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

6 months ago Short URL 15 Comments

Savannah/Uncategorized/Well-Being/Writing

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19

Jul

The season of waiting.

“Perhaps the reason you are drawn to flowers is not only for their outer beauty, but because they remind you beautiful things will bloom after the longest seasons of waiting.”

– Morgan Harper Nichols

That quote is from an art print I recently bought and hung over my desk. It’s part of a trio of prints by the artist and poet Morgan Harper Nichols that are now affixed to my wall, arranged in a diagonal cascade of color against what was once a blank white space. The top one features bright brushstrokes and reads, “Note to self: you can do this.” The print I quoted at the beginning of this blog, with white typeface against a backdrop of golden yellow, sits proudly in the middle. And at the bottom, one word stands out across a swirl of seashell pink and ocean blue: “Breathe.”

That’s what I am currently trying to do: breathe through a season of waiting. It hasn’t been easy. I have felt heavy much of the time. I have been creatively stagnant. I haven’t written or published anything new on this blog in over three months, a fact which has made me feel more guilty with each passing day.

What have I been doing with myself? In this season, time has been hard to track. As spring slid into summer, the hot, humid Savannah days have blurred together to the point that they’re almost indistinguishable.

The months of April and May found me clawing my way through my second quarter of graduate school. Like every university everywhere, Covid-19 thrust the Savannah College of Art and Design into a virtual learning environment virtually overnight, with lectures, discussions and interactions with my professors and classmates all mediated through a computer screen. With university facilities and local businesses shut down, there were no libraries or coffee shops to escape to, and I spent eight to twelve hours a day in my room with the door closed, trying not to go insane. Between crafting digital media copy (one class) and reading about public relations strategy (another class), I devoured New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s daily press briefings and daydreamed about a not-so-distant past, when I was just a subway ride away from the lobby of a cozy hotel in the West Village, or the vaulted ceilings of the Rose Room at the New York Public Library. During one of many socially distanced walks under a canopy of live oak trees, I watched teenagers throw frisbees in Forsyth Park and fantasized about making a jail break. But where would I go? There was nowhere safe to run to. There was nothing to do but stay.

If there’s a word to describe how I’ve felt these last few months, it would be “suspended.” As outbreaks of Covid-19 continue to spike in various cities and states across the United States, plans have been put on hold. Friends will not be visiting, and I will not be making my summer pilgrimage across the country to the rocky shores of Case Inlet. It’s the first time in many years that I won’t spend part of this season looking out across that silvery slip of water from the picture windows of my grandfather’s house. My grandfather’s house has, in fact, been rented. By people I don’t know, but whom my uncle assures me are very nice.

As I write this blog, I’m keenly aware of how self-pitying it sounds. To be honest, fear and loathing of my own self-pity is what has kept me silent for so long in the first place. So I feel compelled to tell you that in spite of my complaints, I know how lucky I am. That my life is good and my problems – while real to me – are tiny and insignificant compared to what so many others are currently suffering through.

I recently had a long talk with a close girlfriend who has been a rock though some of the most difficult moments of my last decade. She supported me though the deaths of my parents, supplied me with endless mugs of herbal tea and an oceanside sanctuary to rest my head when I left my marriage, and counseled me though heartbreaks I thought I’d never heal from. During our conversation, she remarked how hard it must be for me to have to stay in one place, when my M.O. for the last many years was to hop on a plane whenever things got uncomfortable. She was right: travel has been my balm through pain and grief. It has been both a needed distraction and a tool for avoidance. “Maybe being grounded for a while will be good for you,” she suggested.

It doesn’t feel good, but as much as I can, I’ve been trying to look at this season of waiting as an opportunity. An opportunity to heal from the things I haven’t and to prepare for the next, more grown-up phase of my life. To that end, for the first time in almost five years, I decided to go back into therapy.

It was surprisingly easy to find a counselor, given the resources provided to me through SCAD. During the slow summer months, I’ve been able to schedule weekly sessions – for free – with a licensed therapist. And though – like seemingly everything else these days – they’re conducted on Zoom, the sessions have been a lifeline to me, helping me navigate both the uncertainty of the current moment, and all that lies ahead.

There is beauty in the waiting. There is pain too. And amidst all that is unknown, there is the conviction that something has irrevocably shifted. That whoever we will be on the other side of this tenuous moment we are all living through, we won’t be the same.

And maybe that’s OK.

