I buttoned my coat and slung a scarf around my neck on the way out to grab dinner, I consoled myself with the thought that in just one week, I’d be getting on a plane again, away from here. Away from this place that had once held so much promise – a new life, a fresh start, a home all my own – but a place that, though it was filled up with all my stuff, had somehow managed to grow foreign, distant, and sterile.

These days, I like myself better when I’m away. There’s an energy that comes from toting my carry-on through the terminal, from rushing to meet my gate, from airport coffeehouses and bars and bookstores, from arrivals and departures. From checking in. And yes, from checking out. I like the pulse of travel, the pace of it. The sights and smells of different places fill me, inspire me. As long as I keep moving, I’m OK. It’s when I stop, when I settle, when I find myself in this place where I no longer know what to do with myself, that I start thinking about the big, ‘what am I doing with my life?’ question, and things suddenly become much more difficult.

I’m adrift. I don’t like where I am, but I don’t know where to go. I know that my current residence, the overpriced one bedroom bungalow at the corner of sketch and swank, is no longer right for me. Strange that when it came into my life just ten months ago, it was exactly what I needed: a quiet place with a sun-warmed patio that wrapped me up like a cozy blanket and sheltered me through a terrible life transition. But now, no amount of cleaning or decorating or incense-burning will change the fact that I’ve outgrown it. And so, with two months left on my lease, I find myself asking, ‘What now?’

I crave home like you wouldn’t believe. A safe place with a soft pillow to rest my head. A cushy, overstuffed sofa to collapse into at the end of a long, satisfying day. A secure, off-street parking spot (never more attractive than now). And yes, someone to share it with, to laugh with, to tell me in a voice that I’ll actually believe, that everything is going to be OK.

I guess I’ve landed on it. It’s not so much the place I’m looking for, as it is the way I’ll feel – the life I’ll live – inside of that place. Home is where the heart is, right? For me, that’s an eye roll-inducing cliché that’s also, irritatingly, true. Home is where the heart is. The problem is, ever since my heart was broken, I no longer know how to find it.

So for now, I’m living a life of not settling in. I’m making plans for the short-term. I’m thinking big but skimping on specifics. And every time it all becomes too much, I get the hell out of town. I’m sure I can’t keep doing this forever. But for right now, it makes sense. For right now, ‘away’ is simply the best place I can think of to be.

Until next time, friends.

11 years ago Short URL 8 Comments

Lifestyle/Los Angeles/Travel

Anchorage/Away/Extra Dry Martini/Home/LAX/Sarah Kelly/Travel/Wanderlust

Nov

Rory.

Today would have been your thirty-third birthday.

My favorite memory of celebrating your birthday has to be your twenty-first: when Vim drove our small group to Las Vegas on a Tuesday night. Kate (my roommate) thought we were crazy for making the trip. We had no hotel, no plan, other than to arrive at midnight, to celebrate as long as we could stay up, and then drive back to L.A. in the morning. “You’re going to die!” Kate warned. But we didn’t die. We drove into Vegas just before 12 a.m., the sight of neon casino lights beckoning, causing us to chant, “Vegas. Vegas. Vegas!”

I don’t remember which casino we hit first, but I do remember the bartender. She checked your ID, looked at her watch and chuckled. You were just twenty-one. Shots for everyone. What a great night (morning). One of those crazy adventures that you never forget.

I’ve wanted to write something about you for some time now, to dedicate something on this blog that was just for you, something more than just a brief mention, a blip on the radar screen during a bad couple of years. I’ve struggled to find the words. Not because I didn’t know what to say. I’ve no doubt I could fill up many pages with stories – stories of the USC days, of that infamous apartment, the Inglewood Palace, of everything that came after.

There are two reasons it took me so long to write about you. The first is anger. I’m angry that you’re gone because it seems so damned unfair, because you were so young, so full of promise, such a gift to this world. The second reason is guilt. I feel guilty because – sandwiched as it was in between losing my mom and dad – your loss was sort of lost to me, just one more impossible thing in a series of impossible things that I didn’t know how to deal with. I don’t think I ever fully processed or absorbed your death, almost – in a way – pretending like it didn’t happen. And you deserved better than that.

