His nickname was Daddy.

Quite a place to begin. We had agreed in the first five minutes that attraction all seemed to come out to one aspect or another how you related to your parents. With a steady dose of self-reflection, I was happy to sense in short order the family of origin reason to explain a particular fondness for Daddy. Though to me he was Brooks. I called him Brooks to myself.

Look beyond the impossibly wide-won’t-miss-a-beat-blue eyes, the angular jaw and the upright stature. Beyond those obvious attractors, there was this ease –this easy-ease. In my family of origin there was no such luxurious easy-ease. I’d been cultivating it in myself with decided focus for some time now. But Brooks was swimming in it.

Standing at the coffee counter in search of my stolen pink Mountainsmith pack and its contents, I take note of him for the first time. He stands in front of me. He is ordering tea for a friend he says.

“I’m just looking for my bag. Just got stolen.” I say to the woman behind the counter.

To Brooks I say, “Coulda’ been worse. They left my down jacket. Maybe they didn’t want an extra small…”

“Well, the crowd changes here at the weekend. Different crowd. Stuff more likely to get stolen now. Be careful.” He says.

“Quite the night,” I say. “Maybe we’ll have one of those conversations like one does on a plane, where you can say anything because we know that we will never see one another again. All that freedom in anonymity..to say anything…”

(Although I don’t think I used the word anonymity. It was two in the morning by now after all.)

“Come sit with me,” he says. “I have to hand off this tea to my friend.”

We sit shoulder to shoulder on some sort of box. Not a bench or a couch, but a box. It’s like our conversation began hours ago, and yet it’s been minutes. It’s not like I feel that I’ve known him forever. It’s just that he feels extra flexible somehow.

“Let’s play 20 questions,” he says. Although he asks more of the questions. I’ve had a weird night. Not at the top of my conversational game. Too much input.

A note hand delivered to the Nimbus cloud by my beautiful Jackson. A bike ride on the Playa. A sitting spell under the large bells illuminated in blue. The artists gave us a gift femur bone made of resin in response to our appreciation for the installation. They assumed Jackson and I had been in love for years. We blushed, laughed and looked at the ground. Got intensely interested in the resin femur bone. The night continued with bad moonshine, as well as witnessing Jackson’s friend Hamish splayed out in front of the Northwestern Dome with a hematoma the size of a cantaloupe right at his groin. A swarm of medics. A trip to the medical tent. Maybe they would airlift Hamish. Nobody was applying pressure to the wound. Maybe they didn’t want to get that close to his genitals which were displayed in front of God and everybody. He had opted for an underwear-less skirt while pedaling to the Tits parade, and now, hours later, coverage was sorely lacking.

Like dominos you see the rangers ask down the line, “You guys, got any gloves? I think we’ll need gloves…You guys got any gloves?? I think we’ll need glo…”

A doctor, tiny, handsome and dressed like the devil (literally) is circling nervously, not confident in the care the patient is receiving.

“I told them to apply pressure. And they are not applying pressure. But they say the scene is under control. And there is a hierarchy to these things and so I can’t step in…”

He looks agitated in his red suit with two unexplained Ninja poles coming out of his backpack. The swarm of medics lift Hamish up, fixated on stabilizing his neck.

“My neck is NOT where it hurts!!!” Hamish yells. “I hurt HERE!” He says pointing to his groin. Unaware he is wearing no underpants. The volunteers attempt to act as if they’ve seen a hematoma and a splaying scrotum a million times before.

After the hematoma, the marching band, the groovy slow show, the second spontaneous marching band set in the street, I am danced out. I say goodbye to my beautiful Jackson, declining his invitation to accompany him back home. It is not my style.

And now I am having tea with Brooks (or at least witnessing the tea hand-off). And we are playing twenty questions. Or forty questions. We’ve covered some ground, but I’m suffering from too much input. Jackson had kissed me. And kissed me some more. And he was good at it. And he knew how to move. He whispered sweet somethings in my ear. I was in some sort of over-stimulated haze.

