The Writing Group

 Los Angeles, California

Cathy, my friend, trainer, and Chinese-medicine guru, belongs to a small writing group. They formed at the very beginning of the pandemic and carried out a weekly meeting throughout the pandemic via Zoom. When I invited Cathy to come to my house for a pool day, something we also did last summer, she suggested that she bring the group, and all of the food, with her. And that we could do some writing from 'prompts.' This sounded like a great idea and turned out to be even better than I expected.

Cathy brought Erica with her, as well as a spread of food, and a bottle of champagne. I provided orange juice for mimosas and the makings for Aperol spritz. And glasses. And that's all! We ate fresh vegetables, fruit, hummus, pita chips, smoked salmon, chips and salsa, and an eggplant dish with olives that Cathy had made, all at the little round teak table in my courtyard. Then we brought tablets to the lounge chairs by the pool and talked about what we wanted to write about. We came up with a question about what changes we wanted to see in our lives. We wrote for twenty minutes, then shared and talked about what each of us had written. The second prompt asked what we would need to do to facilitate this change. Again, we wrote and shared.

I have written this blog for over a decade and I have lost track of all of the subjects I have written about. But I know that I have written this before: I also keep a journal; have two completed novels; two abandoned novels, and two abandoned self-help books (one diet, and one etiquette). Abandoning projects makes me feel like a failure. Or did, until I read an interview with an author recently where she referred to an abundance of discarded or abandoned writing projects. So, I felt somewhat validated in that practice.

My pen pal recently wrote to me about a houseguest who made the bed before they left his home after a visit. What are they thinking? he asked. Was he going to keep it for someone else to sleep in without changing linens? I pulled out an abandoned project, a modern etiquette book I had started writing in 2019, and sent him an excerpt from the chapter entitled How to Be a Good Guest. I hadn't looked at it in awhile. It contained some handy tidbits such as not bringing flowers to a dinner party that need to be arranged. Your host is most likely busy in the kitchen and having to break away to arrange flowers isn't always welcomed. But the part that pertained to his complaint was: Don't dump damp towels on top of the linens you have taken off the bed and bring them to your host. She (and I am referring to myself here) may not have planned to do laundry at that time, and now will have to in order to stave off mildew. Of course a lot of these problems are easily solved when people don't make assumptions and use that little thing between their nose and chin to ask their host for some guidance. Everyone runs their home in their own way. When you stay with someone, you should understand that, if you want to be a good guest, you are required to get with their program as much as possible.

Am I inclined to finish the etiquette book? Not so much. But I do have a writing project in mind that I think could be rewarding. At the start of the pandemic, I took a pretty, empty book and began writing down the recipes that I cooked for myself. I have continued this to this day, and now have only a few pages left before the book is filled. Each recipe is dated and color-coded to the month (don't ask. Ok, ask. I assign colors to months, yes I do). I kept my journal through the same time, as well as the blog posts I wrote here. I am thinking of combining the three into a cohesive whole. It's not a lot of writing. More organizing and editing. But I think it is a viable project. The writing group is invited to come to my home again next month. Maybe I'll run this idea past them. I didn't feel like this in the past, but now appreciate that it is good to commune with other writers. Otherwise, writing can feel like the proverbial tree. Oops! Did you hear that fall? Hello? Anybody there..? Hmmm. See what I mean?

Celebrate Me Home

Los Angeles, California

I have a lot of family history at The Hollywood Bowl. My mother's high school, Hollywood High, held its commencement ceremony there the year that she graduated. My father, who in college was interested in stage construction, once carried a spear as an extra in a production of Aida. As a child I first went there for a concert production of Madame Butterfly with a family of friends whose father was a musician in the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. All of that was way before my husband and I began sharing a season there with my parents each summer. We started in section E alongside the boxes, but joyfully stepped up to a box when one finally became available. I loved going to the Hollywood Bowl with my parents and seeing how much my dad enjoyed being there, champagne glass in hand. As we trudged up the hill carrying coolers containing that champagne and our pre-concert picnic, my mom would chatter about how we should have made a different meal and next time why don't we... Mom never quite got the concept of mindfulness and being in the moment. Still, it was always enjoyable to be there and often provided us with a great concert. We heard Pavarotti sing, watched Baryshnikov dance, and laughed when Randy Newman dropped an F-bomb between songs.

