anger · change · laughter · life

What’s My Age Again?

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I stopped by the optometry office on my way out of the
medical lab. It was the last week of December and I thought it would be a good day to
get my labs drawn, test my blood, get some confirming news for the new year,
good or bad, at least it’s truth.
At the eye sales desk, he told me that my glasses order was last filled in 2011, that I’d had the glasses I’m wearing for nearly 3 years.
That people usually reorder every year or two.
And it reminds me that I lost a year. 
I was diagnosed with leukemia a week before my 31st
birthday. I don’t
remember it much, who was there, if we sang — I think we did — except that in my threadbare
hospital gown, I opined, Next year, instead of cancer, can we get brunch
instead? – And we did.
But in many ways, I feel like I didn’t actually live my 31st
year (or 32nd if you’re being technical). Suddenly I find myself reminding
myself, Yes, I’m 32 now. 31 sort of did and didn’t happen.
I
know that a few years from now, these missing months won’t seem as missing, won’t feel as
real, except sometimes it strikes me that I spent half a year in a hospital. That when I
consider, “last year at this time,” I was bald and packing for my 4th round of chemo.
And now it’s done. And it’s weird.
When I try to express this weirdness in a way that might make
sense to other people, I say that it’s like my life took this enormous detour, but
now I’m suddenly back to where I parted with the road, and that side road doesn’t
even exist. 
How do you go back to “normal” after that? It’s not to give the event credence it doesn’t deserve, or to use my cancer as a talisman of pain
or suffering, or even of validation – it’s just to say, Yes, it actually
happened, and yet, so what?
So what. It’s a hard thing to say about cancer, without
sounding callous. But, really, what does it mean now?
What has it meant this past year? That’s easy to answer –
everything. Everything I do is in response to it, even though “nothing has
changed.” That’s the weirdness of it. I work at the same job. I sleep in the
same apartment. I watch the same t.v. shows.
Many things I’ve done differently, many things I’ve started,
tried, done, seen, been. But, when does its relevance fade – does its relevance
fade? If everything I do, which I assure you I measure against my cancer stick,
is in response to it, when do I stop mentioning it, when does it stop being a
significant part of who I express myself to be. When I stop mentioning it out loud,
which sometimes I note I do, and sometimes I pointedly don’t, … what does that
mean, if anything?
I text a cute guy, after actually asking aloud, “if today was my last day on Earth…” I drink a badly mis-measured version of turmeric tea, because it’s listed in
Kicking Cancer in the Kitchen. I’m
stewing marrow bones in a crock pot right now because I’ve read they have immune
boosting properties.
I flew a plane, got into a band, went to Hawaii, because I
had cancer.
I bought a car, had sex with that cute guy, built my
first bedframe because I had cancer.
I saw Book of Mormon because I had cancer, and stopped
talking to my dad because of it, too.
I measure how much time I waste or spend on Netflix against
cancer. I measure how much sleep I get against cancer. I won’t read bad books, but
I’ll read damnyouautocorrect until it hurts to laugh any more.
What does it mean, though? Is it relevant? To you. To you,
man on the street, do you care what makes me laugh a little freer? Do you care
why I eat organic eggs, or buy gold boots, or notice the moon? Does it matter to you that everything has changed and nothing is different?
Probably not.
So, what about the missing year – if it wrought all of these
changes, it wasn’t missing, right? That’s the point, right?
Sure. Maybe. 
Still, I wish I could have gotten new glasses,
and gone without the eviscerating fear.
Thanks. 

inspiration · recovery · writing

Climbing Kilimanjaro (or at least, reading the Guide Book)