I needed a break. To catch my breath. And now I had no hat.

And here was Brooks. Talking to me now. He wouldn’t know even now that I can ask a mean streak of questions. I had failed to mention I was a little kissed out. I might have lost some brain cells on the dance floor.

Brooks feels kind. Some odd combination of open and guarded. Loose but tight. Complicated enough to have my attention. Quick enough to hold it. He asked me if I wanted to make out (I didn’t believe either of us counted this as one of the 20 questions). I’d never been asked this directly or this easily –the fact I said no seemed not to phase him in the slightest. And I liked this.

What was this I wondered. Who was this.

He was staying a stone’s throw from here. We walked to my bike. The sun was rising, and the music blared on through the Playa. I might have to know this fellow. I peddled home in the rising sun. Crawled into my tent, stuffing two tiny tampons in my ears. I couldn’t find my earplugs.

It was all perfectly logical.

You see, the dawn electronica was just picking up.

So I didn’t really get to it did I?

Did I see Cloudman or not?

Yeah. Yeah. I did.

Same night. Birthday.

So now it’s late. The stars are bright. People tumbling down the Esplanade speckled with flashing lights, dodging cyclists, hopping into art cars. I’m heading to the next band –wandering through tents and Burning Man villages wondering, ‘Where the Hell is the stage?’ It’s cold now. I’m still wearing the ridiculous boots, the long white birthday eyelashes, my glittery bodysuit –the kind my mother might have worn circa 1973, if she had been quite a bit racier…Regardless, the way it snapped at the crotch reminded me of gymnastics class circa 1975 or something. And of course a down jacket. It’s cold. Oh and a headlamp. All tremendously sexy. What’s not sexy about a big black headlamp? They are all the rage.

Ok. Well, if I had wanted to avoid ANY possibility of seeing Nimbus, I might have avoided the next band, as I knew he liked them, but I thought…this place has god-damn 40,000 people. And isn’t it a bit freakish to avoid a great event out of fear of what? What’s gonna happen anyway? For all I know he’s snoozing away in Baja Sur with old friends. And I wanted a moood. A birthday music mood.

But the set was late, and all I can really think about is how I’m not going to enjoy the music if I have to go to the bathroom. I’d been drinking water like crazy in the dance fury back at Center Camp with the DC consultant and the Dreadman, and the Lover… Having at least located the stage, I’m now all for finding a dark place to go to the bathroom rather than hike another 15 minutes in search of a cavernous outhouse. Give me a shadowy spot between two RV’s and I’m set.

Tromp, tromp, tromp. Bathroom, Bathroom. Headlamp scan for shadow. Shadow. Shadow.

And I hear a familiar voice. It’s a Nimbus Voice. Here we go. Crap. Happy Birthday.

”Nimbus?” I call.

“Hey Nimbus.”

It’s dark. He’s talking to Grandpa…well kind of Grandpa-Meets-Marco-the-Mountaineer. Nimbus doesn’t see me. For all I know my headlamp is blasting in his face. I can’t remember now.

“It’s Megan,” I say. (Oh God. Why must I be here? Right now. I could have kept walking. Shouldn’t I have kept walking? But I’m not a fan of skulking about. I’ve been a fan of anti-skulking now for years. I’m more from the school of rip the band-aid right off…)

It’s not helping he doesn’t recognize me. I may have a flashback to a run around Balboa Island after my Dad remarried. He was standing around with his new stepchildren. I called out and waved, “Hey Dad!” and he didn’t recognize me. I had to walk up to my Dad standing next to my new stepbrother and say, “It’s your daughter, Megan.” Stomach flip. Accelerate toward embarrassment.

Try again. I’m all in now. No turning back.

”Hey Nimbus, it’s Megan.”

“Oh, Megan,” he says, “Happy Birthday.”

Hug. Not one where our bodies are actually there. That’s the way it goes sometimes.
He stops talking to Grandpa.