One of my favorite concerts ever was seeing Paul Simon there as part of his Farewell Concert tour. An experience I wrote about in a post somewhere in the volumes contained here. It was a stellar, magical concert on a perfect late-Spring night. Coincidentally, it was Sandra's birthday (although she had passed away almost five years earlier). I was in musical afterglow for weeks, having recreated the entire concert, off of a website entitled setlist, into an iTunes playlist I could listen to over and over again.

When I saw this year's Hollywood Bowl season's offerings, I was surprised to see a weekend concert of Kenny Loggins with Jim Messina Sitting In. Many years ago, I had seen Loggins and Messina a number of times, mostly at the Universal Amphitheatre up at Universal Studios. That was a relatively small, wonderfully cosy outdoor arena which offered up music and comedy all summer long, and sadly no longer exists. I saw Joni Mitchell, the Kinks, Loggins and Messina and a lot of other popular artists of that time. The concert I missed was The Blues Brothers opening for Steve Martin, back in Steve Martin's white suit and arrow-through-the-head era. We could have gone, and should have gone. But I find audiences can get too trigger-happy at comedy performances and end up annoyingly over-responding to the extent that you can miss the punch lines. So, now rather regretfully, we passed.

The opportunity to see Loggins with Messina again was too good to miss. I asked Joel if he wanted to go. Log Runs and who? he asked. He hadn't known who Paul Simon was either. But he said sure. The concert was scheduled for July 15th, but 48 hours before the concert I got a text and an email that it was canceled due to one of the key members of "the entourage" getting Covid. As far as I know, the finger didn't get pointed at anyone, but clearly whoever it was survived. It was finally rescheduled for September 22nd. On September 20th. I was still pondering putting my tickets up for sale on StubHub. The morning of September 22, my friend, Lisa, texted me to ask if I was excited about seeing the concert that night. And the answer was: No, I wasn't. I was experiencing my Post?-Pandemic Stress Disorder, pre-event dread. But I kept calm and carried on.

That evening, we boarded the shuttle at the Los Angeles Zoo. We had allowed an hour to get from my home to the Zoo which is only about thirteen miles away. We allowed another hour to get on the shuttle and get to the Bowl which is seven miles from the Zoo. Yes, this is Los Angeles. It took the full two hours and some minutes. As we walked into the Bowl, Loggins and Messina were performing their first number, Watching the River Run. It was the song I dreaded hearing.