Rory, as long as I knew you, you carried a certain darkness within you. The funniest and most charming people often do. But the thing that I’m not sure you’re aware of is how happy you made people. How much fun you were. How many lives you made better by being a part of them. Some of the best memories of my twenties have you in them. Like the time you helped me move out of my apartment driving a rented U-Haul with a cracked roof through the streets of L.A. Or attending one of your band with the ever-changing name’s many shows, Natalie and I playing groupie. Or the time I hosted an Easter egg hunt for grown-ups and you competed fiercely for (and won) the ridiculous prize: a purple, fuzzy stuffed Easter bunny purse that you named after our friend Vim.

But out of all the good memories I have of you, it’s one of the more recent ones that stands out. It was at my rehearsal dinner and you, ever the good sport, interpreted the Halloween costume dress-up theme in your own special way, showing up as an Irish St. Pauli Girl, complete with short skirt, stockings and padded boobs. Though you didn’t know many of the guests, your outfit broke the ice and you charmed everyone with your humor and wit. Especially my mom. After she went to bed, you told me how much my mother reminded you of your own, how both of our moms were so proud of us, how they “loved the hell out of us.” I never could have known what a generous gift you gave me with those words, how often I’d return to them like a life raft just a short time later, after my mother died.

The funny thing about death is that it teaches you how you want to live. So, here are some specific ways I want to live, as inspired by you: I want to live without fear of being ridiculous, to embrace my wacky side and have fun, to hell with what other people think. I want to thumb my nose at the “rules,” especially when the rules are dumb or silly or a waste of time (a story you told about scheduling fake meetings with a friend so you could reserve time away from your boring corporate job comes to mind.) And I want to live without being ashamed of my (sometimes) crappy taste in music, because every time I blast some terrible pop song on the radio and sing at the top of my lungs, I imagine you, my heavy metal-loving friend, rolling your eyes in mock disgust, because you can’t believe I actually like that song. This, coming from the guy who once (I know, we’re not supposed to talk about it) recorded a pseudo-autobiographical rap song called ‘Ginga Ninja.’

Oh Rory. You were such a bright light. You were so damned funny. You were the smartest guy in the room. And you were a really, really good friend.

Happy Birthday, my friend. I miss you.

11 years ago Short URL 7 Comments

Los Angeles/Love/Memoir

Easter/Extra Dry Martini/Halloween/Las Vegas/Rory/Sarah Kelly/St. Pauli Girl

Oct

Time Out.

A gentle breeze blows across the outdoor terrace as I sit underneath large stone columns, sipping iced coffee, scribbling in my journal, occasionally looking up from my writing to stare out and scan the hazy blue L.A. skyline, reminding myself where I am. It’s a Tuesday afternoon, the first day of fall, and I’ve reserved these few hours as a much-needed time out. To be with myself, to write, to wander and to daydream. It’s something I rarely do, but today, it seemed important.

It’s amazing how protective I am of this time. How annoyed I am that the Getty Center should be as busy as it is on a weekday afternoon well past Labor Day. I have to restrain myself from glaring daggers at the woman who plops down at the table right next to me – really? There are at least two dozen other tables scattered across this expansive patio. Why choose that one? I flinch at the shrill shriek of a child, and then scowl at his parents. I cringe at the clusters of people who hover for a time right next to my chair, talking loudly, oblivious to any concerns about personal space.

I shouldn’t be annoyed. After all, I chose to come here, to this public place. If I wanted solitude, I should have stayed at home. But solitude is something I’ve had too much of lately. My one-bedroom bungalow is fine for privacy and quiet concentration, but it doesn’t offer much in the way of inspiration. It doesn’t offer many opportunities to fill the well, to stimulate the senses, to let in new experiences, to promote new ideas. I can work and work and work, but the well of creativity quickly runs dry without new images, new life, to draw from.

I suppose that’s why I’m here. It’s why I rose early to get my work done so that I could take the afternoon off. So that I could ascend to this beautiful place high upon a hill, so that I could browse artwork and gardens, so that I could look down and marvel at this massive metropolis that I call home.

I didn’t really come here to write. I knew I wouldn’t get much done, though I made a valiant attempt at it. I came here to be. Because on this beautiful September day, the first day of fall, a day which also happens to be the second anniversary of the death of my mother, I told her that I would. I told her that I would try harder to reconnect to my life. To allow myself to gaze with wonder at beautiful things that she would have enjoyed, like the texture of the paint on Van Gogh’s Irises, and the lush vegetation and tranquil streams in the Japanese garden, and the stunning stone architecture that’s everywhere in this place.