”Can you excuse me for a minute?” he asks Gramps-Meets-Grizzly-Adams.

He steps toward me. He still hasn’t fully registered. I lean into a nearby truck headlight. Flash my face.

“Hard to see you with those white eyelashes,” he says. (I try to take that comment as neutrally as possible) I say little. I just stand there.

I’m just a girl. He, just a boy. And while loving, intense things were once said, that was months ago. Not now. I focus on the impermanent nature of things, and not needing this to be anything other than it is. The Buddhists call it having Darshan. Where you just see. And you need nothing. I’m having Darshan I think to myself.

Yep, this is Darshan.

He says, ”I feel really nauseous.”

Not the first four words I would have guessed after four months of silence. What is the appropriate response to this? Not the classic conversation starter.

I go with: “Um…Well…(going into acupuncture mode) Maybe you could push just lateral to and below your knee on Stomach 36. Good point for nausea…” (WHY am I talking about this? Well for one thing, regardless of the circumstance, nausea sucks.)

“Well…Yeah,” he repeats, “I’m just feeling really nauseous.”

“Ok. Well..” I say, “Anyway…” I start backing away.

He throws out a thin thread: “I just want to say I feel bad about not talking.”

Pregnant Pause In The Dark.

Maybe I turned my headlamp off. Has he dyed his hair? I can’t really see.

I’m oddly steady in his lack of affection. Doesn’t mean I like it. But I can tolerate the discomfort. I’m not afraid. I don’t know why I’m the lucky recipient of this lack. But sometimes life doesn’t make sense.

In response I ask, “Was there something more to say?”

I had had plenty to say months ago, but if a Nimbus spins out of sight, I’m not sure it’s wise to go chasing clouds.

He says: ”I just feel incomplete.”

Huh. I don’t know what to make of this. Maybe it’s a general statement about how his life felt. How he felt in relation to me. Who knows. It’s not so much that I questioned that he would feel incomplete. There was plenty of untidiness in the departure. But I was pretty sure that’s how he had wanted it. Like asking for rain, yet troubled by the water.

I had felt incomplete. But that was months ago now. And I found a way to feel complete in that incompleteness on my own. Someone pledging intense love and splitting hadn’t been the typical order of things for me. But you learn: it’s all possible.

Try not to judge and move on. But you still might have to make sense of the sudden departure, the casualties such a gesture evokes. But standing there, with headlamp and my alabaster lashes, contemplating his nausea report, all I could feel was this sort of sadness in myself and a flat-anger coming from him. Anger at me somehow. Certainly not a warm embrace or a welcome. Where does that fondness go, I wondered. In that brief window, I had opened to him and would have opened further at the time. I knew something real had transpired between us then, despite the looks of it now. Now it was flat-anger-Nimbus.

But you know what? It was ok. Between me and me, I was good.

I would have bridged the gap. But I’ve learned you can’t do that sort of thing alone.

This just wasn’t a climate a good heart needed to peek out into, out from under a silence, a protective ribcage, or a puffy down jacket. I kindly kept it under wraps.

I imagine he took his nausea back to his camp and his Rhythm Section.

I hoped he was happy there.

Well, I suppose it was bound to happen at some point: the meet up with the Nimbus Cloud. On my birthday no less. My birthday at Burning Man. But you see clouds are like that. One minute it’s clear skies and the next thing you know, a familiar front rumbles through. To say I hadn’t thought about this cloud since his departure would be untrue, but my life had expanded again — no longer exclusively focused on this one particular rejection. The world is large, life long, and I’m thankfully capable of remembering both.

I just thought this particular cloud was going surfing in Mexico while I was off to Burning Man. It’s not the kind of information you follow up with an email is it..by the way, I know we haven’t spoken in months but I’m thinking of going to Burning Man. You?

Thanks. But no thanks.

