The Beautiful Answer

Exhausted But Happy

I’ve been traveling a lot lately, which always tends to change you somehow. It may be simple as seeing a spontaneous standing ovation in the airport lounge on the way to Baltimore, as veterans from WWII emerged from the airway. It may be as complex as overhearing intimate conversations you’re not supposed to hear — what the baby likes to eat, when you’ll be home from your trip, who’s speaking in low tones to someone clearly not their spouse.

It may be as great as meeting people who show up to hear the written word spoken aloud in Phoenix, or just to see what you’re like, what your journey has been like as you set it down on paper. That’s pretty gratifying, too. But after a while, you get tired of the wheels spinning beneath your feet and you want to come home again, exhausted but happy, to see what you’re going to get up to next. 

I don’t know what this is, this next path that will carry me forward. I have some idea, of course, but always like to stay open to suggestion. Most likely, I’ll keep writing a project I started a little while ago, maybe start writing a new play as well. The days will pass and I will travel more, meeting more people from different walks of life. And my life will be informed, and feel fuller and richer and just the slightest bit more human because of it. Did I mention that I love being alive? 

Desire is Full of Endless Distances

I didn’t make this up; the poet Robert Haas did.  And in so doing, he laid the foundations for most of my thinking today.

I’ve spent the past few days traveling to Baltimore, and giving a workshop on Intuitive Dating at breathe books there (great shop, you should go). I also saw my new play Punk Rock Mom performed there for the first time as a fully staged production. It was a short trip, yet felt long, since so much time was spent traveling, waiting in airports, eating substandard food and tossing around on beds that make what the Spanish Inquisitors offered look compassionate. 

It couldn’t really have gone better. The turnout was good at the workshop and they asked me to come back, perhaps more than once a year going forward. I like Baltimore, so this isn’t really a problem for me. I also liked the workshop participants. Each one of them seemed kind, compassionate and dedicated to healing and moving on from romantic pain. 

The play, likewise, was a great experience. The company worked really hard, and it showed. The performances were great, the staging as well, and I couldn’t have asked for  a better first experience with this one. Any artist will tell you how rare and wonderful it is when someone truly “gets” you — what you’re trying to do, where you’re going with all of it — and then how fearless they have to be to get behind it. True on all counts here, and very fun to boot. 

So why, at the risk of sounding ungrateful, was I sad at the end? I suppose it could be construed as fatigue (I have been working an awful lot lately) , or just wanting the wonderful stuff to keep going. After all, some people could get used to people telling them they were great all the time. 

I read this quote on the plane home — “Desire is full of endless distances” — and all of a sudden, something clicked. Of course it is, because the closer we get to anything we want — a job, promotion, lover, theatrical production, wonderful workshop or something else, the more we want. That desire, built of smaller needs, piles up on us until we’re forced to reach out more, to close that endless distance, until nothing more remains to be conquered. 

Getting started on that tomorrow. 

Indecision Sucks, and Then There’s Clarity

Sorry for the spotty posting of late, especially since I had made a vow to post every day for the past year. I’m pretty close, with only a few posts left to close out this 365 day period, and never expected a book, a play, a potential TV series and more in the works to be happening all at once. 

Pans to travel to Baltimore last Thursday were in place, until I woke up with a sore throat (I pretty much never get sick — maybe once a year at most) and started to worry that I shouldn’t go. I could call and cancel, I thought. Sure, I’d disappoint people and not get to meet all the hard-working folks who have worked to put my words on the stage. But I was feeling crappy as hell and had no real desire to get in a germ tube and fly across the country. Not in that moment. 

So I Dayquil’d up and got on the plane. As my husband was rounding the corner from our house, and heading for the freeway onramp to get to the airport, I kept thinking maybe I should turn back. Maybe it just wasn’t the right time. 

Then a woman with silvery-white bobbed hair, and black roots caught my attention. She was waiting at the light as we went around the corner, so she could cross the street. When I looked at her, I saw that she was wearing a t-shirt that said one word, in huge letters: GO.

There was no logo, and I’m pretty sure that there’s no band with that name. I should know by now that my guides aren’t subtle. They broadcast messages to me through the radio, billboards, people who randomly come up to me on the street, and many other ways. I have a question in mind, and even before I’ve voiced it, I’m getting information. But this one was pretty magical. 

I live in a magical world, I thought. Amazing things are happening all around me. I can either sit by the shore and miss out on the fun stuf, or jump into the moving current.

So far, I’m thrilled to be here. More tomorrow. I’ve got to get some sleep so I can teach a workshop at breathe books on Intuitive Dating, and attend the first-ever fully staged performance of my play Punk Rock Mom (for me, at least). 

How freakin’ lucky am I? 

Idiot Proof

Those days right before you’re trying to blow out of town are always the most hilarious. They’re the ones when every friend who’s moving calls at the last minute for some help, or they lose your clothes at the dry cleaner, or you get a flat tire — you know, the stuff that takes up your time and drives you crazy in slow motion. I had my own version of that today, with small annoyances, things that took longer than they should have/could have, and just the regular all-around craziness that is my daily existence. It always makes me wish that I could idiot proof my life in some way. 

Not that I’m complaining, mind you. 

I get to go out of town for a few days to do some business (checking out a local theater venue and talking to them about staging my play PUNK ROCK MOM when it finishes with its world premiere in Baltimore, and yes, checking out some spring training baseball. I’m a huge Giants fan, and have been for the past 10 years or so — back when they sucked, back before the torture and the World Series win — and have been going to spring training for 6 years now. There’s a lot of hope packed into those few days in March each year, and a lot of fun to be had. 

So it’s always with a grain of salt that I take these minor annoyances. They try to knock me off my game, but I’m back on it pretty soon. They try to make me forget that I’m lucky to be able to do what I do, and go where I go. They try to pull the wool over my eyes, that stress or rising blood pressure is more important, more worthy of my attention, than the fact that I’ll be in a car soon, coasting through the desert and watching the sun rise over that moonlike landscape. 

Silly rabbit. You’re not gettin’ that weak-ass shit by me so easily. :) 

Wanting, Getting, Having

So much is manifesting for me right now that it’s almsot embarrassing. I never planned to have a book out this year — it just kind of happened that way — and then I never planned to win the Hay House Pitchfest in New York, or have a play of mine staged in the Baltimore area. I never planned to be on a book tour this summer, but that looks like it’s pretty likely to happen. 

In other words, I don’t plan my life according to what I want. Not always, at least. I plan it by what I like to do in the moment — write a book, write a play, help people heal — and then see if I can’t do something a little more with that. Sometimes, time seems to bunch everything together like this, so everything is happening all in one year. It can be stressful. So I like that I don’t operate from a place of want all the time. That’s sad and lonely place that I used to have as a kid a lot. 

Now I’m working on accepting, getting I guess you’d call it, and seeing how that feels. Some days, it feels ridiculously luxurious, an embarrassment of riches. I’m booking a lot of print and radio interviews for the release of Searching for Sassy, and getting ready to talk about myself non-stop for a few months. Lots of people love that stuff. Me? Not so much. But since it’s part of getting, I’m going to practice with it and see where it goes. 

The next stage is having, and seeing what that feels like. I assume a lot of things about it, what it might be like, what it might feel like. How having might be like acting as a guardian or conservator of whatever it is you’ve received. Money, position, status, an item of clothing, an award or honor, a book deal, a relationship, a responsibility. All of them come with the idea, for me at least, of respecting them and being grateful for the having part. 

So, some thing to think about. Some stuff to practice with as I make my way into this next uncertainty. I’m not afraid. Not at all. Instead, I’m excited by what I’ll find.