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I was on the phone this morning with my friend on the East
coast. She recently returned from her frankly stellar honeymoon cruise around
the Mediterranean, and after regaling me with her now-insider-tourist viewpoint
(Istanbul Markets = Yes; Parthenon = overcrowded; Sistine Chapel = Who are we
kidding, Yes.), she asked me what I was up to.
I told her that I’m recently reading memoirs on marriage. I
said, even though it’s not something that’s currently on the radar, one day it probably will be, and like someone who’s gonna climb Kilimanjaro, I ought to read the
guide book.
So, I now have on my coffee table, Vow: A Memoir of Marriage
and Other Affairs, one woman’s story of how
infidelity on both sides corroded her marriage, and No Cheating, No
Dying: I had a good marriage, then I tried to make it better. Also, out of a rubber-necker’s curiosity, a while ago I’d read Elizabeth Gilbert’s Committed to see if her second book would be as good as the first (and, well,
sort of).
To me, reading these marriage memoirs is like getting the read-out from a fallen plane’s
black-box: What went wrong? What went right? What are the junction places and
fuses that tend to blink out first? What can you do, if anything, to reinforce them before they do?
I’ve had a thirst for this kind of reading over the last
several years. I was a Fiction Fiction Fiction only reader for many years,
Stephen King, Ray Bradbury,…JK Rowling, because real life was *so boring,* and allegory could be so much more useful… But, lately, I find myself almost
exclusively prowling the non-fiction, first-persons; most specifically,
picking those that have something to do with where I want to be.
Last Spring, it was the memoirs of Tina Fey (comic, leader,
success), Betty White (comic, still-kicking), Nora Ephron’s I Remember
Nothing: And Other Reflections (writer,
comic, realist) and Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest
Trail by Cheryl Strayed which actually
inspired me to research the best hiking boots for someone with flat feet (not purchased).
I read the following to balance out the light, or rather I
read the above to balance out the dark I was reading at the time: Jeanette Winterson’s Why Be Happy When
You Could Be Normal and Augusten Burrough’s
Running with Scissors.
I wanted to know many things from reading these books: I
wanted to know how to be a successful woman in tough businesses, I wanted to
know how to be an artist, writer, performer and make it stick, and mostly I wanted to know how
you keep moving forward in a hard world, and keep your sense of humor.
During the time I was sick, you couldn’t peel me from a
cancer memoir. It was all I read. Except for that one on divorce (Stacy
Morrison’s Falling Apart in One Piece: One Optimist’s Journey Through the
Hell of Divorce), since it seemed equally catastrophic, and I like the
word optimist in a title.
When my friend first leant me the Lance Armstrong book, It’s Not About the Bike, last
October, I said thanks with a pressed I’m-never-gonna-read-that-Nobody-else-knows-what-it’s-like-to-have-cancer
smile. But, still, I brought it back to the hospital with me for my second
round of chemo, and eventually hardly put it down between temperature- and
blood-pressure monitorings.
People asked what I thought about all the controversy that
was coming out about him then, and I said I didn’t give a shit – He survived cancer, and lived to write a book about it. That’s all I needed to know. 
Honestly, I can’t remember the other ones I read – chemo
brain, perhaps – but that’s what I read these books for: How in the hell did you
do that? How can I?
This summer’s reading of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A
Year of Food Life resulted in home-made
tomato sauce (and a half a plat of rotting tomatoes), an awkward okra experiment, and many afternoon delights with a basket of fresh figs.
And now, now, it’s marriage. It’s also, Going Gray: What
I Learned about Beauty, Sex, Work, Motherhood, Authenticity, and Everything
Else that Really Matters, Anne Kreamer’s
exploration of what it means to grow older in American culture, one strand at a
time.
This is probably the book that sparked my whole memoir
thing, long before I actually read one. I’d still been living in San Francisco,
Borders was still in business, and I was at the Stonestown Mall. Somehow,
perhaps while looking for some “recovery” related book which are often in the
“self-help” section, I saw her book, and remember picking it up, reading the
back copy and noting that it was an interesting idea.
This week, I saw Kreamer’s book on the memoir shelf of my now-housed-in-a-trailer-behind-a-school
public library branch. I picked it up. And devoured it.
So, what about all this? What does it “mean” or matter?
Well, one thing, I suppose, is that reading these books enables me to see that
I’m not alone in my struggles–I’m not alone in living in the world with real
people and real tragedies and real humor, and most importantly, real chutzpah.
Also, aside from Lance Armstrong and the Burroughs one
(which frankly left me more disturbed than helped), all the books I’ve been reading are by women.
Women, claiming their right to share their inane
(Betty White), heartbreaking (Winterson), path-back-toward-the-light
(Morrison) stories. Women using their voice to say, Here, here is where I’ve been frayed and flayed and fraught and
fought, and I’m still here to tell you about it.
These women are my heroes. And so I will continue to head
straight for that shelf in the library/trailer, because I want to climb Kilimanjaro,
too. 