And the invitation so perfect. A ticket for my birthday, given without my certain confirmation. Bali had it in his mind I should be there. And so I took him up on it. Plus, I’d been dying to sleep outside for months. Something happens when you start sleeping outside again. Your molocules rearrange. They find some natural order that can escape you under post and beam. I don’t know what this force is, but I’ve felt it time and again. And I needed to be under the moon. (Pounding techno music next door was another issue entirely). I spent that morning looking at art out on the Playa. An early walk in the desert. Crisp dry air. Bright sky. An installation of balloons and bells tinkling overhead. I needn’t be anywhere else but here. Add to that a solid cup of coffee at Cafe Hippocampus to follow. Perfect. French music. Tiny tables in the middle of the desert. Who could ask for more.

By early evening I made my daily pilgrimage to the temple. I liked the effect that structure had on people. They got quiet. Wrote messages of letting go on the walls. I had written a few of my own. One for my mother and my attachment to her pre-alzheimer’s state. A message to myself and a cloud or two. I wandered around reading of lost parents, partners, divorce decrees — a basket of old matches saved by somebody’s parents who had just passed away. I took a book of matches — an old one — from the Golden Nugget. My mother had registered deer hunters there while my father courted her.

I sat and listened to the wind chimes made of flattened tin cans. A ranger came and sat next to me.

I told him it was my birthday. He had a sweet round face. Big guy. I told him I thought I might run into an old cloud today, despite the Mexico thing, I told him if this cloud run-in was going to happen I suspected it would be today. I could feel him in the air. As we were talking one of the Ranger’s old clouds passed through the temple. For real. He asked me to engage him in conversation, so he could avoid her steady approach. I obliged. We chatted. She passed. Nimbus blows by. Ranger asks to kiss me in gratitude, explaining everybody needs a kiss on their birthday. I accepted. It was soft, and brief. Just a little bit softer and warmer than a friend.

You’re being silly I told myself. Forget the Cloud feeling. It’s just a feeling. Maybe it’s your imagination. Just enjoy yourself. Go listen to music. Ride your bike in your silly jumpsuit and impossibly tall (although frankly quite practical) boots. Hip hop. Then samba. I join a morphing moving group. A guy in dreads. A clean cut with a beret. A smiling Washington consultant.

Although, you know, the woman in the rhythm section sure looked a lot like photos on Cloud’s website as well as the nude sketch I’d seen above the Cloud’s bed months before.

Oh, to wander through life noticing a few less details would be nice. I’m not even the jealous type. I thought, oh this must be Cloud’s woman.

huh.

I took in all the people around me, and kept dancing.

Vibrating to the music she was making.

I just got off the phone with my ex husband’s wife.

We talked for an hour and thirty-nine minutes. It was fun.

Fun you ask?

Yes, fun.You see, with all the pain and difficulty of divorce –it’s been years now– there once lived the old awkward imaginings of who your former person will be with when it’s no longer you.. as well as all you may fear that she IS that you are NOT…

But somewhere a long way back that all fell away.Instead it is such a GIFT (ok, yes, gift can be a cheesy word and I usually hate it in this sort of context but it fits here) to have the pleasure of feeling continuity –even distantly — with that old mate. And tonight that happened through a little conversation.We talked, about what I’m not sure if it matters…about her paintings, his work, my work…she’s headed to Bali. I have a friend that lives there. And then something of the dynamics between them, but nothing too private, something about the differences in our personalities…even a bit about what I imagined she could give him that I could not. But it was easy talk. Nothing ground breaking.

Except in a way, it feels special.We agreed we wouldn’t be marching out and buying ‘best friend’ charm bracelets. But to connect like that — for one hour and thirty nine minutes — somehow enriches my current life. Is this, you ask because we had some sort of utopian separation?No.There was plenty of mess and missteps. But what is life if not mostly lots of mistakes?But eventually the dust settles. It all plays out.He still is him. You, still you.And while I no longer have or wish to have my former husband as the primary witness to my life, nor he to mine, I still love him and always will. And it makes life all the richer to know the woman who cares for him now. It broadens my heart to know her, and to know him through her. It feels like some weird version of having passed a torch. Life isn’t easy, and we don’t always work out what we need to work out in this lifetime with just one person. I spent over a decade with that guy. So to feel a delicate and very real thread from the life I once had to the life we each now have separately, is something else.

