Hello and welcome.

Re-entry and new beginnings.

Howdy,

What have you been up to? I’ve been missing you.

A few of you have asked to be kept in the loop about my writing and wandering and whatnot and so I thought I’d set up a place where I could post a bit about interesting people I’ve met, books I’ve read and places I’ve visited. You can catch up on my writing about escape rooms, phytoplankton, and how to handle mid-air altercations or read an interview with artist/author/mental health advocate Miriam Feldman or a love letter to miraculous woodworker and all around inspiration, Pamela Weir-Quiton.

Over these last months, I’ve found a lot of comfort in volunteering. I’ve sorted books for Access Books, cleaned up the river (and surrounding neighborhoods) with Friends of the LA River, made sandwiches for Hollywood Food Coalition and participated in various SELAH Neighborhood Homeless Coalition outreach events. I am currently organizing packed lunches for two July events.

If you’d like to help out, you can sign up here and here.

One Sunday morning a few weeks ago, I spent three hours working with an organization called SELAH at an outreach for the unhoused. I brought with me thirty brown bag lunches that had been packed by several friends and I set up the lunches on a table under a tree in a park near my home. Other volunteers set up tables with hygiene products, clothing, and coffee. There was a vaccination clinic and a taco truck and several boxes of donuts. We were doing our best to meet as many needs as we could. The day was gray and a slight, but persistent drizzle gave the impression that the air was a little out of focus.

I hadn’t been sleeping very well and, before arriving at the outreach, I’d had too much coffee. In conversation, I had a hard time coming up with specifics. While chatting with my fellow masked volunteers, I suddenly could not recall the name of the famous actress who had starred in Annie Hall.

Some of the unhoused people couldn’t remember the specifics either. A lot of them wanted something, but they didn’t know exactly what they wanted. One man kept saying “I need help” and when I asked what kind of help he said “I need help. I need a sandwich but later I need more help.”

A woman said “I’m bugging out. I’m bugging out. I’ve got to get it together. I need to get it together.”

Someone gave her a hooded sweatshirt. It was gray with black polka dots. She was shivering. She had taken her shoes off so could feel the ground under her feet. She was wearing only black socks.

I had to remind each person who visited my table that, because of COVID, they should not touch anything, but rather tell me what they wanted and I would place the item in a grocery bag. I’d been instructed by another volunteer to offer up, one at time, each item on my table and so I recited the names of the items on display: “Would you like some canned ravioli? A granola bar? Do you like apples? Plums?”

The specifics mattered. The spread of items on the table offered a dizzying number of choices. For many of the people who visited my table, there was too much to consider all at once.

In Los Angeles, “May Gray” often precedes “June Gloom.” During these months the marine layer lays heavy and soft over the early hours of the day, making it difficult to keep track of time.

It has been difficult to keep track of time.

After over a year of the pandemic lockdown, the world is re-opening. A few days before I stood behind the table in the park, the CDC had declared that vaccinated people no longer needed masks. The newspaper ran photos of sparsely gathered fans cheering in person at a Dodger game and Disneyland flung wide the gates to that happiest place.

To get up to speed, I was going to need rituals and practice.

“Would you like some tuna? Would you like a granola bar?” Cans of Chef Boyardee Ravioli went fast. People liked the turkey sandwiches. Most people preferred plums over apples.

On the other side of the table, my unhoused neighbors wanted many things: strawberry donuts, extra coffee, extra sugar. There was one man who came to the table wearing only a jacket over his bare chest. He wanted a shirt. The woman who was bugging out couldn’t believe this guy didn’t have a shirt. She wanted him to get a shirt. She wanted this very badly.

After months of no schedules, my first weekend of being fully vaccinated led me to over-schedule and so, at the end of my shift at the outreach, I drove across town to a performance of A Thousand Ways at Royce Hall. I brushed my hair and put on a nice jacket, but I wore the same jeans I wore when I sat in the grass and ate tacos with another volunteer.

A Thousand Ways, is an interactive experience conceived by Abigail Browde and Michael Silverstone, a theater company known as 600 Highwaymen. It is a two person play and I was one of the people. Before the performance, I received numerous e-mails and a telephone call reminding me of the fact that another person was depending upon me. This performance cannot happen on its own. Not only does the other person need you, but the entire performance needs you.