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Good Luck with That.

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A few days ago, I ran into an acquaintance. Sitting down
next to me, without so much as a Hey, How are ya?, he says matter-of-factly,
“My girlfriend needs to have both her hips replaced.”
… “Uh,” I reply nonplussed, “Good luck with that?”
“Well, I just figured since you’d been through something
hard, you’d understand.”
And I do, but I am not the human receptacle of life trauma,
nor am I the oracle for how to deal with it.
See, the thing is, is that I’m still walking through this,
guys. It’s coming up to a year out from diagnosis, and when I had a sore throat
that lasted more than a few days earlier this month, I freaked out, and tried
not to freak out. I went to the doctor, and I catastrophized and I came back to
reality, and all the tests came back normal.
I have a first date with my bass teacher next week (despite
you nay-sayers!), and I can’t help but think of what an awful thing it would be
to date me and have my cancer relapse – you’re not signing up for that, or are
you? To have Damocles’ Sword hanging not only over my head, but the head of
someone, anyone, who loves me? (A sword hangs over this figure, who never knows
if or when it will fall.)
I am engaging in my life differently than pre-cancer, but I
still have places that challenge me to the point of tears, and I worry that
this will “cause” cancer again.
I am not free from this worry yet, and I am not available to
take your shipwrecked persons into my dinghy. Here’s a life-vest. Dinghy Full.
Find your own.
That said, how many people supported me, etc.etc., during
this time, I know. But, I cannot help you process, people. I’m sorry. My
compassion meter is broken. The well is dry.
That said, when I heard that a friend’s sister was just
diagnosed with AML, the same type of cancer I had, I jumped at the chance to
share my resources and what worked for me, comforted me, and helped me to
maintain my “calm at the center of the storm” which has now broken and allows
me to fall apart, engage in fun, and also to stare at that sword say, “You
f*cker.”
Therefore, your friend, sister, aunt, co-worker, barista who
has cancer? Here’s a link to my own list of what I found helpful. If you don’t
mind, please share this with them instead of asking me. I’m sorry, but my
dinghy is full. 

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Break on Through to the Other Side

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I performed in my first show on Saturday. I played bass and
I sang, and I broke a string and borrowed someone else’s and lost my place and
played wrong notes and sang out of tune, and hopped up and down in my boots and
smiled like a raving fool and had an absolutely fabulous time.
Some of the feedback from my friends has been along the
lines of, I feel like I’ve now finally seen you in your element, doing what
you’re supposed to be doing – you looked so right, so natural up there. And –
they’re right. I feel so natural and so
right up there.
I was on my way to rehearsal last week and was on the phone
with my girl friend from Long Island. We were talking, again, about work, my
work, jobs, career, etc., and as I gushed that being in the band is my favorite
thing in my life right now, she asked me what it was about it that I loved?
I love that I get to play with other people, that we create
something out of nothing, and offer it to other people. That we create an
atmosphere, an experience for others, that we get to have an impact on how people feel, to create emotions and movement
in them. I love that I get to be collaborative, it’s not just me and a guitar,
that I get to learn and bounce off of others’ ideas, that I get to be a part of
a group that wants to do the same thing.
This, isn’t new. I wrote a blog on New Year’s Eve 2011-2012
that included the following:
Performance, A Challenge (12 31 11)
I want to perform. I want to ignite, excite, catalyze,
engender, enmorphize. I want you to witness me. I want you to be changed in the
witnessing. I want the love in you to awaken and stir as I open myself to you.
I want to be there for it. Present. My best, most available self. I want you to
fall in love with yourself in the process. Discover the ancient and cavernous
depth of your heart. I want to be your tour guide. To lead you where you are
ready to be led. I want to change the world, for good. One heart at a time,
beginning with my own. And I am becoming Ready. I am ready to transform.
Pyrotechnic Performance: What I want to do when I grow
up. (8 5 10)
I want to startle your emotions and steamroll you with
feeling. I want to seize and agitate the flames of my inner fuel and fury and
ignite and catch you on fire too. I want to blast you out of your seat aghast
at the wonder that is G-d bellowing through me. I want to own this. I want to
master play and expand this. I want to hone sharpen and broaden the depth of
what I have to offer you. I want to journey with you through the lands of the
psyche and crash you upon the shores of revelation. I want to allow you to lick
and contemplate these wounds as you stagger toward the exit when I’m
done. 

