On the Cross

Sometimes when I'm cruising over to Silverlake I get a suburban sense. It's not the flowery air I don't think and the houses don't look familiar, neither are the palm trees or the winding hills. I wish I could figure it out, but I can't. We do not have to know the something, we need only to recognize the something and not ignore it.

I've been failing more, which means expanding the odds. I biffed it at a stand-up set. Why not? I said going in. Can't hurt. In hindsight, perhaps it hurt. You never know when someone is keeping a tab, or a list, and blacklining your name. There's something to wasting people's time. But there's also something to risking wasting people's time to make people's time. There's also something to be said for building up that callous of opportunities miscarried. I'm in denial it's almost May. LA has that same Time Stands Still Syndrome that keeps everyone in Arizona in Arizona. It's as though no season has passed. I wonder if we stop feeling behind when we get out from the backside or if we stop feeling behind when we stop feeling behind.

The stress I think most people feel doesn't hurt me. I came from humbler beginnings, so I have less to lose. My stress is a particular kind of twitch between my brain and my eye hole from refreshing application pages and proofing my script for the four-hundred-millionth time. Not stress, but my wheel is from spinning over the same conversation I plan to have with a coworker who hates me, a conversation she will never agree to. I focus like a laser sending in my materials, zap, zap, zap. Puhg in bed for an hour reading. He says, "I bet you a million dollars your next opportunity does not come from whatever you just did." And he is very likely correct.

Meanwhile I find, in general, here, people look inward more. The benefits are the "energies" and "manifesting" and the possibilities. No one decent soul will judge a dream. At the same time, I admit I call my Congressman less. I wait to be told more. I have become optimistic about enough change in two years that all is not lost, which I was certain of in a winter city.

There's a ball of hairy pressure on seconds, I explain over a bowl of spicy gnocchi. If I loved something the first time, I am worried it cannot be surpassed the second. I worry over this on multiple levels. If you and I have so much fun, how do we even go up? If I had a perfect day at that theme park why would I chance a second trip? Isn't there that fact about drug hits? That's what someone told me. She had done acid exactly one time because scientifically it would never improve. I'd never do acid, but I would relate that logic to seeing a movie twice.

Millennials need more signposts at their careers, I'm told. More promotions. This has been true of me. I have never stopped moving. What would it be like to be in the same groove for ten years? Even five. I am relieved I do not fear a stable day, but I am certain it is an ocean away.

Italy: Part Three

This was the Italy I imagined. The vines of tiny green grapes wrapping up the hillside. The dark swimming hole. Cemetary perch.

We had our "Big Nice Meal" in the nicest spot our guidebook recommended. Reservations are "a must" we read. Our little host greeted us with vigor and shots of lemonchello. We asked about dining tonight at the top of the hill. He was on the phone in a flash. "9 PM balcony? He is my friend." I wore my new cream dress.

We were seated just after sunset, when the ocean glowed pink. Bread and cuttlefish ink pasta and fresh anchovies, mozzarella prawn, calamari, sweet onion tuna--all in tiny boats, bite-sized and increasingly divine. I drank a vanilla tea and we shared a tiramisu. Bisque left for the bathroom, and I sat, as I now often do with no cell service, quietly enjoying my loneliness.

When he came back he asked me what time I thought it was. I didn't know. But, my, was it dark. "Eleven," he said. I asked for a second dessert--a chocolate almond cake--and we made it home close to midnight.

Italy: Part Two

Uffizzi was probably a couple of the worst hours of my life. Menstural cramps hit hard and I was like "Venus? That's cool, but I think I might scream and/or rip out my own womb and fling it onto this Michaelangelo real quick." I felt bad for hustling Bisque through, but later we discovered he doesn't enjoy lingering in galleries anyway. Actually, the whole ovary explosion was probably a benefit for him as I would usually have been diddling around the plaques and leaving him bored at the end of every hall.

I spent most of the day crying or trying not to cry because I was emotional about basically everything from the street violinist playing Cats (interestingly enough I was not moved by "Memory" but more enraged that people internationally still love Cats when it's really just fine.) to extreme sadness that we had little slabs of only mediocre pizza for dinner and never took a bus anywhere and I saw a hurt pigeon outside the Museum of Modern Art and why didn't Bisque hold my hand through that crowded sidewalk?

David was impressive, sure. We saw some neat crypts. Churches that are so incredible you start to walk into rooms with only one phenomenal piece of stained glass and think, "Pfft. People are supposed to pray in this dungbox?"

Florence was good to me in that it stayed cloudy while we walked everywhere and I had this surprise fantastic Parmesan gnocchi for lunch. But, sigh, you can take the girl out of the Midwestern May, but you can't take a Midwestern May out of the girl. Mainly I was ready for Friday to end.

Luckily it did. And when I awoke our breakfast in bed of coffee and croissant included a small berry muffin. We had one item on our itinerary before the train. We climbed the Duomo. The sun burst in through the patches of concrete in the steep steps. The top was real Italy like you see in books. I felt my smile pump back into my face.

It was a joyful day of transit thanks to Bisque's navigational skills and the vending machine milk bars.

I listened to Light in the Piatzza while he slept. We arrived in Cinque Terre, literally breathtaking. Welcome to Leg Three.

MLK

I live in an extremely beautiful place. Yesterday I walked downtown, then around the lake. I was gone for a couple hours and wasn't even thinking about it. It was perfect fall weather--sun hiding under thin grey clouds, a nip in the air, but avoided with a simple sweater. There was so much life on the main street--visitors in victory and white wick tees. Yesterday morning was the Phoenix marathon. People celebrated on the patio of the Mediterranean cafe, smiled with beers at the New Orleans-themed joint. A woman limped happily into the used book store. I was nostalgic for my victory day. I showered all the salt off my body in North Carolina. Nac and I laid in bed watching Mad Men and eating Ben and Jerry's from cartons. Everything was slow. A sunset on Shell Island is the desktop on this computer.

I made a big bowl of vodka pasta at 9 PM last night and ate it slowly while watching Hitchcock's Spellbound. Like a child, I recognized today would be a holiday, and I wanted to stay up past my bedtime. I examined my list of letters I needed to write, tuned in to The Mountain Goats, and got out my sharpees. I remembered Dr. King and some of the best things he said. I remembered my best friends and some of the best things they've said.

I am gonna make it through this year
if it kills me.