Sometimes you think
What are you even doing here?!
You left Australia to pursue your dreams
And trip the light fantastic!
And then there was drama school
And Aaron
And stupid forking cancer
And an even more stupid entirely preventable pandemic
And raising a puppy
And trying to make peace with living
In a place you didn’t want to be
And dealing with the dumpster fire of hell that is New Jersey Transit
And then there was divorce
(To quote Sondheim
“One word means all that”)
And so much heartbreak
And (to quote Jonathan Larson)
Revolving door roommates
And working all the jobs to pay rent
And just get by
And here you are panicking because
It’s almost fifteen whole years since you boarded that plane
And what exactly are you doing?!

And then your friend invites you to see a show
By a comedian you knew nothing about until tonight
And it’s a show all about being a theatre kid
And you’re surrounded by fellow musical dorks
(Who are actually, in your very humble opinion
The coolest people in the world)
And there is storytelling and laughing and singing
And it reminds you why you’re here
Because despite the absolute forkery that is
The Business of Show
This theatre thing
Oh lawd help you
It is your heart and soul
Your first language
The thing that you keep coming back to
Through heartbreak and struggle and all the forkery
A bit of singing and dancing makes it all better
Easier to bear
And when you take a breath
You remember you have done extraordinary wonderful thrilling things
That if you told Younger You you were doing
She would lose her goddamn mind

So what am I doing here?
I’m doing the thing I came here to do
One day at a time
Imperfectly, to the best of my ability
With the resources I have on hand and
(The best part)
Surrounded by a glorious group of
Theatre kids.

I booked the trip to see Deborah in concert
We met through my podcast
I interviewed her about The Golden Cage
A beautiful two-hander musical
About freedom, restriction, and art
We started chatting every other week and
Became friends
Sharing stories and hope and inspiration to
Do the thing(s)

I decided to travel light
Just a backpack on
The Amtrak up north
Zipping through freezing cold air
Past fields covered in snow and
Frozen rivers and lakes and waterways
The bliss of the quiet car
And a seat to myself

A chance to see my life-twin
My prima guapa Rachel
And Christopher and Paul
And fur-nephew Jake
The joy of being snuggled up with a fur baby
A canine-shaped weighted water bottle 

Four hour lunch at the sushi train
With Rachel and Nina and Susannah
Laughing and dishing tea
Devouring salmon and rice and beef and
Mochi sprinkled with sesame

The loveliness of cooking a meal at home
Peeling and chopping apples
Stirring sauces
Sitting together

The delight of seeing DHC in concert
Her extraordinary musicianship
“We’re all a little out of tune. That’s how you know it’s real.”
The concept of "eclosion"
The process of becoming, of expanding latent wings
Deborah’s deft use of the loop pedal
The way her harp can play classical and jazz and blues and folk and original compositions
A piece of paper woven through the strings turns it into a percussion instrument
Watching Deborah sing and play
Her joy and skill and dexterity
I want to do that
What if Eurydice could have played the lyre?

Heading to a cheese and wine party
To celebrate a birthday
Meeting lovely new folks
Who chat passionately about film and tv and
Are excited for the Oscars
Laugh over film hot takes
How very dare you not like The Lord of the Rings

The next morning
A delightful brunch
(Preceded by a Lyft driver who picked up alto sax as a grown up, once made art in New York, and now works in biotech to try and cure endometriosis)
Finally meeting DHC in person and her lovely friend Erica
A real life fairy harpist
Talking about the world and music and fairies and heartbreak
The thrill of being loaned a lap harp
(And being glad I packed light!)

Arriving in Salem
Hanging out with the Rabinowii
My chosen family
Paul and Naomi, and Fred, and Emy and Nick, Louisa, and Charlotte
Sharing a truly delicious meal
Catching up and trading stories
And marveling at the pace at which children grow

Monday morning comes too quickly
As she always does
The thrill of being able to navigate transit in a city not my own
Figuring out a different system
Aah, this is how they do things here
The modern miracle of tap and pay
Of apps where you can pre-purchase your ticket
Taking the Amtrak back south
Past snow covered fields and
Frozen rivers and lakes and waterways

Thankful, thankful for the ease of the trip
For my community of lovely humans
For unexpected surprises
For time to read
And time to write
For the change of scenery and
A break in routine
For time away
That feels
Like a return to self.

