Pretty (?) in Pink

Husband and I watched Pretty in Pink last night, because movies made in this decade have disappointed us too much and we're not ready to forgive them yet. Some of our reactions:

What is she wearing?

What's up with that hair?

It's not Matthew Broderick, it's Jon Cryer.

Who is that? I know that guy. What's he in?

What is he wearing?

What ever happened to her?

Oh my God, they're doing all this weird 80's stuff, only they're not being ironic about it.

Andrew Dice Clay is in this?!

I love this song!

It's not Matthew Broderick. It's Jon Cryer.

Stop poking each other in the face when you kiss!

I used to have the biggest crush on him.

It's Jon Cryer!

Look, the guy from Three and a Half Men and the guy from Blacklist are fighting. That's funny.

Yeah. It's totally not Matthew Broderick.

I still hate that guy's face.

How do you possibly take two ugly dresses, put them together and wind up with something even uglier?

Man, they wrapped up those plot points pretty nicely. Proof that all you need to get along in this world is a "can-do" attitude, Molly Ringwald's face, and some good tunes.

One More Step

Sleep was fitful last night.

Husband is gone. Sleep is always fitful when he is away. I turned on my heating pad in the middle of the night, trying to fool my unknowing body into believing it was human heat. It worked for a while until the safety switch turned it off and I awoke and remembered once more that I was alone. Stupid safety. And I heard about how zoos will give orphaned baby animals stuffed animals as mother figures. Sometimes we just need something.

I read, once, somewhere, a line in bold print: PEOPLE ARE NOT MEDICINE. And I thought that it was actually backwards: MEDICINE IS NOT PEOPLE, it should have read. People are better than medicine. Husband is my Prozac, my Xanax, my Ambien. I live in fear of something happening to him. I'll be on a whole host of anti-psychotic drugs that I have spent years preaching against. What's wrong with using people you love to calm your crazy fears. Isn't that what people are for?

Wear your seat belt and drive safe, I want to tell Husband before he leaves the house in the morning. Don't leave me on this planet, alone with all my anxieties.

I fed children and got them to school with my brain still foggy from lack of sleep and even though I wanted nothing more than to crawl back into bed, I ran the crater. I have had to narrow my focus down to one singular goal so that I don't try to live in too many directions at once. Get up the Hill. That is my goal. Or, more accurately, run up the Hill.

I made it a little further today than I did yesterday, just a step. I'm satisfied with that, because I have to be. That's all it takes though, just one more step.

Rules for Hiking (and…you know…life too)

1. Pack out what you pack in. And vice versa.

2. Drink lots of water. Water is nearly always the answer. 

3. If you start to fall, turn it into a slide. It hurts less and looks cooler.

4. Remember: Up is hard, down is frightening, level terrain that never changes is easy and a nice break…but dull.

5. Never hike alone. Except…do. Do hike alone. Definitely hike alone. Yes, it is risky, but life is risky. It’s risky to get out of bed in the morning, drive a car, boil water for tea, love someone. Life is full of risks. This is one you should take.

6. Tell someone your hike plan. Except, sometimes don’t. Sometimes do things just for you, not because you need to tell the world about it. Go for a hike and then don’t update your Facebook status, tweet, write a review on Yelp, and for god's sake, please do not blog about it and some nonsense of how hiking is like life….This can also be risky (see #5).

7. Bring snacks. Snacks are the best.

8. Read Mary Oliver. Maybe not while you're hiking--seems dangerous. Maybe sit on a fallen tree trunk or large rock first and then...read Mary Oliver.

9. Don’t worry about the serious hikers. When you see them coming, just say to yourself—Serious hiker alert! and then move to the side to let them pass. Yes, they’ll get there faster than you, but you will have heard more birds sing, smelled more raindrops on leaves, felt more wind on your face, fallen more, and have more blisters.

10. Have a map, but only let it be your guide. Have a plan, but sometimes veer from it.

11. Don’t worry about the way you look—sweaty, red-faced, muddy—nothing like those women in the Eddie Bauer catalog. You look truly god-awful, who gives a crap.

12. When you get to the top of the mountain, panting, gasping for breath, clinging to tree limbs to pull you up and you see a little old lady up there chatting away happily in rapid-fire Japanese and you think to yourself—How the hell did she get up here? Remind yourself: You are a wimp.

Doing Time

I took a month off from my novel. Saved it on a thumbdrive <outside.revision4> and vowed not to open it again until I had distance. Fresh eyes.

I became unbearably lonely without it, didn’t quite know what to do, who I was, without <outside.revision4> open on my laptop. I was uncomfortable, itchy, lost for a few days.

Then I made a list of books to read. I inhaled the books I loved, labored over ones I didn’t, forced myself to finish them. Made another list. Another and another.