I was married to my husband, Tom, at my parents' home and my dad escorted me out of my parents' master bedroom to where Tom and the minister were waiting before the fireplace in my parents' living room. And that walk was accompanied by the recorded song: Watching the River Run, by Loggins and Messina. Back at the concert I found myself protected, as the distraction of finding our seats and settling in blessedly mitigated any attention I might have given to hearing them perform the song. After settling in, and as they launched into The House at Pooh Corners, Joel got our bottle of The Prisoner opened and poured into our stemless, plastic glasses with the fingerprint pinch in the sides for ease of holding (more about this later). Soon they took a turn into the 'country' portion of the set. By the time they were doing their retro fifties rock Your Mama Don't Dance, I could see Joel was not enjoying this concert. He didn't know the music, and clearly didn't like it. I had asked, as we drove to the Zoo, if he wanted me to play some of their music so he could acquaint himself with it. He had replied that he would rather experience it fresh at the concert so if he didn't like it, he wouldn't know before it even started. Good call, because now he was frowning. Frankly, I too was having a hard time enjoying the concert because the two women sitting directly behind us were talking through every single song. Loudly, incessantly talking. Have you ever noticed that when these inconsiderate people regale you with their conversation at inappropriate times, that the content of their exchange is always ridiculously inane? The concert continued. Joel kept frowning. They kept talking. Had Joel turned and given them the look, it might have shut them up, at least temporarily. At some point, I decided to take matters into my own hands. As we were sitting on the aisle, and I was one seat in, I handed Joel my wine and scooted out and down the steps to where I found an usher. The women sitting behind us have been loudly talking through the entire concert. Do we have any recourse? I would like to at least enjoy the second half. In the middle of this, L+M launched into Angry Eyes. Oh, I like this song! I had interjected (yes, wine drinking) into the middle of my complaint. This young, very cute Latino usher wrote down the location of both our seats and the seats of the chattering brujas behind us. Through the next song or two I saw him walk up and down the aisle, but evidently they did too, because they stopped talking. But, as he passed they started right back up again. And here is what I question about this increasingly more practiced problem. Why would you spend money for a concert, film, or theater production and talk through it? Why not just go to a restaurant or a bar? And secondly, let's say you do want to do this. How can you not have the sensitivity to know that you are disturbing the people around you who want their attention focused solely on the music and performers? Unfortunately we all know the answer to that question. We could call it one of the largest social issues facing our society in so many areas today: The New Entitlement.

Forty-five minutes into the concert, L+M called out goodnight and thank you! What? Forty-five minutes? They came back and did another two songs, then the lights came up. Is it over? No one left. We were continuing to ponder when the nice, cute usher approached us and asked us to follow him. We got down onto the promenade where he gave us tickets and handed us over to another usher who took us down further towards the stage to a section set up with folding chairs down front, on the side. There were a few people there but most of the chairs were empty. So this is how they deal with this. Instead of getting the offenders to cease and desist, they just move you away from them (elementary school was so different. I really wanted those women sent to the principal's office).

Soon two people joined us in the seats behind us. Are you also refugees? I asked them, who turned out to be a mother and 20- or 30- something son. Their story was that the women sitting behind them were not only being loud and disruptive through the concert but also had dumped a drink on Adam, the son. When he turned around, the spiller said: Relax, it was only water! But it wasn't. It was a wine glass that still had residual red wine in it, which was now clearly on his jacket. He pointed this out and the response he got from this woman was: F*#k you. Other people sitting around them called security off the app on their phone and as Adam and his mother were walked down to our area, a squad of security people surrounded those women. Maybe they got sent to the principal's office.

We talked with Adam and Randy as the intermission continued for a very, long time. They had enjoyed dinner at the Bowl and had been told that the second half would be Kenny Loggins, solo. And so it was. A few more refugees had joined us and it turned out to be such a fun group of people and actually seemed like a totally different second concert. And... Joel loved it. Evidently, everyone who has seen Top Gun and its sequel had come out for this and those songs created a frenzy. We sang along with Celebrate Me Home, all stood and clapped with I'm Alright, and Joel and I danced to Footloose in the space that was in front of our seats. It was a fabulous, fun second half. Ok, except maybe for the fact that while trying to balance that plastic glass of The Prisoner between my knees while I applauded at the end of one of the songs, I spilled it. I spilled it on the seat, on my pants, and on my Toms (fabric) shoes. But I didn't spill it on anyone else, so I didn't care (except that I didn't get to drink that portion).

Reflecting on the whole experience the following day, I thought about my reticence to go. After fighting traffic to the Zoo and standing in the line for the shuttle, fleeting thoughts of Why are we doing this? I'm not doing this anymore. were dropping into my consciousness. We had talked about going to the Dodgers game the following night. I had pulled the plug. Too much. But it wasn't too much. Albert Pujols hit his 700th home run that night, and we could have been there. So, maybe Kenny, and the kind staff at the Hollywood Bowl, gave me a new perspective. GO. It reminds me of that self-help thing about standing on a precipice in fear of stepping off. And when you finally do, you fly. I'm going to try harder. Maybe I can't fly. But thanks to my gratitude for this concert experience, I think I have learned the lesson that I don't have to fly. I don't even want to fly. I can be perfectly happy just being footloose.

