Autumn in the House of Reflection

Photo by Nick Kenrick
Published under Creative Commons license

I am staying in my friend, Jim's, house for a few days, while he's out of the country on business. I'm minding the house and his 13-year-old daughter, Maddie. so she doesn't have to stay at other people's houses while he's gone. I do it because I care about Jim, who frets about the time his professional obligations keep him away from his girl.  I also do it for Maddie, who is just starting to traverse teenager-hood, and (like all of us at that age) just wants to have her space and her things and her life, as uninterrupted and stable as possible.  Having been a 13-year-old girl, I feel her need for this as sharply as I felt it back when I was that age.


However, I confess that I do this also for myself, for a number of reasons. On a purely superficial level, the house is a beautiful house, large and airy, full of light. It has the requisite real estate selling points - hard wood floors, granite countertops, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves (complete with a rolling librarian's ladder, for easy access to the highest shelves).  It is clean and open, but also has little spaces that permit seclusion.

At times when I can't work anywhere else, because of distraction or temperature, I hide out in Jim's house, so I can write. I find the environment there perfect for writing. It's not my house, so for me, it's like going to work in a really nice office.  I don't feel the need to be doing a chore or seeking alternative activity, so I can write with more focus.  I get what I call "binge-writing" done at Jim's house.

The time I've spent here recently has made me come to appreciate it more than I used to. I have never been a fan of rambling, two-story houses, mostly because the idea of caring for them seems daunting to me. All the nooks and crannies, all the places to misplace things (I'm famous for this, as many of you are well aware). I have maintained for a long time that homes - particularly ones where families live, and where there have been both happy and tumultuous time - have personalities. I won't go so far as to call it a "soul", since I reserve "souls" for living things. But there are persistent and abiding energies in a place where people live their lives every day. For better or worse, we leave an energy trail behind us that invisibly marks where we've been and how we felt when we were there. Who knows how long it lasts, this vaporous trail?

I know when I first came here, the house seemed a little foreboding, almost intimidating. I felt uneasy here, a little edgy. When I first came here, it hadn't been that long since the main planner and dreamer of this house, Jim's late wife, had died. She had been gone less than three years when I first walked through the door, and I expect that the grief and sadness of her loss was still sitting in the corners and hugging the baseboards of the house.  The house's planning, construction, decor, and furnishing were undertaken with the enthusiasm and exhilaration. The journey to its conclusion took an abrupt left turn at some point, and the completion of this house, as a building project, came at a time when energy and focus were drawn away to other, more pressing events.  This is a family home, built with family life in mind. Not just any family, though - this very family that lives here now. But it's a smaller family than initially intended - smaller by one, in fact. And the loss of that one is still felt here.

Which is not to say the house isn't loved and appreciated by its occupants. The teenager probably doesn't appreciated it the way one would like, but only because to her, this is home, and has been for as long she can remember. I think this is only right. There are certain times in a life when you should be allowed to take things for granted, to expect that they will be there, to depend on them. Like, say, three square meals on the table. Or the comfort and solace of your childhood home, whatever its size or grandeur. Or the idea that both of your parents will be there to watch you grow up.

Sadly, you can't have everything. One of Maddie's parents must do her watching from elsewhere. As the years go by, and Maddie's memories of her mother have faded, the photos on the walls of this house, and the memories that others have of her mother, must suffice.

Over the years, the sadness has dimmed. The darkness has receded like a low tide. Lives move on. A toddler becomes a little girl, turns into a young woman. Time moves forward. The house's skylights and windows seem to let in more light, more warmth. The house has, as I said, shrunk, becoming less intimidating, less weighty. Time may not heal all wounds, but it does act as a kind of physical therapy, building the muscles and coordination necessary to live with the wound and its aftermath.

Photo by Seyed Mostafa Zamani.
Published under
Creative Commons license.

I woke up in the little guest bedroom of this house this morning, a little before the alarm was to go off.  I had set the coffeemaker to auto, and the smell of fresh brewed coffee right outside my bedroom door probably did the trick. (Note to self: get help for severe coffee addiction.) It was foggy and chilly outside this morning. The California weather seems to be getting the idea that it might actually be time for autumn to start kicking in. I lay in bed and thought of this house, the grey light outside, getting brighter by the minute, and the sleeping girl upstairs, ignoring her alarms for that extra five minutes sleep.  She was four and a half when I met her. Her father, now one of my best friends, was still feeling the loss of his love keenly. Now, they are both going forward. He delves cautiously into the frightening world of dating. She plans her adult life and career and dreams of her future in the spotlight. The passage of time has changed them both.

