2018 in 9 photos

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1) from trip to yellowstone in october where we saw a lot of great stuff and I tried finally taking my camera off automatic and experimented with shutter speed and exposures. noteworthy b/c i was in throes of crowdfunding and there was some interior darkness starting to assemble that the majesty of the landscape was helpful in neutralizing. also: amazing place and how had we never been there before? already planning our return.

2) from trip to Humboldt County, CA where in addition to running Avenue of the Giants with friends we took the kids to Patrick's Point and walked them out to Wedding Rock where we'd been married 18 years previous. hall of mirrors that we will return to this May to run the same half-marathon

3) a still from Microaggressions, the 6 part webseries I wrote, funded (thanks RACC), and made this fall. currently in post production. was excellent to be back on set, was excellent to see it come alive thanks to the great cast/crew. was also excellent to work in diff format (ie webseries) and most especially to have such a quick turnaround time from conception to wrapping. very eager to share this. stay tuned. 

4) from our first full night alone in 7 years. we had drinks, saw Free Solo (A+) , heard some live music (Mel Brown Trio, A+), played pinball, slept in (ie past 6 a), read the sunday ny times in bed. It was a long overdue restorative and much too quick.

5) from camping trip to Jesse Honeyman State Park. a reminder to camp more and to turn off my phone and live more presently (though that sounds a little goofy and simplistic compared to the profundity of the sensation). also a reminder to clean my lens more.

6) in april got home to empty house and found the flex piping under upstairs sink split and for an hour or so 50K gallons of water were pouring through the house. repercussions still being felt/managed but suffice to say it was disruption and introduced imbalance that persists but one that may in the end be useful in terms of resetting things in a better place. 

7) from trip to Ecola State Park in June w/ family and mother in law wherein I was reminded to not try to control everything. (read: I desperately did not want to go on this trip but it turned out to be really fun)

8) after years of resistance to ever crowdfunding again I pulled trigger to raise some $ for Sister/Brother, in large part b/c having little success via other channels and this movie isn't gonna make itself. I wrote this positive affirmation at start of campaign and put it in my wallet and forgot about it. It's notable b/c to experience this go round of crowdfunding was to enter a dark and rocky place with little hope of positive end result. but by the end it worked out. (note: that sounds more quaint than the experience was, b/c the experience was horrible).

9) one hazard of prepping/making webseries and then 4 days later launching month-long crowdfunding for feature and in the middle of all that going on trip to yellowstone was that I stopped running for a couple months. This fact - in combo with all the bottomless negative sensations that crowdfunding activated - sent me into a tailspin of deep darkness. In November I made a deal with myself to run everyday for 1 to 4 miles. It was not sudden or automatic but this continued action helped me slowly return and gain a modicum of control over the chaos. this pic from Springwater Corridor in early december pretty much sums up the feeling.

past the shattered door

If you're unlucky enough to have an event that can engender PTSD - in my case the events surrounding my brain tumor diagnosis in 2005 - then I am so sorry. You'll work for years - running, meditating, therapy - to modify, mollify, blunt, ignore all subsequent manifestations but the event has such force and power that all your improvements and updates will just be blown into the wind, plywood to a hurricane, bandages to an amputation. Rising in different forms: depression, anxiety, panic attack. Sometimes a combination. Beware triggers they say. For me trigger is not being able to get in touch w/ M, who in more than one way is my lifeline and conduit to outside world. Due to recent iphone update which rendered cellular function kaput M's phone was working intermittently and so we jerry-rigged a fix for but the fix kept not holding. Sunday night she went to reading and was out late and I couldn't get in touch w/ her b/c of this issue with phone. She couldn't receive calls/texts or make them. N was running fever and suddenly out of medicine so my original impetus was innocent enough: ask her to pick up medicine on way home. But it just so happens that sick kids is another sort of ptsd trigger for me (something or other about the betrayal of the body, of the inability of us to rely on anything b/c we're just one event away from a shitstorm) and lo and behold, after trying several times to call and text her, it began:  slow implosions, getting faster, getting closer with each passing minute. An interior dialog of panic/don't panic, while a series of dark looping images whirled by. The don't panic voice was akin to a stewardess telling everyone to stay calm when we can all just look out the window to clearly see imminent fire, explosion, oblivion b/c this plane is going down.  I absolutely right-now had to get in touch with her. I knew she was at after-party at some place so I tried getting a hold of the people she might be with. No dice. I texted a couple individuals. Nothing. It began rising up from the floor, this blackness, encircling my stomach, my heart and lungs. I looked up our car insurance so I'd have the license plate and VIN number to tell the police when they came. Headlights flashed by on the trash can on the street. Just the passing bus. I began checking alerts on my phone, seeing if there was anything horrific-fireball-on-the-interstate wise. I began thinking when/how to tell the kids. When/how to tell her mother. Text from a friend dinged in: they saw her leave an hour ago w/ K.The clouds parted and Oh sweet Jesus, thank fucking god. I called K, no answer. Texted K, no answer. FB messaged K, nothing. And just like that all the light quickly vanished. Breathe. Deep Breath. Breathe. Deep Breath. Somewhere inside I knew I was overreacting. We'll laugh about this in a couple days. How ridiculous I was that night. Ha ha! I tried to keep coming back to Occam's Razor: she and K probably went for drinks and got to talking. But then the alternate timelines came roaring in and they were equally plausible razors: she gave K a ride home and perished on the way/perished on the way back/lost control of the car in the industrial part of town w/ no one around but skeevy meth-heads and her phone isn't working, oh god. it's fucking midnight. Red alert. urgent. I couldn't just stand there waiting in my pajamas. I put on pants. I went out into the front yard, looking up and down the street, looking for light, listening for engines, heart pounding, throat constricting. Text from friend dinged in: have you heard from M yet? let us know when she's home. Great, now they're worried too dumbass. I went back inside and, feeling at absolute loss and b/c I couldn't just stand in the kitchen hyperventilating or picturing the next morning when I'd tell the kids, went down to my office, sat down at the keyboard and started writing an email to her with trembly fingers, partly to document what I was feeling and give form to it, and partly to say goodbye. We had just had our first solo night together in 7 years the night previous and had an amazing time (drinks/movie/live music/pinball/no kids/laying in bed reading the sunday ny times!) and the screenwriter in me couldn't help but see that narratively this would be them moment in the movie that it would all end due to unseen, dark forces. Element of surprise. Let your characters think they're safe. Of course, this is it. This is how it ends.

