PROLOGUE
The theater is dark and packed. Outside it’s a hot and cloudy afternoon in New York City but inside dawn is about to break over the English countryside.
From the moment the curtain lifts and Mark Rylance begins to act the acting out of his role as Rooster Byron in the play, Jerusalem, the audience leans forward and this is where they stay - edgy, open, grateful. Two and a half hours in and they’re a mixture of exhausted and exhilarated and everyone wants more.
Rooster, who the playwright has put through hell, is banging on a drum and bleeding from every orifice. His home is about to be bulldozed, all of his friends have left, his child has given up believing he will ever be the man he’s meant to be and his last hope - that a giant he’d (maybe) met near Stonehenge will appear to save him - is nowhere to be found.Literally beaten and spiritually broken by circumstance and his own failings, Rooster calls forth each of his ancestors by name, demands their assistance at the top of his lungs and drums until his palms are as purple as plums. He is stripped down to his most human self, desperate for transformation and, somehow, impossibly, filled with hope.Then… the trees on the stage start to sway wildly in an off-stage wind. Then… heavy footsteps - a giant’s footsteps - loud enough to rumble the theater - can be heard approaching. Then… the curtain comes down. Hard.
It takes me a second to realize I’ve stopped breathing and started crying. Everyone has. I’m swept into the thunderous applause - hooting and hollering for a standing ovation that lasts FIVE minutes. I look to the man on my left, a stranger before that moment, and we clasp hands, beaming at each other like a couple of headlights.I’d forgotten how community is always thisclose, just waiting for me to show up. I tell the stranger this. He nods and smiles. I yell over the audience, “Everyone is just waiting for everyone to show up, right?” He nods again.
A few minutes later, while washing my hands in the ladies room, I catch my reflection in the mirror – red nose, swollen eyes – and think of the horoscope I’d read two days before: “A journey or a meeting takes you back in time and you may be surprised what you find buried under years of neglect…”
ACT ONE
The biggest surprise was the journey itself. Because of the terrorists and their big bag of bullshit I have a fear of flying so crippling that I haven’t left the state of California in a very, very long time. If I can’t get there by car, it’s off the list. In my microscopic corner of the universe, they really did win and I hate myself for letting them take what had been, up until then, an incurable case of wanderlust.
For years I was always just getting back from somewhere or just getting ready to go. I see photos of myself, each dated before that Tuesday morning – Vietnam, Paris, Austin - and squint to make out the woman who believed the world was tiny - the one who wanted to see every centimeter - and I barely recognize her.
In place of actual travel, I’ve spent my time logging on to airline websites and planning routes to places I’ve yet to see, knowing full well I won’t buy a ticket. I look at my friend’s Facebook pages stuffed with photos of their great lives until, utterly disgusted with myself for being such a pussy, I eat entire tubs of whatever I can find that comes in tubs.You see, the thing is, I used to be kinda cool. Now I’m not. During the early days of the blog I set out to accomplish a weekly challenge so I could go back to being cool but I haven’t been able to keep up with it because I’ve felt like a fraud. How can I write about the glory of this life and the big banquet we all have to eat from if my only daily activity is walking to the mailbox and back? My “existence” has been equal parts fear, poverty and terrible luck - luck that can only be attributed to a lifetime of bitch slapping leprechauns – and I’ve had nothing to say.
But then, out of the blue, Roni called and offered me a trip to NY. She has always been positively Amazonian in both her generosity and her lust for life and she’d been worried about me for a while. She’d wholeheartedly supported the divorce and the writing but had grown weary of my recent disappearing act.
“I’ve had it with you,” she said when she called that night. “You’re coming and I don’t want to hear any of your bullshit excuses. Waa-Waa to someone else, just get your ass to LAX and I’ll take care of the rest.” My fear of flying is nothing compared to my fear of losing Roni’s respect so I tried to remember how to pack a suitcase, lubed up for my TSA search and found a seat at the gate with a view of the bar.
I took one, two and, finally, three (they were small) Valiums and in a dreamy haze I saw the writing on the wall. Literally. A part of the terminal was under construction and on a dusty support beam someone had spray-painted: Ub4. I stared at it forever (I was really, really high) and burst into tears. Some of the other passengers eased away from me or pretended not to stare as I tried to make sense of what had happened to the b4 me.
Who was I before Dash or the troubles with Slim? Who was I before the bust up of the family? Before John broke my heart? I’d gone from a globe-trotting, table-dancing bon vivant to a woman too self-conscious to go to the market because there was no money for an eyebrow wax. I’d stopped having sex and stopped dreaming. I’d started chewing my nails to the quick and stopped writing.
