17

Sep

Resurfacing.

On a Friday morning in July, I went back to the apartment on Drayton Street one last time. After we had collected the odds and ends that didn’t make it into the U-Haul, emptied the kitchen cabinets, cleaned out the fridge, wiped down the smudged and dusty surfaces, and hauled bags of garbage to the dumpster, I wanted to spend a few minutes alone in the empty apartment. To confirm that we hadn’t left anything behind. To say goodbye.

The top-floor roof deck

After two and a half years of a pandemic that – no matter how many politicians or media personalities declare over – still has its tentacles into our lives, my sense of time feels more elusive than ever. I can tell you that it has been five years since I left Los Angeles, three years since I was accepted into grad school in Savannah, Georgia and decided to move here, and that next week, it will be ten years since I lost my mother. I know all these facts and yet they still feel apart from me, as though, through the film of my memories, I have been watching those experiences happen to someone else.

As soon as we saw the apartment on Drayton, we knew. At the time, we had been trying to talk ourselves into renting a Victorian one-and-a-half bedroom in the heart of Savannah’s downtown historic district. The apartment, on picturesque Jones Street, was adjacent to an old town square, walking distance to trendy bars and restaurants, and had a look that was quintessential “Savannah.” But something about it gave me the creeps. It could have been the cleaning crew hastily scrubbing the walls during a viewing with a real estate broker I didn’t remember contacting, the mysterious locked door leading to nowhere at the back of the kitchen, or the suggestions planted in my impressionable brain by the ghost tour we’d been on the night before. Whatever the reason, as we moved through its airy, vintage interior, goosebumps formed on my arms and I felt, more than heard, the word “no” echoing throughout my body. So, when the (fully furnished!) apartment on Drayton came along, with its gated parking, utilities bundled into the rent, and a nice, former Midwestern landlord named Claire who offered to use her connections to help Jake find a restaurant job, it was all too easy to say yes. And after Claire took us up to the top-floor roof deck and waxed poetic about drinking coffee on an outdoor floral loveseat while watching the sunrise over Savannah, we signed the lease.

The view above Drayton Street

Of course, no one could have foreseen what would happen next. We had no idea that our new home’s location, in the center of Savannah’s hip Starland District and walking distance to my writing classes at SCAD’s Arnold Hall, would scarcely matter. That Covid-imposed lockdowns would mean I’d end up completing more than eighty percent of my master’s degree online, taking Zoom classes in the bedroom and writing essays on a portable laptop table in the living room. That the picture I had in my mind of what life would look like attending grad school at a cutting-edge art institution (Film festivals! Fashion shows! Museums and art galleries and endless inspiration!) in the middle of a romantic, riverfront Southern city was so very different than it would turn out to be.

Still. Despite the harsh realities of the pandemic and the pain of lowered expectations, the apartment on Drayton Street was, in many ways, a dream. Even after more than two years of living next to train tracks and enduring the early morning blare of a freight train, two years of homeless drifters camping alongside those tracks and (sometimes) outside our front door, two years of climbing the apartment’s two sets of steep staircases with twenty (!) steps apiece, we loved it there. Leaving – as it is with leaving any place you love – was bittersweet.

Orleans Square

But, post-graduation, we found another place to love: a rental house in a slightly less-hip (read: cheaper) neighborhood in midtown Savannah. A house with an actual backyard, a sunroom I could convert into an office, and a location on a quiet residential street with an equally kind, former Midwestern landlord. So, we signed the lease, and, nearly two months later, haven’t looked back.

Over these last two years, the world has changed, and I have changed within it. Mostly, I took time away from Extra Dry Martini due to the demands of SCAD’s MFA Writing program, which turned out to be far more rigorous and all-consuming than I had anticipated. But also – over two years that have seen lockdowns, political upheaval, a deadly insurrection, and an escalation of aggressive, hate-filled rhetoric across all forms of media – I’ve become averse to certain online spaces, and have tried to limit my time on them (on social media in particular) in order to safeguard my mental health. Put simply: the less time I spend online, the better I feel. 

But this space, this blog, means a lot to me. Writing Extra Dry Martini was a lifeline through the often-fraught decade of my thirties. It helped me navigate crippling grief and became the launching pad for the major life changes I made as a result of heartbreak and loss. I miss it. And I miss the people who read it.

Post Covid, Post MFA, I find myself looking for a way to reimagine my relationship to this space, to continue to publish writing that is honest and vulnerable but also honors the place I’m in now, and the person I’ve become during the time I’ve been away. Something that – while still personal – is less about me and more about the process of writing down our stories. Something that acknowledges that writing while living real life – with all its demands, distractions and interferences – is both possible and a worthwhile endeavor. For all of us.

So. This is the beginning. The beginning of something that I hope will be both familiar, and totally brand new.

Thank you – as always – for reading. Until next time, friends.

Arnold Hall

9 months ago Short URL 15 Comments

Savannah/Uncategorized/Well-Being/Writing

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27

Dec

Sunrise.

“There’s always a sunrise and always a sunset and it’s up to you to choose to be there for it,’ said my mother. ‘Put yourself in the way of beauty.”

– From the book “Wild,” by Cheryl Strayed

I couldn’t believe how quickly the nine days passed. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised: time always moves differently at the beach. I arrived on a Tuesday evening after a long travel day. There was the pre-dawn taxi ride to Newark airport, the two-hour flight delay, the six-hour cross country flight, and finally the hour and a half drive over freeways and winding rural highways to get to the beach.

The day after I arrived, the rain rolled in. Rain that lasted for three days. So much rain, the low-lying plot of land next to my grandfather’s house filled with water and formed a large pond, playing host to a flock of Canada geese that glided serenely across its surface.