I want to heave you into oblivion and gently reel you
back in.
None of this has changed, except that I feel I actually am
more ready for it. I actually am more ready to simply try, to put myself out
there, however expertly or inexpertly, and just try damnit. Forget Yoda, I think there is a try. It’s the same as doing, perhaps. Or rather, I am in fact no more ready than I have been before, but, I’m simply doing it anyway, putting the action first, and watching my willingness follow. (So maybe Yoda was right after all…)
I have been afraid to let you know how important these
things are to me. How important it is to me to stand in front of you and give,
offer, collaborate, combine, and reveal what I really am and have. I have been
afraid that if I tell you what this means to me, and I am disappointed with
your response or with my own performance, that I couldn’t take the
disappointment. But, I feel ZERO disappointment. The people who are meant to
help me in this are showing up. I am getting help to get better, to improve,
and even if I didn’t, there’s room for me anyway.
I’m finally listening to myself, which is a phenomenal thing
to do.
And you know what, I’m proud of myself, too. Which itself is
a phenomenon. 

I have affirmations plugged into my phone to ding on the hour. One of them is: “I intend to make a difference.” Although this was meant around my “job,” my next “career move,” when my friend reported to me yesterday that seeing me up there touched her deeply, inspired her to see me, having lived and now doing what I’ve always wanted to do — I realized that perhaps, I already am. 

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To die to sleep*

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You will end these miles on your knees,
scraping through glass and what glitters
that isn’t gold like they said.

You will pick through it anyway,
hoping the next piece is solution,
absolution, peace.

Not long past a milemarker,
you will simply give way, flatten
your body to the ground
exhausted by all the false
expectations and trial of
working So Damned Hard.

As the shards pierce and mold your skin,
sleep will come and, with it, surrender.

May 2013.

*Hamlet

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So, once you achieve enlightenment, you don’t have to meditate anymore, right?

