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Author, Historian, Storyteller

Archives for June 2016

Happiness, Live and LearnLeave a comment

I was never one that believed in the power of the universe/earth/person to heal and be centered. Yoga, meditation, chakras, The Secret, good vibes/energy, karma, chanting, etc all fell under the category of New-Age-Mumbo-Jumbo-Hippy-Dippy Crap. I realize that some of that is actually very old and not new-age, hence the ‘mumbo-jumbo’ or ‘hippy-dippy’ classifications. I thought it was ridiculous and therefore discounted all of it, and quite frankly anyone who practiced it. I didn’t believe in it, so it couldn’t possibly be beneficial. For those who don’t know me well, this is not because of a strict adherence or belief in a western religion. I didn’t believe in any of those either. I was what you would call a consummate non-believer.

Non-Believer

As I have gotten older, my non-believer status has definitely been disturbed. Mostly due to the fact that my Western medicine doctors have prescribed for me yoga and meditation. Out of all of the drugs on the market to treat every ailment under the sun, my doctors prescribed this. (As it turns out, I have very good doctors.) I grumbled and bitched, but eventually I tried it. I spent my first yoga class, thinking, “This is stupid. I hate yoga.” But I did it. I also meditated, and for a good long while those sessions were spent with me telling my brain to, “Shut up already, I’m meditating here!” Needless to say, neither of these activities were especially useful at the beginning. I thought it was stupid and so it was stupid.

Then something curious happened. The more I did it, the less stupid it felt and the less stupid it felt, the more my anxiety went away. As my anxiety went away, the nightmares decreased, and as the nightmares decreased, I actually started to get some sleep. Let me tell you, sleep is a glorious thing! I didn’t necessarily increase the amount that I did yoga or meditated, but I stopped thinking of it as stupid. I acknowledged the benefits of each practice. Then I started to practice gratitude, I sent my wants and desires out into the universe and learned about the chakras. All of mine were blocked, go figure. I even made myself a chakra balancing necklace with a representative stone for each chakra. Funny coincidence, the two stones that represent my most blocked Chakras are the two stones I have always been drawn to – the majority of my jewelry contains either peridots or garnets. I’m thinking coincidence isn’t the right word there.

In other words, I’ve gone from a non-believer to a meditating-chakra-balancing-good-vibe-heal-thyself-yogi who is more curious as to what you’re grateful for than what you do for a living. I’m still not entirely sure how this complete reversal took place, it kind of snuck up on me, but I’m much happier and healthier now that it has. Hit me up if you want a chakra balancing necklace/charm. I have no idea if it actually works, but it makes me feel better. So there ya go. Okay, I lied. It’s not a complete reversal. I still dislike yoga. Namaste.

Okay, I like this part.

Okay, I like this part.

Live and LearnLeave a comment

I was one of those obnoxious people growing up that was just naturally good at school. As long as I went to class and took notes, I could pass the tests with flying colors after very little studying. Essays were a cake-walk. I’ve always had a predilection for writing. Even in college, I wrote my papers the night before they were due and never got lower than an A. I’m organized, pay attention and was smart enough to make school a breeze. Chemistry was the closest I came to a class making me struggle, yet I still had an A when I dropped at semester because it conflicted with the art class that I wanted to take. I was that person. Feel free to hate.

The weird thing is that now that I’m older, I wish I hadn’t been that person. I wish I had been forced to learn early on that you have to work for your success. Instead, I was taught that if you show up, put forth a modicum of effort you will succeed. Yes, I had enough to deal with as a kid without throwing in struggling at school, but still. Because of this education, I have been slapped in the face as an adult more times than I can count, because I expected something to be a cake walk and it wasn’t. The first couple of times it happened, I was flabbergasted. You could have knocked me over with a feather. “What do you mean I didn’t get what I wanted? I showed up and worked toward it a little. That’s all it takes!”

Plan vs Reality

Nope. I have now learned that life is not that simple, and things rarely work exactly as you planned them to. Especially not on the first try! But I’ve also realized that there is more to learn in failing then there is in succeeding. That sounds insanely cliché, but I guess it’s cliché for a reason: it’s true. I have learned more about myself, my friends and what I truly want from life through my failures then through all of the soul-searching I have ever done. I think the biggest one in there, is what I’ve learned that I truly want from life. Think about it, you fail at something and you find yourself sitting there at the bottom examining what you had been striving for. All of sudden, the extraneous bits start to slough off. “Well, that bit isn’t all that important, and that bit would be nice, but isn’t essential. Now if I could only get this.”

So you go after whatever the “this” is, and you leave the bits you pared off behind. It’s simpler now, more focused. You work toward it and you fail again. Sitting at the bottom, you once more evaluate. You once more whittle down, once more become more focused. You become clearer. Then you try again, fail again, re-evaluate again. Rinse and repeat until all that is left is the core of your desire. The wrappings and glitter and bows are gone, and all you are left with is what you truly want and it resonates deep in your soul. It resonates so profoundly that you realize you’ve been going about it all wrong, and shift gears, change tactics completely. Stride out once more to conquer the world. I feel like that’s where I am now. Rinse. Do not repeat. I hope.