I tried to stay on east coast time, going to bed early and rising before the dawn. For the first few days it worked, my internal clock naturally nudging me awake before sunrise. But as the crash and clamor of New York City faded into the tranquil quietude of the fog-wrapped inlet, I couldn’t help it: my body naturally slipped back into what could only be described as “beach time.” Just in time for my return to New York.

I almost didn’t make the trip west. The days before I came here were consumed with sorting through and purging my belongings, checking items off an ever-growing to-do list, and preparing to leave New York. It’s nearly impossible for me to believe that by this time next week, I will be settling into a new life in Savannah, Georgia. At the end of next week, I will move into a new apartment, attend graduate school orientation, and be on the precipice of starting a master’s program.

Aaah. Just writing those words gives me a stab of anxiety. I know I’ll be fine; I’ve navigated big scary life changes before (and documented them on this blog). But this feels different. This feels like taking a purposeful step into the future, one that’s full of intention. With this program, I’m committing my time and resources to developing my voice as a writer. And I’m committing myself to finishing the memoir I’ve been trying to write for years.

When I arrive back in New York, I’ll have a mere five days to finish packing and discarding my belongings, saying my goodbyes, and getting ready to move. Five days. The thought of it sends my brain swirling into overdrive. There’s so much to do that my mind can’t contain it all, so instead, I choose to push those thoughts aside and simply enjoy the view.

As I write this, I’m sitting at my grandfather’s dining room table, drinking coffee, watching the sunrise valiantly break through cracks in the thick white fog that hangs over Case Inlet. A small stack of photographs rests nearby. After days of poring over old photo albums, these snapshots are the last handful of images I have left to record on my iPhone camera. Mostly, they’re photos of my mother and I, dating back to my early childhood and teen years, many of them taken right here on this beach.

My mother is everywhere in this place. It’s why I wanted to come here, busy as I was before my impending move to Georgia. In this little corner of the Pacific Northwest, I hear her laughter reverberating off the rocks of the beach and dancing along the shore of the inlet. I feel her in the wind that rustles through the evergreen trees; see her in the snowy apex of Mount Rainier that every so often breaks through the thick layers of grey clouds to say hello.

I wonder what she’d think of me now, as I prepare to embark on this new adventure. I can’t know for sure, but I do know I’m glad I came here. I didn’t know until I arrived how much I needed this time. Time to breathe. Time to reconnect with the place that raised me. Time to honor those who’ve gone before me and whose spirits still reside in this place.

And this morning, I needed to see that sunrise valiantly break through those clouds. Like a beacon of hope. One that said, “Hey kid, you’ve got this. You’re going to be OK.”

And now, here I go.

Until next time, friends.

3 years ago Short URL 17 Comments

Career/Change/The Beach/Writing

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31

Oct

The farewell tour (part one).

“What we call the beginning is often the end.

And to make an end is to make a beginning.

The end is where we start from.”

– T.S. Eliot

There’s something downright magical about autumn in New York City. The stagnant summer air lifts like a veil and disperses, offering a gentle respite from the suffocating heat on subway platforms, the stench of garbage bags piled high on sidewalks. The scarves come out, the sleeves get longer, legs that were once bare are covered over in tights. The leaves change quickly – to gold, to crimson, to fiery orange – a reminder of the impermanence of time, inviting you to pause and breathe in their colors before they’re gone.

Fall has always been my favorite season. I suppose it’s odd that I should find this time of year so hopeful just as nature begins to do its dance with death, but I do. The lazy haze of summer has ended, and before the sparkly glow of the holidays descend, there’s a window of time that feels both industrious and optimistic. Back to work, back to school, back to routine. The energy is palpable on the streets of the city: the weather still mild enough to travel by foot, but with crisper air, an accelerated pace, and a sense of urgency that permeates every movement.

I’m in love with New York right now. It might be because I love autumn, or it might be because, soon, I’ll be leaving. Either way, every moment is suffused with wonder, each day brings a new revelation.

It’s joyful, and at the same time, it’s sad. I’m grieving my departure as I would the impending death of a loved one: I’m grateful for the time we have together, yet I can’t help but anticipate the end.

So then, why leave at all? There are many reasons, but the biggest one is this: after spending the last few years floating through life, floating from one temporary situation to another, I am ready for structure, and stability. I’m ready to ground myself in something more permanent, some place that feels like a home. And locating those things in this city – permanence, structure, home – simply hasn’t happened. For reasons both financial and personal, they feel out of reach.

At the end of August, I learned that I was accepted into the MFA writing program at the College of Art and Design in Savannah, Georgia and offered a significant scholarship. After a visit in late September, during which I toured the school and met with faculty, I decided to enroll. I start classes in January, and while I’m excited about embarking on this next life chapter, the prospect of moving to the southeastern United States has me feeling. . . nervous. Suddenly, I’m contemplating living in the path of hurricanes and red state politics. After selling my Prius and spending two years riding subways, I’ll need to get a car again. After a scary operation earlier this year, I’ll have to surrender my New York health insurance and kick-ass Manhattan doctor in favor of finding a health plan on the Obamacare market in Georgia. And after spending all of my adult life living in two of the world’s major cities – Los Angeles and New York – I’ll be moving to a town with a population of roughly 150,000 people, many of whom travel at a much slower pace than I’m currently accustomed to.

And yet. I can recognize that my life has been stuck. In order to achieve my goals, I need to do things differently. Shake things up. Take some risks. Act a little braver than I feel. And here’s something I’ve learned from the other times I’ve jumped off the proverbial cliff: change is scary, but it’s also necessary. And it’s usually necessary before we are ready for it.

In the meantime, I’m enjoying the hell out of my remaining time in New York. About six weeks ago, just before my trip to Savannah, I reached my two-year anniversary of moving here. As I reflected upon the lessons of the last two years, I wrote them down in a post on social media that I’d like to share with you below:

Two years ago today, I woke before the dawn, finished packing all of my belongings into three suitcases, and drove with my uncle through the still-dark early morning to Sea-Tac airport, where I boarded a plane bound for the opposite coast. Early that same evening, I greeted a landlord I’d never met and moved into an apartment I’d never seen, marking the official start of my new New York life.