Is it possible that this whole time that I've held the brain tumor and all that surrounded it in the rearview mirror, as something in the past that I was done with, not knowing that it still enveloped me? That it gave me just enough wiggle room to allow me to think I was free? Does the attendant insecurity, negative self-feelings and corollary emotions which I've just long presumed lay within me actually have their sources at the point of impact? And isn't this a freeing thought in some regard? That the reasons I still feel myself wrestling with these forces across the years owes nothing to my own limitations and everything to the sheer force of the event. The running, the breathing, the meditating, the therapy, the too-many-beers - all just shape-shifting bandages for my amputated limb. Should I just let go entirely, submitting in whole to these forces? So much effort would be instantly alleviated if I'd just accept that: You don't have the upper hand here. 

I was on the third sentence of the goodbye email when lights came through the window. A car in the driveway. I stood to look out the window. It was M. locking the car and beeping the alarm and striding across the grass oblivious, like a normal person home after a night out. It was getting close to 1 AM. I walked upstairs and cracked a beer to help me calm down before catching her up on the events of the last couple hours.

uncollected thoughts on crowdfunding a movie

just wrapped up my 4th crowdfunding venture. [ran 3 for The Black Sea (one a success, one a fail, one in-the-middle)]. The latest was done to support my next feature film Sister/Brother. I am a big fan of the concept and spirit of crowdfunding but less a fan of the actual doing, which runs counter to my default personality setting which is more or less to be quiet. I don't want to ask people for support in general, much less for something that I've taken years to write and assemble and that has legitimate meaning for me creatively, emotionally or otherwise because a) it could fail b) I am exposing myself. In fact after The Black Sea I promised myself I would never crowdfund again because the experience was so draining and unpleasant even though the movie would not have been made without it. Some of this feeling - that I'd never crowdfund again - was ego and some was the mistaken presumption that for a second-time filmmaker with a developed screenplay with actors and key creative personnel attached finding capital would be a smoother enterprise this go-round. Not the case. Though the film played at several festivals and had small group of followers, no magical doors opened and no money magically rained down from the sky as a result. No well-heeled or hungry bulldog producer sought me out to shake me by the shoulders and promise me s/he wouldn't sleep until this movie was made and in the world.

And so last fall I applied for a battery of grants from a wide spate of foundations, thinking I could patch a couple (maybe even a few) together to maybe get a whisper of a spark of motion with which to approach investors - and came up empty on all of them. Every single one. This was deflating naturally but I have served on enough grant panels to know the competition is fierce and the inevitable projects - meaning the ones that appear to be getting made regardless of the success of the grant - are favored. And it became clear that without some money already in that funding a narrative feature via grants is not a sustainable idea.

And so after some interior deliberation (and especially because MAKING A MOVIE > waiting for something/someone to allow you to make a movie) I decided to go for it. The people at Stowe Story Labs agreed to be fiscal sponsor. Plus, Seed & Spark was launching the second year of Hometown Heroes and I thought perhaps I could piggyback on that for some additional motion. I had raised 32K on my first venture for The Black Sea and this was going to be less, 25K, so how hard could it be really? Some well-timed, well-meaning tweets, a steady but not-too-intrusive-or-annoying FB presence, some emails to former contributors and the money should come fairly easy. Except no.