In a culture where it seems longevity in primary relationships is a rarity, to connect like that –however briefly — fills me with joy.It makes the world feel a little more whole, more full of love. Knowing there’s plenty to go around. And that two woman can talk about their lives having nothing to do with the man that links them. But also it feels something like a new fangled odd ball but no less real sense of family.

I’m thinking of buying one of her paintings.

You see, they are very beautiful.

So  who really wants to write about what happens next? 

You see,  a cumulus nimbus cloud isn’t just some puffy poof of magic. It’s a whirling dervish of wind, ice, tremendous force and competing currents. It moves fast, pulls hard, and will take your breath away. I know of this paragliding pilot who got sucked into one — was hauled up to 30,000 feet, frozen, passed out, and then spit back out, tumbling toward earth, only to crash-land unable to move. And they say it was in the end her inability to move, which saved her.

Note to self.

Experts say had she made any sudden movements upon impact she would have kicked into cardiac arrest. Apparently, sometimes doing nothing to fight big forces saves you.

 2^nd note to self.

So with my own nimbus visit, I couldn’t say I was frozen, nor even passed out. But I   had one HECK of a time trying to figure out which way was up. Just as quickly as the sky opened –wide, deep, and quick –just as suddenly the sky closed up shop. You see where I’m going here.

Falling faintly. Faintly falling.

Although it wasn’t so faint. I just like the sound of those four words. They capture that sense of losing elevation. 

My cloud,  my kite, my sweet little tornado got up off his knees and suddenly needed to talk about freedom.

Nimbus drawing up.

Wait a minute.

Couldn’t we just grab a light bite to eat?

Have a nice rest in the tall grass?

Nestle into my neck, just so?

Find some middle ground here between the rest of our lives and never again?

Can I offer you an olive?

A tissue?

Maybe wait for you to get over that nasty cold?

But to a stirring cloud perhaps these questions are as useful as that paragliding pilot asking that nimbus for a time-out.

“Listen, Mr. Cloud, could we each just take a moment, a nice deep breath?  You see my head is spinning, I’m having trouble keeping my thoughts straight…and I’m noticing some ice gathering on my goggles…What the FU…is happening here????? Hold onnnnnnnnnnnnn….Let me catch my……”

But the cloud keeps moving, replying with a:  “ Crash, bang boom.”

Wasn’t even mean-spirited of that nimbus. There was just no stopping it.

Strong forces, you see.

In my case, inside that high velocity-cloud-chaos it wasn’t so much about literal windshear,  but a bramble  of words  – trying to make sense of the extreme change in weather. But if the opening in the sky was rather unexplainable –wide, quick and deep — why should my nimbus’s close be any different? 

Sometimes you just can’t fight the forces of nature –not to mention the being thrown  and  the spitting out part. I mean, what could that woman do at 30k feet? No time for analysis. Maybe all you can do is hold on. Follow it out. And hope for a soft briar patch to land in. A feather bed seems like asking too much.

But man, that crash landing hurt like hell.

Wary of sudden movements—I am oh-so  gently taking my heart into  my OWN hands. I am warming it, trusting with time, and a lot of gentleness, a steady open beat will return. For now it makes sense to speak to it in the softest of tones. And I am extra mindful of what flies, pulls and draws overhead.

Maybe I’ll take up caving. 

Well, I fell in love with a kite. Or maybe a tornado. Or a cumulus nimbus cloud. I’m not sure what description fits best. It all happened so quickly. Like trying to read a road sign wizzing by at 200 miles an hour. Plucked me up off the ground and into the sky. Thermals spinning me up, up, up. And it was beautiful. Barefoot poems. Laughing. Shy, smiling kisses. I saw his heart, felt his heart through his big eyes, felt his lithe body moving through space and toward me. Elegant muscle, tight sinew. Tall bones. He opened wide and quickly and deep.