Two years. Two years that have contained two surgeries, six play readings, countless applications and rejections and near misses and almost-might-have-beens. Two years that have tested me in ways I never could have imagined. Two years that have reminded me of just how much I still have to learn.

New York, I’m sorry for every time I cursed your name. You were only trying to teach me that who I had been was no longer enough. That if I wanted to do all the things I had always talked about doing, I’d have to work harder, become stronger, push myself farther than I ever thought I could go. You were a tough teacher and I hated you for that. But boy, did I learn.

Sometimes your heart has to break before it can open. You did that for me, New York, and then rewarded me by unfolding an epic love story at my feet.

It’s no secret that I may not be calling you home for much longer. But for as long as I’m here, I promise you this: I will take in your towering skyscrapers and your sunsets over the Hudson River and your autumn leaves falling amber with aching wonder. I will move through this great city with gratitude for every moment that I have left. And as I do, I will remind myself again and again that I did this. That two years ago, I came here alone, with no plan, and I made friends and told stories and fell in love.

And that is something, New York.

That is everything.

In the words of T.S. Eliot, “What we call the beginning is often the end.” And now here I am, at the beginning of my New York farewell tour. But maybe this beginning won’t be the end, after all. Maybe instead – two years later – it’s just the place where I’m starting from.

Until next time, friends.

4 years ago Short URL 17 Comments

Change/New York

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20

Aug

Motherland.

“my mother

was my first country.

the first place I ever lived.”

– Nayyirah Waheed

I’ve been back in the Pacific Northwest for nearly three weeks. The weather has been glorious, reminding me of all the childhood summers I spent on this same beach in front of my grandparents’ house: digging for clams with my mother, collecting driftwood to build bonfires, combing the shores of Case Inlet for colorful sea glass we’d use for our art projects.

Most of the people I spent those childhood summers with are gone or come to this beach no longer. New neighbors and new, fancier homes have cropped up all along the inlet. And these days, sea glass is hard to come by.

But every now and then, you still find it. Like the evening a week ago, when I emerged from a saltwater swim and spotted a weathered, rectangular piece of transparent lavender peeking out from among the rocks. Its color reminded me of the four walls of my high school bedroom. A bedroom with no windows, where I affixed blue, glow-in-the-dark stars to the ceiling. A bedroom in a house that someone else calls home now.

Every month, the full moon bears a different name. In January, it’s called the Wolf Moon. In June, it’s Strawberry. And a handful of nights ago, as I sat under the August moon – Sturgeon, named for a fish – I turned that piece of sea glass over and over in my hand and did something I haven’t done for a while. I talked to my mother. I asked her for help.

There are some conversations too personal to share. In the nearly seven years since my mother died, my conversations with the inlet are like that. Because if my mother is anywhere, she’s there, in the water that raised her. The water she loved her whole life. The water where we scattered her ashes, sending her back to the place where she began.

So, last week, I sat on the deck of the beach house and rested my feet on its railing and asked the inlet some questions. I watched that big, bright, full Sturgeon moon cast a golden stream of light across the inky, mirror-like expanse of water and I confessed my secrets to the sea and the sky. And that night, I dreamt that I was swimming underwater, exhaling huge air bubbles into its depths. And when I broke the surface, I saw that the beach was covered with sea glass. Polished, weathered, sparkling glass, glinting in the moonlight. As far as the eye could see.

I’m going back to New York soon. I don’t know what I’m going to do, only that I’ll be there until December, and beyond that, the future is uncertain. But after three weeks on this beach, uncertainty doesn’t scare me as much as it used to. Because over the last three weeks, I was reminded that I can still sit under the night sky and confess my secrets to the inlet. That saltwater swims still have the power to heal me. And that rare and beautiful things can still be found among the rocks on this beach.

This is where my mother is, as much as she is anywhere. And because of that, no matter what else I do, I will always return here. Because of that, no matter where else I go, this is the place I will always call home.

Until next time, friends.

4 years ago Short URL 10 Comments

Change/Grief/Healing/Pacific Northwest/The Beach

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19

May

Savannah.

I didn’t stay long on Tybee Island. It was hot and humid, and I was alone, and I didn’t want to risk leaving my belongings unattended on the beach while I went for a swim. But I had taken the half hour Lyft ride from downtown Savannah for the sole purpose of putting my feet into the Atlantic, and I wasn’t going to leave until I did it. So, I found a bench at the edge of the beach, took off my shoes and socks, placed them into my canvas tote bag, and walked down toward the water. My toes sunk into wet sand and warm ocean waves washed over my feet as I stared out at the sea. The Atlantic wasn’t my ocean, and yet, as I gazed across its vast expanse, I felt the same thing I always did when in the presence of its west coast cousin: peace.

Tybee Island

I had only been to Savannah once before, in my early twenties, when I took a road trip there from Nashville with my college roommate Rachel. We spent two days wandering through old town squares, drinking mint juleps from plastic to-go cups, and joining the crush of revelers on River Street. Savannah was hot and dreamy and intoxicating, a place unlike any I’d ever been, and it left its mark on me. I vowed to come back, and soon.

But life got in the way, and somehow fourteen years went by. It wasn’t until I started writing a new play that Savannah returned to the forefront of my consciousness. After the play’s two characters meet and quickly fall in love, Savannah is the place their reckless romance draws them to. It’s a place that looms large in my female heroine’s imagination, a place haunted by ghosts both real and imagined, a place, where, as she describes it, “time doesn’t exist.” Over the course of the story, Savannah is the place both of these characters long for, but one they ultimately never return to.