I have changed, too. I am, deep into middle age and nearing another birthday, finally retooling a life away from pure subsistence and toward creativity. It is a struggle, financially and practically. But I am, for the first time in my life, truly happy and hopeful. I should be terrified at the prospect of poverty and financial hardship at this age, but truly, I've never been less afraid then at any time in my life. Fear, it seems to me, is a useless emotion, particularly when one is pursuing a life in the arts. This is what I decide as I'm lying in a guest bed, in a house that is not mine, smelling freshly brewed coffee.

Autumn seems to have arrived at last. It's my favorite season - the season for shedding the old and readying for the new. Halloween and harvest, the Day of the Dead and my birthday, then on to winter and giving thanks and offering gifts and another turn of the calendar. Some like the spring, for the new growth. I like the autumn and winter for shedding of old things that get in the way of that growth.  Loss of leaves on a tree is an ending, yes, but also a beginning, too.  If you want your spring, you're going to have to walk through your autumn and your winter to get there.

This house knows that. This house has lived it. This house has figured out that if you just sort of stick around, doing what you were meant to do, fulfilling your natural function, day in and day out, without waivering or falling back, things get better.  Things get lighter and easier to manage. Sadness comes. Tragedy happens. So does triumph. Events take a turn for the better, and then the worse, and then the better again.  But sorrow that hovers near the baseboards cannot stick. It will fade eventually, from enough sunrises, and season changes, and holidays, and milestones.

It's autumn. And I'm writing. In this house, where people live and get through the day. Nothing bad can come of that.

(NOTE: All Photographs in this piece were acquired through Flickr, under the Creative Commons license.)

When It's Time To Let Go (Or, That Rose DeWitt Bukater Was One Smart Cookie)

Several years ago, I made the decision to end a friendship. It had been a close friendship that meant a lot to me at one time.  In fact, when I ended it, it still meant a lot to me.  Letting go of that friendship was one of the hardest decisions I have ever made.  And it wasn't a throwing away. It was truly a letting go, the same way that, in the movie Titanic, Rose lets go of Jack when she realizes that he is beyond saving.

The friendship was beyond saving.

Whatever it was that had brought us together as friends, the thing that continued to bind us had become unhealthy and unwieldy.  There were unkind words spoken and boundaries broken, on both sides, that had slowly eroded the foundation of the friendship.  The final blow was, I'll confess, my doing.  I had suffered a loss - a death in the close family - and this loss had caused my ordinarily temperamental and difficult family to be even more so.  After months of caring for a very ill old man, all of us were frayed and damaged and just plain exhausted.  We had no patience for each other.

There were a handful of friends who picked me up during that time and carried me through that very difficult time by being loving and supportive, by handing me some really useful advice, based on their own recent losses, and by just plain telling me they loved me and, no matter when I called, they would pick up the phone.

And they did.

But she - this friend I released - wasn't one of them.  Instead, she said some harsh things to me that hurt badly, and then when asked to apologize, simply couldn't bring herself to do it. Our final, sad email exchanges sit in a folder in my Outlook - me asking for an unqualified "I'm sorry", and her saying, "Well, I am sorry you misunderstood," or "Well, I'm sorry, but here are all the things you've done to me."  I didn't want to hear that right then. My old man was dead, my heart was broken, my spirit was depleted, and what I wanted to hear was, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. What can I do to help you now?" If I had heard that, all would have been forgiven and the slate would have been cleaned.

When I compared her treatment of me over the past couple of years with that of my other friends, I realized I had a choice to make. A hard choice. I could go on in a friendship that took more energy than I had at that time, that occasionally resulted in emotional and psychological bumps and bruises, and that somehow didn't seem to serve either of us anymore, since she seemed unhappy and dissatisfied as well. Or I could just find a way to walk away.  When I put the choices about this friendship into my mental centrifuge, trying to separate the useless product from what really mattered, I kept coming up with the same results.

Love shouldn't hurt.