In the 6 years between my first crowdfunding foray and this one, several things transpired.
- Everything online became immediate right-now loud, look-at-me turbine engine of white noise
- Crowdfunding in general became ubiquitous ("Help Me Pay This Dude to Pack my Apartment!")
- Crowdfunding for your tiny indie movie became ubiquitous
These all conspired to run counter to my expectation of how things would play out.

Day One was good. Some of the people I was counting on came through. Then day two we hit plateau and moved into a nothing-nothing-nothing-drip-nothing-nothing-nothing-drop rhythm that continued for ten days and which began to grind me down, activating a rising whirlpool of negative sensation, ultimately causing me to question the validity of the project, the validity of the campaign, the validity of me as filmmaker, and at darker moments, me as person, charting the trajectory of various failures in my life and allowing them to feed/sustain a terrible narrative in my head that I've been working for years to unravel. Why did I do this again?

With some creativity, some conversation with other filmmakers (thanks David W), and a well-timed-but-accidental-because-it-was-planned-a-year-ago trip to Yellowstone I started to find a path out of darkness. What's the worst that would happen, the project failed at crowdfunding? That's not the end of the project, just of one avenue. As someone once said (or should have said) there are many paths to the mountain. Once I began staring this failure in the face and accepting it and contemplating other ways to get this movie made things became lighter and the path out continued to illuminate itself. Ultimately the project was successful and I reached my goal but it was not without personal impact. The more time that gets between me and the experience the more favorably I'll reflect on it but at present it feels like there was a corrosive in the process, something negative. Those are funny words from a person who just raised 100% of his project and I know there are plenty of less-fortunate projects so maybe I'll zip the lip, dispense with the analysis, and head to these notes:

NOTES FOR CROWDFUNDERS (OR MYSELF IF I EVER CHOOSE TO DO THIS AGAIN WHICH AT THIS WRITING I DEFINITELY WON'T THOUGH DEEP DOWN I KNOW BETTER THAN TO SAY THAT OUT LOUD BECAUSE WHO KNOWS REALLY):

- don't conflate running a crowdfunding campaign with making a movie. they are not related in the least. you can argue that modern world blah blah hustle hustle self-produce blah blah but they are divergent. (maybe this outs me as old.) There are many people doing this who are great at the flash and sizzle and OMFG YOU GUYS and the funny gifs of cakes exploding or dogs high-fiving but that doesn't mean they can frame a shot or direct an actor or find the heart of a scene in a sudden two-shot because you're losing light. Don't forget this.

- some people will surprise you. they give more than you anticipated or give more than once or are invested in your success without you even knowing it. their belief in you and/or the project will sustain you in the darkness. even when it is quiet, know that there are people in the world who have your back.

- some people will disappoint you. there will be people you are counting on, or at least presuming will support you - in no small part because when they asked for support for their project you were there for them; you gave money and tweeted/FB'ed about their project - who will leave you flapping in the wind. Do everything you can to not let this eat you up from the inside. Chalk it up to them revealing who they are, remember it, and don't dwell or let it fester. I mean, first try emailing them directly and give a gentle reminder or two (we have just 26 hours to go. remember when I gave you fifty bucks for X?)  but then cut them loose and never ever ever support them or their art again. (note: not sure the aspiring buddhist in me agrees with the end of that sentence and I'm still processing/wrestling with it but it felt satisfying to type it out.) At minimum, don't let their lack of response define you or impact your emotions.

- some people who supported you last time won't support you this time: but how can that be? you never know what is going on in someone's life and social media is a murky lens. So when the person who gave to your last movie, emails you back a one-word email (the word: UNSUBSCRIBE) after you sent her a direct email, not a mass email, appealing for support, just shake it the hell off. Maybe your email was annoying or maybe she is contending with darkness of any form and can't deal. Either is okay.

- your best friends are fellow filmmakers: one of the highlights of this experience was crowdfunding alongside a bunch of other projects and watching them navigate similar hazards and obstacles. Talk to them. Celebrate/commiserate together.

- don't do the whole campaign by yourself: even if you've done it before. you need a multitude of voices and you need days when you have nothing to to with it.

- let gratitude be your default setting: no matter the amount you raise or the difficulties you encounter. Treat the $5 contribution with the same level of respect and thanks as the $250 contribution.