Until next time, friends.

3 years ago Short URL 10 Comments

Change/Creativity/Savannah/Well-Being/Writing

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26

Jan

Starland.

It was early evening by the time I arrived at the building on Drayton Street. I gave my Lyft driver the gate code, he punched it in, and heavy iron doors swung open to let us inside. I’d only been there once before – on a Monday morning in December – and the place looked totally different in darkness. Long, ominous shadows stretched across the parking lot as we wound our way toward the back of the complex.

It wasn’t the type of place you could easily find if you didn’t know where to look. My apartment and its five neighboring units were classified as live-work spaces: airy, high-ceilinged, industrial lofts with unassuming eggshell façades and a stripe of steel blue across their midsections. Two of the units had storefronts facing Drayton Street (one belonged to an acupuncture therapist, the other a waxing studio), but their signage was understated, and didn’t reveal that just beyond the heavy iron gates there were actual people, living actual lives.

My landlord’s son – who lived next door and who was supposed to let me in – had stopped answering my texts. “I’m here!” I typed cheerfully as we drove through the gate, but he didn’t reply. I arrived to find his apartment eerily quiet, with all its lights off.

“You don’t have to wait,” I told the driver, as he unloaded my luggage into the parking lot. “I’m sure he’ll be back any minute.” “It’s no problem,” he said. “I want to make sure you get in OK.”

I knew he was just being polite, but his answer annoyed me. I was tired from the move, the long travel day, and the jumble of thoughts swimming around in my brain, and the last thing I wanted was to stand around awkwardly in a dark parking lot with some stranger. “Just go,” I thought, looking down at my phone again and silently pleading for the text that would rescue me. No text came, but suddenly, something else broke through the quiet evening: the sharp blare of a horn. The noise repeated again, and then again, growing louder and sharper with each subsequent blast. The driver looked at me, a question in his eyes. “Freight train!” I yelled, pointing to the tracks running just beyond the parking lot where we stood.

“That’s loud!” He yelled back, as the train chugged past us. “Does it come through here often?!?”

I shrugged. “Two or three times a day, I think. But the noise doesn’t last for very long.”

He raised a skeptical eyebrow but said nothing, probably because he didn’t feel like yelling. I looked down at my phone again: still no message. I sighed. “I appreciate you waiting with me,” I told him, “But really, you can go. I’ll be fine.”

“Well alright, if you’re sure,” he said, already walking toward his car. “Welcome to Savannah.”

I’ve been here for three weeks now. Three weeks in which time has simultaneously been speeding by and standing still. After I gained access to my apartment (my neighbor, as it turned out, had fallen asleep, which seems a miracle, given the train), I’d barely put sheets on the bed before I went to grad school orientation, picked up my ID badge, and bought a stack of textbooks at the campus bookstore. I’m not exaggerating when I tell you that I arrived in Savannah, and my life changed overnight. And ever since that first day, I’ve been on a treadmill, trying to keep up.

I’m sure there will come a time in the not-too-distant-future when I come up for air. When I get a Georgia driver’s license, and a car, and start exploring the southeastern coast and the world outside of graduate school. My sanity demands it. But for the moment, most of my time in Savannah is confined to Starland, the quirky midtown neighborhood where I live. Starland’s vibe is young and artsy, populated by enough hip eateries, cool watering holes, and fair-trade coffee houses that it feels like someone took Portland, Oregon, and plunked it down in the middle of the south.

If I have to be stuck without a car, there are worse places. I’m six blocks from Arnold Hall, SCAD’s writing building, where I have all of my classes. In Starland, I can walk to dinner, to coffee, to yoga class, to the local art store, and to a gas station/convenience mart that’s the closest thing I’ve found to a New York City bodega. I can go days without leaving this neighborhood, which, since most of my time is devoted to writing essays and reading large volumes of text, is pretty darn convenient. And though I haven’t seen all of Savannah, I feel pretty confident in saying that fate has already landed me in the most “Sarah” neighborhood in this city.

On the one hand, I wish I could have done the move differently. I wish it hadn’t been such a mad, crazy scramble to get out of New York and that I’d had more time to say goodbye to the people and places of that city. I wish I’d arrived in Savannah with a cushion of time to simply adjust, to do all the life stuff required to make a place feel like home, before entering into a rigorous graduate program that leaves little time for anything other than classes and homework.