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When I first stopped drinking alcoholically 7 years ago, I engaged in a
process of change that was reported to bring about a “spiritual awakening,” to put
me in touch with a Higher Power of my own understanding that would, it was also
reported, solve all my problems.
I asked a group of these people who had experience with this
change process the following question: So, once I have a spiritual awakening, I can drink normally, right?
The group laughed, I didn’t quite understand why—I thought
it was a legitimate question—and eventually I read and began to understand why:
“Commencing to drink after a period of sobriety, we are in a short time as bad
as ever.”
You can’t turn a pickle back into a cucumber.
This weekend, I went to Harbin Hot Springs with a group of
girl friends. It was my first time to this “clothing optional” new-agey camping
resort, and my friend recommended that I get a massage while I was up there.
So, on Thursday night, I trolled through their offerings, and came across
something called an “Amanae” treatment. … This was not a massage. It is,
according to their publicity, a “spiritual, emotional bodywork release,” the
intention of which is to let go of stored emotions in the body through the use
of breath and a bit of “laying on of hands.”
On Saturday morning, as soon as I arrived, I went straight
to my appointment. I laid on a massage table, the flowy-dressed, Australian(?)-accented woman put her hand over my heart, and thus proceeded an hour of on and
off bawling and crying.
Let me say again, this was not a massage! But, whatever it was, things happened. Thoughts came up,
and my throat would start to burn and she’d put her hand there without me
telling her so. Her finger would press into my heart, and like juicing a
citrus, out would pour tears. It was weird, but totally my kind of weird.
Thoughts came up about my father, about my work, about
cancer. About G-d. The Why’s and the pain and the agony and the grief and the
confusion and the frustration and the betrayal. All of it came up and, luckily,
out.
I am again engaged in the specific process of change I began
7 years ago, and am again at a part about release, forgiveness, softness,
letting go, and acceptance. I did more writing up there at Harbin, and on the
last day, I asked my friends if they wanted to write down those things they wanted
to release, to leave here on that (purportedly) sacred ground, and to write
those things they wanted to embrace. Then, we’d go up to a vista spot, and bury
them.
So, we did.
I put into the ground the things I want to let go, stop
spinning about, beating myself up over, as well as those things I want to bring
closer to me, to my experience, to my belief. I buried both, because neither of
these are up to me—whether that which I release is really eased, or that which
I want to call in (or call forth) will be. It ends up as G-d’s poker hand,
getting to hold or fold whatever “he” wants.
That said, through all of the writing I’ve done lately, that
crazy ass non-massage, and simply a lot of intention setting and reminders on
my phone(!), I feel a little—maybe even a lot—lighter. I feel a little more at
peace and ease. When the thoughts about my career or dad have come up since, I don’t
feel as much angst about them.
And here’s the kicker. 
On Friday night I did a meditation
around individuation from my father, about asking him to forgive me for not
being able to fix those things he thinks wrong with his life, and for any
failings or shortcomings he may think I have. I told him, in meditation, that I
forgive him for his inability to fix that which I believe is wrong with my
life, and forgive him the failings and shortcomings I think he has.
I did a bunch of writing in response to some questions in
this book I have, and saw more and again how he was formed in this world, and
his own trials that led him to the behavior and mindset that he has. I saw a
primary “fault” of his as his unwillingness to forgive his own step-father for
being unavailable. I saw that as my own.
As I was driving back from Harbin last night, in pinged all
the texts that got lost in no-reception land. One was from my father.
My grandfather, his step-dad, died on Saturday night.
My dad told me when he came to see me when I was first
diagnosed in September that he was finally finding forgiveness around his own
father. My skepticism aside, I was glad to hear that he even saw his lack of
compassion and was finding his own version of it.
So, I texted my father back. I was sorry for his loss, and
so very glad he was able to find some peace with his step-father while he was
still alive.
Who knows. Who knows what this means, if anything, for my
own relationship with my dad. Who knows if my own work, my own realizations and
shifting, and (final?) grieving around my hurt by him created the space that Ed
needed to pass on. Who knows if that timely a communication was related in any
way, following the requested months of silence between my father and me.
But I felt ease around composing my reply, around offering
him the kindness of information that I’d been away and hadn’t received his text
‘til then. I questioned whether I was being co-dependent, whether he needed to
know I’d been away, whether my intention was to ensure he wasn’t going to be angry with
me for my delay. But, in the end, I decided it was a kind thing to do. It was his
father, the only one he’d ever known.
With my obvious
increased enlightenment and equanimity around my relationships that I’ve obviously attained over the last several days, the question
came this morning as I heated up my coffee — do I still need to meditate?
Well, I’ll leave that up to you to decide. 😉 

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I Left My Heart in New Jersey

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As I begin to contemplate forgiving my dad for being the
person he was and is, and consider letting go of my attachments to his and my
own pain and suffering, I realize that there are other strings tied into this
knot.
I realize I consider myself the glue of my family, and in
looking at letting go of that role, to allow them to their own paths, to allow
myself to fully own mine, I realize that I have reluctance to let go. My
attachment to my role as “glue” means I have fear that to release it is to
allow them to unglue, to fall apart… to allow myself to fall apart.
When we were growing up, my brother had an awful stutter, no
doubt in reaction to the anger displayed at home. So, I became his mouthpiece.
I became his interpreter, and we were connected.
When my mom fell into her deep depressions and the agony of
her chronic migraines, I became the one to open her bedroom curtains and help
coax her into the day.
And, perhaps, to the best of my ability, I tried to be the
ultimate good daughter for my father, so that I didn’t anger or strain him
beyond what he was emotionally capable of. Although, later, that plan was
failing, and so angering him was easier to do, since placating him was nearly
impossible.
So, the glue. Give my brother voice, and protect him from
others who couldn’t understand him. Give my mom encouragement, and protect her from the world. And give my father the order and
conscription he wanted in a household that he obviously couldn’t keep together
by a rule of iron fist.
To release my role as his good or his fuck-up daughter, is
to release these other roles as well. It is to allow my brother to have his own
voice. To let him stutter. What kind of a sister can do that? Easily?
It is to allow my mom to have her insane work schedule that
leaves her laid out two days of the week, to let her manage her life and her
affairs, even if it makes me uncomfortable to hear about it.
The other thing is… this is the healthiest my family has
ever been. Ever. My mother is medicated and in a happy relationship. My brother
is thriving in his job and relationship. And, even my dad is in a relationship,
semi-retired in Florida. Every one is doing just fine. I don’t need to be the
glue anymore. I don’t need to be the puppet-master.
To consider releasing this role brings up the fear of losing
them, though, because as attached as I am to that role, as ingrained as it is
in me, what will our family dynamics look like without it/me? What will I be to
them, if I’m not their savior or chameleon? What will I be to myself?
Will I be as important? As loved? As necessary to the world?
Will it feel like being unmoored, or will it feel like being
free?
I can’t know until I try. But there is no reason for me to
continue to play a role to an empty stage, or to, what?, try to get them back
to play their parts? That’s not what I want either.
If I am not the savior, who am I? If I am simply a daughter
and sister, how will I be loved or love them? What does detached love look like?