I told her that I would, and so I did. Or at least, I tried. I wandered the West Pavilion and lingered for an inordinately long time among the small but stellar collection of Impressionist paintings. I walked to a lookout point and stared down at the city, at the suckers stuck in gridlock on the 405 freeway, grateful that at this moment, I wasn’t one of them. I put away my phone, taking a hiatus from the emails and the texts and the Facebook messages, recognizing all the while how difficult it was for me to do this, and that was exactly the reason why I should.

I find it nearly impossible to take time outs like this. Time outs just to be with myself and to think and to reflect and to not have to do anything. Chalk it up to my OCD, but relaxing is almost guilt-inducing for me. I always feel like I should be accomplishing something, not just sitting around. Even when I watch a movie, it’s something I’m studying for acting class. Or when I really need to do some deep thinking, I’ll go for a run, because at least I’m getting a workout in at the same time.

But all of this compulsive doing hasn’t done much to help me out of the lost space I’ve inhabited these last couple of years. Checking things off the to-do list – while satisfying – hasn’t done much to help the cavernous, nagging hole in the pit of my stomach. Productivity hasn’t cheered my flagging spirits or healed my persistent heartache. I have been doing a lot, but clearly I have been doing something wrong.

So, on this day, I made a promise to my mom that I would take some time out – even just these few hours – and I would soul search. And I would listen to what my soul said, and I would act.

I suppose I can’t expect one afternoon to solve all of my problems. After a few hours of taking in beauty, of soaking in the sunshine, of trying just to be, I didn’t feel any clearer than I did before. I didn’t experience any profound epiphanies, and I didn’t feel any closer to knowing ‘what’s next’ for me. But I’m still glad I did it. I’m glad that I allowed myself this time. Mostly because it made me recognize that I need to do more of it; to make space in my life for time like this. To relax. To be still. To imagine. To dream. To take in the world and to wonder about it. And to breathe.

Perhaps knowing that – and doing it – is a start. At least, for now.

Until next time, friends.

11 years ago Short URL 50 Comments

Los Angeles/Me/Well-Being

Extra Dry Martini/Getty Center/Impressionism/Japanese Garden/Los Angeles/Meditation/Sarah Kelly/Van Gogh

Sep

Olympia.

We left Anchorage on a bleak, snowy day in late November. It was just after Thanksgiving, and just before my fifteenth birthday. I remember how bitterly cold it was. I remember snow-topped Atlas Van Lines moving trucks parked in the driveway in front of our house, a stately, three-story slate grey Alaskan chateau on Hidden Lane. I remember sulking, dragging my feet, not wanting to go. I remember little else.

Come to think of it, I can’t even remember where we celebrated my birthday that year – 1995 – sandwiched as it was between Thanksgiving and settling into our new home in Olympia, WA. It’s funny how little I remember from that time. Mostly, I remember the weather: the Alaska deep freeze, the cold Olympia rain, the ice storm that hit with a force shortly after our arrival, the tree branches that froze and crackled and splintered throughout the night, littering the road and falling on power lines, knocking out our electricity. Our new house, situated as it was at the end of a long, narrow peninsula called Cooper Point Road, and then down a private, gravel, pothole-filled path with a sign at the top that warned ‘end of county road,’ was very literally in the middle of nowhere. Which meant that when the ice storm knocked out the power, it stayed out. For days.

And then there was Olympia itself. Upon crossing into the city limits, visitors are greeted by a sign bearing a red, white and blue shield in the form of stars and stripes, proudly proclaiming: ‘Welcome to Olympia, an All-America City.’ True? I suppose so. But mostly I remember Olympia as a small-ish Pacific Northwest town with a bit of an identity crisis. A place where state-workers, government bureaucracy, federal buildings and all of the other trappings of being the state capitol came together with the dreadlocked, hemp-wearing, Evergreen State College-attending hippies, the self-consciously artsy, delightfully quirky PNW hipsters, and the more affluent, old moneyed country club set – the ones who owned boats and waterfront homes and wintered in warmer climates.