But on the other hand, I think it’s probably best I didn’t have time to get “ready” for this, or to think about all the things I’d be giving up to become a full-time student. If I had, I would have found a million reasons not to do it.

There’s so much about life that’s hard right now. But there’s also something else: an unshakeable feeling that all I have is this moment. And in this moment, I’m where I’m supposed to be, and doing what I’m supposed to do.

And that, despite the train tracks running through my backyard, is a pretty good feeling.

Until next time, friends.

3 years ago Short URL 4 Comments

Change/Savannah/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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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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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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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.

4 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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10

Aug

Eclipse Season.

“I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next.”

– Gilda Radner

On Saturday, July 27th, there was a full moon lunar eclipse, and I missed it. I knew the eclipse itself wouldn’t be visible from North America, but the moon would still be large and full and red-tinged (a so-called “Blood Moon”), and I wanted to see it. But I couldn’t find the moon that night, because the skies above New York were socked in with thick grey clouds, the result of intermittent rain and thunderstorms that had been rolling through the region over the last several days.

I should have suspected what I was in for when, ten days earlier, my afternoon flight to New York was grounded in San Francisco due to east coast thunderstorms. When I finally slipped into a cab at JFK, picked up two weeks’ worth of mail, watered the plants, unpacked, and ran the AC long enough to cool my swamp of a bedroom, it was the next day, and the sun was coming up over Manhattan.

That was how the dog days of summer began, and that’s how they’ve stayed. There have been a handful of days I’d call “sunny,” but for the most part, the ceiling has been low, the skies gloomy, the city shrouded in a blanket of humidity, and the threat of rain ever present.

It’s my first New York summer. The last of the four seasons I am experiencing here for the first time. As far as New York summers go, I’ve been told this one has been pretty mild. But still. For a Pacific Northwest girl used to the desert climate of Southern California, the cool breeze off the Pacific Ocean, and the safety of my air-conditioned car, it’s an adjustment.

The crush of sticky bodies on the subway, the wall of stifling, stagnant air in my un-airconditioned eighth floor living room, kitchen and bathroom, the stench of midtown Manhattan. . . I’ve been feeling the heat of the city in the heaviness of my limbs and the haze of my brain. It has made me cranky and tired, even though I have no real reason to be. It’s just that everything seems like it’s moving in slow-motion these days, especially my writing: a laborious process layered with plenty of self-doubt.

I haven’t published anything on this blog in over a month, the longest I’ve been away from Extra Dry Martini in forever. While it’s true I’ve been consumed with other writing projects, it’s also true I’ve been avoiding this space because I haven’t known what to say. Like the heat outside, I sort of feel like I’ve been waiting for something to break within me, something that will crack me open and make me feel like myself again.

The full moon lunar eclipse on July 27 was the second in a trio of eclipses that began with a partial solar eclipse on July 12th and ends tomorrow, August 11th, with a new moon lunar eclipse. In the world of astrology – which I admit, I put some stock in – eclipses are significant events, known to be catalysts for change, sometimes delivering that change in unexpected and dramatic ways. Their energy can be emotionally-charged and volatile, leaving us on edge and out of sorts, inviting us to confront uncomfortable truths that push us to end one chapter of our lives and begin another.

In these long, languid late summer days, as we approach the end of eclipse season and I approach the end of my first year in Manhattan, the question of the future sits heavily on my mind. I don’t feel ready to leave New York, but I’m not quite sure what I’ll do here if I stay. And if I return to California, what will I do there? More of the same? That doesn’t feel right, either.

I’m stuck.  And, well – hot.

Maybe I’m hoping the last of this trio of eclipses will flick on a light switch inside of me, illuminating some long-buried insight that I haven’t seen. Maybe I’m just waiting for the end of August, when I’m done with my writing classes and I can grab one more blissful week in the Pacific Northwest to swim in Case Inlet and pose questions to the moon and the stars and get really quiet and just listen.

It has been eleven months since I arrived in New York City with nothing but three suitcases and big dreams. My life today looks nothing like I thought it would eleven months ago, and I think that’s OK. I’m proud of myself in some ways, disappointed in myself in others. And I think that’s OK, too.

I have no idea what the future holds. But then again, neither do any of us. So, rather than tying up this blog post up in a neat little bow, I’ll simply end it with one of my favorite quotes, from Anaïs Nin:

“You have a right to experiment with your life. You will make mistakes. And they are right too.”

Until next time, friends.