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Riddle Me This.

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I’ve been tasked with the following (“simple”) assignment: Begin to feel safe in the world.
It’s been pointed out to me that my magpie-like attention to
artistic endeavors (“Ooh, Look! Shiny!”), my lack of focus on any one interest
is a way to offer myself protection. If I don’t take ownership of any one
thing, then I don’t have to let you know how much it really means to me; I
don’t have to let you see that I’m actually good at it; I don’t have to be
vulnerable or honest about who I am.
So, I’ve created a system whereby I can never accomplish
much, because to have actual ambitions –which, of course, I do– means I have to
try to let you in, and… to let you help. To let you see me.
It was pointed out that my ideas around lack
of safety in the world also affect my ideas around and experience of money. It’s another (potential) place of ownership and
esteem. If I don’t have focus there: if I don’t really pay attention, if I
allow myself to float, then I’m not at risk of seeming inept, because I’m not
really trying to not be “ept.”
The problem, of course, is that neither of these ways of
being actually provides the protection
and safety I want. They’re broken systems. The pattern of self-abandonment as
self-protection means, simply, that I don’t move anywhere, and I become
frustrated and self-flagellating… which isn’t really a booster, fyi.
So, here’s the conundrum. In a reality where I have
developed cancer and had the foundation of life and my existence called to the
chopping block, how, pray tell me, do I
trust in the safety of the Universe??
It was hard enough before. These patterns didn’t form in a
vacuum; it’s not like I haven’t been working on them. But, now, you want me to overcome my fear of being harmed,
visible, annihilated in light of
cancer?
Come on, son.
So, you see my dilemma. I want to feel safe in the world.
But I just had the fabric of my life called into question, the veil of safety
between the reality of this world and that stripped from me – and you want me to trust what?? That things “turn out well,” that if I do the proper
merry-go-round of prayer, meditation, self-examination, that life will “get
better.” F that Sht.
Un- Non- Utterly Anti-Believable.
No.
I don’t believe that “life” will get better. Because if
there’s anything the cancer has taught
me, it’s that living according to what you think is the “good thing,” waiting
for the cash and prizes gleaned from being the “good” girl, with the “good”
job, with the quiet, calm, friendly, dependable meekness, is a load of horse
crap. LIFE doesn’t get better, because I do good things. I get better because I do healthy things.
That’s it. There’s no fucking guarantee. There’s nothing
that says, This way to freedom and joy. The only roadmap are the things we know
light us up. The things I’ve been too scared to share with and show you.
There is no guarantee that I will be safe. There just isn’t.
None of us have it. As a book I read last night put it: “Most of the time we
live in a tiny pocket of normality that we wrap around us like a security
blanket.” If there’s anything that’s abnormal, it’s cancer in a healthy 30-year
old.
How do I reconcile these realities, then? One, I am safe in
the world. Two, the world is not safe.
My friend who brought this up (and I really like her
interpretation of my “Jack of All Trades, Master of None” M.O.) said that I can begin to feel safe by taking small steps.
Um, like what?
I don’t know yet. But the crux is that my way doesn’t leave
me feeling safe either. Jumping from thing to thing, having little focus and
clarity on my life, my finances, my goals… dare I even have or say
ambitions?… this manner of engaging with the world doesn’t work. I have to begin to trust it, to trust in it, or to trust my place in it – or simply
to trust that these interests of mine are valid and worth validating, worth me
taking the time to explore, and let you know about, worth my heading to SF to
play bass, and worth my recording simple songs to put on facebook, and worth my
acknowledging the paintings I’ve made in my apartment are good, and worth my accepting
and proclaiming that I want to act, sing, be seen, be heard, and be, in the
end, authentic.
To be authentic is to be vulnerable. It is to lay myself
open to the lines of the universe, and the people in it. It is to stop being
the hummingbird that never alights, and trusting that when I do, I won’t be
shot.
I am safe in the world.
I am ready to heal my relationship to safety.
It is safe to be my authentic self.
I don’t have to be alone to be safe. 

