Bird by Bird

Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he’d had three months to write. It was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my  brother’s shoulder, and said, “Bird by bird, buddy.  Just take it bird by bird.”

Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

For most of my life, endings have come pretty easily to me. I think I owe this to the number of sad, tear-soaked goodbyes that dotted my youth. As I moved from city to city, school to school, friendship to friendship, goodbyes became par for the course. Ask anyone I know well, and they will tell you that I am most unsentimental when it comes to the ends of things. This could actually be a sign of severe emotional detachment, but that, I think, is a story for another post. Today, I want to talk about beginnings, because for me, and for many people, beginnings are hard.

Home

Over the course of the last two and a half weeks, I have had six panic attacks. Six terrifyingly oppressive and exhausting panic attacks–and they’ve all been about my upcoming return to New York.

Surely, you might say, I should be very excited to go back to New York. I have, after all, been trying to do just that for a sizable portion of my time in Los Angeles. And you would be half right in your assessment. I am, indeed, very excited to return to the world that I have inhabited for the largest portion of my adult life thus far. A world where I will once again be surrounded some of the most educated people from all walks of life. A world where I know that I can, if I choose, avoid talking of auditions and casting agents.  I am excited to return to the realm of the cosmopolitan and escape some from L.A.’s relentless sub-urbanity.

However, New York is not some mysterious unknown into which this adventurer is now diving. For all that I love that city, I no longer harbor any romantic ideals about what it’s like to live there. Life in New York is, in a word, exacting. It is probably one of the most relentlessly grinding places that one can choose to be. “Anything after New York would be–a pleasure cruise,” as the song goes. It is a really fucking boring pleasure cruise–but many a former New Yorker has been driven from their abode, perhaps for Portland instead of Santa Fe, but the sentiment remains. So many things that normal Americans take for granted are labeled luxuries in New York. Personal space? Access to nature? Solitude? New York has managed to commodify each of these in such an intense way that great sacrifices must sometimes be made in order to obtain them. And having lived in California for the last 18 months where those three things are abundant, I will admit that I balk a bit at re-surrendering myself to the concrete jungle. I’ve gotten awfully comfortable in my 1 BR with parking.

And as I make the decision of whether to live with another person or willingly raise my own budget for rent an additional $300-$500 dollars every month (an amount that would rent an entire two BR apartment with parking in other places), a tiny voice creeps in and asks me what exactly I think I’m doing. I know how hard things can get. I know the depths I can sink to. I am at something of an impasse, and all I want is to find my way home.

What is a home? They say home is where the heart is, so it makes sense that my poor, fragmented heart is so confused about what that word means. Having bounced from town to town as a child, then state to state and country to country as I reached adulthood, I have given pieces of my heart to so many people and places over the years that my compass has no north. There is no guiding star to lead this voyage, so it often feels like I am simply adrift at sea. My parents live in different cities, both far from the town I fled to go to college. My host families in Japan, Argentina, and Morocco are living their lives without me. The entire country of Israel, which I love with reckless, wild abandon that you can only have for first loves of a certain nature, is too fucked up to consider returning to any time soon. So for now that just leaves New York with the largest portion of my heart: home to 8 million crazy, ambitious, intelligent, beautiful, wonderful monsters — who have not paused or slowed since my departure, because they are too busy trying to stay afloat themselves. I am one insignificant grain of sand on a shoreful of souls who have come to and left New York. And much to my chagrin I know that I will be leaving little pieces of my heart here in L.A. with the people here who have unexpectedly become like family.

All of this is to say that home is where the heart is; I just need to find all of the pieces of my heart.

Spring

Ever since spring ceased to mark the end of a school year and the coming of Summer Vacation, it has become increasingly difficult for me to enjoy. The fact that one must, as an adult, continue to work through what are arguably the most pleasant days of the year is almost enough to make one wish that it wasn’t spring at all. If all the weather is going to do is mock me from outside my office windows, maybe I’d be better off without it.¹

T.S. Eliot put it so succinctly when he said:

April is the cruellest month,
breeding Lilacs out of the dead land,
mixing Memory and desire,
stirring Dull roots with spring rain.²

The whole mad race toward summer, for that matter, is filled with a melancholy entirely different from that experienced in the brackish months of autumn. In the fall, we mourn the loss of light and life from the natural world, but in spring it is the departure of vitality from our own lives which is drawn into focus. As the world regenerates around us, we cannot help but see that we have grown another year older, another year further from our spritely youths, and another step closer to the clearing at the end of the path.

It seems too that I have been surrounded by the shadow of death as of late. At every turn, I am having to express my condolences to some good friend or another, the one degree of separation between myself and the Reaper being a few degrees too close for comfort. TV and film that I cannot help but watch (the amazing Grace and Frankie comes to mind) delve deeply into issues of mortality and purpose and happiness and loss, and I am amazed at how quickly things can change, how thin and ubiquitous the barrier is that separates us from the great beyond. It is as though the universe is reminding me, not so gently, that this too shall pass. I need to get my shit together.

As the earth warms up and the trees refoliate, I am bombarded with the fruits of other people’s labors (which seem all the more plentiful in comparison to my own relatively bare limbs). Here, so-and-so is receiving his Master’s degree. This one is getting married. Those two are having a baby.  Or starting a business. Or booking a gig–and here I am, in a city I do not love, immersed in a culture whose priorities I do not share, ostensibly chasing a dream that I can no longer wholly identify as my own. I cannot afford to leave, nor would I want to without giving L.A. and “the industry” a proper chance, so for the moment I am stuck. It is the definition of frustration.

It is unhealthy, I know, to measure myself against the successes of others. But I am, after all, only human. In addition to being “only human,” I am also a single-minded and unmerciful perfectionist in whom the drive to excel has until now been life’s single greatest motivator. And like most perfectionists, it is not the potential for success which draws me onward, but the fear of failure before which I am ever-fleeing. No matter how often I check in with my inner child or self-coach to be mindful of the damage I am capable of inflicting upon my own psyche, my auto-flagellation game is strong and my implements are well-honed with use.

The one piece of comfort that I can take from the turning seasons is the knowledge that this too shall pass. Just as spring will always glide into summer before giving way to winter, this sense of melancholy will fade. It may potentially be replaced with a sense of foreboding or a deep, unmitigated sorrow, but I can deal with that when I get there. The world is moving underneath my feet, and it’s almost impossible that I’ll feel exactly as I do now in a year or even six months. Until then, there’s not much to be done for it except put on a little Joni Mitchell, spend some time at the beach, and nurture my life’s tree as best as I can. In time, it may well bear more fruit.

¹ This is hyperbole. Please do not take spring away from me.
² T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland