It's St. Valentine's Day, 6 in the morning. The sky is dark outside in the cool Los Angeles morning, the concrete forest of my city awakening with singing birds and a random car speeding past now and again. I couldn't sleep. I've been dreaming of old loves- not just lovers, but things I loved in the past. Friends I've lost. Boyfriends I left. Books I traveled the world with but haven't thought of in ages.
And it's St. Valentine's Day.
SECTION A: ST. VALENTINE'S DAY
I've made a big deal of Valentine's Day this year. Apparently I do every year. I told my beloved partner that I was gifting myself the sort of Valentine's Day *I* would like to have because he thinks (as ALL my boyfriends throughout time have said) that it's dumb to have a commercial Hallmark holiday to have to be romantic.
By the way. Literally every boyfriend I have ever had, with the exception of J___ and J___, whose birthdays happened to be Valentine's Day- oh!- Happy Birthday, boys- (early college years, crazy years. I doubt either of them read this blog and if they do, well, boys, forgive me for my crazy years. I wasn't well.)But back to the literally every boyfriend I have ever had thing- they have all said the same singsong complaint about not needing some Hallmark holiday to be romantic.
Let me tell you.
Yes. Yes, in fact, you do.
Oh, not that you weren't all incredibly romantic. Some of you were. Some of you were incredibly romantic- J___ (V-day birthday boy) wrote love letters. The other J___ made CD mixes (old-fashioned playlists or mixed tapes after tapes but before playlists.) One of my J's, a third college boyfriend whose name also confusingly began with J, was an incredible artist who made a hand-crafted, hand painted kama sutra for me.
Never on Valentine's Day.
Why do we need Valentine's Day?
Well, the reason I love it and celebrate it as an adult is not because I am some dumb consumer blindly being led by marketing.
No, it is for the same reason that I think things like prom and graduation ceremonies and baseball games are important.
I didn't really go to prom, by the way. I think I went one of the two years, with a group of girls, without a date, because even though I was pretty and thin by my senior year (after years of being a chubby, broken glasses wearing, funky short-haired girl sometimes mistaken meanly for a pretty gay boy) I was undate-able in my small town high school. Aside from one sweet boy a few years younger than me who is still a very good friend, no boy would ask me out. Still burns, although not in a way that I'm actually hurt or care. Years later, several boys from school told me they always *wanted* to ask me out. I suppose we all carry wounds from stupid high school, except for those of you lucky enough not to.
I also didn't go to my college graduation, even though I graduated with honors.
And a lot of things. Over the years, I have missed all sorts of baby showers, weddings, funerals. For years, I missed them because I was on the road as a musician, or performing. After a while, I just wasn't invited.
My biggest regret in life, after NOT going to NYU on the big scholarship they offered me (I know.) is not going to my childhood best friend's wedding because I was in India. At the time it seemed a good idea. Now, I feel sorely the lack of that particular friend in my life- frenemy, really, and I suppose years later, time passing, all things turn to dust, as will she and I.
But this is about St. Valentine's Day, and love, and love letters, and remembrances.
There's rosemary,
that's for remembrance.
Pray you, love, remember.
And there's pansies, that's for thoughts.
There's fennel for you, and columbines.
There's rue for you, and here's some for me.
We may call it herb of grace o' Sundays.
Oh, you must wear your rue with a difference.
There's a daisy. I would give you some violets,
but they withered all when my father died.
They say he made a good end.
--Ophelia
Hamlet Prince of Denmark
Act IV Scene V
St. Valentine's Day is important because it gives us a collective opportunity to remember the ones we love and celebrate that. I don't care about the flowers and chocolate and sex. I mean, of course I do. I have all sorts of plans involving tiramisu and champagne and lingerie. But if I were alone this year, I would be doing the same damn thing, actually. I'm done skipping out on things that might connect me more deeply to my own humanity.
For years, I lived life David Foster Wallace. Not as famous, successful, or brilliant, perhaps, but the basic template of my being is in that man with whom I share a birthday (along side Anais Nin, Nina Simone, W.H. Auden, Ursula LeGuin, and Jennifer Love Hewitt. It all starts to make sense, right?). ... as lonely, isolated, able to see through the bullshit of culture but without a community to share that with. As disappointed in both the inhumanity of humanity as well as the stupidity of humanity. Frustrated by the simple lack of caring, if not elegance. Where was Jesus now? Where was beauty? We reduced ourselves, at least in this nation, to cave-men, although at least we have maintained Venus of Willendorfs via selfies by Miss Kim Kardashian, that berated symbol of fertility that we mistake for celebrity...