​Don’t meet your heroes
They say
But what if
One chilly winter’s day
You do meet your hero
The Drew Barrymore
Star of the screen and
Descendent of theatre royalty
A woman who
You have watched literally hundreds of times
On repeat

And she takes the time
During her busy show
To hear your story
That you loved Ever After
That you had leukemia
That your sister was your stem cell donor
(In the moment you actually said bone marrow donor
You’ve never used that phrase before
Oh tongue tied brain!)
And suddenly Drew is sitting right beside you
Holding your hand
And staring into your soul
With her magical sparkly eyes
And telling you about light and mirrors and reflecting back what we see
And you think “ohmygod I’m going to have a heart attack”

And your sister
Who was right beside you
For hundreds of those viewings
Is sitting beside you
And Drew asks her for advice on how to be sisters
Because she is raising two daughters
And you and your sister laugh
Because even that very morning you were incredibly annoyed with each other
Although now you’ve learned not to pull each other’s hair out
(At least not physically)
And your sister says,
“We fought every day as kids!
You have to learn to listen to each other.”
Haha, funny now
Look at us now
Sitting here in matching red tones
With our long hair and smiling faces
Mum’s work friends wonder if you’re twins
(My god that made you crazy when you were younger
I’m older)

How many times have you watched
Those magical sparkly eyes
Playing Danielle de Barbarac
And you think what was it about that film that moved you so?
The costumes!
The script!
The cinematography (the shot where Danielle realizes something has happened to her father)!
The fact that Danielle is a book-loving girl who is
Good at sports (apple throwing, running, climbing trees, swimming in rivers, mud wrestling, sword fighting)
Adept at homesteading (growing food, foraging for truffles, bread baking, bee keeping), and
Unafraid to speak truth to power (saving loved ones and quarreling with royalty)
Whose bestie is an effeminate male artist
Whose fairy godmother is Leonardo da Vinci (who builds flying machines and walks on water)
All while wearing pretty frocks and princess hair
And she has wings!
And battles with Angelica Houston
And survives childhood trauma
In a world where conundrums are solved with a quick game of rock paper scissors
Where you can punch a rotten stepsister in the face and she gets her comeuppance in a vat of purple dye
Where you can save the prince from the bandits
Where you can go to the ruins at Amboise
Where chocolate is a savored novelty
Where you rescue yourself from the lecherous baddie
Where the prince realizes he has been a pig headed idiot
And, even though you’re just a working girl who pretended to be fancy
He chooses you because of who you are at your core
A book-loving girl who is good at sports and homesteading and speaking her tongue
In 16th century France
Accompanied by a gorgeous George Fenton score
And where the whole entire point (gentlemen)
Is just to LIVE

But in the moment of sitting next to
Drew Freaking ET-Ever-After-Josie-Grosie-Charlie’s-Angels Barrymore
You can’t articulate all of this
So you show her your “breathe, just breathe” tattoo
Your childhood love and grown-up life’s motto
Inked into your left wrist
And Drew loses her mind because
She also has a “breathe” tattoo on her left arm
And she takes the time to take a photo
And she is so kind and warm and empathetic
And days later
You still can’t process it all
It must have been a dream
Or a fairytale
And you are thankful thankful thankful
That your hero was everything you’d hoped and more
And you head out into the cold winter's afternoon
With a glowing heart
Ready for the next adventure.

Sometimes you see a play
That cracks you open
Leaves you sobbing in the aisles
The story of a woman
Trying to know her mother
Know and understand the
Person she was
Before she was
Mom
When she was
A young woman starting a
Consciousness raising group
In the basement of an Ohio gym
In 1970
Before no fault divorce
Before women were allowed to have their own bank accounts
Before marriage equality
Before the narrator’s existence
And trying to understand the question
Was it worth it for her mom
To have kids?

In the second act
I could hear the
Sniffles and sobs
Of people around me
Sitting in the dark
Undergoing a collective catharsis
The extraordinary ability of a well-written,
Well-executed play
To provide a place for healing
For processing
For saying out loud
We need to do better
For women

At the end of the play
I couldn’t face going home
There were too many feelings
Too many thoughts to process
So I walked up to Rockefeller
And admired at the tree
And even though it was freezing
I walked down Fifth Avenue
All the way to 59th
And the lights sparkled
For the little child
Within

I arrived in the US
Twelve years ago today
It’s strange to think of that person
Landing in the freezing cold at Denver Airport
Clutching a folder thick with immigration paperwork
Feeling excited and scared about the next adventure

In the twelve years since
I’ve been married and divorced
Survived cancer
Had my heart broken
Lost two grandparents
Lost six friends to cancer
Been in two choirs
Moved 7 times across 3 states
Lived with 5 different people
And survived NJ Transit

I’ve worked a lot of jobs
Second-hand bookshop and farm volunteer
Babysitter
Receptionist atop fancy glass towers
Broadway usher
Teacher
Vocal coach
Writer
Actor
Fake patient
Stage manager
Director
Podcast editor, and an
Operations/staff assistant

I’ve done the Artist’s Way twice and
Built Filmed Live Musicals
Written and performed a cabaret
Written a book chapter 
Spent hours in the archives at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts 
Performed in Colorado, New Jersey, and New York
In plays, musicals, and immersive shows
Seen a show in every Broadway house
Taken class at Broadway Dance Center
Played flute and ukulele and piano

