April and Chris

She's getting married tomorrow. To the man she danced with at his senior prom, the guy she used to gush and giggle about with me in Ms. Ryan's computer class. It's like a fairy tale.

I first saw April in my 7th grade gym class. She was wearing a white tee shirt with a cookie on it.
Neither of us were very good at gym. (Thankfully, in a high school built on the high holy virtues of academia, it didn't matter and we were often excused to sit on the side lines and cram for Latin exams.*)

That night,  I noticed she was also in the Tuesday night CCD class for all of us public school kids in West Roxbury. I don't remember who approached whom, but we started talking, and soon our desks were pushed together.  We lived in the same part of town (separated by The Woods and The Quarry), loved doc martins, fishnet tights, and The Offspring (before and after they 'sold out').
Very quickly, very clearly, we were inseparable.

April and I both kept journals in those cheap, cardboard covered composition notebooks you can get at CVS for a dollar. Every few days we'd trade journals, spending time in class or on the bus reading one another's most secret thoughts. Sometimes we'd write responses directly into the other one's book. Sometimes we'd use the journals to have entire real time conversations in class or study hall.
Because of that, for a long time April and I were like two halves of one mind.

We vacationed with one another's families, referred to one another's parents as "Second Mom," and "Second Dad," had sleepovers, fell in and out of love with different boys, watched The Craft or Empire Records at least once every few months, and created a fantasy story about what our lives would be like as grownups in a notebook separate from our journals, which we also passed back and forth. You know, like all teenage girls do.**

Although we shared a very close core group of friends, April was my closest. In all the time we spent together, I do not remember a single fight.***

During our senior year she and  Chris started dating. Chris was a guy she had known she she was eleven, and had hated until recently re-meeting him. I liked Chris, and I liked her and Chris together. They dated until almost Thanksgiving of our freshman year in college, and then - and here's where the fairy tale gets complicated - they broke up.

Unfortunately, by then, April and I had also drifted considerably. I didn't even  know that she and Chris had broken up until long after it happened. Through the next five years April and I lived very different lives, separated by geography and newly evolving interests.
While we were both seniors, Chris and April got back together and started dating seriously again.

April and I are also back in touch.
I can barely begin to express how blessed I feel that I will get to be there tomorrow when she and Chris stand up in front of everyone and promise each other the rest of their lives.

Congrats, April and Chris.
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* I don't know how the gym classes are now. But that's how I remember it, at least.
** We figured we both be in a rock band. So the story was about life on the road. And boys.
*** April, you can correct me if I'm wrong here... but nothing really jumps out at me.

LOST

This entry is not about LOST.

I never have never even seen a minute of an episode of LOST.
But Liz C. is in town and in the spirit of friendship I now find myself sitting  Shannon's house gearing up to watch the very last episode ever.

I was wearing a surgical mask to protect me from cat dander* which I had to take off to eat our order of "Wings". We ordered Wings over Amherst all the time in college and have taken this tiny reunion as an opportunity to munch on chicken together even though Shannon's boyfriend Ted doesn't like the franchise's recipes as much as we do.

As we watch the official LOST recap that is airing right now I am struck by a few things.

First of all, I kind of wish I had been watching LOST all along. I guess I did miss out on a huge cultural phenomenon. Years from now I will have to admit that I didn't watch it and people will look at me the way I look at them now if they say they never saw the episode of Punky Brewster where Cherry locks herself in a refrigerator and almost dies.**

But mostly I am struck by how lucky I am to have the friends I have. I love to sit here by the window in this apartment, a black cat at my feet (a bottle of fexofenadine by my hand), and Liz and Shan on the couch across from me trading jokes about LOST. And in between jokes about LOST, just trading stories.
 A minute ago two other close friends who live upstairs stopped by the window behind me and I made faces at their baby. Ted is delivering a rant about season three. We are going to eat ice cream soon. Then I'll put my surgical mask back on.

I'm happy.

I'm not going to understand a single thing that happens in the next two hours. And honestly, when the show starts I am probably just going to sit here and continue working on the script for Gorefest.

But I am glad I came here. I always am.

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*I am not the most stylish person you know, but I am the most fun to take places.
** RIGHT?

i believe in everything, nothing is sacred; i believe in nothing, everything is sacred

Forgive me. I meant to write about Advent tonight while my stew simmered away. But like the Magi showing up unexpectedly at Bethlehem, my dear old college roommate found her way to my doorstep. She arrived just in time to help me wash the mushrooms and share the wine. So allow me to cheat this post with a story I wrote a while ago to explain our relationship.

It was early on in our freshman year that Jen's family had come to visit and dropped off two huge pallets of FlavorSplash water along with a ton of other "care package" items. Jen and I were random assignment roommates - friendly but not friends. Yet.

I decided the water was taking up too much room on the floor. Being a Social Thought and Political Economy student, (mainly enrolled in creative writing courses) I had some free time. I began to tie string around the bottles and hang them from anywhere I could get them to stay. The top of the windows, the posts of our bunk beds, attached to wire hangers and suspended from the ceiling...