This love did. So I did what I needed to do, and said "good-bye".  It was hard. As she got smaller and smaller in my life, more and more distant, I wanted to reach out and scream, "No, come back!" I knew I would miss her.  I would miss the inside jokes. I would miss the movie dates and brunches and birthdays.  I would miss hearing her voice and her laugh.  She was a good friend, whom I'd loved dearly, whom I still love in some small way.

Yet when I said goodbye, when I let the frozen hands of that friendship slip slowly into the metaphorical Atlantic and then turned my attention to saving my own life, as Rose did, I realized that there was a lot more out there for me. My life became a little less chaotic, a little less painful. I missed our good times, but those had become fewer and fewer.  I had thought at one time I'd never be able to survive without her in my life.  In fact, I believe she said nearly these exact words to me.  I did survive, though. I thrived, in fact.

This experience was an invaluable lesson to me. Sometimes, friendships are like Volvos. Sometimes, they're like Yugos.  Ours was somewhere in between - maybe a Ford Fiesta.  But what I learned was that when it's time to get out of that vehicle and into something that better suits my life, I don't have to hesitate.

I don't do that anymore. When the car breaks down, and can't be reliably repaired, I have the right to go. I was reminded this past week that it's all about boundaries.  And sometimes it's about self-salvation.  I can pull those frozen fingers away from my hands and free myself.

Life is short, and I have a lifeboat to catch.

Playing God

Today, we are Catharine, Science Geek. Because I am fascinated by all things medical and scientific, even if they are far beyond what I can comprehend.  The news of the hour is Alana, a pretty New Jersey teenager who has three biological parents.  Yep.  You heard that right. Three. Biological. Parents.

In 1990, Alana's mother was having trouble conceiving a baby. After several attempts at fertilization, doctors theorized that Alana's mother might have a flaw in her mitochondria (the DNA that comes through the maternal line).  They performed a brand new procedure called cytoplasmic transfer, whereby they took one of Alana's mother's eggs, excised the portion of the egg containing the mitochondria, and replaced it with mitochondria from a donor egg.  The resultant hybrid egg was fertilized with sperm from Alana's father, the ovum was implanted in Alana's mother and, presto-chango, nine months later, a pretty, fresh-faced baby, containing genetic material from Alana's mother and father, and the donor female, was born. Fourteen years later, here we are, and here she is:

Shut up, how cute is she? And the only thing unusual about her is that she might confound a DNA test because she has one extra donor to her strand repertoire.

The reason this is of interest now is that the UK is considering fully legalizing the procedure in order to avoid certain diseases of the mitochondria which, though rare, are very debilitating.  The US, however, has already effectively banned the procedure by shuffling it under the auspices of the Food and Drug Administration - which is somewhat perplexing, as it is neither a food nor a drug. The same FDA which has no trouble feeding us mutant corn, is apparently worried that gene replacement therapy will create vast armies of mutant hybrid children who are bent on world domination and can't be killed because of their superhuman physiques and their incomprensible paranormal abilities!

No human cytoplasmic transfers have been attempted in the US since the FDA took it over.

The FDA has said outright that they are concerned that such procedures are tantamount to doctors "playing God" with people's lives.  I'm always amazed when I read about certain medical treatments which have been banned - not because they are not effective, or have been determined to be dangerous - but because we don't want our doctors "playing God".

What in the name of Hippocrates and all that's holy do people think medicine is, anyway? Newsflash, my darling little Neanderthals - the practice of all medicine is, in fact, "playing God". When the mundane world would have you get sick and die from a bacterial infection, your doctor prescribes antibiotics, thereby... "playing God".

When your appendix threatens to burst and cause a potentially fatal case of peritonitis throughout your lower abdomen, the surgeon plays God by cutting you open and removing the offending organ (thereby thwarting pesky Nature and her plans to see you dead and buried once and for all).  I myself was the "victim" of such a God-playing ego maniacal mad scientist, when my unborn child decided that she didn't care what the cool kids were doing, she was coming out butt first.  Her refusal to turn onto her head as her due date approached, coupled with a spike in blood pressure on my part toward the end of the pregnancy, might have been a fatal combination, if my doctor hadn't played God and scheduled a Cesarean section.