- find quiet: if you are lucky enough to find yourself in the hills of Montana in October and the light is golden in the aspens and your heart is open the smallness/greatness of existence will speak to you. This enterprise is so small it will say. It doesn't not have the meaning you are ascribing to it it will say. The meaning lays solely in your movie it will say. It will shake you by the shoulders and promise you that what you really need/want is already inside you and no matter what it won't sleep until this movie is made and in the world.

reversion

was home sick a couple days and it - along with recently prepping/shooting project (which took me away from my mildly regular running routine which has obvious mental/emotional health benefits) and immediately afterward prepping/managing a live crowdfunding campaign for my next film (note: crowdfunding I'm reminded can activate a long ribbon of negative sensation dominos) -  drudged up a bunch of ill will and feeling. things i've overcome or worked long at getting tools to live alongside. sort of a fun-pack of depression/anxiety/panic all in alternating registers and currents. Exercise non-existent, meditation, not constant. diet and intake too much bad not enough good. and so i stick these in the front of my mind: remain grateful for what you have. put the focus on drawing breath. reflect on where you've been not where you haven't. don't wait in ambush, don't expect applause.

63 eye-blinks

I have been surprisingly flattened by the news of Robin Williams' death. The particulars yes are horrible and dark but the mere fact of him not existing any longer is what caught me off guard. I did not revere him per se or track or follow him or hold him in some high celebrity esteem. But what I've learned in 24 hours or so after I discovered he died is that he occupied a bigger place than I knew. I ache with his passing and I cannot figure out why or better put, I cannot articulate why. There is something in here about a collective mourning, something about my (our) own mortality reflected back to me, something about my memory of seeing DPS at Perimeter Mall in Summer 89 - 25 yrs - with Carmen and Amy and Will (who was visiting from Charlotte) and me absolutely losing it in the "O Captain My Captain' scene, something about cinema when it functions as intended on a deeper, molecular plane where things - ideas, emotions, people - are fixed and inviolable like air, planets, stars, and lastly something about how all this - good, bad and in-between, has a shelf-life. Sixty-three eyeblinks. Not so different or far from my forty-two eyblinks. Not so far from the twenty-five eyeblinks ago where I am sitting in the dark in Atlanta with my friends, watching Robin W on screen. I don't know what it means or how to source this sadness. All I can say definitively is that I am unspeakably sad and that I and we are the poorer for his absence.

altering landscape

Some great bits wash ashore from the internet and intersect in thematic ways. The general undercurrent is the constantly-changing-before-our-eyes-mode-of-film production/consumption and the how/what/why. This impacts filmmaker and audience alike.

first, this great interview w/ Jean Renoir about art v. technical progress, about how modernity and tech. advancement takes you further from artistic purity. (note: I drink this stuff up. sooo good)


h/t a bittersweet life

then, this excerpt from S. Soderbergh interviewing Gordon Willis

 h/t cinephilia and beyond

All of this is both enervating and depressing, the latter for (I presume/hope) obvious reasons and the former b/c cinema continues to evolve and endure. Despite the fact that you can now watch Kubrick or Tarkovsky on your ipad (read: not the intended final format) the central psycho-mythological core that impels it to exist will not diminsh.

on illness movies

  Long story short:  In 2005 I had a brain tumor. Through 2 brain surgeries and some advanced radiation treatment and an abundance of luck (including the health insurance to treat it) I dodged the worst outcome. This is a good thing and I am grateful daily. Despite the threat of death now living in the rearview mirror the repercussions of the experience exist alongside me. I am altered in my outlook, my social interactions, my relationships, my depression, my anxiety, my isolation. I anticipate the worst-case scenario in every benign event. I see the black pulse of oblivion inside everything. (Jeez, that last sentence makes me sound like a tenth-grader who writes bad poetry. Wait, I did that.)

  For the above reasons I am unable to watch or take seriously most filmed enterprise about illness (so I probably won't see the popular one playing now.) Almost without fail* I see fiction, artifice, manufacture, and cheap design aimed at cheaper emotional response. I sense the gears of clunky devices creaking under the floorboard of the narrative. I feel proprietary about it - which is probably short-sighted since we are all on a freight train chugging toward oblivion and finality (There's that 10th grader again.) In the same way that a white director probably shouldn't direct a movie about slavery you probably shouldn't make a movie about terminal illness unless you have direct experience - as patient or caregiver. Because as skilled as you may be at writing or framing or cutting or blocking you can only cheat at showing a replica of the black emotional inner core undergirding the whole thing.**  You can only film events.

  You can film a man laying in a hospital bed holding his wife's hand after he's had his first brain surgery. You can film their faces as someone from Transportation arrives at 11 PM with a wheelchair to take him away for an unexpected MRI. You can push in on her as he is wheeled away. You can show her walking to the restroom to sob while he's silent in the hush of the descending elevator. You can show him being inserted into the machine while she makes her way to the deserted parking garage and starts the car, heading home for the night. You can cut to an hour later, him alone in his hospital bed, her alone at home, both of them wide awake, the moon through the vertical blinds.
   But these are all only event-based, only suggestive, only tiny approximations of the roiling fear, rippling through them both, because the surprise nature of the MRI must indicate something bad looms on the periphery, threatening to consume them, that things are in fact worse than they're willing to admit, that all the positivity they forced each other to maintain for weeks up to the surgery was meaningless, that the top of the dark box of unspoken possible futures resting between them unacknowledged is slowly unfolding on its own accord, that shadows are seeping out, into the corners of the room, across the floors, into the air, slowly constricting their breath and their ability to speak. It is coming they both think. But neither can say it out loud to the other. It is coming. 