Jen looked up from her Organic Chemistry book to ask for an explanation.
"It's like we have water-trees," I said, brushing my electric pink hair out of my face. "We can just reach up and pluck them down."

She was silent. Then, to my surprise my sensible, pre-med roommate put down the heavy text and began helping me string the bottles up.

Once we got all the bottles hung we went back to our homework. Jen began inventing a vaccine to prevent HIV transmission, while I wrote a poem about a bird I saw once.

It was not long before a bottle fell, BONK, narrowly missing Jen's head.

"Misch," Jen took her glasses off, "this is not going to work."

I had a different reaction to the crash. "Jen, this is great! It's like the Clock People in this book I'm reading."
"MichELLE. What on earth are you talking about?"

I was talking about a fictional pile of trash in a fictional underground tunnel. The Clock People in Tom Robbin's novel Even Cowgirls Get the Blues tend to this giant trash pile that functions as their clock. When something falls off the trash pile, that's the clock striking. There is no set interval to the striking of this clock. It can go days without a sound, or toll several times in one hour. The noise reminds them that the time is NOW. There is no past or future. 1 o'clock; 2 o'clock ... means nothing. Just NOW.

I explained this to Jen. She looked like she was sorry she asked. She went back to her work.

BONKCRASH. A bottle fell onto the dresser between our work areas, upsetting some spare change.

"The time is NOW!" I yelled gleefully. Jen began to laugh. "The time IS now," she answered.

We picked up the water that had fallen and re attached it to the walls. As we were doing so Jen's boyfriend knocked on the door.

"What are you two doing?"
Jen smiled widely, "fixing our water-clock!" Mike looked extremely unhappy.
But I was very happy. And guess which one of us she spends her time with now?

Mix Independent, won't you come spend a little time?

Monday night I had the pleasure of attending Cherry, at Jacque's Cabaret in Boston.

"Cherry" is described as " a night of New," for a reason. It features new performers or veteran performers doing new things. There was a very special reason I was present at this particular show and it was because Johnny was doing something new.

Last week, Johnny Blazes, wrote to a handful of hir friends saying:

As any performer will tell you, and most of you are performers so you know first hand, there are certain things that a performer feels completely comfortable doing onstage.... There is also usually at least one thing that that performer is terrified to do onstage. In my case, sing anything other than opera.

Not sure why. I can take off my clothes, flamenco dance, recite a soliloquy, lip synch like a fifth grader, cover myself in fake blood, fake fur or real whipped cream, without the slightest hint of stage fright or embarrassment, but singing earnestly onstage seems off-limits.

Well. It's about time.

Johnny's letter went on to express fear, and even uncertainty about inviting any of us, but asked that we come out to support this new endeavor. I hadn't seen Johnny on stage in a while due to my own rigorous performance schedule, so I made plans to go.

Jacque's was well populated when I got there. I'd never been before, but I started enjoying myself right away. Monday night featured Becca D'bus, Katya, and Hava Heart, and their lip synching, hip twisting, hair flipping performances were all spectacles in their own right...

But Johnny, as promised, was singing. Earnestly. And it was amazing.

Hir second number was a rendition of Ne-Yo's "Miss Independent," done with all gender neutral pronouns. "Ze does hir own thing," Johnny sang, sidling up to audience members in the small space, "that's why I love hir. Mix Independent, won't you come and spend a little time?"

As Johnny moved, every other person in the room remained riveted. Johnny didn't strip, or juggle or do any of the complex choreography the audience knows ze's capable of. It was just Johnny being Johnny, sharing hir voice in a way that is usually off-limits. I watched with a mixture of love and pride, and was surprised by the end to find my eyes full of tears.
Because that's how performers grow. But not just performers. That's how we all grow. Facing and shedding fears one at a time. And if we're lucky we get to share those moments with people we love.

Congrats, Johnny.

jump start my heart, you.

Friday had been an unintentional marathon of an evening starting with two shows at Improv Asylum followed by drinks at The Field with the cast of Crime Solving Bear 2, breakfast at 2am at IHOP and finally a viewing* of Wet, Hot American Summer for the breakfast survivors at chez moi at around 4am.

I only tell you this because you'd think that Saturday I would have slept all day.
Instead, Saturday morning I woke up restless.

The kind of restless I haven't felt in years, for reasons I will dwell on in a future post.

I tried to watch an episode of Mad Men (I'm still in Season One), and found myself unable to concentrate. I found out my plans in Boston for the night were being deferred to another evening and I only grew more itchy. I alternately cleaned the kitchen and bathroom. I considered and rejected complicated dinner options. I surfed tracks on The Scarlet Pimpernel soundtrack until I'm sure my roommates wanted to hand me over to be guillotined. I switched to The Last Five Years.