When I arrived in Olympia in 1995, from what might as well have been a foreign country – Alaska – I felt like a stranger in a strange land. I was no newcomer to the Pacific Northwest – both of my parents grew up there and I’d spent nearly every summer in Seattle or at my Grandparents’ beach house in Allyn, WA – but Olympia was something else entirely. An odd, eccentric town where all these different and distinct segments of the population intersected, amidst a backdrop of gloom and rain, of tall trees and water-facing cafes and dirt roads to nowhere. I didn’t fit in at all, and yet, strangely, it was exactly where I belonged.

I remained in Olympia for less than four years, bailing as soon as I could to attend college in Los Angeles, and choosing to return only infrequently, on random summers and holidays. And though L.A. has now been my home for many years, there is something unshakeable about Olympia. It was so different than any place I’d ever been before, and so different from any place I’ve ever been since. For the Alaska girl used to the long dark winters where Christmas lights cast a soft glow against the snow, the endless summer nights near the solstice when the sun never seemed to go down, a place where you could go ice skating in your backyard and moose frequently roamed city streets, it represented total culture shock. And for the woman who sought bright lights and bigger things, who has traveled the world, and who made Los Angeles her home – with its vast expanse of freeways and smog and traffic and unnaturally beautiful people – Olympia remains a beacon, a reminder of a more innocent version of myself, a longing for a simpler, more offbeat, more authentic life.

On my last few visits to Olympia, I tried my best to recapture the good old days – the rainy afternoons passed journaling in indie coffeehouses, the outdoor concerts in Sylvester Park with its gazebo strung with white lights, the treasure hunts in the epic Goodwill on the corner of Cooper Point and Harrison, 90’s music blaring over the loudspeakers, the long walks around Capitol Lake, the beautiful boys in too-baggy clothes killing time at the skate park. I’ve tried my best to recapture the Olympia of old, but the truth is, it’s no longer the same. The magic of nostalgia that held me in its grip for so many years while I slogged away in gritty L.A. has withered in the face of cancer and alcoholism and mental illness and hospice. The lighthearted teenage memories of watching old movies at the Capitol Theater and dance parties and bingeing on late night french fries at The Spar now compete with doctors’ visits and funeral arrangements and sorting through the contents of my parents’ house.

The thing about my arrival in Olympia as a fourteen-going-on-fifteen year-old at the tail end of 1995 is that it was perfectly timed. It was so easy to be a teenager there. You didn’t have to work hard to manufacture the tragic angst you so desperately clung to as part of your identity; it was already baked into the cake with the gloomy rain-soaked skies and the tall trees and the grunge music and the drive-thru espresso stands with ironic names. But the thing I didn’t realize about that time in my life – the thing that I could only realize later, with perspective – is that it was actually beautiful. That I wasn’t really as dark or as moody or as tragic as I pretended to be, that I was only playing at it. It wouldn’t be until much later, when I was touched by actual tragedy, when grown up responsibilities eclipsed the teenage worries that had once seemed so heavy and oppressive, that I would truly understand the difference. And then, more than ever, would I long for those bygone Olympia days.

Until next time, friends.

11 years ago Short URL 2 Comments

Family/Los Angeles/Memoir/Olympia

1990s/Anchorage/Evergreen State College/Extra Dry Martini/Grunge Music/Olympia/Sarah Kelly/Sylvester Park

Sep

Past Lives.

I just hit my fifteenth year in L.A. The milestone arrived quietly. So quietly, in fact, that I barely even noticed it. It wasn’t until this past Saturday, when I was parking my car on a familiar street in Silver Lake, experiencing an odd sense of déjà vu as I climbed out of my too-dirty Prius, gold linen clutch in hand, heading to an afternoon brunch, that I realized that it had already happened. I had missed it. I paused for a moment, the hot September sun beating down on my back, and thought about how very different my life was from the girl who arrived in this city fifteen years ago, how every different my life was from even one year ago. The thought crossed my mind and then I quickly dismissed it, exhaling a puff of air as I trudged uphill toward a house full of people that I’d never met.