They called for us to board and by the time I found my seat in the seventeenth-hundred row, in the middle of two smelly fat guys (fuck you, leprechauns) I not only didn’t care if the plane went down, I was kinda hoping it would. I ordered a Gin & Tonic and assumed the crash position.
Once airborne I pulled out the computer "to journal." I decided to use the 5 hour flight like an archaeologist at a dig – sweeping away the dust to uncover the bones – and the hope was that by the time we landed, I would have answered the riddle of my own antiquity and emerge from the skies re-born.I drank the gin in one swill. It reminded me of my flight to Europe the summer I graduated from high school. It was the first time I’d had a grown up cocktail. Before then it had been rum and Coke (without ice) out of someone’s trunk at the Marina Greens in San Francisco but suddenly drinking was less about unprotected sex and throwing up into the bay and more about pretending I was French. I thought about my cousin, Taj. He and I had gone on that trip to Europe together and in a few hours (God willing) I would be at his apartment in Chelsea.
I tried to write, tried to sweep away the dust, but mostly I stared past the gut of my fellow passenger and out into the inky black sky. There is a piece of evidence missing from my memory, I know it, the one that will crack the case but before I had the chance to figure out how to get the me before to merge with the me now, I passed out.
ACT TWO
I’m on the rooftop at Taj’s apartment. The deck is covered in silver paint and when the sun bounces off, the reflection clears up everyone’s skin. We’re all so beautiful. I’d forgotten. Flowers of every conceivable color and shape bloom in big pots. There’s food and wine and easy conversation. Taj and his wife, Rey, embraced me with such force upon my arrival that I haven’t been able to stop smiling.I can see the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building from my perch under their painted umbrella. The city sounds like summer. We sit around a table holding hands. It’s hot out and my face hurts from all the smiling and I can’t remember the last time I was this happy.
Taj and Rey live life out loud and this enthusiasm emanates in every thing they do – how they speak, love, cook, decorate – everything a wild mixture of Dominican, Pakistani, Italian, French and American. No sentence commits to a single language. We yell across the roof to each other (and to our friends who have joined us) “Tu quiero, caro mio! I am so happy to see you. Basta – it’s ridiculous but, you know, Je t’aime, mija. Really. Mangiare, tutti.”
It’s. Heaven.
We stay on the roof for 10 hours – from the moment I arrive until we force ourselves to go to bed. They tuck me in with kisses and as I fall asleep I realize that Roni has given me the most extraordinary gift – she has forced me home to find myself even without knowing that is what I’ve needed the most.
Over coffee the next morning, Rey shows me a book called Color, by Victoria Finlay. “Alex!” she says in her delicious accent, “You MUST read this book! You must!” Everything Rey says has an exclamation point at the end of it. I curl up on the sofa with the book but first she says she wants to dress me up. She has a major job in fashion and the closet to prove it. She’d taken a pass at my suitcase and cocked her head to the side, confused. Didn’t I used to dress with some panache? What are all the jeans doing here? Why so many t-shirts? She looks at me with sympathy. “Oh, Alex! Cos'è successo, mi hija?”
She brings me an outfit and begs off for a live out loud day in the city. I’m to dress and head out too. I’m to explore and feel the sun on my face. “Cara,” she says, “it is what you NEED!” I do as I’m told and I have to say, I feel great. It’s been a hundred years since I’ve worn something that wasn’t utilitarian and a strut appears in my step. Like the THUMP-THUMP bass from a lowrider's speakers, the city is vibrating with activity. Everything and everyone synchronized. The cobwebs begin to loosen.
I take the subway to where it all began, the house I lived in when I was a little girl. I stare up at the façade, look down the street and see Slim toddling behind me calling me Ax. It’s not easy to remember something so sweet in the context of knowing what would happen later but I keep breathing.
In her book, Finlay tells the story of visiting the cathedral in Chartres when she was a little girl. Staring up at the stained glass window, her father told her, “It’s 800 years old and now we don’t know how to make that blue.” I know about this. The lost formulas, the terrible yearning for a hue.
I walk to the apartment I was living in at the height of my bon vivant-ness only to find that it’s no longer there. The symbolism is not lost on me. I remember the Feast of San Genarro – how I used to watch it from my fire escape. Eating hot zeppoles out of a paper bag, I would watch the neon lights from the Ferris Wheel bounce across my legs.I get a coffee from Dean & Deluca and see myself coming into the store the day before Thanksgiving in 1992, the first time I ever made the meal on my own and remember how much everyone loved my pumpkin cheesecake.