This is harder to capture with a camera.

(note: some additional thoughts found here)

artifact, january 2005

*i liked The Big C, in part b/c Laura Linney is fantastic and I love Cries and Whispers because Bergman is peerless. There's probably a couple others that escape me at present.

**Or wait, is this protective ownership just another marker of my experience? Or is it valid? Can't an artist write/make anything about anything? As long as its emotionally authentic? It's all pretend so who cares, right? I don't know the answer, I'm asking.

oblivion tour

flew to SF last week to attend memorial service for M's uncle. Marin sun and sky were warm and blue, a counterpoint to the dark finality of everything surrounding us. Travelling with 2 small children amplified all stress and discord but also small, breathing reminder of the ephemeral nature of this whole ride. a gut-punch coming and going. i didn't know him well but i knew him. enough to feel something large stir as i sat staring at his broad grin frozen on poster-board at the front of the venue, joyous to the end. later in sausalito, boats on the water and tourists with peace sign poses in front of a parkside fountain. I am in a wool suit pushing a stroller, hoping an infant will sleep, the heel of my dress shoe extracting skin and blood. Later that night, watching alcohol shake loose obscured sadness, the true fear and effect of  the ultimate pulsing right there under all our manufactured forms, tiny truth pellets falling into a dispenser one at a time.

 the next day w/ M's dad, back in Marin again warm and blue, his person and form showing signs of decline, the same but different. we go to a park she went to as a girl; we go to her elementary school pulsing with one-upon-a-time Ms; we drive through rolling hills, find the house where M was a girl 36 eye-blinks ago, the hill she rode her big wheel down. ten seeming minutes from now will i/we tour similar terrain? the morning becomes afternoon and have to leave, to cross the bridge back.

 the next day we are w/ dear friend and her son, watching him drive in a run on an elementary school field, feeling the prickled absence of his father, an absence that continues to shadow me, forcing me to confront unanswerable questions. later at their house, the last place i saw him, hugged him, told him 'hang in'. more large things stirring, more gut-punching, continuing as we board the plane, as we return, as we unpack, as we sleep, as we rise, as we go through the motions of daily routine, leading me to a conversation w/ M at the kitchen sink the next night. Why am i perpetually fucked up, why am i 9 parts dark black to 1 part graciousness and blessings instead of the inverse? why does what i dodged continue to extract skin and blood? more unanswerable inquiry. I am exceedingly lucky and I know it but I don't always feel it. I feel the potential result more than the actual. I feel the passing form of the shark that missed me instead of the relative calm blue water i laze in now. when and how will it end?

waiting for something

photo by Matt Sipes

The other night I cooked dinner and then sat down a the table, waiting for M to come out of the bedroom a as she does each night after rocking our 18 month old son to sleep. This enterprise typically takes 30-60 minutes so I wasn't sure how much time I had before she'd arrive. I flipped through the day's NY Times but didn't have the stomach for sequestration or drones or Mali or any of the other ten thousand horrible things currently underway so I pushed the paper aside and reached for the tiny version of Letters to a Young Poet that happened to be sitting on the table. (note: why was it sitting there? I have no idea. It's M's). I absently began to read letter one and felt strange sensations ping-ponging through my body. The text was at once rote-familiar and a revelation. I'd read it a million times as a much younger person, the person at the start of everything, the person bundled with equal proportion of drive, ambition, arrogance. When you are this person - and you haven't yet lived - passages like:

This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple "I must", then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your whole life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse.

are the sort of thing you cling to, the sort of thing you silently repeat as you take little baby steps forward, mistaking motion for progress. Ideals and integrity are very easy at the start of everything. The projection you have of yourself years hence is that of some mystical artist, healing and soothing world ills with electrified ART bolting from your fingertips. Now, here at age 40, having recently (finally) directed my first feature film and contending with the multi-pronged nature of contemplating what it means to have (finally) done it, and the dark post-partum-like depression that's hung over me like a black blanket since (finally) doing it, and the constant self-lacerating voice that urges me to qualify or put the word 'finally' parenthetically when I talk about having (finally) done it, the words in that first letter took on a different sort of register.