Déjà vu has been my constant companion these days. It’s almost as if my past has been chasing me, trying to meld my younger self with the current, Sarah 2.0 version. For starters, I find myself living alone for only the second time in my life, in a place that, while a bit bigger than the shoebox Culver City studio apartment I rented when I was 24, is oddly similar. Like my old place, it’s bright and airy, it has an enclosed patio, and it boasts friendly neighbors. My new place is a few miles east of my first solo digs, yet close enough that Culver City, very different yet very much the same, has once again become the closest hip neighborhood, once again my default stomping grounds.

On Friday evening, the night before that Silver Lake brunch, déjà vu paid me yet another visit. Driving home from my girlfriend Zoe’s new apartment, an L.A.-spacious one-bedroom in Mar Vista, where we gathered over dinner to talk about love and loss and family and hope and romance and well, the things you talk about when you’re in your early 30s and single and you’re missing your mom and you’re wondering what it all means. Tired and ready to head home to bed at 11 p.m. (definitely not the me of 15 years ago), I turned right onto Inglewood from Washington and flashed back to all the memories that had been made on that street when three buddies of mine rented a post-college apartment there, an apartment they nicknamed the ‘Inglewood Palace.’ I thought about parties and football games and hangouts and good times. And I thought about one of those friends who’d passed away far too soon, about another, now a father and a college professor in Fargo, North Dakota, and another, my best friend of the bunch, who’d recently left L.A. to begin a new life with his wife in the Bay Area. How familiar that street felt, as if no time had passed. And in light of the years that had passed, in light of all that had happened, how foreign it felt too.

Back to Saturday, to brunch, to Silver Lake. I was standing in the kitchen of an unfamiliar house, wearing a sleeveless black silk cocktail dress that used to be my mother’s, a dress that I had realized (too late) was far too warm for this September day, mimosa in hand, making small talk with women that I’d never met before. I was at a literary salon that I felt privileged to be invited to, where the attendees were almost exclusively writers, some aspiring (me), some very successful. I felt a little bit like a fraud, like a kid playing dress up, fumbling for things to talk about, this blog, my life, the book I want to write. I was trying to be as engaged as I could be in the present moment, but I couldn’t help feeling my mind wander down the hill, toward an apartment one street over on Golden Gate, where ten years earlier (God, could it really have been ten years ago?) my friend Mary and I passed many evenings drinking wine, engrossed in deep, meaningful conversations about politics, art, love, the meaning of life. Conversations that, in truth, weren’t that much different than the ten-years-later conversation I’d had the night before over champagne and pasta at Zoe’s place in Mar Vista. Then and now, we were preoccupied with what would happen to us; we were worried about becoming the people we were supposed to be.

Have I become the person I’m supposed to be? No, not yet. As I stood in the kitchen of the house in Silver Lake, listening to two impressive female writers speak about their books, about their writing process, about their lives, I could relate and yet, I couldn’t. They talked about motherhood, mid-life crises, and menopause, all things beyond my experience, things that were looming in the somewhat distant future. But they also talked about going through transitions, about needing to change when life had become too small, too narrow, too claustrophobic, about the ever-present need to grow. And to that, I could relate.

I’m about a million miles away from the baby-faced eighteen-year-old college student who arrived in L.A. fifteen years ago. I am, and yet, I’m not. I’m certainly older, definitely wiser (though I’m the first to admit, not always wise), and I’ve been shaped and stretched by the roller coaster that is this life. But the one thing that hasn’t changed after all this time: I’m still trying to figure out what it all means. I’m still trying to figure out who I’m supposed to be. As my mind wandered back to that apartment on Golden Gate, the words of one of the authors broke through my reverie. ‘Life is cyclical,’ she said. ‘Things are wonderful, and then they’re not. Things are terrible and then they’re not. Everything passes.’ And something about that statement clicked in my brain. Maybe this pervasive sense of déjà vu, of revisiting these familiar places from my past and seeing them through older eyes, is exactly what’s supposed to happen. Maybe it’s my opportunity to review where I’ve been and make different, better choices about where I’m going. Maybe it’s a reminder that life is cyclical. And maybe it’s telling me that I’m on my way. That I’m one step closer to becoming the person I’m supposed to be. At least, I really hope so.

Until next time, friends.

11 years ago Short URL 6 Comments

Los Angeles/Me/Well-Being

Culver City/Deja Vu/Extra Dry Martini/Los Angeles/Mar Vista/Past Lives/Sarah Kelly/Silver Lake

Sep

Tennis.