I like to be needed, but it also stresses me out. I made sure to arrive early at UCLA where I parked my car in the nearly empty garage. The silent campus amplified the click-click of my leather soled shoes against the sidewalk. I checked in with a group of ushers and, after a brief wait, I was escorted into a small classroom. Six feet behind me, a second usher guided another woman.

In the room, there was a table with two chairs. A pane of glass divided the table and a small stack of white cards occupied a square opening at the bottom of the glass. We were given a choice of where to sit. That choice determined the role we would play. I chose the chair that faced the door and because of that, the first card was mine to draw. We took turns reading these cards.

My partner in the performance was very tall. She had red hair. She walked with a slight limp. She had long fingers and black painted nails. She wore numerous bracelets and a heavy stone medallion around her neck. She was dressed in a black, stretchy blouse and a black skirt and a black sweater. She wore slip on sandals and a blue paper facemask. At the beginning of our time together, she was breathing hard from the effort of walking into the room. She seemed to be in pain.

An arrow on each card indicated which of us would read. We took turns drawing a card and reciting the words written in plain text. Words in italics indicated action.

Rest the palm of your hand on your cheek.

We took turns asking and answering a series of questions and I was reminded of the questions I had posed to my unhoused neighbors.

Each question was moving us toward understanding each other as humans. Each question was placing us in a particular space at a particular time. The cards instructed us to imagine each other in different situations: behind the wheel of a car, in the rain, with a broken heart. One card prompted me to imagine what the woman across from me might look like if she was filled with joy.

Nod when you’ve got it.

My partner was asked to imagine me in a car, driving into a driveway. She was asked to imagine me getting out of the car, to imagine a door opening. She imagined me flinging myself into the arms of the person I love. The woman on the other side of the table nodded when she had conjured this scene in her head. I’m not sure she imagined my husband, but I can’t know for sure.

Imagine a complete stranger in a familiar scene. Create a story for them.

I imagined the man who had come to the outreach without his shirt. I imagined that he’d woken up on this rainy morning and found that his belongings had become soaked in the night. I imagined a couple of t-shirts, one black and one white. I imagined a navy and orange striped crew neck sweater with a hole in the armpit.

Imagine him frustrated. Imagine him shivering with cold.

He threw on his jacket and he walked across the park to us and he asked for another shirt and we gave it.

Curl your fingers into a fist. Now slowly open your hand.

My choice of chair determined that the woman on the other side of the table from me would leave me alone in the room. I was made to expect this departure. Together, we had imagined it. We imagined meeting at a party where we danced and laughed. We saw a meteor shower or maybe it was the full moon. The falling snow was cold on our cheeks. She slipped on the ice and I held out my arm to steady her. Though we were still sitting across from each other, separated by a pane of glass, I felt her hand on my arm. I knew her hand. I’d seen it open and close on the table across from me. I understood what it looked like when she held it open, palm up, and when she placed it against her cheek. I’d been led to notice these things. Each card reminded me to look at her.

Look at her hands. Look into her eyes. See her scar. Imagine how it got there. See her smile.

I couldn’t see her lips under her mask, but I imagined her mouth.

As a volunteer at the outreach, I imagined where the man with no shirt was living. I imagined what it might be like to sleep in a car, or under a bridge, or in a tent on the cold sidewalk. I spoke as much Spanish as I knew. I looked for ways to create connection.

“What’s your dog’s name?” I asked. “My brother is a tattoo artist,” I said. “I like your tattoos.”

I raised my voice to be heard over the sound of the traffic, the sound of the rain. I raised my voice so that it might carry through the cloth of my face mask across the distance of the table between us. I gave away turkey sandwiches and cheese sandwiches and peanut butter sandwiches. I handed out as much ravioli as we had. I opened shopping bags and added candy bars and granola bars and cans of tuna. I looked for dog food and poured coffee. “Nice to see you,” I said. “Thank you for coming.”

At the end of the performance piece called A Thousand Ways, after I’d sat at the table and gone through the remaining cards on my own, I left the theater building alone and made my way along the walk to a narrow bridge that connects to the parking garage. I was about halfway across the bridge, when I heard someone shout, “thank you!” Knowing, not knowing the sound of the voice, I began waving. I turned all the way around before I saw her: my friend from the table. I waved with both arms and she waved back.

I imagined what I might look like from a distance in my bright jacket and slightly baggy jeans. Me, my gray hair, my tired eyes. Me, waving from the bridge.