I hop on the train to midtown and swing by the old showroom building. I used to work in fashion and as I step into the air-conditioned lobby, it all floods back – the trade shows and sample sales. I remember a fake fur I bought, how I used to wear it like a robe after baths and how I can’t remember the last time I let myself be naked. I run to meet Roni at the theater.
At the curtain call, Mark Rylance, still out of breath, told a story: “One night after the show, a woman came up to me backstage and said, 'The last time I was covered in blood, listening to a drumbeat and waiting for the giants to arrive was the day I was born.'”
When I leave the theater the skies have turned yellow and it’s started to drizzle. I'm more grateful for this than I can say. The rain has always been special to me and tonight it feels like a gift. Even though I’m dressed for a runway, I decide to walk back to Chelsea.
Along the way, I see a writer at her computer inside a Starbucks. For some reason she looks up at me and we smile at each other. I'm so glad I’m a writer. I see a woman with her son. He’s about 9 and she’s dragging him behind her, trying to keep him under their umbrella. I miss Dash, fiercely. I'm so glad I'm a mother. I see a woman in her early 20’s screaming into her iPhone at a boyfriend. She’s drunk and her friends are trying to calm her down. I’m so glad I’m 43.
After months of feeling like my personal soundtrack has been scored exclusively by cellos, I start to hear new music. Specifically, Dylan’s Like a Rolling Stone only - because of the weather and being in NY and wearing a necklace that costs a year’s salary – I hear it in some dance techno beat. “How does it feel to be on your own?” Fucking amazing.
By the time I get back to the apartment, I'm giddy with anticipation. For what, I’m not sure. Taj and Rey are gone for the night so I decide to go on to the roof and enjoy the view. As I walk through the door, a huge gust of wind comes up and slams it shut. The clouds open and it begins to pour down rain. I turn to go back in but the door is locked. It’ll be hours before anyone knows I’m here and the umbrella is gone.
Leprechauns.
I have no choice but to find a chair and embrace my predicament and in that moment of resignation I find the missing evidence. Yes, my life used to be different but it wasn’t necessarily better. It was exactly like it is now. Good and bad. Mourning for any moment before this one stops making sense and the road I’ve been on to find myself forks to the right.I tilt my face skyward and recognize this for what it is. Baptism. Then... footsteps. Heavy footsteps.
A giant's footsteps.
The theater is dark and packed. Outside it’s a hot and cloudy afternoon in New York City but inside dawn is about to break over the English countryside.
From the moment the curtain lifts and Mark Rylance begins to act the acting out of his role as Rooster Byron in the play, Jerusalem, the audience leans forward and this is where they stay - edgy, open, grateful. Two and a half hours in and they’re a mixture of exhausted and exhilarated and everyone wants more.
Rooster, who the playwright has put through hell, is banging on a drum and bleeding from every orifice. His home is about to be bulldozed, all of his friends have left, his child has given up believing he will ever be the man he’s meant to be and his last hope - that a giant he’d (maybe) met near Stonehenge will appear to save him - is nowhere to be found.Literally beaten and spiritually broken by circumstance and his own failings, Rooster calls forth each of his ancestors by name, demands their assistance at the top of his lungs and drums until his palms are as purple as plums. He is stripped down to his most human self, desperate for transformation and, somehow, impossibly, filled with hope.Then… the trees on the stage start to sway wildly in an off-stage wind. Then… heavy footsteps - a giant’s footsteps - loud enough to rumble the theater - can be heard approaching. Then… the curtain comes down. Hard.
It takes me a second to realize I’ve stopped breathing and started crying. Everyone has. I’m swept into the thunderous applause - hooting and hollering for a standing ovation that lasts FIVE minutes. I look to the man on my left, a stranger before that moment, and we clasp hands, beaming at each other like a couple of headlights.I’d forgotten how community is always thisclose, just waiting for me to show up. I tell the stranger this. He nods and smiles. I yell over the audience, “Everyone is just waiting for everyone to show up, right?” He nods again.
A few minutes later, while washing my hands in the ladies room, I catch my reflection in the mirror – red nose, swollen eyes – and think of the horoscope I’d read two days before: “A journey or a meeting takes you back in time and you may be surprised what you find buried under years of neglect…”
ACT ONE
The biggest surprise was the journey itself. Because of the terrorists and their big bag of bullshit I have a fear of flying so crippling that I haven’t left the state of California in a very, very long time. If I can’t get there by car, it’s off the list. In my microscopic corner of the universe, they really did win and I hate myself for letting them take what had been, up until then, an incurable case of wanderlust.