A New Normal

Los Angeles, California

In a favorite book, Kathleen and Frank by Christopher Isherwood which combined letters of and commentary about his parents, Frank wrote to his wife from the front during World War One that he could easily tolerate his enemies. It was his friends that gave him trouble and pause. To quote another Christopher, my good friend, Why do we want to fight with our friends? That's why we have families.

I am wondering if one of the mental health issues that we were nonspecifically warned about is in our relationships and friendships. Joel and I made it handily through the two and a half years of lockdown and the uneven emergence after vaccines, boosters, and Omicron variants. We are in an ever-diminishing group who did not, that we know of, contract Covid. My friends fall into both categories of infected and dodged it, by about half and half.

I don't see evidence that any of my friends have pandemic-related mental health issues. Yes, we all admit, the isolation was hard. I went it alone. Others had spouses; still others small pods. In a very small group exhibiting stupidity, a few of my friends acted as if there were no virus whatsoever, or at least not one that they would allow to cramp their style. They're the double-infected group, determined to be afflicted with every or every other variant that comes down the pike. Of the groups who sheltered in place, I'm not sure which of the three situations: alone; with spouse; with pod, would be the hardest. Being on my own, especially not seeing Joel for months, brought isolation and a great deal of longing. But it also was a highly productive time for me. I meditated and worked out daily, wrote a lot, and got quite a bit of home-organizing done. I somehow ended up with two pen pals and we wrote long emails to each other throughout the time. Those provided some laugh out loud moments which were golden in a time of odd uncertainty. I probably watched too much TV, but I was selective about what I chose to entertain me. I remember liking Queen's Gambit. On the other hand, when I wanted the TV off, I didn't have to deal with anyone in my house who wanted it on. Silence was golden.

But coming out of the pandemic and getting back into the swing of seeing friends has been an adjustment. Has there been conflict? Yeah, a little, but mostly there has been movement: Some casual friends have become closer; there has been a disconnect with a couple of friends, and a few old friends have come back into my life. Maybe it's a bit like the Queen's Gambit chessboard. The pieces moved around a bit, and then some of them fell off the board.

This week I saw friends three days in a row. It was fun, but it was exhausting. I try to space these things out. And is the fatigue I feel in the late afternoon related to aging, pandemic, or what? I come home from these days feeling spent. And, truthfully, I have to override my reticence as these plans that I have made approach. In the past, when I had travel plans, I always went through pre-travel angst the night before the trip. Even if I was returning to my beloved Kona Village, as I did each October knowing I would be blissfully happy the entire time I was there, that night before travel would bring regretful blues. Why am I doing this? Why did this ever seem like a good idea? I wish I wasn't going. Luckily these thoughts were so familiar to me, that I let them tool around in my head while I interjected the wisdom that I always feel this way before all trips, and tomorrow when travel is underway, I will be fine. A glass or two of champagne always helped as well.

I have never felt this about social engagements. I have the opposite of social anxiety. I love parties. I love events. I am happy being in groups. Or at least I used to be. These days, even lunch plans with a friend brings up an angst similar to my pre-travel blues. I react as I always have. I keep calm and carry on. But I wonder what this is about. I have an odd yearning back to those productive days of lockdown. Somehow jonesing for a calendar with all days empty. And yet, it was not a happy time and I was painfully missing Joel throughout.

I don't think my pre-engagement angst is about my friends. I met my ex-best friend, Cindy, for lunch on Monday. We have reconnected after fifteen years without contact. It has been a unique experience to be together. I don't know where it will lead and what kind of a friendship we will have going forward, but we both agree that we want to explore this and have spent time catching up on all of the events of the past decade and a half, and gently touching on the conflict that led us out of each other's lives so many years ago.