A month before my second trip to Savannah, I sat in an exam room near Columbus Circle and reviewed the results of two ultrasounds with my doctor. The bad news was I would have to have surgery. But the good news was much better. My cyst was benign. After weeks of fearing the worst, my doctor sat across from me and offered a reassuring smile. “Take a deep breath,” she said. “You’re going to be fine.”

Forsyth Park

So, I scheduled my surgery, and immediately thereafter, I booked a trip to Savannah. For the last several months, I had been anxious and unhappy. Wanting to change my life but paralyzed to take the first step. And then: a health scare. And suddenly nothing else mattered until I heard those five words: “You’re going to be fine.”

I arrived in Savannah last Tuesday evening, by way of a fifteen-hour train ride from Penn Station. It might seem crazy to opt for such a long journey when I could have flown there in a few hours, but the truth was, I’d always had a thing for trains. Something about siting near the window, watching the landscapes whizz by with a journal in my hand and thoughts swirling through my brain had always seemed inherently romantic to me. And as the southbound Palmetto Line pressed on through New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina, I alternated been sleep and waking dreams. It was perfect.

I spent my first full day in Savannah wandering cobblestone streets and re-orienting myself to the city. I got lost but cared little, because there was nowhere I had to be and nothing I had to do. I covered nearly ten miles on foot, my skin glistening from the warm, humid air, my limbs feeling surprisingly light from the effort. By the time I sat down to dinner and watched the sunset settle over the Savannah River, I knew I’d made the right decision.

Bridge over the Savannah River

Savannah continued to cast its spell all during the course of my stay. I walked along the river and ate lemon custard ice cream. I browsed trendy boutiques on Broughton Street while jazz music wafted in from outdoors. I went to Bonaventure Cemetery and gaped at the gothic gravesites draped in Spanish moss. And on my second to last night there, as I joined a group of tourists on a ghost tour through the heart of Savannah, a sort of fantasy began unspooling in my head. Could I live here? Compared to New York City, the cost of living was surprisingly affordable. I was enthralled by the architecture, the wide boulevards shaded by live oak trees, the town’s quirky, offbeat charm and the slower, southern pace of life. For years, I’d been flirting with the idea of getting an MFA, and one of the most famous art schools in the country was right there, in Savannah. Without even really thinking about it, I pulled up the website for the College of Art and Design, looked up graduate degree programs, and sent in a request for information. What’s the harm in applying? I thought. If I get in, I can always decide not to go.

I went to Tybee Island on my last day there. Once my feet were in the water, it was difficult to tear myself away. I stood in the ocean for several minutes, enjoying the sensation of waves pooling around my ankles. But the hot southern sun was also beating down on my skin – pale skin that had seen little sun during the long New York winter – and I wanted to get off the island before that evening’s parade snarled the traffic. And then there was the matter of the next morning’s early train to New York. I reluctantly called a Lyft.

Architecture in the historic district

“Where are you from?” my driver asked, as I settled in for the ride back to town. I hesitated. Where was I from, anyway? These days, I wasn’t so sure. “Right now, I live in New York,” I told him. “In Harlem.”

“Ah,” he said, his already pleasant demeanor turning even more amiable. “My wife and I moved here from New York two years ago. We lived there for many years.”

“What brought you to Savannah?” I asked. His eyes met mine in the rearview mirror and he smiled, then stretched out his arm and pointed toward the window. “This,” he said, indicating clear, sunny, blue skies, and miles of lush vegetation stretching along the highway as far as the eye could see. “Can you blame me?”

Mercer House

“No,” I admitted. “To tell you the truth, I’ve sort of been thinking the same thing myself these last few days.”

By the time he dropped me off at my Airbnb, the Notes app on my phone was full of recommendations for my return visit, and my head was full of information about Savannah’s low cost of living, booming economy, and the community of former New Yorkers who’d relocated there. “Are you sure you don’t work for the Chamber of Commerce?” I joked. “I’m sure,” he laughed. “But if you’re serious about moving here, my wife is a real estate agent. You can friend her on Facebook.”

I have no idea if my infatuation with Savannah is just a passing flirtation, or if the seeds planted during my few days there will grow into something more serious. What I do know is that life is far too short to continue living the way I have been: held in the grips of fear and self-doubt. I don’t know if that means changing my location, but a change of some sort is definitely in order. And last week, on my trip to Savannah, I took what felt like an important first step in that direction.

Until next time, friends.

River Street

4 years ago Short URL 10 Comments

Change/Love/Memoir/New York/Travel/Well-Being

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14

Apr

Westeros.

The day before the season seven finale of Game of Thrones, I left Los Angeles. All that remained of the eighteen years I’d spent there was contained in three suitcases, a duffle bag, and four cardboard boxes. The luggage was coming with me, on a one-way flight to Seattle; the boxes would be shipped to my new address in New York City, once I knew where that was.

Daenerys, Tyrion and the dragons (from IMDB.com)

I had no job and no place to live, a fact that should have concerned me more than it did. But as I bid farewell to my roommate Jen, bound for the vacant house in western Washington that once belonged to my grandfather – the house where I planned to “figure things out” – my priorities were elsewhere. “I can’t believe I’m not watching the finale with you!” I wailed. Jen and I were friends who, for years, had dissected every GOT plot point and character arc like it was our job. “What am I going to do?”

More than a year and a half later, I’m looking forward to the epic series’ final season with both eager anticipation and a palpable sense of loss. For eight years, Game of Thrones has been my companion throughout the most difficult experiences of my life. When it premiered in 2011, I’d never lost anyone close to me; before season three was over, my parents, my grandmother, my dog, and a close friend from college were all dead. As I grappled with disorienting grief, the brutal, you-win-or-you-die rules of the world GOT unfolded before me provided welcome catharsis. A show where the writers didn’t hesitate to kill off beloved characters was – oddly – comforting. No one was safe. Anyone could die. Just like in real life.

Watching Game of Thrones in L.A.