5 years ago Short URL 17 Comments

Career/Change/New York/Well-Being/Writing

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22

Jun

June.

“Many of us spend our whole lives running from feeling with the mistaken belief that you cannot bear the pain. But you have already borne the pain. What you have not done is feel all you are beyond that pain.”

– Khalil Gibran

I started writing the end of my story first. I began with the day I hugged Jen in the driveway of her apartment building after she’d helped me put three heavy suitcases in the back of my car, and then drove my silver Toyota Prius up an eerily deserted 405 freeway to the top of the Sepulveda Pass for the last time. I wrote about the Lyft ride to the airport, where I told the driver I was moving to New York and how strange those words sounded coming out of my mouth, and the celebratory glass(es) of prosecco I drank at the Wolfgang Puck restaurant in Terminal 6, where I thought about my mother the whole time, because it was almost eighteen years to the day that I’d taken the reverse flight, from Seattle to L.A., as a kid going off to college, and how scared I’d been, and how she’d held my hand and told me that everything was going to be all right. And now, here I was again, eighteen years later, no longer a kid, but feeling just as exhilarated and terrified by the change I was about to make, and this time without my mother to tell me everything would be all right. So I took a deep breath, got on the plane, and told myself.

It felt easier to start at the end than the beginning, not just because the ending was fresh in my mind. Because the ending was so full of hope. As I scrolled through old Instagrams and blog posts from last summer, that was the thing I was struck by again and again: hope. The fact that I didn’t know how this grand adventure was going to turn out, but I was barreling forward anyway, with a sense of faith and confidence that surprised even me. Because I wanted something different than what I’d already had, and that meant doing something different than what I’d already done. Because when nothing is certain anything is possible, and I believed most of all the words of a friend who told me that anything is possible in New York.

So I made the decision to go, and once I’d made that decision, all the other decisions sprang from it, gathering momentum, like a giant snowball rolling down a hill. And I didn’t stop to think that anything could go wrong, didn’t consider any outcome other than a good one, didn’t even really listen to friends who cautioned that change is difficult, and I might have a hard time transitioning to life on the east coast.

Of course, hard turned out to be an understatement. And as winter descended like a fog, and none of my plans worked out and the grief I thought I’d healed from came roaring back, I lost sight of the hope I’d had in those early days. I stopped believing in myself. I stopped believing that good things were possible.

But if there’s one thing I’ve learned during these last few difficult years, it’s that sometimes our darkest moments can be our greatest teachers. And during the winter that never seemed to end, I came to a realization: maybe the fact that nothing was working out was exactly what I needed. Maybe my move to New York wasn’t meant to be about what I would accomplish. Maybe it was meant to be about what I would learn.

It’s officially summer in the city. My first. It’s already uncomfortably humid for a girl used to the desert climate of Southern California, and it’s nowhere near as hot and a sticky as it’s going to get. I’m trying not to think about it. I’m trying to take each day as it comes, enjoying the fact that I can still sit in my living room with all the windows open and feel the faint breeze rustling through the trees and listen to the rattle of the 1 train as it shoots out of the tunnel at 125th and Broadway.

The beginning of summer means my memoir class is coming to an end. And while I’ve made a commitment to spend these next hot, humid months writing my book, I’ve also just begun another class: an intensive playwriting workshop geared toward finishing the first draft of my next script. I’m a bit worried I’ve taken on too much, that one big project might derail the other. But as I’ve started diving into this new play, a bittersweet love story about two people whose destinies are intertwined and yet, who ultimately can’t be together, I’ve realized that whether it’s fiction or non, there’s one theme that keeps running through all of my work, a theme that goes something like this: You can’t save people, you can only love them.

I can’t say how long I’ll stay in New York. I can only say that after nine months and three seasons, I’m finally starting to appreciate this city for what it is: an open door I needed to walk through to change my life. I’m grateful for every road block, every challenge, every time I looked in the mirror and asked myself, “What in the hell am I doing?” This experience has made me stronger, less afraid, and more willing to fail. And while I’ve never been a person who’s been comfortable living in uncertainty, I can recognize that uncertainty is exactly what I needed to make me realize I still have the power to shape my own narrative. I don’t know how this story is going to end, only that I’m writing it moment to moment, in a place where, once again, anything feels possible.

Until next time, friends.

5 years ago Short URL 22 Comments

Change/Creativity/Grief/Love/Memoir/New York/Writing

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