Midwives, dentists, chiropractors... all of them are playing God in one way or another by stepping in when Nature is trying to insist on taking it's course, and intervening to save lives and end suffering. Otherwise, doctors and nurses would be standing over your sick bed and praying over you when you got sick, waiting for God to step up to the plate and get the job done. There's a name for that, by the way... Christian Science.

You can't have it both ways.

Either we permit medicine to make some headway on horrendous diseases that can only be cured with stem cell research and gene therapy, like Tay Sachs and cystic fibrosis, and help solve fertility issues and genetic problems by using methods like cytoplasmic transfer, or we stop taking antibiotics and prohibit our children from doing so when they get sick.

(Oh, and... good luck when little Timmy turns up with his first back-to-school ear infection, by the way. Sorry we couldn't play God to save him. Did I mention kids used to die on a regular basis because of ear infections before doctors "played God" by inventing penicillin? No? Oh, well.... We never liked little Timmy much anyway. Always whining about his pus-filled ears. So annoying.)

Face To Face with the Man on the Street (Or Rather, On the Jogging Path)

Dear Guy on the Street Who Just Shouted at Me to Smile:

Actually, in all fairness, you didn't actually shout at me to smile.  To be specific, you said... and I quote, "Hey, baby, why aren't you smiling on a day like today?  What's that face for?"

Since I wasn't aware I was actually making any specific face at the time, I was taken aback by the comment. I had to stop and imagine to which face you could be referring. See, for a moment, I was thinking about myself, and not you, and while I realize that this is rather unforgivable, I confess it happens most of the time. But I imagine, since I was on a running trail, dragging my sorry, too-large ass off the couch for the first time in a long while, it looked something like this.:

That's my "God this is truly annoying, my blood sugar is low, and I could really use a taco" face.

It could also have been my "I'm trying to forget I'm on this running trail by thinking about what I will be writing after I've finished this running tomfoolery and gone home to write" face, which looks something like this:

Or it could be what I call my "Urban Warrior" face.  I don't think I have a picture of that face, but it can be best described as a kind of "I'm either homicidal or crazy or both, so stay the fuck out of my way" face.  This is the face I created when I turned around fifteen and started getting real boobs.  I created it for men like you.  Men with no boundaries.  Men who believe that my sole function in life is to give them something pretty to look at.  See, back then, I used to look more like this:

And because i looked like that, men began letting me know that they were paying attention.  To my face. To my tits.  To my ass. To my body as a whole, and how it pleased and displeased.  My mother, who was an extraordinarily beautiful woman, discovered the same thing around the time she turned fifteen as well.  Usually, her face looked like this:

I was raised in a woman's house by a woman alone.  She once told me, "If you adopt the right attitude, you can walk down any street in any city and be pretty safe.  You cannot be weak.  You cannot show fear.  You cannot look lost or confused.  No matter what, you belong there.  No matter how lost you actually are, you're right where you meant to be. And anyone who tangles with you is in for the fight of his life. People won't fuck with you."  (Note: Nobody fucked with my mother.) So I began to watch her.  When we were on our home turf, she was amiable enough, friendly enough.  But when we were someplace new or strange or out of her comfort zone, the face became hard and kind of ferocious.  I studied that face.  I learned that that face kept men -- men like you, actually -- away from her.  They called out, but they kept their distance. And that's what a woman alone most wants. To be able to walk down a street she doesn't know, or jog on a running path by herself, without having to be worried about being approached by a stranger who wants something from her.  Maybe just a smile.  Maybe more.  Maybe he's just looking for a way to break the ice because he's lonely.  But I have to wonder why he would choose a shout-out as a mode of introduction.

You see, sir, the face I was probably wearing - my "Urban Warrior" face-- was invented for men like you.  Men without boundaries or propriety, who truly believe that women -- all women, of all ages -- were put here to smile at you and make you feel worthy.  Because I was raised by a single woman in a single woman's house, I was raised with no such idea about the world.  I have never been trained to believe that as a woman out in the world, my job is to make men feel better about themselves by plastering a fake smile on my face, even while I'm engaged in a very personal, very internal effort (i.e., jogging to get back into shape).

You may be a perfectly nice man, who simply learned unacceptable modes of behavior from the men around you. You may be a husband and a father and a grandfather to girls - girls you may treat as if they were princesses.You may have never even swatted a fly.  But by shouting out to me in a public place, by trying to augment my behavior to accommodate your aesthetic, you have over-stepped your bounds.