But that's a story. Partially true, partially untrue, varied year by year, filtered through the lens of this moment now.
You see, that's a belief system as poisonous and dangerous as one that says that God sends natural disasters to punish nations for allowing gay marriage.
It is.
And so while the answer is not, in my mind, to hook up and believe in culture, aka marketing, aka a series of agreements that we agree too agree upon about the way the world is, whether we realize we are agreeing or not-
At least, while I'm alive on this earth, this lifetime, whatever time I have left, I'm looking to find beauty and humanity and possibility and goodness everywhere I can.
I'm old enough to know how the world works, and I'm even older than that. I'm old enough to look beyond its transgressions to find its renewal of hope.
And so,
Valentine's Day.
I WHISPERED, 'I am too young,'
And then, 'I am old enough';
Wherefore I threw a penny
To find out if I might love.
'Go and love, go and love, young man,
If the lady be young and fair.'
Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,
I am looped in the loops of her hair.
O love is the crooked thing,
There is nobody wise enough
To find out all that is in it,
For he would be thinking of love
Till the stars had run away
And the shadows eaten the moon.
Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,
One cannot begin it too soon.
Oh, I know I'm weaving up marketing and Shakespeare and poets and hurts and possibilities. And I'm not saying prom has any meaning if you are a young person, who, like I did, is going to miss it for being different than the others. I'm saying, give yourself the prom you dream of, in your heart, in your innocence, in your imagination. And don't give a damn what other people say or think. You don't need to be Ophelia any more than I did.
SECTION B: RECOVERED OPHELIAS- PHILOMENA
There's a wonderful book I read whilst in rehab for eating disorders years ago in college, "Reviving Ophelia." Can't get into the details now. Google it. But know that it is about reclaiming young women from the brink of demolition in the forms of eating disorders, sexual abuse, sex selfies, low self esteem, revenge porn, cutting, bullying, etc. Modern day witch hunting.
I thought of it so often while watching- for the second time in one month- the film Philomena last night. This was my second viewing, this time with my partner in life and crime. What a beautiful film. Steve Coogan and Dame Judi Dench in the true story of a jobless, broken journalist helping an Irish woman find her 50 year old son after-
SPOILER ALERT
the nuns at the Abbey where she had given birth in the 1950s had sold the baby for adoption to America.
The first time I watched the movie, I wept, as I wept last night- but that first time my blood BOILED over the Catholic church, and organized religion in general, and its crimes against people, humble people especially. Oh, there's other blogs for me to talk about how so often our establishments stray so far from what Jesus would actually do it's down right farcical, if not evil. But.
Last night I wept also for everyone. Because the nuns who did those things, they were no better nor worse than the rest of them. They were simply surviving and operating so as to survive the best they could under the circumstances as well. Yes. It was wrong. But then I started thinking about the way the world thought of- and often still thinks of- women and sex. And we simply were and often still are downright medieval in our thoughts and beliefs about women and the rights of women. And I wept for all of us.
Then I thought of Mary Magdalene, one of our earliest Ophelias. I suppose at this point, if you are reading my blog, you are most likely familiar with what I will call a reclamation of Mary Magdalene. You are most likely someone who venerates her despite the most likely false reputation she has been given over the centuries as a way to control and manipulate people. You may even be someone who looks up to her legend for answers to your own broken heart.
And she is hear to show you, as is Philomena,
Let your heart break,
Because it will.
Your heart will break.
Speaking of prom and high school, this is something that should be taught in schools that isn't, at least not outright. It is something that classes like English literature get close to, but something you should all know about life:
You Heart Will Break.
And you can let it break open.
Do not let it break shut, crumbling to dust at your feet. Death will do that for you.
Let it break open, bursting with pain into a thousand soaring skies.
You will discover not only that you have a choice to do so-
Philomena did- watch the movie- a stunning ending-
I did- and do, and practice doing so at every chance-
And that opening is where miracles live.
SECTION C:
FICTION FRIDAYS?