What I am saying is this: It took me a long long long time to get to this point and it doesn't look like the glossy image I'd projected years ago. It still looks and feels like me. Nothing transformative or artistic about it really. Same problems. Same bills. The only difference is that I did it. And that I did it for myself finally. Everyone comes bundled with their own snarl of issues that impede or blunt progress. Mine has been (or rather, one of mine has been) the constant desire for approval of others; needing permission to do what I want to do. Brutal. I can't say I  transcended it to my make my movie but I can say I made my movie in spite of it. And here is where I felt a tiny stab of recognition reading the following:

You ask whether your verses are any good. You ask me. You have asked others before this. You send them to magazines. You compare them with other poems, and you are upset when certain editors reject your work. Now (since you have said you want my advice) I beg you to stop doing that sort of thing. You are looking outside, and that is what you should most avoid right now. No one can advise or help you - no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself.

Yes. That reads one way when you're 20 years old, another way at 40. How I wish I'd have been able to take those words fully on 2 decades ago. I can't help but fantasize that if I'd truly been able to embody them that I've been closer to that mystical art lighting-bolt fingered thing but there again I'm mythologizing something that is perhaps harmful to mythologize. Let me repeat this sentiment though: it took me a long long time to get to this point. And now let me paraphrase Rilke: who gives a fuck who likes it or not.

In that way that happens when you tune to a new frequency, I've been finding these sentiments in other places suddenly, echoing back. This recommended article about Ang Lee and the duration between film school and his first feature; This interview with Cheryl Strayed in Creative Nonfiction wherein this is said:

STRAYED: My definition of success has been developed over many years full of both successes and failures. My trajectory has not been failure, failure, failure, then success. The successes have been there all along, and all along, there’s also been a steady stream of rejections and disappointments. I imagine this will always be the case. It’s the writer’s life. It’s true that Wild’s reception, in particular, has been rather breathtaking, but it hasn’t made me measure success differently. I keep faith with the work. Wild would be the book that it is regardless of how many people read it. I’m very sure about that. When I say, “Success is a pile of shit somebody stacked up real high,” I mean it’s folly to measure your success in money or fame. Success in the arts can be measured only by your ability to say yes to this question: “Did I do the work I needed to do, and did I do it like a motherfucker?”

I hope none of this sounds like whining.  I am exceedingly grateful to be here. Only remarking that like many things in life that are epic and transformative, the place I sit now feels quiet, pedestrian, and ordinary. Perhaps this comes from stripping off the shell of arrogance, ambition, drive - all these real-world markers of  seeking approval (for me anyway)  - and actually making the movie.

the last weekend of Henry 10.17.2010

saturday, am we get up and make breakfast, sitting out side on the deck. you and strunk are standing on the table before we eat. you look like two little statues but then she hisses at you. when the food is on the table you attempt repeatedly to get jump up from a chair. you are extremely persistent and i swat you away multiple times w/ the paper. later m goes to laurelhurst park to meet friends and i'm laying on the futon w/ a cozy green blanket. you enter the room, see me, jump up and start purring. i scratch at your head, the bit between your eyes over your nose. you love it.

sun am, you enter our bedroom and begin your mewing to express dissatisfaction or eagerness for breakfast. i'd already gotten up to let strunk out 45 min earlier. i manage to pull you on my chest and keep you there where you purr loudly, laying across my belly. it is the last time you sleep on me. that morning m feeds you and strunk jellied tuna parts which is a delicacy and she ends up giving you the whole can. when we get back from yoga we cook breakfast, i make coffee and as per your usual request i give you some cream and then some more cream. it is the perfect autumnal afternoon now, the october sun warming us all on the back deck, crisp as hell. at one point i see you sprawled out, laying prostrate under the table and for a split-second i picture your death, after all you had that swollen eye thing a few wks ago and you're no spring chicken anymore. but you're alive and well, enjoying what must be the perfect day for a cat. later LB is laying there next to you, his paws grazing the top of your head. later m is off the deck in the backyard helping me w/ the composter. this gives you the opportunity to jump up onto the table and attempt to eat what's left of her eggs. she has to run back twice. later, when we're back sitting there you jump up and scavenge off her plate.

m and i go to ikea to get slats for our bed.  we come home. we take LB to the park and throw the tennis ball w/ him. when we come home you and strunk are eager for dinner. i feed you your part of a can, crushing your pill for the eye thing into the food. then i put the rice on for people dinner and help m put the slats on the bed. i leave to walk to the grocery. is it here? do you exit when i do out the front door? i already can't recall. if you did, this is the last time i'll see you alive. yes, wait that was it. you ran out with me. i went to retrieve the shopping list from the car and you were in our driveway, to my left. as i shut the door i recalled all the times you'd jump into the car if the door was open.

we eat dinner and watch two l & o svu's from season 2. when it's done i get on the computer and m taps the side of a can out on the porch and says 'i put the call out. when you're done there you get him'. this is our ritual. we put the call out for you, summoning you back from your kit adventures. sometimes it's instant, sometimes 10 to 15 minutes. but you always come. usually we hear your bell from near or far, tinkling as you run back. in los angeles you lived in an apartment for 7 years, always aching to be outside. when we moved to portland we let you run free.  but we always made sure you came in at night time. i brush my teeth and then tap the can from the front porch. nothing. no bell tinkling.  i go to the back porch. nothing.

