Maybe It Just Looks Different

When I was in third grade my life's dream was impossible. It's very confusing to hear, "You can be anything you want to be when you grow up!" and also, "7 is too old to become a gymnast." This feeling has haunted me for most of my life. Too late, too late. I don't know where the spirit came from. I'd like it to go. I believe what people tell me, and many people have told me I am too late. A director I loved explained wherever women are at 26 are where they stay. He was regretful about it, like, it's sad but true, toots. He thought he was lighting my fire. He thought I was 22. I was 27.

I don't think I would have traded it for the fall musical or my beloved speech team, but I wanted to play JV soccer in high school.. But everyone else had been on rec center leagues. I don't have "I'll show you" in my blood. I never have. Senior year I wrote a paper about how jealous I was of M Night Shymalan who so clearly knew what he wanted from life so his dad paid for him to go to NYU film school to do it.

But behind and ahead aren't real, I know. I see people lap me and sit the next one out. I underestimate someone who blows past me. It's not a track at all, actually.

So in third grade it was kind of hard to come to terms with this whole, "you're washed up even though you just found out about it" thing. I liked to play the first track of my George Winston CD and do a floor routine in the living room. I could do a cartwheel at least.

I let the dream float away. I did a local play or I became obsessed with Limited Too body spray. I read mystery chapter books. But what I didn't know is the dream never left me, it just put on a new outfit. It chucked what I didn't care about--the Olympics, muscles--and left what I liked--moving, with feeling, to music. So years and years later I fell in love with step class. And I performed weekly with my improvised musical cast. And we even had all these sell-out shows at the biggest theatre festival in the world where, yes, we were known to do a dance break or eight. I know for sure, high on a big number, I've done my share of leaps and tumbles. So maybe it just looks different.

If You Left It Up to Me

The weirdest part is this was always how it was going to be. I had plots and plans for these past months in February, but now they seem like clouds. Not laughable, not sad. Translucent and cold. I am mad beyond words at what my government did and continues to do to its people, my neighbors. I am made and awake. I thought I was awake before. Then I woke up and dreamt of being awake. So for the people who are really and truly struggling and dying, I would wish for a time machine. I can't think of a worse way to go, alone, kissing loved ones goodbye over FaceTime. It breaks my heart.

But for me, I don't know how else to say, I am grateful it is happening. I am blessed to be more radical, to have been trapped in a corner of reading what is the universe literature, to have written the scariest play I've ever written and shed more relationships I don't need. Blessed by how many times I've swam this summer (even yesterday). Blessed to question how often I didn't eat at home. Blessed to be with Puhg a kajillion minutes a day. To have tried new things--like the swam boats at Echo Park and site-specific theatre on a hiking trail. To have been in forest cabin and a on the balcony of a beach inn.

I mourn our trip to Japan. I fear I'll never do the work I want to do again. Maybe my weekly theatre closed. History collapsed. It happened faster than I would have thought I could handle, but I did handle it, so that must mean something.

Weeks to lose my mind and weeks to sleep too much. Writing horror feature for no one and phone calls to anyone. There's this pervasive idea that we've lost all this time and experience, but I feel like I've experienced more in most days than ever before because it's just us in here--me and my soft squishy brain. Fewer distractions than ever, I haven't always been happy, but it does feel right.

Santa

Something beautiful is the ocean. It is too big to be beautiful, too powerful. Too free. It is ocean. There is no real way to describe it if you're there, 20-40 feet from the beach, about to touch the buoy. The sound is quiet but only because itself is so deafening. It's so everything you forget you're in it. The mountains. Those can't be. Hard and rocky when all you're doing is floating. And you wonder how many people walk into this very slosh hoping to never walk out, maybe with weights attached, and at the last minute they realize they could have just come here every day instead of the places they hated.

The salt will sting but it's also a seasoning. It smells like fresh and tastes like life. I ran into it after a two miler. I felt it wiped me clean. All I had was my droopy underpants and a striped sports bra. That was plenty. A reminder that holding clothes all dirty and sandy, shoving your shoes under your armpit is acceptable. Walk back across the street barefoot and grimy but better than before.