For years I was always just getting back from somewhere or just getting ready to go. I see photos of myself, each dated before that Tuesday morning – Vietnam, Paris, Austin - and squint to make out the woman who believed the world was tiny - the one who wanted to see every centimeter - and I barely recognize her.
In place of actual travel, I’ve spent my time logging on to airline websites and planning routes to places I’ve yet to see, knowing full well I won’t buy a ticket. I look at my friend’s Facebook pages stuffed with photos of their great lives until, utterly disgusted with myself for being such a pussy, I eat entire tubs of whatever I can find that comes in tubs.You see, the thing is, I used to be kinda cool. Now I’m not. During the early days of the blog I set out to accomplish a weekly challenge so I could go back to being cool but I haven’t been able to keep up with it because I’ve felt like a fraud. How can I write about the glory of this life and the big banquet we all have to eat from if my only daily activity is walking to the mailbox and back? My “existence” has been equal parts fear, poverty and terrible luck - luck that can only be attributed to a lifetime of bitch slapping leprechauns – and I’ve had nothing to say.
But then, out of the blue, Roni called and offered me a trip to NY. She has always been positively Amazonian in both her generosity and her lust for life and she’d been worried about me for a while. She’d wholeheartedly supported the divorce and the writing but had grown weary of my recent disappearing act.
“I’ve had it with you,” she said when she called that night. “You’re coming and I don’t want to hear any of your bullshit excuses. Waa-Waa to someone else, just get your ass to LAX and I’ll take care of the rest.” My fear of flying is nothing compared to my fear of losing Roni’s respect so I tried to remember how to pack a suitcase, lubed up for my TSA search and found a seat at the gate with a view of the bar.
I took one, two and, finally, three (they were small) Valiums and in a dreamy haze I saw the writing on the wall. Literally. A part of the terminal was under construction and on a dusty support beam someone had spray-painted: Ub4. I stared at it forever (I was really, really high) and burst into tears. Some of the other passengers eased away from me or pretended not to stare as I tried to make sense of what had happened to the b4 me.
Who was I before Dash or the troubles with Slim? Who was I before the bust up of the family? Before John broke my heart? I’d gone from a globe-trotting, table-dancing bon vivant to a woman too self-conscious to go to the market because there was no money for an eyebrow wax. I’d stopped having sex and stopped dreaming. I’d started chewing my nails to the quick and stopped writing.
They called for us to board and by the time I found my seat in the seventeenth-hundred row, in the middle of two smelly fat guys (fuck you, leprechauns) I not only didn’t care if the plane went down, I was kinda hoping it would. I ordered a Gin & Tonic and assumed the crash position.
Once airborne I pulled out the computer "to journal." I decided to use the 5 hour flight like an archaeologist at a dig – sweeping away the dust to uncover the bones – and the hope was that by the time we landed, I would have answered the riddle of my own antiquity and emerge from the skies re-born.I drank the gin in one swill. It reminded me of my flight to Europe the summer I graduated from high school. It was the first time I’d had a grown up cocktail. Before then it had been rum and Coke (without ice) out of someone’s trunk at the Marina Greens in San Francisco but suddenly drinking was less about unprotected sex and throwing up into the bay and more about pretending I was French. I thought about my cousin, Taj. He and I had gone on that trip to Europe together and in a few hours (God willing) I would be at his apartment in Chelsea.
I tried to write, tried to sweep away the dust, but mostly I stared past the gut of my fellow passenger and out into the inky black sky. There is a piece of evidence missing from my memory, I know it, the one that will crack the case but before I had the chance to figure out how to get the me before to merge with the me now, I passed out.
ACT TWO
I’m on the rooftop at Taj’s apartment. The deck is covered in silver paint and when the sun bounces off, the reflection clears up everyone’s skin. We’re all so beautiful. I’d forgotten. Flowers of every conceivable color and shape bloom in big pots. There’s food and wine and easy conversation. Taj and his wife, Rey, embraced me with such force upon my arrival that I haven’t been able to stop smiling.I can see the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building from my perch under their painted umbrella. The city sounds like summer. We sit around a table holding hands. It’s hot out and my face hurts from all the smiling and I can’t remember the last time I was this happy.
Taj and Rey live life out loud and this enthusiasm emanates in every thing they do – how they speak, love, cook, decorate – everything a wild mixture of Dominican, Pakistani, Italian, French and American. No sentence commits to a single language. We yell across the roof to each other (and to our friends who have joined us) “Tu quiero, caro mio! I am so happy to see you. Basta – it’s ridiculous but, you know, Je t’aime, mija. Really. Mangiare, tutti.”
It’s. Heaven.
