ACTUALLY, EVERYTHING IS BEAUTIFUL!

singing at the SF Conservatory of Music

It was dark, the first months of the year. I had taken that winter fairly hard, feeling unmoored and lacking emotional intimacy, still recovering from a months old breakup. I had had a dream one night in November and felt I had come back to myself two days later, when I walked into the very dark room of The Visitors at SFMOMA. This isn't about that, but it's worth noting. "Once again, I fall into my feminine ways." I felt that, opened again to an internal softness I'd recently had no place for. 

I had begun writing a draft of a novel by hand, sitting at my kitchen table in the early dark, writing scenes in pencil on blank printer paper. For a brief moment, perhaps the only time in memory, I had had a "writing ritual," sitting in the same place at the same time each day, writing, adding more and more to the story from thin air. 

In doing so, I was subverting a deeply held belief I'd had since the age of about seven, or possibly eight, that I could not write dialogue. Emboldened by my recent forays into short story, the novel I wrote by hand was the first story of pure invention that I'd attempted in many years. And it was going well! 

Unsurprisingly, my ritual was interrupted — I was hosting my mother for nearly a week and the thread of the story was lost. 

Still, the paper and pencil process was of interest to me, and I wondered if I could write a piece now that was only dialogue. No story, so to speak. Just talking. 

As I wrote the play, I imagined the voices of two friends as the two characters. My friend Aki and I read the play together one night in February in front of the henge of purring, lit 3-D printed cats in Hayes Valley. She laughed, and I thought, well this is really something! 

Then the play sat on my computer, and I sent it to a couple of people, and they likely didn't read it, and I would re-read it at intervals, and think alternately that it was fairly funny or fairly bad. 

I stared out the window last week and thought of many different configurations of performances, recitals, readings, dramatic announcements, etc. On Friday night, I looked up at the loft in Rachel's apartment and, much like with the curtained window seats and bay windows of my childhood, the domestic space became a potential stage. Off the cuff, after a mouthful of a Dunkin' Donuts Pumpkin Spice Malt Beverage, players were found, the stage set, and the play was on its way, living then, taking on its own momentum, nearly running away with itself at times. 

***

Every fall of recent memory has its distinctness, and yet they all seem to approach the womb-like interiority of the writer's world. 

The observing mind is at its abundant ripeness in the swell of autumn. The open and sensitive spirit, taking in every inflection, returns to set it all down to paper amongst the warmth of early afternoon light. I am supposed to listen to Regina Spektor and Laurie Anderson at this time. I am meant to light any number of candles, have it cozy, be open to the real potential of love but also seduction, especially the unrealized kind. Fall is absolutely the time for rampant and exquisite fantasy. Fall is the time of the interior world, magic and sweet, known to me alone. 

Reading and talking at length about Alice Munro's "What is Remembered," I am reminded of the strength of my conviction as it pertains to the mind as a woman's ultimate realm of privacy and independence. I think of reading Beautiful World Where Are You, as I now read Intermezzo, and I think about Erin Somer's "Ten Year Affair" as well as Elizabeth McCracken's "The Souvenir Museum" and I think about my own stories "From Above" and "The Dynamic World" (which you can read if you contact me and ask for a PDF). 

In any case, the ultimate freedom to think any thought, observe, project, or otherwise narrativize any experience is one we must fight to maintain. And it is in the spirit of this interiority that I hereby proclaim:

ACTUALLY, EVERYTHING IS BEAUTIFUL!!!

Yes, even a life of difficulty, containing suffering in youth, the body that eats itself, unanswered texts, etc. etc. etc, that life is beautiful because the ultimate return to my own mind promises such joy, wonder, and softness.

AT THE TABLE AND BEYOND

from top left: Katherine serves "Two Soups Happy Together"; Cassie and Aki in conversation; plates mid-meal; Cassie and Aki post-revelation; order tickets staked on the table; Aki's thoughts on comedians; drinks on the table; Cassie's thoughts on comedians; Mission Dolores at dusk.

The table is the place of confessions. At the far back, in the corner, we're checking out everyone who's coming and going from the bathroom. 

Everyone looks at everyone, especially those people we know from Instagram, or even from real life, and my line of sight to the front door means I get to keep tabs on who's arriving. Nobody is leaving.

When the New Yorker uses the word "buzzy" to describe the scene at a restaurant, I guess this is what they're talking about. 

The scene has showed up. The bartender who made me a Paloma on Saturday afternoon is here, as are the DJs, the painters, and the hot Australians.  

As we watch all these people and they watch us, the ricocheting noise of conversation and music creates an ambient and shifting blanket of privacy. So as we are very much on display, the confessional takes shape.