I spent a lot of time this past Labor Day weekend glued to television coverage of the US Open. For as long as I can remember, I’ve always found something soothing about the game of tennis. The rhythm of a long rally, the squeaking noise the shoes make as players scuffle across the court, the sotto voce commentary. But the main reason I can’t let a major tournament pass by without at least tuning in is because of my mother.

My mom played tennis throughout high school and college, and in her day, she was superb. Though I never got to witness her play when she was at the height of her game, I’ve heard the stories. I’ve seen the trophies and awards she won, listened with rapt attention to the tale of the legendary match where she and her female doubles partner outplayed – and beat – the boys.

Throughout my life, I was keenly aware that mom’s biggest regret was the fact that she didn’t pursue a pro career. She certainly wanted to, and from everything I understand, she was good enough to at least give it a shot. But her parents – both successful court reporters – were adamant that she choose a more conventional life, and they pushed her to attend law school. Mom didn’t push back, at least, not hard enough. She went. And she failed out – or dropped out, I was never sure – after her first year at Gonzaga. Mom ended up following in her parents’ footsteps and becoming a court reporter too. Her career was short-lived (she worked just a few years before marrying my dad and moving to Alaska, where she managed his law firm), and I’m not sure that she ever enjoyed it. She suffered from severe anxiety throughout much of her life, and she once confessed to me that she’d get so nervous about the pressure of the job that she’d often throw up before showing up for work.

The reminder of her unfulfilled dream was a constant companion throughout my childhood. It was present when we rose early on weekend mornings to watch breakfast at Wimbledon, present in her obsession with Chris Evert (her favorite player), present in the infamous screaming match she got into with my grandmother during a holiday dinner we hosted at my parents’ house in Olympia, during which years of my mom’s suppressed rage boiled to the surface and the only thing that kept my grandmother from storming out of the house was the ice storm swirling outside, making the roads impassable.

And it was especially present in the fact that my mom was constantly signing me up for tennis lessons, whether I wanted them or not. I was a good kid. Quiet, shy, polite, I earned straight A’s in school and generally didn’t rock the boat. I was my mom’s only child, and a tremendous source of pride for her. I felt the weight of that pride from an early age, and, not wanting to screw it up, I towed the line, and for the most part, stayed out of trouble.

A rare exception was one summer in Anchorage, when my tennis instructor called our house, concerned, because I hadn’t been showing up for my lessons. I was 11 or 12, old enough to walk by myself from our house on Hidden Lane to the tennis courts at a downtown recreational area called the Park Strip, and bratty enough to decide that I’d rather blow off my lessons in favor of killing time at Fifth Avenue Mall with my friends.

Busted, I confessed to my mom what I’d been doing. I felt my face flush with hot shame as I admitted lying to her, telling her that my lessons were going well when I was really hanging out at the food court with my buddies. I prepared for the storm of her anger – after all, I deserved it – but it didn’t come. Mom didn’t yell. It was much worse than that. She looked sad – almost as though she might cry – and so, so disappointed in me. It was as though by rejecting the sport that she loved so much in such a cavalier, spoiled, pre-teen way, I had destroyed her dream all over again. I had let my mom down. And it felt awful.

She never signed me up for tennis lessons again. I went on to dabble in various other sports – volleyball, softball, track and field – but I never got really good at any of them. In my heart of hearts, I was a nerd, a bookworm who loved making up stories, who loved poetry and art, who sang in the choir, who read Shakespeare and imagined myself a regal, corseted, high-born lady in Elizabethan England.

I don’t think my mom ever fully understood my decision to pursue a career in the arts. She didn’t feel the goose bumps I felt when sitting in a darkened movie theater, didn’t know the rush I experienced from standing on a stage in front of a live audience. She certainly didn’t understand the draw of Los Angeles, with its urban sprawl, and smog and traffic and crowds.

My mom and I were very different people with very different dreams. But I think the fact that she lived with the regret of giving up on hers also made her so fiercely protective of mine. Time and time again, she defended my choices to family members and friends who didn’t understand what the hell I was doing. She offered financial support when I struggled, which was often. She sent me flowers on every opening night. And when she did travel to Los Angeles to see me stand up on a stage and tell stories, she was so very proud. And she made sure everyone knew it. Especially me.