There is simply no excuse. I have been busy, yes. Busy with Monologue-a-palooza at Samuel French Bookstore (so fun! Amazing talent! Especially Brittny Roberts, hope she doesn't mind me citing her. She's the woman who put the whole thing together and she is incredibly gifted as a writer and actress. In fact, what I am about to say reveals my own high esteem I have for myself, haha, but, I wish she and I could have a TV show or something together. I have been part of two of her events and am really a fan of both her writing AND her acting.) I WILL return with Fiction Fridays, perhaps today, even, Fiction Fridays on Sunday? I have been rehearsing for my gig March 11th as well as writing my next project, a web series I will share more about later- and pitching my script with Carlo and all the little intricacies of coping with rejection and getting cautiously optimistic about potential opportunities and all that.
So. It's nigh on 7 am now, and so soon I will have to walk the Henry Monster and bake the croissants (they are proofing right now... let me just go see how big they have gotten overnight-
oh- oh, yes, oh, my. They have doubled in size, maybe even tripled, and they smell yeasty and buttery and they are FULL of marzipan and in an hour I will bake them and I can tell already they will flake perfectly. They won't be as good as the real real deal, as in, like, from Paris, real deal... but they will be AWESOME.
I got so excited about those croissants just not that even Henry got excited- the possibility of food thrills him- he IS a dog, after all- and he just came in the room to let me know he is definitely awake and ready to play, eat, or pee, or all three. So I gotta wrap this up asap!)
SECTION D:
GRATITUDE SATURDAYS
I missed gratitude Saturdays because I didn't wake up at dawn to write. I woke up just in time to feed the boy, walk the boy, and do my Italian lesson with breakfast (something I do every day, my Italian lesson with breakfast. Yesterday was a revisiting of one of the past tenses... ho studiato italiano, etc.) And then it was time to do ballet and then I had to get ready to put on my jersey and go support Napoli (we lost, 0-1 to Juventus) (my partner's team, but I *did* get to meet a GENIUS director who is also a supporter of Napoli) before rehearsal at UCLA with the pianist/ music director for my gig March 11th before coming home to clean the kitchen and the bathroom (we still have a hole in the ceiling in the bathroom because there is a leak from the upstairs neighbors which caused a crack in the walls to become, well, a big hole that then the plumber had to make even bigger, and the bathroom is covered in crumbling wood and paint and dust and I am simply tired of bathing in what seems like the ruins of a bathroom rather than an actual functioning urban apartment, so, I did my best) and then the day had gotten away from me and it was date time. So.
95. Old fashioned Valentine's cards
96. Red lipstick
97. High heeled stiletto shoes
98. Surprising a group of Italians with an official Napoli jersey in robin's egg blue
99. A mother who knows JUST how to flatter your ego.
I sent her a picture of me in the jersey in our kitchen, where the lighting is PERFECT, and she wrote back, "did you get botox?" I was vainly proud, as I am always, of my skin. What a vain biatch I can be. Really. One of my worst qualities. But Carlo took me down a notch when he said,
"Your Mom is smart."
"What?" I asked, not quite sure I had heard him correctly.
"She's smart," he repeated, with an impish grin.
"Why?" I asked, confused.
"She knows how to make you feel good."
The realization swept over me, and my vainglory slapped me in the face.
"Oh." I said. "So, I don't actually look like I have had botox done," (which I have not, for the record, although last week I DID have a microcurrent, microdermabrasion facial done, and I wrote so to my Mother, gleefully exclaiming, "maybe it worked." Oh, how embarrassing.) I looked down at the second half of my pizza, debating whether or not to defy my diet and refuse my slim career game, or if I wilt not, but be sworn to love, and a character actress I will be?...
The next piece already halfway down my gullet- what was that about a diet? Meh. (Shrugs.)
I continued,
"She was just making me feel better."
Carlo giggled and continued eating his Saturday night junk food as well.
Oh, we are as sick as the secrets we keep.
Pizza, corn dogs, chocolate, wine.
Not too bad. ;-p
100. Pizza
101. Corn Dogs
102. Chocolate
103. Wine
104. Almond Croissants
105. Comfy sofas
106. Strong men with broad shoulders who hold you in their arms
107. Reclaiming heroines besmirched by marketing
108. Allowing life to open your heart rather than shutter it up like a beach house come November
109. The little puppy dogs who are forever loyal but are now placing a paw across your lap. It simply is time to let you go.
LOVE
ALWAYS
OF THE DEEPEST SORT
Erin
p.s.
9:40 am
Here's my sweet Valentine from my beloved.
LOLOLLOLLLOLOL