At my father’s funeral in the winter of 2013, I sat at a table with his younger brother, Jimmy. The last time we’d seen each other, I was four years old and the flower girl in my half-sister’s wedding. With no relationship as adults, we had little to talk about. Jimmy was also gravely ill, requiring an oxygen tank to help him breathe. But he’d been a professor of film at a university in Nevada, and somehow, Game of Thrones came up. Our stilted, awkward conversation quickly gave way to a spirited discussion about Jimmy’s favorite character, Daenerys Targaryen. Jimmy died a few months later, and, in the years that followed, whenever Daenerys conquered a city or triumphed over one of her enemies, I felt a nagging sadness that he didn’t live to see it. “Jimmy would have loved that,” was my common, wistful refrain.

There are no knights in my story, no dragons or sorcerers or white walkers. But so often over the last eight years, the struggles of GOT’s characters have felt like heightened, fantastical versions of my own. I have loved them, learned from them, cried and cheered for them. But nowhere in the Game of Thrones universe did the stories of two characters resonate more personally with me than those of Arya and Sansa Stark. While their brothers were off getting killed (and occasionally, coming back to life!) or turning into a three-eyed raven, those two sisters were learning to survive in a world that constantly underestimated them. My life circumstances were – obviously – far less dramatic, but like Arya and Sansa, I too knew what it was like to suddenly lose my parents, to have my family ripped apart, and to be thrust into a new reality where everything felt cold and cruel and unfair. Every time one of them was hurt, I was outraged. Every time one of them triumphed, I saw it as a personal victory. Which is why the season seven finale, when they worked together to finally bring justice to the man who had been the architect of so much of their family’s suffering, was so, damned, satisfying.

Arya Stark (from IMDB.com)

There are plenty of people who will say GOT is just a TV show, and plenty more who will brag about the fact that they’ve never watched an episode. But for me, it’s more than just a compelling drama. The community that formed around watching Game of Thrones made me feel less alone during the loneliest period of my life. As Vulture.com pointed out in a recent article, in the age of binge watching, GOT might be the last show we watch together, each episode an event that must be experienced in real-time, with all of its awe and horror unfolding before our eyes. Which is why, even now, with so many of my friends and loved ones three thousand miles away on the opposite coast, I’ll still feel like, tonight, when I tune in for the season premiere, I will be watching right alongside them.

The final episodes of Game of Thrones are done. All that’s left to do now is wait, and watch. I am equal parts excited to see how my favorite characters’ stories will end, and terrified to learn their fates. And while I know no one is safe in the land of Westeros (or in the lands beyond), I do have one final request. Hey David, D.B. and George R.R.? Please don’t kill Arya and Sansa. I have survived many things in my life, and I’m sure I can survive that, too. I’m just not sure I want to.

Until next time, friends.

Jon Snow and Sansa Stark reunite (from IMDB.com)

4 years ago Short URL 9 Comments

Change/Entertainment/Grief/Memoir

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23

Dec

Magic.

Listen to the Mustn’ts, child.

Listen to the Don’ts.

Listen to the Shouldn’ts, the Impossibles, the Won’ts.

Listen to the Never Haves, then listen close to me.

Anything can happen, child.

Anything can be.

– Shel Silverstein

On the eighteenth day of December, I took a walk along Riverside Drive in Manhattan. The air was crisp, the trees barren, the late afternoon sun slipping low on the horizon, spreading its golden glow across the Hudson River and backlighting the New Jersey skyline. In just over twelve hours, I’d be getting in a cab bound for Newark Airport, then boarding a cross country flight back to the Pacific Northwest. I didn’t have time for a walk. I had dinner plans. I hadn’t finished packing. My alarm was set for 3:30 the following morning.

I didn’t have time for a walk, but I needed it. Walking was always when I did my best thinking, and my thoughts were, at that moment, a tangled jumble. I tossed my laundry into a dryer in the basement of my apartment building and set the timer on my phone. I had an hour. Out into the cold December day I went.

From Riverside, I took a left on 116th street and crossed Broadway, onto the campus of Columbia University. It was twilight now, and I entered a tree-lined promenade, aglow in the sparkle of white Christmas lights. The quad was largely quiet, evidence of the impending holiday. Despite my haste, I felt a measure of calm settle over me. I loved school. I had always loved school. Lately, I’d been entertaining the idea of going back for a master’s degree, but I wasn’t sure if that was something I really wanted or just a stalling technique, a costly way of putting off the inevitable reality of making big life decisions.

I had much to do, but I was in no hurry to return to my apartment. Two days earlier, the daughter of the woman I’d been subletting from had filled the living room with boxes and bags of what can best be described as “stuff.” She’d had a crisis in her living situation in Brooklyn and had to move out suddenly, and the result was now sitting in my once clean and orderly living room. My landlord apologized profusely for the disruption and promised she would deal with the mess while I was away over Christmas, but I couldn’t help feeling unsettled by the chaos. It was also a reminder of a truth that was becoming more and more apparent: my landlord’s daughter wanted to return to her old apartment. Soon, I would have to move.

I’d had a good run in New York, and I knew it. For what I’d been paying in rent, I should have been living in a shoebox in the Bronx with at least one roommate. Instead, I had a seven hundred fifty square foot, eighth-floor apartment with a balcony perched over Broadway all to myself. The space was beautiful and tranquil and safe. My cheap rent had enabled me to take writing classes and write a new play and work on my memoir without the urgency of having to look for a real job. The co-op even had a theater company in the basement of my building, a theater company that would be producing a reading of my new play in January. I’d arrived in New York with no plan, and somehow, landed exactly where I needed to be.

But now what? The question nagged at me as I trudged north along Amsterdam Avenue. I had some ideas about temporary living situations but anything even semi-permanent would require paying real rent and a renewed urgency to find a real job. Did I want to look for work in New York and try to root myself there? Or did I want to call time on the Big Apple experiment and return to the west coast? I didn’t know. I missed California and my friends something fierce, but after fifteen months in Manhattan, I wasn’t sure I belonged in L.A. any more.