The fact remains that Ted Bundy got almost all of his victims by playing into the societal training that woman receives to be "nice". To be "helpful".  To let down her guard, or be shamed into doing so, because she's not being "nice" and "helpful" enough. You're no Ted Bundy, you'll argue. But I have no way of knowing that. Until I know differently, all men who are unknown to me (and some who are, for that matter) are Ted Bundy, and will be treated accordingly.

"That face" is for you.  "That face" has helped me walk down streets in the roughest neighborhoods in Los Angeles, in Chicago, in Kansas City on the darkest of nights in the wintertime, unscathed.  "That face" saw me through a moment where I got lost in New York City at 19, took the wrong subway and wound up in Hell's Kitchen.  This was pre-Giuliani, pre-"I *heart* New York" Hell's Kitchen -- tight neighborhoods where no strangers were welcome, let alone some blonde Valley Girl tourist.  But "that face" allowed me to -- after the sweet bodega owner took pity on me ("that face" and all) and told me how to get back to Manhattan -- make it to the other subway platform and get back to my hotel.

"That face" is my only weapon in a world that teaches women that we're bitches if we turn a man's advances away, and whores if we don't.  It is the weapon I use in a world that has taught me since childhood that my job is to make it out of this world without getting raped, instead of teaching its men simply not to rape.

So, kindly sir on the running path, thank you for your concern about my face.  No need to worry. I'm pretty sure that my face is just fine.  See I have a few other faces.  Let me treat you to a few that you will never see in your lifetime.

This is my face when with my two best friends in the world:

And this is my face at a birthday party for me, with my friend Valerie, who has known me for... well, let's just say we were embryos when met and leave it at that, shall we?:

And here's my face I save for my darling grandson, who is very funny and wacky:

You didn't see any of these faces because you're not entitled to them.  You don't deserve them.  They don't belong to you, because you haven't earned them. My face belongs to me, just as yours (complete with that loud mouth of yours) belongs to you.  And I'll make the call as to who sees what, if it's all the same to you.

I hope this explains my "face position" once and for all, and alleviates the overwhelming anxiety you seem to feel regarding my facial expressions.

Kind regards.

Yours sincerely,

No One Here Is Amused By My Antics

I was on the phone with a friend a month or so ago, shortly after I'd given notice at work, discussing things that I needed to talk to my bosses about before I left.  He suggested I take the opportunity to "go rogue".  And we laughed, because... like... what are they going to do? Fire me?

"Amanda's dangerous when you let her off the leash," I joked.

After we hung up, though, something about the conversation stuck with me.

Off the leash.

Unchained.

Let loose.

Me, unregulated...

Amanda Without Borders.

I had a t-shirt made back in February that came to me one weekday morning as I was battling nausea and stress, preparing to rise and ready myself for work.  The result of the shirt can be seen at the top of this post.

"No one here is amused by my antics."

It was when I made that shirt that I began to think that I might have to leave.  And more and more, I began to see that, in spite of the dangers and fears, leaving was absolutely positively the right thing to do. Not just leaving this particular job, at this particular company.  But any job like it, at any company.  Because, regardless of how sweet one's corporate boss is (and I've had some truly great ones), no matter how understanding or tolerant, the truth is -- no one here is amused by my antics.  They're busy trying to get their work done.

My antics are who I am, though.  Antics are, in effect, my business. My weird way of looking at the world doesn't fit with most people's.  I'm out of step in a corporate environment, because, honestly, no one gets me.  When the world is looking at you with that RCA Victor dog look - head tipped to one side, trying to figure out what manner of beast you are - it's a little defeating and demoralizing.

"Normal" people.... people who live in a world that isn't punctuated by make-believe, by character development, by plot twists, separated into three acts and starting with literary exposition.... generally assume that I am "being funny" or "being dramatic".  As if it's a lifestyle choice.  What I'm "being" is actually just... me.  The real me.

I've come to realize that being creative is like being gay.  It's not something you choose.  It's just something you are, something that's innate and essential to the core of your identity.

Lady Gaga said it best: You're born that way.

When my daughter was quite young - maybe 10 or so - she asked me what I'd do if she ever came to me and said she was a lesbian.   I had already thought about this, since there's at least a 10% chance with every child that they will be gay, and you'd better figure out how you're going to handle it if they are.  I answered honestly -- that I would tell her I loved her, that I supported anything she chose to do, that I would help her anyway I could. Except one.