I’ve run, quite a bit
All around Fort Collins
Brooklyn, West New York,
Astoria, and Harlem
6 marathons
4 half marathons
And a handful of races

I’ve traveled to Acadia State Park and Atlanta
Salem and Boston and Washington DC
Traipsed around Connecticut
Honeymooned in the British Virgin Islands
Did a road trip from FoCo to New York
I’ve been back to Australia three times
And London once

I’ve frequented farmers markets
And made my own yogurt
Grown arugula and spinach and basil and chives
Strawberries and raspberries

I helped raise a sweet and ridiculous floof of a puppy
Learned Spanish and Danish
Learned to bake cheesecake
Learned to manage my depression

I grew my hair out again
Started eating meat again
Started morning pages again
Got my first tattoo
Tried contact lenses and
Finally got my drivers license

I’ve had my heart ripped out of my chest
I’ve been held and taken care of and spoilt rotten
I’ve met, and become friends with, some of the most extraordinary and beautiful people
From FoCo, Brooklyn, Carteret, Astoria, and Harlem
MSK, front of house, MasterVoices, SP land, and, of course
Buck’s Rock

And today, on the anniversary of my moving here
I performed a two show day
With a group of people whom I utterly adore
With a lead actor whose cast albums I have listened to on repeat
In a rarely performed musical by a composer whose work inspired my life path
With friends in the audience

And tomorrow I’ll direct a musical with a cast of sweet and precocious kidlets
And the next day I’ll start rehearsals for a new project with MasterVoices
And I think
It’s taken twelve years, but I’m finally doing the thing I came here to do
It just took a little cancer, divorce, gestures-at-the-world-in-2025 detour to get here

I think about what I want from the next chapter
To live on my own
To travel, and keep exploring my glorious city
To visit all the museums
To fill my days with music and theatre and writing
And delicious food
And time with friends
And glorious books
To keep tripping the light fantastic
And being so very thankful
That despite *everything* (again, gestures-at-the-world-in-2025)
I’m here.

​I didn’t know singing in a cemetery while watching two Brits lug stone and ice and fire was on my bucket list
But here we are
How to explain this transcendent experience
That even days later I’m still processing
The magic of it
The meditative-ness of it
The rareness of it
The extraordinary nature of it

MasterVoices were the guests of
Kaleider’s Arch
A performance piece that has been done around the world
And this weekend was to be performed at
Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn
We rehearsed on Friday night
Learned all the elements of
Verity Standen’s gorgeous music
The revelation when she said
It doesn’t matter if the pitch drops
“That’s the human voice isn’t it?” she said
That’s the human voice!
And she said it didn’t matter if we made different vowel sounds
Because different vowels sound and feel different in individual voices
And wow, what a relief it was to hear that!
It’s not to say I don’t love the discipline that’s usually expected of the chorus
But it was so freeing to just SING
I floated home from rehearsal

The Saturday show was canceled
Due to inclement weather
Damn those weather gods!
But it made showing up on Sunday
All the more exciting
We rehearsed in the afternoon
Had dinner on the grass
A peak Victorian activity
In the midst of life we are--
My friends arrived
Ella, Miles, Opus, Emma, Heidi, and Molly
And somewhere in the crowd, my roomie Artur
Friends from very different parts of my life
UNSW, the Theatre Royal, Buck’s Rock, SP land, and NYC
All sitting together on the hill behind me
It was overwhelming and dizzying and wonderful

At dusk
The audience and the chorus
Sat among the gravestones
Lenny Bernstein up the hill
(Earlier, a number of us made a little pilgrimage to pay our respects
His grave is blink and you miss it
Not at all what you’d expect for one of the musical giants of the 20th century)
And witnessed the building of an arch
Out of stone and ice
A fire was fed in a metal drum
While 5 glorious singers intoned
The elemental nature of it
Water, earth, fire, and breath
Brick by brick and block by block, it was
Quite something to watch these two men haul the building blocks
While we all sat there and watched
Could we have gotten up to help?
Why do they do all the work while we just sit there?

At first the arch didn’t quite come together
It took a few goes of moving stones in and out
And readjusting and hammering
Before they took the wooden former out
The audience broke into applause when the arch stood on its own
Then Seth dragged the fire underneath
And the voices sang and intoned and rose and fell
And the ice slowly melted
It felt like we might sit there forever
Then the arch suddenly collapsed
The singing faded away
And the audience and the chorus, without guidance,
Gathered around the fire
It doesn’t get more primal than that
Humans gathering around a fire
To tell stories
Like moths to a--
As we did, the clouds parted to reveal (I kid you not),
A full moon

It was a meditation
It was immersive theatre
It was civilization and humanity and human endeavor
Everything we build will crumble
Everything we know matters
Nothing is important
What we do is vital
What we do is irrelevant
What we do is -