i go back to the front porch and tap the can and hear nothing. it is eerily quiet. then i see it. a black shape laying across the street in the neighbor's yard. it could be a scarf or a discarded piece of something but as i go down the steps and across the street, growing closer i see that it is a cat, curled up as if sleeping.  my stomach plummets. wait, is it you? there's no collar. for the teeniest of split-seconds i think that maybe it's not you but a look-alike. but i feel the tail and that is how i know - you have a distinctive broken tail. it is you, my love. dead. you are gone.  you look as if you could just be sleeping but underneath you i see blood. your eyes are frozen open.someone has lain tiny flowers on your body. i don't know whether to pick you up or not, i end up going back to the house. i find your collar and tag and bell - crushed - laying in the street. i put them in my pocket. i tell m. moments later we are both outside sitting by you, both dumbstruck, crying, disbelieving. we put you in a cardboard box and take you inside and cry some more. we sit over your box in the living room trying to show strunk and LB. i am crying so hard that LB is more concerned with me, licking the tears off my face. i pour a tiny bit of cream for you. i light a candle.

just like that you are gone. nearly 15 years old. a robust life, suddenly over. and you are so warm. it must have just happened. just as we were sitting inside, watching the computer screen. how can you be so warm and no longer be alive? we each hallucinate seeing you take a breath. but no, there is no doubt: the life has left your body. we each speak about you. how glad we are that it happened like this, that it wasn't some debilitating disease, and that we are glad you died right away, that the car or bike who hit you didn't merely maim you, leaving us to take you the emergency clinic, with you in mortal agony, forced to decide whether to have you put down or not. no, this was a swift journey and we thank whomever needs to be thanked for such a mercy as that. we send you energy and good vibes to help you cross over. we check the times of the pet crematory. in the morning we will take you to be burned to ashes. but for tonight, we put you and the box outside, where you would most like to be, so that you can run free. one last time.

xo

Farewell Henry

Henry (aka Henry Malone-Padian, aka Hank, aka Handsome Hank)

3.17.1996 - 10.17.2010

godspeed good friend. you are sorely missed

Henry & Maxwell in Los Angeles

it feels like a hundred years...

Spent some time this AM filling out a pre-meet health questionnaire for upcoming visit to new acupuncturist. The document was generic in nature but aimed at isolating recurrent mind/body health issues so the practitioner knows how best to treat the patient. Got to the part about Emotional Health and was asked check all that apply:

granted, most of the choices are at the gloomy end of the spectrum but the 3 items i selected were certainly not positive. all day i keep asking myself why not joy? I'm not completely joy-less in my day to day life but joy is not my default setting, not even close. You'd think after the brain tumor that I'd be shitting out sunshine and dancing on moonbeams but i worry a lot - too much? - about death. The death of those I love. The death that's built into everything - even planets, stars, galaxies. I can't just go for a beer with a friend, I go for a beer with a friend that I know one day will be dead. I go to watch a baseketball game and instead of keeping my focus on how good Greg Oden looks and how nice it is to have Martell Webster back, my mind drifts to 100 yrs from now these 17,500 people will not exist in this current form. This is not a positive or sustainable scenario for emotional well-being. I get that. And I'm not saying that I can't help my thoughts b/c I know I can if I work at it, but I do wish that - in the face of all this inevitability - that i was joyous.

updated to add: feel compelled to qualify - after two slightly concerned emails - that i am not drowning in an ocean of sadness per se as relates to death. it's an intellectual consideration not emotional, even though the above post is mostly about my emotions. does that make sense?

loss, sadness

untitled

...fragments, increments...

i was rejected by email this morning from a creative venture that i was excited about. my excitement was two-fold: one to be involved w/ something that sounded right up my alley, and two, i was pretty sure i would get it (this of course has a sub-compartment of ego validation). i attemped to not get pulled into the currents of the rejection but only w/ minor success. dribbles of depression and anger kept arising. later i stood in the kitchen getting ready to leave for work and bigger waves washed ashore, waves encompassing history and things outside the present, outside the right now. Impressions, conclusions, arrivals all built on shadow and sand. Later still, at work, it continued to gnaw away. mm and i have been in the habit of celebrating our rejections in a formal manner, a vocal declaration of our intent, a salute to the effort not the result. I worked to move my awareness to this arena. Later, I came upon this passage from Pema C:

But the real core instruction is, whenever you're feeling uncomfortable, don't believe what you're saying to yourself. Right then is the time to not believe what you're saying to yourself.