Here's the thing about age. On the internet, which takes up so much space that it becomes tantamount to or even surpasses the reality of reality, I am led to believe that this time in my life is about "Finding a Partner" or "Building my Career." 

It is becoming my job to decide whether or not I should watch the following videos: "MARRY THE RIGHT PERSON?", "Therapist_Dave's Red Flag Warning," "He Did THIS 13 Years After Retiring," "RYAN GOSLING'S DAUGHTER IS A BIG FAN OF THE [thumbs down emoji]." 

But in this bar, and at the gallery and on the street, and especially at the dinner table, it is possible to stop gulping from the ocean. People who look like people. Friends who feel like friends. 

We have heard that the prefrontal cortex reaches maturity at the age of 25. We turn to each other wondering, "Does your brain feel like it's done cooking? Does yours?" 

Maybe not, but at least we've come far enough that Cassie is able to go full circle with Hooked on Phonics. 

The Mushroom is serving tonight and we order a "Carrot Pile and Crudités," "Savory Pancake" and "Mizuna Salad." "#1 Hippie Sandwich" is already sold out, but "Sexy Vegan Cheese Plate" is still on offer, as is "Two Soups Happy Together," which Katherine serves nymph-like through the crowd. 

Alex wears Kermit green from toque to toe and appears at the mouth of the makeshift kitchen, which is also the last remnant of the dive bar that used to be. The chef's domain is like a cave with cracked red paint and a string of halogen lights that adorn a staircase which recedes into a dark and unseen corner. But what exits from such darkness is the bright and spicy flavors of sharp, fresh greens and a pile of carrots so true to its name that I laugh deliriously when it's placed on the table. 

This is the kind of food that makes me sure that my brain's still cooking, new neural pathways opened up by the ingenuity of two slices of radish sandwiched together by a generous dollop of hummus. 

IT FEELS GOOD

The train drops off in the dell. To become acquainted with the subsequent upswings, we climb the walls of the bowl to the cruising spot, to the Victorian delta. Imagine you follow on her shoulder, so subtle is the we here, because to her she is joyously alone.

Triangulating the first path with the second is a simple matter. Hike up Clayton, pause for the overgrown lamp shining toffee yellow. 

The air is so good. 

Our girl finds a market and stops in for a bar of chocolate. She is already feeling beautiful. The man behind the counter says, "This bar is my gift to you today, because you have beautiful eyes." She accepts. She agrees. 

The market is on Uranus street, high above the city, and she starts to sing "Top of the World" by the Carpenters. 

I'm on the top of the world lookin' down on creation and the only explanation I can find ... is the love that I've found ever since you came around your love put me at the top of the world... 

She feels radiant. She turns right on Mars. 

Our girl has an idea about God. Belief? Hm, no. She is making and then meeting God. Prayer usually goes something like this: 

In a dark room, with eyes closed and hands tucked together, she begins by getting in touch with the idea of God, which can be done by envisioning the paths water droplets follow when flung off an object in motion or the random collisions of molecules in a gaseous state. Realizing that the veins of stone printed on the linoleum of her bathroom are the same as the sprawl of alluvial fans and flood planes, we can add these to the list as well. Then, she says, "Hello, God," and imagines that there is a heavenly phone bank where a representative picks up the line and eventually passes on her information to the main entity. 

This is a very good way. 

In the bustle of this place, it is easy to worry that God is not here. But upon reflection, to look out a back window at sunset and see a scoop of sorbet sitting on the horizon was an affirmation. God showed itself to her, to assure her, to usher her in. Perhaps the God encounter is to be in the discovery of things, like walking out from the dell to crest sequential wooded hills. 

And to quote herself, God has left the building, but He is still in the room. 

It is a good thing to arrive to where she is known and unknown, interceded by four years of more flesh and living.

There are many things to say, apparently. Questions to be asked about the appropriate cultural categorization of various animals -- cottage, cabin, trade wind? There are so many statements that prompt her to ask, "Today?" 

She says "Behind my house there is a garden, next to my house is another house, because I live on a street, because my street lives in a city." They all laugh, him especially. 

One day around a large table in a small library someone read a poem aloud, perhaps about the sea. He began to cry. He took his water bottle. He left the room. 

One day he arrived to the large room on the first floor carrying a small homely tea cup pinched out of clay and glazed a morose yellow. 

One day he tacked two long sheafs of brown paper to the wall and two people took up position writing single words at the same time until they came to the same conclusion. 

Sweetness. 

Our cosmic family. Is that what friends are? Is that why love or some promise of it seems whispered in the touches and glances of men with wives and girlfriends? 

A sing-song name to call him baby. 

Really, wondering if the pope will come to pizza. Is it enough to sit shoulder to shoulder in the plaza? 

Perhaps. It is good.