I told her I would never support a decision to live as a closeted homosexual.  I came from an era where all homosexuality was hidden in dark places, as if it was something shameful and ugly.  I've seen what it does to people. Coming out is hard on everybody.  But living a lie about something so profoundly a part of one's nature as whom one loves is a travesty and soul-killer.  I told her that I would never support her in self-shaming behavior.

I look back on that conversation and think, I was living as closeted creative.  I was a self-shamer. Every art I ever had - acting, singing, writing -- I have put on the back burner in favor of a steady paycheck.  I have almost certainly missed the acting/singing train (many people have told me so, in no uncertain terms).  That was a choice I made that I didn't realize I was making at the time.  I behaved as if I wasn't entitled to my art.  It wasn't a big money-earner, and my only important job was to earn money.

Now, I have another choice.  To live as a creative - with all the risks and discomforts that entails -- or live in the closet, as if somehow, my art is something shameful and dark and in need of hiding.

If I don't have the guts to take this risk now, to come out of the creative closet, wending my way past the colored pipe cleaners and Popsicle sticks, over the bottles of Elmer's glue and tubes of glitter, and into the bright, unflattering light of day, then I deserve to die alone and miserable.  And I don't deserve that.  No one does.

Amanda without Borders.  Amanda, Unchained.  Off the leash. Out of the shadows.

Now... let's go find us a plot twist and have some real fun, shall we?

SAYING THE DARNEDEST THINGS

[Excerpted from my forthcoming nonfiction book on my observations about living life as a full-time artist. The book is called "NO ONE HERE IS AMUSED BY MY ANTICS."]

I am not quite four years old when the Art Linkletter scouts come to Melrose Nursery School in Los Angeles, on the prowl for kids who say the darnedest things.  It is the end of summer, beginning of autumn, and though I have been assigned to the kindergarten-level classes, I will not turn four until early November.  This is the Age of Father Knows Best, when most kids my age are at home with their moms during the day and won't start school for another two years.  My parents are not together, my mother works, and I have been in nursery school for as long as I can remember.  I have been reading for nearly a year by now.  In another year, by age four and three-quarters, I will skip public school kindergarten and go straight to first grade.  

I am minuscule for my age and verbally precocious - probably obnoxiously so.  I am, it will be reported on every progress report and report card I will ever get, "loquacious and outgoing" which is teacher parlance for "has a vocabulary beyond her grade-level and won't shut her damn pie hole".   I am called in from the playground, much to my dismay, because this means I will miss my turn on the swings and for one of the smallest, youngest kids in the class, that's a big deal.  There are about twenty-five kids, and only three swings.  

It's dog-eat-dog.

I am taken to one of the classrooms with several other children and two grown-ups I've never seen before begin talking to us, asking us questions about our parents, about our pets, about our favorite games and toys, and how we like school.  I think nothing of this.  It's the early Sixties, and where children are concerned, most adults have very few boundaries.  This is long before "Stranger Danger" and it isn't unusual for total strangers to  come up to you and ask you your age, your favorite foods, and who your mother is, little girl, without so much as a by-your-leave.  Granted, given my size, most people assume that, rather than pushing the grand old age of four, I'm more like an older two or younger three, so when they see me in the toy section of Owl Rexall by myself -- where our mothers left us completely unattended regularly until that rat bastard pervert came along and nabbed Adam Walsh -- they probably assume I've wandered off and my mother must be frantic by now.  Looking back, I'd probably make this assumption, though I hate to admit it. 

I answer all the questions put to me (and some put to the other kids, because speaking out of turn is and always will be an unpleasant habit of mine).  I know that some of my answers have come as a surprise to my teachers, to Daddy Frank (the school's owner) and to myself on some level.  When the two strange grown-ups are finished with us, we are sent back outside, where I try to get into line for the swings again. When an older, bigger girl gets in my way, I take every inch of my tiny size and every thermal unit of my anger and righteous indignation, and I throw it at her, shoving her off her feet and to the ground. 

This guy thought I was a laugh-riot.

Back in those days, I knew just how to deal with Resistance with a capital R.