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And Away We GO!

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The first “blog-a-day” I wrote here was about Adam Levine.
Forgive me. Or nod understandingly at the photo I posted with said blog. From
what I remember, the blog was about engaging in my life, and playing bass. That
first blog was written in the fall of 2011. And I have finally begun to play my
bass.
I first came into ownership of this bass when I was 19. It
was Dave Gillian’s. And because of the apocalyptic way he helped me cheat on my
boyfriend and destroy many of the relationships I held dear, including the one
with myself, he offered to sell me his bass for $5. (We were 19, remember…) So,
I instantly accepted; and he realized what a mistake he’d made (in the offer,
not the cheating) that he offered to sell me the case for it for $195. I said
no thanks, I don’t need a case for it; and besides, (she added pointedly), you
owe me.
And so, a vision, a hobby, a dust-laden, continent-crossing
bass was born.
Although, now, I do wish I had a case for it…
Post-cancerland is really no different from pre-cancerland,
but there are ways that either I’m being more persistent, or the Universe is
being more collusive. Almost two years ago, I got in touch with Brad and Eddie about
putting together a band that didn’t come together. Two years before that, I thumbed
around a few times on it in the practice studio of Kris on his guitar and Matt on drums – neither Kris nor I really knew what we were doing, but the
idea (and reality) of rocking out in a practice space was awesome. Before that, years before
that, I played the same bass line over and over by myself in my room off the
kitchen of 98 Richardson, our college house.
But, now, today, somehow things are different.
The band I’m now playing with is with two girl friends of
mine, so there’s not a lot of pressure to be awesome. Plus it’s very easy to be
a barely adequate bassist. And that’s all they need.
The band isn’t entirely my style (glam-rock), but many of
the songs are funny and so, it’s encouraging me to not take myself too
seriously about the whole thing. Show up, play what’s written, smile, laugh.
Okay, sure, I can do that.
What’s more exciting is that the girl band is an off-shoot
of this woman’s main band – which has guys in it. Real musicians. *Not that women can’t be!* but, it’s nice
to know I’m going to have the chance to play with people who know what they’re
doing, and can help teach me – the guitarist teaches guitar and bass. (In fact, that’s what I’ll be doing tonight!)
Because it’s not really my style, or what I see myself
doing, or what I have in my vision though (singing at The Bottom of the Hill in
the kind of rockish loud band that plays there), I reached out again to my
other friend. And I guess that’s the difference – I keep on reaching out. I
haven’t stopped giving credence to this desire. Instead, I’m following up,
following through. And this other friend is
a rock guitar and singer, has played in a myriad of punk bands, knows what
catharsis it is to get loud, microphone spit, caught in the moment. I want
that, and he’s willing to practice at his space with me. Just for me to get
into the spirit, see if it’s really what I want, how I can do it. Someone to
get loud with me. Someone who supports me, and who I know won’t judge me.
So, Bass. I don’t have a calling to be Flea, but more like
the Ringo of bassists, and a chick singer in a rock band. And god damnit,
apparently I’m doing it.
(First show, June 1st, 6-9pm at f8 in San
Francisco…)