And he got down on his knees and said things you shouldn’t say. Not that early, anyway. I told him not to make jokes like that with a woman my age. I thought my response funny. But it was also true. And then he said it again. Something about me lit him up. Made him feel something alarming and disarming. And then he kissed me some more. And his poems. Oh his poems. Not your average verse, but-barefoot-in-the-street-he’s-offering-me-his-everything-poems. Shot right from his heart to the center of my own. Throw in a couple of speeches about practical matters about what all this would look like, and I was done for. He was beautiful. And even more beautiful on the inside than the out. As if I could believe that were possible.  

I couldn’t take in any more beauty, any more enthusiasm –overwhelmed with unexplainable, unexpected, unprompted love heading my way. So I asked him to come with me to smell candles in a department store. I needed something to bring me back to earth. And comfort-eating was out. Too many butterflies. 

Well, that is my thought today anyway. Up early, I hopped into my suit, waxed my board, and headed out. Sat on the beach and watched to set my best course. Picked out my line. Picked up my board. In I went.I then proceeded to spend the next forty minutes just getting hammered. I paddled next to this striking bald guy, looking way more organized than I. I kept wishing he would just paddle away from me, as I prefer to take my beatings in solitiude. Less humiliating somehow. In a break in the sets I lulled myself into thinking I had gotten to the outside. I even sat up on my board like my work was all done. But then a different set began again. How stupid was I? Which meant I had lost my obvious chance to more easily head clear to the outside. And so the hammering began again.

Funny how it can look like absolutely nothing from the beach.

And finally I thought, you know what? I’ve learned this lesson before. It doesn’t have to be this hard. I’ve lost my clear line to the outside and am stuck in the mush. I’ve drifted north with the current and that 100 yards –in this case –does make a difference. I’m going in, and if I have to start over again, so be it.

So I did.

Well, today was fantastic. Surfing with Peter in the rain. First the long board then I had a semi-graduation (if you can call it that) to the shorter board. Then paddled to the outside. Big surf. Big surf to paddle out through. Not like Laird Hamilton big, but big. Peter said, bigger, fit looking guys wouldn’t have made it out there. And pointed to four guys who hadn’t made it out. Not to be an ego maniac here, but Peter doesn’t know the size of my will. Fuck those bigger guys. Mostly we paddled out for the sake of paddling out. As some of the waves had a six foot face, and I’m still happy EXTREMELY happy with a three or four foot face –tops.

But I got to practice everything…Mostly the turtle roll and bailing off the board. But I also got to ride big swells on my board and learn about the currents and the tides and rips, and paddle at an angle to try to catch the waves.

And the rain is going this whole time. And I’m watching the pacific this whole time. And I’m thinking I am so so so lucky to be alive. To write and to think and to get to ask questions, like, well I mean what IS a riptide really anyway?

And then I caught one a big one –and it freaked the living shit out of me – and I bailed. Peter said I shouldn’t have bailed but ridden it on my belly all the way in. Probably was great advice –obviously not taken –as that wave spun me into a flexed somersault that I didn’t even know my back was capable of. I’ve never had the greatest backbends in yoga. Maybe today cracked something open. Holy hell, I thought, I hope this is NOT what it feels like to blow a disk.

And of course that was the last ride of the day. But the ocean was so deep, the swells so broad, the plunk plunk of the rain on the surface so sweet. Who knew that writing a second draft of a book about love, and relationships, and the culture of self-help would lead to something as fabulous as this? I never did, I assure you.

I want to know who wants to get married at the Radisson Inn. I mean, I really want to know this. You are sitting around with your betrothed, your beloved, brainstorming about the big day. And you say, “How ‘bout the Radisson in July?” And she says, “Honey that sounds perfect! I always wanted to get married at the Radisson.”