I’ve spent the last two years overwhelmed by grief. First, in denial of it, pushing myself to ignore it, throwing myself into work, pretending it didn’t exist. Later, paralyzed by it, unable to make important decisions, unable to move forward with my life. Finally, lately, I’ve been succumbing to it, allowing it to wash over me, to consume me.

But it has only been very recently that I’ve begun to get angry. Angry for letting circumstances that are out of my control dictate my fate. Angry for acting like a victim, for feeling sorry for myself, for sleeping too much, for whining too much, for indulging in my vices too much. And mostly, angry for abandoning my fighting spirit.

Watching the US Open this past weekend made me miss my mom something fierce. But it also made me feel closer to her than I have in a long time. It made me pay attention to her ever-present voice in my ear, telling me to be as brave as she knows I can be, to stop moping, to get off the couch and to fight for my life. Watching the US Open made me remember that the greatest gift my mom ever gave me was her unwavering belief in me. It reminded me that the worst thing I can do – like that summer when I ditched my tennis lessons – is to let her down.

Sometimes it takes something as innocuous as a tennis tournament to remind us that our dreams are fragile, precious, ephemeral things, and if we don’t grab onto them, they can disappear. Many people don’t get to live their dreams, either because they’re afraid to, or because life throws obstacles in their way that they don’t think they can surmount.

I am one of the lucky ones. Despite circumstance, despite pain and trauma, despite grief, I have everything I need to live the life I want, and the only person standing in the way of that is me. And though my dreams might look different than they did when I was 18, that’s OK. Because I’m different, too. The thing that hasn’t changed – that has never changed – is my desire to stand on a stage, or on a set, or behind a camera, or in front of a computer, and tell stories. Stories that entertain, that inspire, stories that have the power to heal.

Thank you, mom, for reminding me how precious my dreams are. I promise that every day, I will continue to fight for them. I promise that I will never give up. I promise to do it for you, and most importantly, I promise to do it for me.

Until next time, friends.

11 years ago Short URL 1 Comment

Family/Los Angeles/Love/Memoir/Sports

Anchorage/Chris Evert/Dreams/Extra Dry Martini/Los Angeles/Olympia/Sarah Kelly/Tennis/US Open/Wimbledon

Aug

Laguna

I’m very lucky. One of my closest girlfriends rents a beautiful home in South Laguna Beach, California. It’s on a hill overlooking Pacific Coast Highway, a long, bright, airy space with large windows dressed in soft, billowy curtains overlooking the sea, and a white wooden chair with a colorfully-embroidered cushion on which to sit and watch the sun setting over the ocean.

I’ve been feeling lost, adrift, bogged down under the weight of emotions I can no longer shake off or brush aside, at a crossroads and feeling overwhelmed by the nagging question, ‘what now?’ The world no longer feels safe or predictable; what was once familiar has turned foreign. And my little bungalow in Los Angeles – while charming – has hardly been a refuge. My girlfriend with the beautiful home by the sea has been working in New York, her home sitting vacant, and when she offered to let me stay there, I gratefully accepted.

It’s not easy to leave life in L.A. for more than a few days – too many commitments – but I cleared six days from the calendar, packed up my car and hit the 405 freeway heading south, past two airports, into Laguna Canyon, and out the other side, arriving at the ocean.

My trip didn’t exactly begin as planned. I arrived in Laguna, opened up my laptop, and connected to WiFi to learn the sad news that Robin Williams had committed suicide. I was heartbroken. Heartbroken, and at the same time, grateful. Grateful that in all the dark places I’d been over the past couple of years, I’d never been there: the darkest of the dark.

Moved by his passing, my scene partner from acting class texted me to ask if we could change the scene we were working on to something from the movie What Dreams May Come. I said sure. It had been years since I’d seen the movie and this time, I watched it with different eyes. Eyes that had known the type of grief and sorrow portrayed in the film. As I watched it, I wept. Wept at the beauty of it, the beauty of a love so powerful that it could transcend death, transcend hell, transcend the darkest, most twisted places imaginable. And I wept at the irony of it too, given that this beautiful, gifted man had, in the end, succumbed to the darkness. I wept for a man who made so many people happy while carrying such desperate pain.