I spent Tuesday with Lisa who I have known for over thirty years. We shared poke and a Caesar salad lunch and shopped Sephora for new lipsticks. Wednesday I was with my golf coach, Barb. We met another friend for french toast in the late morning, dropped off my watch for repair at Cartier in the afternoon, and then shopped Costco. I feel blessed to have these and other women in my life, even though I have to wade through those feelings of mild dread the night before the plans. I suppose this is just a post?-pandemic effect that will be with me for however long it is with me. And, I guess, that's ok.

Joel and I are planning to return, once again, to salsa dancing at a Columbian venue, which offers the best DJ and a lot of room to dance. We are strangers in this strange land, as there are clearly mostly Columbians who attend. The first time we went, I said to Joel: Not only am I the only white person in this club; but you are the only Mexican. I have been in other clubs where I am the only non-latino. But at this club, they dance differently, Columbian-style and so well! We both miss dancing a whole lot. But there is trepidation before we venture out. At least with us there is. Again, around us are people doing all kinds of the things they used to do and doing it all maskless. But then, how do I put this? There are a lot of idiots around us. So, while I have heard people scoff that Covid is no worse than a cold, we continue to stay safer, even if not completely safe. There is no such thing as a safe salsa club. But then, there are things that are worth risk while being careful in most other areas of our new lives. And for us both, dancing salsa is definitely one of those things.

The Long Hot Summer

Los Angeles, California

And then, we experienced a relentless heatwave with daily temps over 100-degrees. During the ten day ordeal, I blew out a tire which required me to wait for a tow in a parking lot while the late-morning temperature hovered around 108F. All was well that ended well until later that week when I came down with an ailment which sent me to urgent care. But that too passed as these things shall.

Then, the weather got humid. And that change culminated in gathering clouds and a 12-hour rainstorm, compliments of hurricane Kay (or, since said hurricane traveled to us from Mexico, I call it Hurricane Que). It was glorious. Still hot, but glorious to me -- someone who hadn't seen rain since last Spring. I opened up all of the shades covering the french doors leading outside, and watched the rain dancing on the tile and pool in my courtyard. The Dodgers were rain-delayed for their game in San Diego. No one minded.

I thought back to the first day of my last semester of college. We had a rainstorm the day before, Labor Day. There are few things we appreciate more in Southern California than a hopeful preview of the season to come, arriving early in September. September is usually relentless hot. And that makes me think of the first day of school in both junior high and high school. My mom always took us shopping at Bullock's or Robinson's department stores to buy our fall clothes. That first day arrived and we dressed in wool skirts and sweaters. It was usually in the 90s. Thank God I abandoned fashion foolishness decades ago.

Even if Fall isn't exactly commencing, some other things are. I return to Mass tomorrow on 9/11. Fitting, as the first time I attended Mass at this church was on the tenth anniversary of 9/11 in 2011. Why have I waited until 9/11 to return? Well, we have been on Covid-watch, but the risk level has finally gone down. And, the choir doesn't return from taking the month of August off until the second Sunday of September. No small thing.

Additionally, Joel and I are returning to dancing shortly. Maybe even this week. I can no longer track when we last danced, but it has been months. We are amongst the only two people I know who haven't caught Covid. We are both relatively healthy, though through age and previous maladies, we are considered to be in a higher risk category. Friends who have gotten Covid report that it is no worse than a bad cold. But my doctor reminds me that we never know what new viruses might cause, down the line, once we allow them into our bodies. Polio rebounded on survivors; Epstein-Barre is known to cause MS and cancer; chicken pox begets shingles. I wouldn't freak out if I got Covid. But, simply put, better to avoid it if possible.

So, two good things will return to my life. Three, if you count the arrival of Fall later this month. I see pumpkins in our future. I'm happy.