I’m sorry. I just don’t see it. Not to mention I’ve been here five days and I still haven’t figured out where the reception rooms actually are. When I get bored of memorizing, I try to mix it up by doing laps around the hotel, as well as laps through the hotel. But I’ve yet to stumble onto one banquet hall. But the rooms MUST exist because I see tired groups of men loitering in the lobby with nametag badges hanging around their necks that say things like ‘Steve Hauf – Dessert.’ Does Steve sell dessert? Make dessert? Write about dessert? These are questions for which I have no answers.

My point is, this is an extremely ugly place to get married. Period. I think if we surveyed a panel of experts, all would concur. And it’s not a money thing, as I can think of ten more affordable places to get married than here. It’s a question of romance. This is about as romantic as the Shell station where I pumped my gas earlier. The most romantic thing happening here that I can see is the Serta his and hers adjustable mattress. But I’m pretty sure they don’t offer those at receptions.

I saw my first Radisson bride and groom on Saturday. I learned later I had a friend who attended the wedding. The boss’ kid. Apparently they had some really embarrassing last name, which caused my friend to struggle with how to address the new couple on the card. I can’t remember it now, but it was something like, Mr. and Mrs. Sicko. I swear, something that startling.

But maybe Mr. And Mrs. Sicko have good old memories of the Radisson or the restaurant next door which offers spirits and Asian fusion food with ‘very adult’ tastes. What does this mean – ‘adult tastes?’ Anytime I see the word ‘adult’ on a sign I assume there’s porn inside. But I’ve never heard of an ‘adult’ restaurant. Have you? I peeked through the windows on one of my laps around the hotel. I did spot zebra striped valences on the windows…so maybe it IS an ‘adult restaurant’ peppered with a hint of porn. Zebra or leopard can mean just a little bit naughty, right?

I have three days to get to the bottom of this.

So my little one-person show is heading to New York this week. Crazy. The term one-person show is definitely a misnomer as its existence depends on so many people: Nell, my pr friend, my genius graphic designer friend, my two girlfriends directing me (basically telling me…that was funny, no that other thing wasn’t…and you’re doing that weird thing with your hands again…) Lemon who edits my work and my new unbelievably talented writing teacher. Without them I would definitely not be on this crazy adventure. I feel the excitement I remember growing up, just putting on the 7th grade school play or a skit at camp or something. But this is far more surreal as I’m a full grown adult. Who gets to have this much terrifying fun and still call it a job?

So before my actual departure, I’m holed up in the Radisson Inn in Longmont, Colorado, Odd, right? I’m with Isabelle, my Portuguese Wonder (Water) Dog. We’ve been gypsy-like for months, mostly staying with friends, some camping to help the show budget –Seattle, Washington; Newport Beach, California; Aspen and Salida, Colorado –great places to land as I try to piece this show and a writing life together. But it’s a well needed break to have total privacy here, to have space to work, work, work. Not to mention they have Serta personally adjustable beds.

By now I can teach anyone how to pack a good suitcase. But the beauty of the Radisson Inn this week: my room can be a disaster area and I won’t be messing up anybody’s guestroom. I try to be a tidy guest with my friends –but here I’m making a giant, fantastic mess. Script revisions, query letters, contracts, business cards, summer clothes, blueberries (on sale), cucumber brown rice sushi roll in the fridge, and a case of Pacifico. I only wanted a six pack but they had run out. I’ll give the extras to the Radisson guys downstairs who say hello to Isabelle every time she tromps by them with Froggie in her mouth to go outside to go the bathroom.

So the weekend is all about re-memorizing. The show has changed a lot. You’d think when you write something yourself, it would be easier to memorize, but I haven’t found that to be the case. Plus when you have trouble with a particular passage, it’s tempting to just rewrite it, which definitely shouldn’t always be an option. Just because it’s hard to remember, doesn’t mean it’s the wrong way to say something.

So for now, I’ll pack it in. I just want to send out a big thank you to every single person who’s helped me – for the great morning yoga class, to the folks at Daily Candy, to the staff of the Midtown International Theatre Festival. I feel lucky to be a part of this.