I have a bad habit of assuming the worst-case scenario. When something good happens, I can’t enjoy it, because I’m already preparing myself for when it goes away. The concept of “living in the moment” is something I struggle mightily with.

I wasn’t always like this. At least, I don’t think I was. I’ve been so altered by the events of the last six years, I don’t remember the person I was before all the bad stuff happened. I don’t remember who I was before my mom’s alcoholism, my dad’s cancer, my grandmother’s dementia, my grandfather’s hospice, my divorce, and all the deaths and devastation that ensued. I know I used to feel young and carefree and that the world was open and full of possibility, but that all seems vague and ephemeral now, like a dream I woke up from after sleeping too long.

Worst-Case Scenario Sarah is not only annoying, she has profoundly affected my ability to enjoy New York. She has left me fists clenched, steeling myself through winter, sweating through summer, unable to allow myself to indulge in the most basic, touristy activities like walking the Brooklyn Bridge or taking in the city from atop the Empire State Building or marveling at the Manhattan skyline from the deck of a ferry boat.

This is a revelation about myself I’ve only come to recently. It began a few months ago, when I first learned my landlord’s daughter was applying for jobs in New York. Bemoaning my fate over whiskey on a patio in Williamsburg, my friend Kirsten waxed poetic about the New York apartment shuffle and proposed a question I couldn’t wrap my head around: “OK, so you have to move. But how do you know you won’t find something even better?”

I didn’t say it out loud, but my brain immediately spat out the following: Impossible! How could it possibly get better than what I have now? I knew this good thing would go away. It was only a matter of time.

The day after my walk, I arrived in Seattle, and some dear friends picked me up at the airport and took me out to lunch. As we caught up over Pacific Northwest seafood and pints of dark beer, I told them about the latest: I had a play reading in January, I’d signed up for a new memoir class, and soon I’d have to move and didn’t know where to go or what to do.

I may be Worst-Case Scenario Sarah, but fortunately I have the good sense to surround myself with Glass is Half Full People. As I explained my situation and my uncertainty about the future, my friend Karrin offered: “It sounds like you’re letting your creative work dictate your decisions. And that’s pretty cool.”

The next morning, writing morning pages by the fire in Grandpa’s beach house, I found myself scribbling that phrase over and over again. Let your creative work dictate your decisions. And I decided something: even if I had to move before my memoir class was over at the end of March, I would find a way to stay in New York, and finish it. I loved that class, loved the people in it, loved the instructor, and I knew it was helping me do the hard work of writing my book.

My last assignment during the last session of Memoir II was to write the reflective ending of my book. It was incredibly difficult because it meant I had to force myself to answer some big questions. What is the point of my story? How do I want the reader to feel? And what have I learned over the course of this very personal journey?

I wrote about the week before I moved to New York, when I gathered at the beach with some of my closest friends. One day, while we were getting ready for a boat ride, my friend Vim spotted a sight that is quite uncommon in the protected cove of Case Inlet: three Orca whales – two calves and their mother – swimming close to shore. Everything about the future was uncertain, but in that moment, experiencing the magic of seeing an old place through the new eyes of my visiting friends, I suddenly believed it would all be OK.

This is the last paragraph of what I wrote:

I don’t know what my life will look like in New York. I don’t know what I’ll do, or who I’ll meet, or how things will change. I just know I’m no longer afraid to face an uncertain future. Grief taught me that life unfolds as it will, whether we like it or not. And it also taught me that if one day can change your life for the worse, then it certainly can for the better. And I’m ready for that. I’m ready to embrace whatever lies ahead. Because the mystery of all the things we can’t know is what makes life exciting. It’s what makes me glad I’m alive.

I so badly want to own this. I want to abandon Worst-Case Scenario Sarah in favor of someone who not only believes good things will happen, she expects them. That’s why I wrote that passage. Call it an attempt at manifestation, call it faking it ‘til I make it, it’s my sincere hope that by the time I finish my book, I will have arrived at that last paragraph.

On my second day at the beach – December 20th – I sat in the living room, bundled up in blankets, waiting out a storm. When suddenly, I saw something that made me rush outside. It was a vibrant, unbroken rainbow, forming a perfect half circle from one end of the bay to the other. And for some reason, I thought about the poem by Shel Silverstein I began this blog post with.

Anything can happen, child. Anything can be.

I may not totally believe that yet. But man, am I working on it.

Until next time, friends.

 

4 years ago Short URL 11 Comments

Career/Change/Creativity/Friends/Memoir/New York/Pacific Northwest/The Beach/Writing

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22

Oct

Wounds.

“We cannot simply sit and stare at our wounds forever.”

– Haruki Murakami

It took everything I had not to cry in the waiting room of the doctor’s office on west 58th Street. The tears had been threatening all morning. An hour before, I’d squeezed into the least crowded subway car I could find on the southbound number one train, only to discover the air conditioning was broken. Sandwiched between morning commuters, I gripped the grimy metal pole with one hand and lifted the hair off the back of my neck with the other, sweat gathering on my face and causing my glasses to slide down my nose. Once off the train, I checked my reflection in a store window: my right eye red and swollen, my skin an oil slick, my freshly flat-ironed hair already a frizzy mop from October humidity. As I walked down 58th Street, it started to rain. Perfect, I thought.

Once inside the doctor’s office – an impressive and well-heeled Manhattan ophthalmologist – I settled into a couch to fill out what felt like a never-ending stack of paperwork. “Everything’s going to be OK, Sar,” I told myself. “You’ll get rid of this infection and you’ll feel like yourself again.” An elderly man hobbled into the waiting room, part of his face covered in bandages, walking with the help of a cane, and I immediately felt ashamed. “So many people have it so much worse than you,” I thought. “Stop being a baby.”