Path-to-success

Live and Learn, Theater, WritingLeave a comment

I have spent the past three weekends covering the Hollywood Fringe Festival for See It or Skip LA. Which involves seeing large amounts of shows, writing reviews and getting together with my other correspondents to record podcasts about what we’ve seen.  After our last recording session it occurred to me that all of the shows that I have raved about, have one thing in common: they all used comedy to make a serious story more accessible.

“Night Witches” – a play about the female Russian bomber regiment in WWII who terrorized the Germans night after night despite encountering heavy losses. Was it inspiring? Definitely! Was it depressing because a majority of the main characters died? Yep! Did I leave the theater depressed? No, because amidst the dire situations of the women were interwoven comedic scenes of the Nazi soldiers. These scenes could have easily been written just as serious as the Russian scenes – which did have some elements of comedy but were for the most part dramatic – but that would have resulted in a very different play. It would have been heavy on top of heavy, leaving the audience feeling, you guessed it, heavy. Instead, this show juxtaposes dark with light and as a result is selling out as people clamber to see an historical play.

Check out our podcasts here.

Check out our podcasts here.

On the other hand, I saw a different historically based play that left me feeling ambivalent at best and negative at worst. It was 90 minutes of downtrodden woe-is-me-nothing-is-going-right, with no break or release of the tension. Even at the end when the character gets what he had been striving for the whole time, the victory is tinged with heartache. The one victory in the entire piece was spoiled. The piece was acted well, and quite frankly staged better than “Night Witches,” however without that light to balance the dark I had to recommend that audiences skip it for something else.

For the dark to be accessible, palatable, effective it needs to be balanced with light. Then it struck me, out of all of the critiques of my novel there was one outlying comment early on that I looked at briefly before shoving it aside and disregarding it since no one else seemed to have the problem.  What was that comment?

“Be cognizant of providing breaks for your reader. Your first 50 pages are intense and nonstop. It can be overwhelming.”

In other words, at the beginning of my novel about the Civil War, an already super-upbeat topic, I inundate my reader with DARK, DARK, DARK! Hmmmm. I have spent the past three weeks espousing the virtues of how comedy strengthens drama, yet when somebody gave me a similar note, I completely ignored it.

slow clap

Well. Done. Me. Despite the fact that I have rewritten the beginning of my novel more times than I can count since I received that comment, I will be going back to examine it one more time. Here’s to the light, strengthening the dark.

Life, Loss, LoveLeave a comment

I am the suite safety warden for my company, which means that in the event of an emergency I am in charge. It also means that every year I have to attend the annual safety meeting. In three years, that meeting has gone from the main focus being earthquake preparedness – we are in LA after all – to workplace shooter preparedness. Everything from what should be in place at a company level to help prevent an incident all the way to what to do during an incident. There is a video – Run>Hide>Fight – the three steps to try to save your life should there be an active shooter. There’s a goddamn video. And please note, that what the video doesn’t emphasize enough, is that while you’re running out of the building away from the shooter, make sure that your hands are in the air, so the cops have no reason to mistake you for the gunman. And put your cell phone in your pocket just in case. Holding something shiny in your hand is probably not the best idea. This meeting was planned well before the Orlando shooting, but its timing was poignant nonetheless.

Last week was all about rape and abuse – Brock Turner and Profiles Theater – and it looks as if this week is going to be all about shootings, and I just can’t. I have reached the point where I can’t take another headline, video clip, Facebook rant or snide comment about hatred or violence or abuse toward a people or person simply because they are different. I cannot take another comment blaming the victim’s behavior, or second guessing the victim’s motive, or spreading advice on how not to be a victim. Not one more, ‘Well, if they weren’t living in sin . . .’ I can’t. I just can’t. The victim’s part in a crime starts when the perpetrator forces their presence on the victim. Not a second before. I don’t care what they do in their everyday lives. I don’t care who they love, how they dress, or how they comport themselves. They have no culpability in the crime itself. How do I know this? Look at the fucking definition of the word. According to Merriam Webster Dictionary:

Victim

1:  a living being sacrificed to a deity or in the performance of a religious rite

2:  one that is acted on and usually adversely affected by a force or agent

a (1) :  one that is injured, destroyed, or sacrificed under any of various conditions

a (2) :  one that is subjected to oppression, hardship, or mistreatment

b :  one that is tricked or duped

One that is acted on. Their only active role is to try to stop the attack if they can. Beyond that, a victim has no action. Why do you think one of the most common feelings of victims is a feeling of helplessness? Because they had NO PART in the crime committed against them. If they had no part in the crime, they can hold no part in the blame. Until our society can truly grasp and understand that, until our society at the leadership level can stop the moral damning and undermining of certain groups of people, you can give every woman in the US a rape whistle and a can of mace and there will still be rape. You can give everyone in the US a gun to carry and there will still be shootings.

Until it is clear – across the board from political leaders to religious leaders – that all human life is sacred and worthy regardless of gender, race or sexual orientation; until it is clear that the victimizing of a group of people simply because of their differences is not condoned, this will never stop. As long as victims are blamed for the crimes acted upon them, this will never stop. As long as people of influence preach fear and hatred towards those that don’t fall in line with their own doctrines, this will never stop. Until it is known, carte blanche, that acts of hatred and dominance toward others will NOT be tolerated for even a second, this will never stop.

This will never stop. I don’t know how we will fix that sentence, and I don’t know how to live happily in a world where that sentence cannot be fixed.

Scooby Doo