We stay on the roof for 10 hours – from the moment I arrive until we force ourselves to go to bed. They tuck me in with kisses and as I fall asleep I realize that Roni has given me the most extraordinary gift – she has forced me home to find myself even without knowing that is what I’ve needed the most.
Over coffee the next morning, Rey shows me a book called Color, by Victoria Finlay. “Alex!” she says in her delicious accent, “You MUST read this book! You must!” Everything Rey says has an exclamation point at the end of it. I curl up on the sofa with the book but first she says she wants to dress me up. She has a major job in fashion and the closet to prove it. She’d taken a pass at my suitcase and cocked her head to the side, confused. Didn’t I used to dress with some panache? What are all the jeans doing here? Why so many t-shirts? She looks at me with sympathy. “Oh, Alex! Cos'è successo, mi hija?”
She brings me an outfit and begs off for a live out loud day in the city. I’m to dress and head out too. I’m to explore and feel the sun on my face. “Cara,” she says, “it is what you NEED!” I do as I’m told and I have to say, I feel great. It’s been a hundred years since I’ve worn something that wasn’t utilitarian and a strut appears in my step. Like the THUMP-THUMP bass from a lowrider's speakers, the city is vibrating with activity. Everything and everyone synchronized. The cobwebs begin to loosen.
I take the subway to where it all began, the house I lived in when I was a little girl. I stare up at the façade, look down the street and see Slim toddling behind me calling me Ax. It’s not easy to remember something so sweet in the context of knowing what would happen later but I keep breathing.
In her book, Finlay tells the story of visiting the cathedral in Chartres when she was a little girl. Staring up at the stained glass window, her father told her, “It’s 800 years old and now we don’t know how to make that blue.” I know about this. The lost formulas, the terrible yearning for a hue.
I walk to the apartment I was living in at the height of my bon vivant-ness only to find that it’s no longer there. The symbolism is not lost on me. I remember the Feast of San Genarro – how I used to watch it from my fire escape. Eating hot zeppoles out of a paper bag, I would watch the neon lights from the Ferris Wheel bounce across my legs.I get a coffee from Dean & Deluca and see myself coming into the store the day before Thanksgiving in 1992, the first time I ever made the meal on my own and remember how much everyone loved my pumpkin cheesecake.
I hop on the train to midtown and swing by the old showroom building. I used to work in fashion and as I step into the air-conditioned lobby, it all floods back – the trade shows and sample sales. I remember a fake fur I bought, how I used to wear it like a robe after baths and how I can’t remember the last time I let myself be naked. I run to meet Roni at the theater.
At the curtain call, Mark Rylance, still out of breath, told a story: “One night after the show, a woman came up to me backstage and said, 'The last time I was covered in blood, listening to a drumbeat and waiting for the giants to arrive was the day I was born.'”
When I leave the theater the skies have turned yellow and it’s started to drizzle. I'm more grateful for this than I can say. The rain has always been special to me and tonight it feels like a gift. Even though I’m dressed for a runway, I decide to walk back to Chelsea.
Along the way, I see a writer at her computer inside a Starbucks. For some reason she looks up at me and we smile at each other. I'm so glad I’m a writer. I see a woman with her son. He’s about 9 and she’s dragging him behind her, trying to keep him under their umbrella. I miss Dash, fiercely. I'm so glad I'm a mother. I see a woman in her early 20’s screaming into her iPhone at a boyfriend. She’s drunk and her friends are trying to calm her down. I’m so glad I’m 43.
After months of feeling like my personal soundtrack has been scored exclusively by cellos, I start to hear new music. Specifically, Dylan’s Like a Rolling Stone only - because of the weather and being in NY and wearing a necklace that costs a year’s salary – I hear it in some dance techno beat. “How does it feel to be on your own?” Fucking amazing.
By the time I get back to the apartment, I'm giddy with anticipation. For what, I’m not sure. Taj and Rey are gone for the night so I decide to go on to the roof and enjoy the view. As I walk through the door, a huge gust of wind comes up and slams it shut. The clouds open and it begins to pour down rain. I turn to go back in but the door is locked. It’ll be hours before anyone knows I’m here and the umbrella is gone.
Leprechauns.
I have no choice but to find a chair and embrace my predicament and in that moment of resignation I find the missing evidence. Yes, my life used to be different but it wasn’t necessarily better. It was exactly like it is now. Good and bad. Mourning for any moment before this one stops making sense and the road I’ve been on to find myself forks to the right.I tilt my face skyward and recognize this for what it is. Baptism. Then... footsteps. Heavy footsteps.
A giant's footsteps.