I was escorted to a back room for tests. The doctor’s assistant was kind, picking up on my obvious nervous energy. I explained I’d already had a full eye exam in May with my eye doctor in California, and no, I did not need to have my pupils dilated. “I just really want to get rid of this infection,” I insisted. My voice sounded small.

“So, do you like, go back and forth between here and California?” he asked, as he held an instrument up to my eyes to check their pressure. “Umm, sort of,” I said. “I moved here a year ago, into a long-term sublet, but I’m not really sure how long I’m going to stay.” He nodded in understanding, and I knew I wasn’t alone in my sentiment. If there was a common theme among New Yorkers, it was – love or hate the city – they were always threatening to leave it.

The impressive ophthalmologist couldn’t have been more businesslike and less interested in putting me at ease. As she shined a light in my eyes and reported some numbers back to her assistant, I rambled on about my nearly three weeks long saga with ointments and urgent care. “Does that make sense?” I asked, desperate for reassurance. “Mmhmm” was all I received in return.

“I’m going to give you drops,” she told me, “and I want to see you again in one to two weeks. If the infection isn’t better, we’ll probably have to do an excision.” She described a procedure that sounded like something akin to torture and made a joke about an eye patch, but I had stopped listening; my body had already shifted into flight mode. In that moment, all I wanted was to get my prescription and get the hell out of there.

A few days later I took a train to Brooklyn to meet a friend for drinks. This friend is a brilliant filmmaker, a highly intuitive person, and – probably – a bit psychic. As I described the situation with my eye, she quickly shifted gears away from a medical conversation to a more spiritual one. “Why your eye?” she asked. “Is there something you’re not seeing? Or something you don’t want to see?”

Okay. Yes. My New York experience has been a study in averting my eyes, of procrastination and avoidance. The truth is, I haven’t committed to anything that would truly anchor me here, haven’t invested my time in a serious job search, or my money in a permanent place to live. I’ve been running around, meeting people, applying for residencies and fellowships, writing like crazy, but I’ve had one foot out the door ever since I arrived. It’s no way to live in a place, even if you’re pretty sure that place could never really be “home.”

It has been ten days since my visit to the impressive ophthalmologist. Ten days of stinging eye drops four times a day, ten days of no visible improvement in the cyst that has planted itself on my right eye lid. In those ten days, the weather has turned decidedly fall-ish. I’ve gone from sweating on the subway to wrapping myself in a scarf and puffy coat to keep out the chill. And also in those ten days, some unsettling news: the living situation I thought was stable has turned uncertain, bringing with it the chance I might have to move sooner than I thought.

I coasted through the summer without having to make a single important decision. In a way, I sort of feel like that’s been my pattern these last few years. Biding my time in between difficult decisions. But you can only bide your time for so long. Decisions must be made. Life must be answered.

It’s funny the power fear has to sharpen your focus. In pain and discomfort, facing an impending surgical procedure, bracing for news about the status of my apartment, I am suddenly, totally, vulnerable. And in that vulnerability, I’ve done something that’s hard for me. I’ve reached out. I’ve had more meaningful conversations – both on the phone, with friends far away, and in person – in the space of the last week than I’ve had in months. And it has reminded me that though things seem challenging right now, in the grand scheme of life, my current situation isn’t that big of a deal. I am loved and cared for and luckier than most. And whatever happens, whatever decisions life pushes me to make, I’ll make them. And everything will be OK.

Until next time, friends.

5 years ago Short URL 14 Comments

Change/New York/Well-Being

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28

Sep

Autumn.

“It is the nature of grace to fill the places that have been empty.”

– Goethe

I knew summer was over before I dipped my toes in the saltwater. The normally cloudy Case Inlet was unusually clear, a sign of a fresh current of (cold) water coursing through the bay. Goosebumps formed on my arms. “Don’t chicken out,” I chided myself. “This is your last chance until next summer.”

The thought of all the people for whom “next summer” never came flashed through my mind, and with an urgency suddenly more powerful than my fear, I flung myself into the sea. The shock of icy water traveled quickly up my body and stabbed at my insides, but it didn’t matter, I was in. “Hi Mom,” I murmured, looking up at the familiar snow-capped peak of Mt. Rainier. “I miss you.”

Later, cover up and shorts layered over my swimsuit, I sat on the deck of my aunt and uncle’s house, stared out at the inlet, and thought about everything and nothing. It was my last day at the beach and my uncle had plenty of questions, most of them involving the future.

“How long are you planning to stay in New York?” he asked me over dinner that night. My reply was noncommittal, as I still had plenty of questions about the future myself. “As long as it makes sense,” I told him. “There are a lot of things I want to do there.”

It’s hard for me to believe it has already been a year since last September, when I left that same stretch of rocky beach in the Pacific Northwest to move east and reinvent my life. These last twelve months have passed quickly, even though at times – mostly during the cold, dark winter – they seemed to move at a torturous pace. When I made the initial decision to relocate, everything fell into place so quickly that I foolishly believed everything that followed would be easy, too.

I was wrong. I came to New York with a long list of things I wanted to do, see and be, and one year later, I feel as though I’ve accomplished very few of them. I applied for numerous fellowships, residencies and jobs, and have been rejected – so far – by all of them. I’ve hit roadblocks, struggled with seasonal depression, and felt like a failure more times than I care to admit. I’ve been sick, sad, and have experienced a resurgence of grief I thought I’d healed from. Countless times, I fought the urge to give up, give in, and go home.

But there’s a sticking point: I’m not sure where “home” is any more. The place I lived longer than anywhere – Los Angeles – is filled with people I love and years of life-altering experiences. I left because I was bored, creatively stagnant, and desperate for a change. That rocky Pacific Northwest beach? It will always be a safe harbor and an anchor, but it’s also a repository for more painful family memories than I can count. In other words: not the best place to begin the next chapter of my life.