Today, I have no recollection what happened after the two grown-ups left Melrose Nursery School.  I just know at some point, I found myself at CBS Studios on Fairfax awaiting my "big break" on Art Linkletter's House Party, one of several children in a room, waiting for grown-ups to tell me what I was doing there and what was expected of me.  There were toys in the room - I do remember that.  Neat toys, too - Legos, dolls, Radio Flyer wagons, and a couple of tricycles, including a red one which I appropriated immediately and refused to share during my entire tenure in that room.  It was mine, and I wasn't going to risk losing it to one of the bigger kids. 

Hey, kid.  This is my tricycle.  Touch it, and things are going to get really ugly, really quick.  There's a new sheriff in town, she's riding a little red tricycle and she'll give you an elbow to the solar plexus just as soon as look at you. 

My memory of that time is very hazy, except that at some point they separated us into groups of four or five kids, and took each group out and sat us in the empty studio, with only our parents in the audience.  They asked us questions again -- about our pets, and our parents, our favorite things - which was confusing to me, because at least one of the interrogators had been at Melrose the day I was first scouted.  Wasn't he listening?

At one point, the woman who is asking us questions asked what we wanted to be when we grew up.  There was much hemming and hawing among my young panel-mates.  We were four-, five- and six-year-olds, for cripes' sake - we have to decide now?  The usual answers popped out of my older colleagues' mouths.

"Fireman."

"Pilot."

"Ballerina."

And then it was my turn, and before I knew what I was saying, my answer - completely truthful and completely a surprise, even to me, left my lips:

"An actress, a cowgirl and a mommy."

The parents in the seats laughed, the two staffers laughed, the cameramen who were milling around adjusting cable laughed.   

That gentle tittering sent an electric jolt through me.  Every hair on my body stood up.   I had said something and what I'd said had made grown-ups other than my parents laugh out loud.

After we were sufficiently prepped, out came "the Man himself" - Art Linkletter.  Of course, I had no idea who Art Linkletter was at the time, but he was nice enough and seemed to be uncommonly interested in all of us for an adult. I glanced up at my mother in bleacher seats, and she didn't seem to be panicking, so I assumed he wasn't an immediate danger to my person.  He was a very nice man who put us all at ease with his gentle manner and his easy-going affect. 

After our brief introduction to Mr. Linkletter, we were led offstage to await our "Kids Say The Darnedest Things" segment.  When we were brought back out, everything had changed.  The lights were full on and bright, the bleacher seats were packed with people I'd never seen before, and I couldn't find my mother's face in the crowd.  As it happens, for reasons I was never able to get him to explain, my father, who was sitting on the aisle near the exit door in the back, stood up just as we sat down, and I recognized his silhouette almost immediately, though I couldn't see much detail past the hotter-than-the-sun's-surface television lights used for taping back in those days. Seeing his familiar figure saved me.  I was, for all my bluster and schoolyard bravado, only three, and I surely would have failed miserably, had I not seen someone I knew in the stands.

From there, it happened really quickly.  Questions and answers from Mr. Linkletter, mostly answered by older, less intimidated panel-fellows.  Then he asked me if there something that my mother said to me all the time that made me mad.  Again, the words slipped out of my mind, rolled down the back of my cerebral cortex and landed flat on my tongue -mimicking exactly my mother's tone of voice - which was yelling at full volume - the very last thing my mother had said to me the evening before, which had made me quite mad:

"GO TO BED!"

This time, the laugh was from more than a few parents and stage hands.  It felt like there were hundreds of people (there couldn't have been more than 100, realistically), laughing in unison, including Mr. Linkletter, who made a surprised face and then guffawed.  This time, what I felt was more than a tingling sensation.  My cheeks burned bright scarlet, but it was only half out of embarrassment.  I remember that laugh as if it were yesterday.  It awoke something deep in the pit of my stomach - terrifying and powerful, but also fascinating and awe-inspiring.

Somewhere around my fourth birthday, I learned two valuable lessons.  If I said just exactly what was on my mind, without filter or editor, without restraint or good judgment, I could make people laugh out loud.  And also, I learned that hearing that sound was, for me, something akin to oxygen.

When I was not quite four, I figured out that somebody, somewhere could be amused by my antics.  I'll always be grateful to Art Linkletter for that.

