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 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 spent the day at Buck’s Rock
Giving a tour in the rain
To new campers and their families
Trying to convey the magic
That happens in the summer
And then I made my way
All the way to BAM
The Brooklyn Academy of Music
To see Suleika Jaouad
Fellow AML survivor and
Journal writer who is
Undergoing her third round of treatment and is
Currently on the New York stop of her book tour

It wasn’t until I was sitting down in my seat
That it occurred to me
BAM was the place where I had my first job post-cancer
I didn’t work there for long
I had gone back to work too soon
I didn’t have the stamina to make it through a shift
But I was desperate to get back to normal
I had to ask for permission to sit down during the show
Another usher saw me and scolded,
“We’re not allowed to sit.”
I wanted to say
“I just had cancer.
I had a transplant.
I can’t stand for long periods.”
Instead I pretended I hadn’t heard her and
Fought back tears.

And now I’m nearly 11 years out.
How did I get so lucky to be here?
When Ruth is gone?
When Miguel is gone?
When Katy is gone?
When Miren is gone?
When Suleika has relapsed twice and is likely to be in treatment for the rest of her life?
Watching her standing up on that stage
Looking absolutely radiant in a bright and colorful dress with a thin gold belt
Her pixie hair sleek against her head
Reading her extraordinary words about fear of mice and cancer and treatment
While her husband, Jon Batiste
Played on the piano behind her
The love between them
The way they seem so grounded
So in touch
So in love

It broke my heart a little
The longing for a creative, spiritual, loving partner
Someone
To traipse across this mortal coil with
The heartbreak of tasting it
And having it taken away
Because I’m not enough?
Because it’s not the right time?
Because of so many factors out of my control
The fear of relapse
The fear of being ok
The fear of having what you want
The fear that you will never fulfill your dreams
Reach your potential
Do the thing you came here to do because
Illness
Pandemic
Politics
Global warming

And it wasn’t until I was on the train home
That I realized that I’d spent the day at camp
(The place where I was diagnosed)
And not once thought about getting sick
I was too busy being excited about the summer to come
Thinking about my to do list
Chatting with the new campers

The day was full of synchronicity
Old camp friends messaging out of the blue as I arrived at camp
Being at camp on the day of Suleika’s New York book tour
The New York stop being at BAM
On a rainy day  
​At the end of April 
Something magical 
Alchemy
From the French, Latin, Greek, and Arabic 
"The pursuit of the transmutation of baser metals into gold,
Search for the universal solvent and the panacea."

A visit to
Edith Wharton’s estate
Designed by the Pulitzer Prize winning author herself
With her eye for classical architecture and
Symmetry and
Clean lines and
Circular shapes
The grounds are extensive
And stunning
Filled with art
Whimsical and thought-provoking and somehow seeming right at home
In the woods
A tour of the house reveals
The luxury and freedom of wealth
Imagine breakfast in bed facing east
Time for morning pages
And walks through the Italian Renaissance garden
And French garden
And walkway lined with trees
And trips to Europe for years on end
And dinner at 8pm
The forest surrounding the house
Most definitely enchanted
Most definitely home to fairy queens
And tiny beings
A new favorite

An unexpectedly delightful afternoon
After a cold and drizzly morning
The sky is blue and 
The air is warm 
You wander through Chinatown 
Past the Buddhist temples 
And the restaurants with their 
Steamed buns 
And roasted ducks hanging in the windows 
Past the high end stores on the main road
And in to the back streets 
Crowded with a myriad of knick knack stores 
Overflowing with Buddhas,
Laughing, lounging, and serene
Crystal balls 
Wooden fans 
And all kinds of novelty chopstick holders 
You see a bonsai tree with leaves of jade and
Remember Abuela. 
You think about the confluence of 
Cultures and stories and influences
That bought you here. 

The gift of
A beautiful first edition book
One hundred and thirteen years old 
Inside, an inscription from the author herself
Written in lovely flowery cursive 
To Mrs. Speed 
Within you'll find a golden ring
Of noble poet friends,
As bright a friendship
May it bring
Twixt you and me and one
who lends  
this gift in loving greeting,
and memory of our meeting. 
Helen A. Clarke 
November fourteenth, 1916 
Boston. 

Oh that I am the luckiest 
To work on Broadway in the early afternoon
And then, later, to go to a beautiful space 
On the East Side 
For a talk with Alex Lacamoire
And learn about Broadway pits 
And programming keyboards
And being a sub musician
And feeling inspired you start heading home
But you linger a little
Because it is a truly gorgeous 
Balmy spring day 
And you don't really want to go home 
And suddenly
Your dear friend calls from Lincoln Center
"I got you a free ticket!"
And you hustle as fast as you can
And the train gods are blessedly with you -
Even when you accidentally hop on the wrong train
(Uptown E = Queens, not Manhattan!) 
And you get to see Uncle Vanya
In a new adaptation by Heidi Schreck
​(she is a genius) 
With a killer cast 
And it is moving and funny and devastating 
“I just want to be an ordinary sinner and eat noodles!” 
And you wander home 
And you think
It really is the greatest city

A movie with 
Annette and Jodie
Like being with old friends 
And they're telling an extraordinary story
Of extraordinary women
Doing mind-bogglingly extraordinary things 
The endurance of the human spirit 
Against the odds 
"A diamond is just a lump of coal that stuck with it!"
Overcoming trauma
Overcoming the lacerations of jellyfish stings 
​And doing the thing you set out to do
You're never too old 
To taste your dreams