The next day, returning from the beach, I turned on my phone to find more sad news waiting: Lauren Bacall had died. And I felt gut-kicked. Because I admired her tremendously, held her up as a film noir icon, a legend, a true dame. And it felt like some bygone Hollywood era that had already ended was now finally, officially, over. And I sat in the open-air trolley car on the way home, the wind kissing my cheeks, and I cried.

So the first two days I spent by the sea were sad. At first, I fought it. But then, gradually, I gave in. I worked a little, and slept a lot. I rose early and sat by the window and watched the marine layer break apart over the ocean. I walked down the long wooden staircase to Table Rock Beach and I lay out on the hot sand and tried to read important things. I made a playlist of happy, poppy, empowering music and I ran up and down steep hills, pushing myself to the top of one hill, past a street called summit, up to mar vista – sea view – telling myself not to give up, that I’d remember this moment, that it was symbolic (stupid writers, looking for symbolism in everything), that even though my lungs burned and my legs were heavy as lead, even though it hurt, that I could push past the pain, that I could still do it. And I did, arriving at the top, gasping for breath.

And little by little, I got lighter. I felt like having more fun. I wandered through lush gardens and took pictures. I browsed art galleries and daydreamed over watercolor paintings. I got dressed up and took myself out to dinner. I indulged in sunset cocktails on a terrace at the luxurious Montage resort, becoming the vicarious guest of an extravagant, breathtaking Indian wedding – in which the bride and groom arrived on bejeweled horses – unfolding on the grounds below.

I spent five days never needing to drive, traveling on foot and hopping on and off the free open-air trolley cars running up and down PCH. I’d stick my head out the window, like a dog sniffing the wind, watching the sun sparkling on the sea, my arms tingling with goose bumps as the ocean breeze whipped through my hair.

On my last day there, in an effort to pamper myself, I visited a CVS drugstore and loaded up on beauty products that I didn’t really need – salt scrubs and mud masks and lip gloss and nail polish. Standing in line, I grew impatient as the store’s only sales clerk spent an inordinately long time chatting with the elderly lady in front of me. They talked and talked, even though she’d completed her transaction, even though the line was steadily growing behind them. I sighed, checked my phone, rolled my eyes.

When it was finally my turn, the clerk gave me an apologetic smile. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘She just lost her husband. They were married for a lot of years.’

‘Oh no,’ I said. ‘Yes, very sad. Very sad,’ he replied. ‘But when God decides to take you, there’s nothing you can do.’ I nodded, said nothing. Knowing all too well.

Outside in the parking lot, feeling guilty and ashamed at my impatience – after all, where in the hell did I have to be anyway, I was on vacation – I approached the elderly woman as she was loading her car and asked if she needed help. Too late, as she placed a twelve pack of Dr. Pepper – the last of her purchases – in the backseat. ‘I forgot this was heavy,’ she said, indicating the soda. I smiled at her, knowing exactly what she meant, knowing how the fog of grief makes you forget, makes the ordinary seem strange. ‘I hope you have a good day,’ I said. ‘I’m trying,’ she replied. ‘That’s all we can do,’ I called after her, as she got into her car.

So I went back to the beautiful house by the sea, and I lit the healing candle I’d purchased at the new age store downtown on my first day there. The candle that I’d been lighting every night. And I thought about that woman, and I thought about the fact that even a place that was this beautiful couldn’t keep out suffering, that things are so rarely how they appear on the surface, that we all have something – all of us – that we’re carrying around with us. Something that we’re trying to make peace with. Something that we’re trying to let go.

And I burned that candle down and I said a silent prayer that I’d be on the other side of my something soon, and that a new something – something beautiful and unexpected and exactly what I needed – was on its way. That if I just kept going, kept pushing myself up the hill, kept moving through life with an open heart, that I’d find it. That it would arrive. ‘I’ll just keep trying,’ I told myself. ‘That’s all I can do.’ After all, that’s all we – all any of us – can do.

Until next time, friends.

12 years ago Short URL 4 Comments

Los Angeles/Me/Well-Being

Extra Dry Martini/Laguna Beach/Lauren Bacall/Montage Laguna Beach/Robin Williams/Sarah Kelly/What Dreams May Come

Category Archives: Los Angeles