A Valentine Love Story

I have been feeling particularly open to Valentine's Day this year -- not sure why, and I'm not sure I care why.  I thought, instead of my amorphous Seneca quote cover page, I'd take at least Friday - the actual day - to have a true, hearts-and-flowers, HappyValentine-y image for my cover photo.

So I set about Google to find just the one that made me smile.  The sheer number of Valentine's images on any search engine is staggering, let me tell you.  And many of them are cartoons and teddy bears (no, thanks), flowery sentiments (I'd rather not this year, if you don't mind), and images of Edward and Bella (still? seriously?) in hearts looking longingly at each other (do vampires get to celebrate Valentine's Day, I ask myself).  

Then I happened on a quiet little image from a Valentine promotion that a pub was doing last year - some special giveaway on Valentine's night during Happy Hour.  Aha, I thought.  This might be just the thing.  It was abstract, red on a colorful background, looking very much like a painting.  No slogans. No teddy bears. No vampires (thank the gods).   It was different.

Yet... also... familiar... 

I opened it up to full-sized in the browser and took a better look.  My eye was immediately drawn to the signature in the lower left hand corner.

"Sowards '01"

Yep.  I made it, twelve years ago, using an old iteration of UltraFractal and a filter program by Alien Skin called Snap Art.  I had it posted on an art blog a while ago.  Someone must have lifted it from there for their own use.  (Just a little reminder this Valentine's Day when you're considering posing in front of a digital camera for your Significant Other in that new negligee... Relationships come and go, but the interwebs is forever, kids.)

It still holds up, by golly.  I love art, and I also love the internet - both for reasons that are different, yet familiar.  

Happy Valentine's Day, my peeps.  I love you all.

(CORRECTION: I believe the filter program I used was Eye Candy, not Snap Art.)

For Us Or Against Us

I have stated on this blog in the past that I have mixed feelings about Edward Snowden, the whistle-blower who brought the entire NSA surveillance fiasco to light.  Most of my objections regarding Snowden revolve around his sketchy motives and his demeanor that makes him appear as though he's a publicity hound.  I have stated that I never got the feeling Daniel Elsberg particularly wanted to be famous for exposing the Pentagon Papers.  I get the opposite vibe from Snowden.  While I think it was important that the NSA's activity be brought to light and made transparent, I am uncomfortable -- deeply uncomfortable -- with the idea that a person would blow the top of a secret government spy agency simply for the self-aggrandizement.
Now that several national newspapers are angling for clemency for Snowden, there is sure to be renewed discussion about why he did what he did.  Is he a freedom-loving American, truly motivated by a desire to take us back to pre-Patriot Act protections against unwarranted search-and-seizure methods by the government?  Or is he a shallow opportunist angling for his 15 minutes of fame?

At this point, I neither know nor particularly care.  The NSA has been outed, the government has had to come forward and take a stand saying everything they're doing is hunky-dory, and that's that.

I am disturbed though by this black-and-white characterization of Snowden is beginning to form.  At the bottom of the HuffPost article, there's a little survey asking "Is Edward Snowden a hero or a traitor." HuffPost readers get to click a little button by either "hero" or "traitor" and neatly wrap up a complex and multi-layered situation with the mere point-and-click of the mouse.

Why? Why does Snowden have to be either?

I can find nothing that he's done to make him much of a hero. But neither do I find his behavior traitorous. He's made a bit more transparent an intelligence agency that has quietly been building steam and strength since it was formed in 1952.   Unlike the CIA, the NSA is absolutely entitled to spy on American citizens on American soil.  Now, they're being allowed to do it wholesale, without benefit of a warrant or judge's order. Somebody should be keeping an eye on that, don't you think?

But Snowden is no hero, either.

He's kind of a conniver and a schemer who used a classified position to get the goods on the government.  It's like asking a two-bit conman to testify against a mob boss. You're glad he brought the mob boss down, but you wouldn't invite him to Thanksgiving if you could help it.

What happens with regard to continued or broadened NSA surveillance remains to be seen. As I've said before, I'm glad there is an awareness now of just how much harm the Patriot Act has done to erode Constitutional freedom in this country.  We have spent the last twelve years, allowing our leaders to govern us through fear and threat.  And as such, we have gotten precisely the country we ordered out of the catalog.

Now, we know.  And we do have Snowden to thank for it.

So I will say "thank you" and send him on his way, without a title that burdens either of us.