And then there’s something else. Something bigger. Something I promised myself somewhere over the course of the last six rollercoaster years that began with my mother’s sudden death: I would no longer do the safe and easy thing. I would make choices based in hope rather than in fear. I wouldn’t go back and try to recreate the past, I would move forward and forge a present that was entirely new.

I’ve tried my best to do that. It’s no accident I left my family’s beach cabin and moved to New York one week before the fifth anniversary of my mother’s death. I didn’t want to spend that anniversary in the same place where my mom and uncle grew up, the same place where I’d spent every childhood summer, the same place where we boarded my grandfather’s tiny tin boat, went out to sea, and scattered my mother’s ashes. I didn’t want to mark the passage of another year feeling like a prisoner to the past. I wanted to spend it starting over – whatever that looked like – on the opposite coast.

A few weeks ago, in early September, I spent the day with one of my mother’s closest friends. As we caught up over lunch, we talked about my mom, our memories, and what had happened in the year since I’d moved. The conversation turned to the memoir I’m working on. “Is it about your Mom?” she asked. I nodded. The next part was – and is – hard for me to admit. “It’s about what you do when the person you love the most is the same person you’re terrified of becoming.”

To my surprise, she didn’t seem horrified. She seemed to understand.

I’ve been in New York for a year. It still feels less like home than it does some exotic, foreign land I’m learning to navigate. But you know what? I like it. I like the fact that it’s full of strivers who get knocked down and continue to get up again. I like the fact that I’ve been challenged here in ways I never was in L.A., and that my failures have forced me to think outside of the box, get creative, and try things I otherwise wouldn’t. I like the fact that it’s a tough town, but one where it still feels like possibility waits on every street corner.

There’s no way to know where I’ll be this time next year. Any attempt to lasso the future is a pointless exercise. For now, it’s enough to be here, living moment to moment, doing all I can for as long as I can, making choices based in hope rather than in fear.

Until next time, friends.

5 years ago Short URL 4 Comments

Change/Grief/Memoir/New York

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30

Aug

Labor Day.

“Something good will come of all things yet.”
– Jack Kerouac

It was a hot, humid morning when I left New York, every bit as hot as it had been eight weeks prior, the last time I fled the city to seek the sanctuary of a rocky beach in the Pacific Northwest.

And yet, even as I settled my tired body – already sweaty at seven thirty in the morning – into the back seat of a taxi cab and we drove east through Harlem, I could feel the summer waning, feel the drumbeat of autumn, feel the looming threat of barren trees and crisp days and  – before long – fresh snowfall. I had felt it the day before too, trudging along Amsterdam Avenue on my way to the Morningside Heights post office, as the influx of new Columbia students poured out onto the city streets. Something about their wide eyes and dewy faces screamed “Fall is coming!” And I realized as much as I’d grown weary of my swampy apartment, the mosquito bites dotting my legs and my impossible-to-tame hair, I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to summer yet. It had gone too fast.

I have a keen awareness of time passing that I didn’t have before I moved to New York. Years ago, I remember being told by east coast friends that the lack of seasons in Los Angeles skews your sense of time, something akin to spending too long in a Vegas casino. Think glittering lights, pumped-in oxygen, absent clocks. I pretended to understand what they meant, but the truth is, I didn’t. I was eighteen years old when I moved to L.A., and before that, I’d lived in Washington State and Alaska. Places with weather for sure, but not the sharp swing of extremes I had already experienced during my first year on the east coast. The lightning storms, the Nor’easters, the way the sky would suddenly open up and pour out buckets of rain, all of this was new to me. All of it seeming to signify the impermanence of the present moment, that this, too – be it good or bad – shall pass.

As I write this blog, it’s Labor Day weekend, and I’m exactly where I was this time last year, staring out at the silver mirror of Case Inlet from the living room of the beach house where my grandparents lived for most of my life. This house – once a buzz of activity – sits largely empty now. Each time I return, I do my best to fill up the lonely spaces. I brew strong coffee and drink too much of it. I unfurl my red sticky mat and practice amateur yoga in the living room. I watch as much Mariners baseball as I can, occasionally (often) yelling at the TV. I wrap myself in my grandmother’s old yellow afghan and watch the sunset from the same weathered porch swing I used to climb on as a child. And sometimes, in the morning, I’ll put on my grandfather’s enormous emerald green bathrobe – still hanging from the hook on the back of the door of his old room – and find comfort in the weight of its heavy cotton against my skin.

This place, this beach, is my anchor. It’s my back up plan if everything else goes wrong. Three of the four times I’ve traveled west since I moved to New York, I’ve returned here. To see my family. To remind myself where I come from. During an often confusing and challenging year, it has been my safe harbor. My true north. For a while, as I struggled through seasonal depression and various physical ailments, I was convinced I had made a mistake by leaving L.A. It’s only now, returning to the very spot where I planned my move a year ago, that I can see that everything I did was right. That the adventure I began back then is not ending but beginning.

The day before I flew to Seattle, I finally had a conversation I’d been dreading. The year lease on my Morningside Heights sublet was almost up, and I wasn’t sure if my landlord would allow me to stay beyond the twelve-month period we’d agreed to. Technically, I had been living in someone else’s apartment – my landlord’s daughter – who could choose to return at any time.

“I’m not sure what your plans are,” I wrote, “But I’d love to stay until Christmas, and then we could reassess from there?”

“No problem,” she replied, adding that her daughter had no immediate plans to return to New York, and that, when she did, she wanted to live in Brooklyn “for a while.”

“Let’s see what develops,” she added.

I suppose “seeing what develops” is exactly what I’ve been doing this past year. And now that it finally feels like it’s working out, I see no reason to stop. After all, if everything goes wrong, the beach will still be here.

Until next time, friends.

5 years ago Short URL 8 Comments

Change/Grief/New York/Pacific Northwest/The Beach

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