I went on hikes through green woods, scrambled up the sides of mountains, searching for toeholds to propel me up. When you really need to move forward, any ole toehold will do. It doesn’t have to be fancy. I saw the true beauty of a 360 degree view—nothing in the way. I got lost and followed two highly-educated, super-fit, upper-middle class ladies until I realized their path wasn’t the one I wanted to take. Besides, they were moving too fast for me. I slipped and fell on the loose, treacherous path I ended up choosing and then soaked my scraped body in the sea.

I wrote all my words on notecards in pencil. Notecards began to pile on counter tops, dresser tops, any horizontal surface in the house and then in my car. They acted as bookmarks with my long-forgotten handwriting on them. They hid in my sheets, stabbed me in the leg in the middle of the night, waking me. The words didn’t necessarily have meaning for me. Most of it was useless, a reflection of a thing, not the thing itself.

I sat on my porch and watched construction workers on the street below—covered against the hot sun, moving dirt from one spot to another, and then a jogger sped by, gone before I even fully realized he was there.

I sat in silence.

I listened to the same song on repeat for hours, never tiring of it, but hearing something new every time—one art teaching another. I wrote a story no one will ever read based on the song. I wrote it not because it needed to be read, but because it needed to be written.

I ate no meat without even realizing it until supper one night when I picked all the chicken out of my portion of the chicken casserole I’d made. I asked myself: When have you last had meat, self? Self could not remember. So, what, are you a vegetarian now, self? "I don’t think so," self answered back.

I walked down seashores, initially insecure in my solitude, and then finding comfort in it. I wrote on notecards about it. I discovered I forgot how to spell and I really like the word choke. It kept coming up—choke. I conjugated it in my head, just because it felt good bumping around in my mind: I choke, you choke, he/she chokes, we choke, they choke. Choke.

I wasn’t taking time away from my novel. I was doing time away from it. Precious time to ask myself one question: Do you write, or are you a writer?

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Depths

The ocean doesn’t want you.

She rejects you time and again when you attempt to enter her depths. But then . . . an act of faith, a submersion, a push, and you are past her angst—you are in her. There you are nothing—a head bobbing on water, no duty, no service. Not waiting for anything to happen, but living in the happening, being the happening. Cool blue, nothing in the distance but that place where the sea meets the sky—the horizon. When you’re feeling dizzy, prevailing wisdom says, look at the horizon to regain your equilibrium.

You know something about who you are in that moment. Who you really are when you don’t have to be anything to anyone. A truth. And even if you don’t understand the truth, it’s still there—waiting to be grasped, accepted. Behind you are the screams of those in the shallow as waves pound their bodies, but you are safe, you are deep enough.

You can’t stay forever in her depths, promises forbid it. Life doesn’t all happen in the depths: some happens in the shallows, some on shifting sand, some on solid ground. When you’re ready, she shoots you out again—a messy, ungainly rebirth—crawling back to the life you made for yourself.

Up

My house is high on the rim of a volcanic crater. This is a good thing when you live in a tropical environment and you don’t check the weather for temperature and chance of rain (sunny, 80’s, 10% chance), but for tradewinds and the occasional tropical storm threat. This is also a good thing when you need to get in shape.

I took my lazy body for a run around my neighborhood, which dips to the valley and rises around the crater again in a three mile loop. I started strong on my one mile downhill with an exhilarating, almost childlike love of running, having a fleeting desire to hold my arms out and holler, “Wheeee!” and continued running on the flat valley where I started to feel the many weeks of inactivity in my muscles. I decided I would walk back up the crater and when the climb started, I smiled and marveled at the nature around me and felt blessed to live in such a place.

But the mountain would not end. It would not stop going up. My legs started to give out, my head was fuzzy from heat, I needed water. I worked to keep my torso upright, but kept wanting to slouch, even crawl, the rest of the way home. So, I did what I always do when I’m uncomfortable…I looked for a way out of it.

There was no way out.

The only way through was up.

There was no giving up. I couldn’t turn back, there was another mountain that way too. It was literally uphill both ways. But then it hit me. It was just like life. I have to climb the mountain to do anything, I have no choice. The only way through is up.

I had to conquer the mountain, and suddenly I had to conquer my unfounded fears too—three inch flying cockroaches and customer service reps and parallel parking. And yes, I've been trying to get a book published for six years, but that’s okay, because the only way through is up.

Then it happened, I made it to the top of the mountain. Sprinklers went off beside me and cooled my skin as I strolled along the grass-lined sidewalk. I turned a corner and saw it—another hill looming in the distance. Just when I think I've made it to the top, there’s another challenge to overcome. I will never really arrive. And the only way through is up.

My fingers started to swell on this last hill, my shirt was soaked with sweat, and when I finally saw my house, Spaceman came on my iPod, like some kind of iPod ESP. “Spaceman says everybody look down, it’s all in your mind.”