And what we're saying to ourselves at those times are really old habits. We're reinforcing really old habits. That's what we do when we're uncomfortable. We don't leave it with just hooked or triggered. We seek to get the bubble back together— or whatever language you want to use— by talking to ourselves, in a way that really strengthens old habits. And they're usually very self-destructive habits.

requiem for a hat

i would be a first-rate buffoon to say i couldn't see this coming. i could feel you trying to take your leave for months. what began as a hair-line fracture in the ice began to grow and drift incrementally, becoming a rift, a chasm, an abyss. i am clumsy in thought sometimes and, yes i'll say it, you took full advantage of that. i cannot fault you for my shortcomings though and, should you gaze on these lines, please do not infer such. we were doomed from the outset you see. all things die. even the brilliant, the shimmering, the harmonious.

a post-mortem is a fool's errand but for posterity's sake i shall recount the final moments: i parked the car in a downtown parking garage. eager to lessen my burden's i did not bring my bag choosing instead to carry my lunch and book which in turn meant i had to stuff you, sweet hat, into one of my pockets (i cannot recall thru my vale of tears whether this was coat pocket or pants pocket). I also carried an ipod and a digital camera, meaning my hands were thick and fumble-prone and as i've admitted, my thoughts were scattered like wind-borne seeds. somewhere between the parking garage and my bldg i lost you. but i didn't realize this until hours later. you were long gone before i even noticed.

please know, though i am cloaked in blackness, i wish you all best,
where-ever you may have landed, who-ever may claim you as theirs.
the mountains, the seas, the stars will see our paths crossing as a mere blip - should they regard it at all - but know this dear friend: our time together occupies broad canyons of my memory, my person, my being. the person i am and the person i strive to be are unified thru the prism of your glory.

argh, let me stop this stalling and bring on the ceaseless ribbon of heartsick gutache:

farewell my sweet angel. i'm forever yours. faithfully.

the corridor, revisited

3 days into october and i can feel a familiar tug at my emotional resolve. a low-grade sort of hum that heralds (or could herald) impending greyness and/or depression. maybe it's seasonal, after all it's been grey and rainy for the past couple days, but that feels reductive. i've long been a champion of all things rainy and autumnal and would like to think that it's more reasoned or complex than some knee-jerk mammalian computer-chip reaction.

more likely is the connotative value of autumn: almost 4 yrs ago, at almost this time i began to get the headaches, followed soon by the blurred vision. this whole stretch of autumn, october thru xmas, was the preamble and backstory of the brain tumor year. then, the following october (2005) i found myself living in a hotel room in Cambridge, MA for 2 months as i received proton beam radiation at Mass General. While the tale has a happy ending (meaning i'm still alive, typing this out) just remembering it summons the emotions of that time, the fear, angst, dread and above all, the uncertainty.

here's another reason, going hand and hand w/ the above, (based on a recent blood draw) my pituitary functions are likely beginning to slow and fail. this was predicted and not a surprise. "not if but when" b/c of the radiation treatment. i'm meeting w/ endocrinologist next month to look at options which, as i understand it, means i'll be on some type of drug(s) for the rest of my life. not only can lowered pituitary function cause depression on a chemical level but for me the mere contemplation of the pituitary failure promotes it. ugh.

i am doing my best to remember that when we were in the corridor, the one of 2005 where we didn't know what would happen or what to do or if i would even live out the year, that we would have paid any price. we would have made any bargain and from that vantage point (ie, the abyss) taking a drug for the rest of my life was the sweetest most benign option possible.

it is all - the autumn depression, the pituitary news - a flashing reminder that no matter how 'normal' my life may feel now, no matter how gloriously mundane things like going to the movies, paying a bill, reading a book may be, no matter how much time i put between myself and 2005 that i am not returned fully from brain tumor land and i never will be. Some strand of my life will always be tethered to it.

tickle of depression

sat out in the autumn sun on my lunchbreak today which was a beautiful thing (bonus: mm driveby) except for the fact that i'm reading an incredibly disturbing book about invented illnesses and the egregious medical marketing techniques used to promote cure of said illnesses except that often the word 'cure' is misleading at best, utterly false at worst.

so anyway, that's not enough to ruin someone's day. but that combined with the idea of drinking rocket fuel is. plus that and the idea of the regulatory agency (the FDA of course) set-up to protect us from the dangers of say, BPA, being utterly useless could start to tug at your mood. (particularly since the FDA's lack of regulation in the pharmaceutical industry is featured in the book i'm currently reading).

but then reading about pigs being abused and raped in factory farms. yep, that'll do it. all these things congeal and harden and leave me a little glum. what kind of a freaking place is this?

update: mm just informed me about cannabalistic polar bears. mood not improved.

black fog of depression

"...a patient’s psychological functioning may be affected by the psychological implications of receiving a potentially life-altering diagnosis, the direct effects of the tumor on mood and cognition and treatment side effects..."

wow this seems obvious. i suppose it's good that it's being studied though.

article can be found here