To quote Ali Smith
remember you must live
remember|you|most|love
remainder|you|mist|leaf
To witness it, experience it, be a part of it
I am thankful thankful thankful

​I am beside myself with glee
The re-discovery of purpose
Of coming back to myself
Doing the thing I came here to do
The thing I left the comfort and safety of Australia for
Singing and dancing and art-ing and
Tripping the light fantastic
THIS is what feels right
This is what feels good
I thought I’d lost it
Between cancer and living far from the city and divorce and heart break and not doing the thing(s)
But I’ve been doing my morning mmm’s
Morning pages, meditation, movement
And soaking up the last remnants of delicious summer
And tonight hearing British voices
Leading vocal warm-ups
Took me right back to Central
BA ba ba ba ba ba baaa!
CA ca ca ca ca ca caaa!
Vocalizing, loose shoulders, stretch to the side and feel your ribs pop pop POP!
Tummy breaths, activate the diaphragm
HA HA HA HA HA HA HAAAAA
Poke out your tongue
Feel ridiculous
Feel glorious!
It’s all delicious!
The missing of it
The living it of it
The loving of it
The returning to it
Back to self
The world may be a dumpster fire of hell
But there still is music
There still is art
There still is sky
And earth
And breath
Take it in and --

When you discover a meditation 
That is simple and profound and
Gently powerful 
The way it can shift your entire energetic being
And help you feel both grounded and light 
And you wonder how you ever lived without it 

Even though it was in black and white, and quite grainy
It was an emotional experience
Realizing that the dancers were just a few years older than Mum
Seeing the embodied dancers of voices I’ve listened to on repeat since I was 10.
It still amazes me that the stories of dancers in New York could resonate with a 10-year-old living 10,000 miles away.
That incredible Marvin Hamlisch score
Hearing the audience hear it for the first time.
Imagine being able to see A Chorus Line for the first time?
Remember seeing A Chorus Line for the first time?!
Remember being 10
Remember taking ballet lessons
Remember tights and leotards and having your hair in a bun and hair nets and hair pins and hairspray
Remember ballet shoes and cross over wraps
Remember practise shoes and the pretty satin shoes 
Remember the smell of the studio
Remember being awed and intimidated by the older girls 
Remember wishing you were an older girl 
Remember dancing in the living room and the light was your spotlight
(How did you know about spotlights?)
Remember the rush of joy.  

A part of me laughs reading about
Suleika Jaouad’s journaling practice
The seriousness behind it
The intentionality
I starting journaling
Keeping a diary
Because Elizabeth Wakefield in Sweet Valley High kept a diary
And, because she was the nerdier book-smart twin,
I wanted to be like her
I wrote in code for a bit
To deter prying eyes
But gave it up when my boyfriend (who was studying computer science) figured it out in a few minutes
I still remember the code
My high school friends teased that I would journal on my honeymoon
I did, for the record (haha)
And my (then) husband didn’t mind

I got my first diary for my 10th birthday
Hard cover, blue, with an art nouveau illustration of a woman clutching an armful of fruit on the front, and scented pastel colored pages
Thirty years later there are over 70 journals sitting on the bookshelf
“Lockable” dairies with pale pink pages
Exercise books that I covered with white paper and words cut out from magazines
Lovely leather-bound books with hand-made paper
Pretty cloth-bound books from fancy stationery stores
And even one I made at camp
Mostly there are notebooks of varying sizes,
Books that were easy to carry in my backpack
For writing on the bus or the train
Or, on lucky luxurious days, while hurtling through mid-air on a Boeing bound for someplace else
The pages are filled with angst and dreams, crushes and heartbreaks, joys and boring day-to-day minutiae
Ticket stubs and bits of brochures and seemingly significant fortune cookie predictions
The diaries are not particularly profound
They’re not the record of a historically significant person
I have no idea what will happen to them when I’m gone
But they’re my most prized possession

After I got sick I fell out of the habit
There was so much to say, I couldn’t say anything at all
But I did make an attempt of keeping up with morning pages
A habit started in my mid-twenties
And now I have 31 spiral bound 5-subject notebooks to accompany the journals
Pages and pages of streams of consciousness scribbles

And if I think about it, I also have over a decade of blog posts to add the pile
Poems and scribblings and reflections
Tracing my desire to find the beauty, find the joy, find the light
Amidst break-ups and falling in love and moving away and falling love again and moving away again and cancer and to trying to find the light again

It has been delightfully fun to follow the prompts in Suleika’s book
My favorites so far have included
Write with your non-dominant hand (Marie Howe)
Write a paragraph about the funniest thing to happen to you from the perspective of an inanimate object (Kiese Laymon)
What would you write if you weren’t afraid? (Dani Shapiro)

What would you write if you weren’t afraid?