Outside the sky was blue, and the tree outside my window, with all its reds and oranges reminded me of Amherst. The first time I listened to The Last Five Years was in Amherst. My trip to Amherst was scheduled for the morning. Man, do I miss Amherst, I thought.
I decided to throw some clothes into a bag for the morning.
Then it was all over.

Once the clothes were in the bag my mind was made up. I began throwing things into the backseat of the car. I felt like a version of myself I hadn't quite noticed gone missing.**

Within fifteen minutes I was in the car belting the words to "I Can Do Better Than That," and cruising in a zen like state*** towards the middle of the state back to a town I've had a love/hate relationship with for years.

The first thing I did at Amy's house was accidentally almost electrocute myself in an incident involving an electric socket in their low set ceiling, and a giant sword. The second thing I did was debate at length about what it would have looked like, and if it would have been appropriate to carve into a gravestone.

The restlessness had dissipated on the road and was replaced with an overwhelming sense of coming home.

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* We all promptly fell asleep, so it was more like a "putting on for background noise."
**Which is a good thing since most of my life demands a lot more discipline than I used to have.
*** only more driving appropriate

This Blog is One Year Old

I began writing here one year ago today convinced for a myriad of reasons that "this [was] going to be my year."

I was right in all the ways I predicted, and in many that I did not.

I wanted to take this opportunity to get a little bit emotional. I am probably already one of the most emotional people you know. And .... I'm finally alright with that. (Mostly). I had a pretty emotionally charged weekend, and I don't want to get into details, I just want to cut to the chase.

I like to think everyone knows how I feel about them because I'd also like to think of myself as a pretty open book. I know firsthand, as many of you do, that some goodbyes come far too soon, far too fast and without fair warning. That knowledge has made me occasionally sappy to the point of irritating. But even I have things I haven't said when I should say them.

It seems like whenever someone we love leaves us for good, we are quickly moved to spell out our I-love-you-s to the people we have left. Because we know in those moments that time is precious, and life is short. But still, time slips away leaving us with a lot of things unspoken.
Today I'm celebrating my birthday which to me really means celebrating all the relationships that have made up my life as I know it. So here goes.

Mom, your love literally created me. I didn't know it was possible to get even closer to you, but somehow this year we did. Brian, we competed for many years but now we finally stand as equals, ready at each other's call for for help, or just to share a laugh or two. It's exactly how Dad would have wanted to see us turn out.

To all of my family and friends: I am who I am in part because of each of you and the mystery of that is something I can never wrap my mind around all the way. Growing up is so weird. I think of all of you and I say "this is my life, these are the people I keep" and I am so profoundly happy. I visualize axons in a nerve bundle. I could not untangle myself from you if I tried, and I wouldn't want to because it would hurt and things would stop working.

But it doesn't end there. Take this very seriously. My castmates and various directors. My patients, all of them. My students at Thacher. My coworkers and bosses. The friends of friends I've shared moments with at parties. Strangers on the buses and trains and planes that brought me here. Cab drivers with and without advice/cigars/cell phones/bad jokes. Bartenders. Everyone's new babies. The old man who sells ramen on that street corner in Tokyo. Your cat. Every person I met while apartment hunting. The guys I've gone on dates with. The guys I did not go out on dates with. People who have made me laugh. Or made me cry. That waitress that night. The authors of the blogs I follow. The reporters in Iran. Drunk people on the street. My new mechanic, Nick. People I met once, people I will never see again. The people who come and go every single day.

It's all connected. And we're all connected. And for the whole big picture I believe I have God to thank above all. Because God reveals Himself as Love. God is love, and I perceive that love constantly reflected by the people who surround me. And that's where I find my most honest, deepest, happiness.

... So when you have a blog you're allowed to pretty much say anything you want, huh?
This was NOT the year I reinvented myself as cool and aloof, that's for sure.

I started the blog to see where it would end up. I liked keeping it, and I think I'll keep keeping it. I will, however, be splitting off the entries about nursing and particularly homelessness into a blog of their own for professional purposes before this winter. It's something I've wanted for a while.

So I also want to take a separate minute to thank everyone who reads this. Whether you're a friend, or a curious enemy, or a stranger who accidentally found it while Google-ing "homeless" or "improv." Thanks for reading it, because without you the words are pretty meaningless.

I am looking forward to this next year. I have a few new goals. I feel less sure of how much I want some of my former goals. I don't have all the answers, but I have enough questions to keep myself and hopefully most of you sufficiently entertained for another 365 days.

This is going to be my year. And it's going to be your year too.

Scott and Rachel and The Wedding

This past weekend marked the wedding of two very close friends of mine.

Scott and Rachel started dating during our sophomore year. Scott and I were already fast friends, and through him, Rachel and I quickly became friends as well. I've watched Scott and Rachel grow side by side for years now, and their love inspires me and energizes me in ways I can't explain. Being in their presence it is easy to detect a mix of very palpable respect, tenderness, playfulness and creative energy.


Mr. Braidman, during his toast to the couple mentioned that it's going to be really fun for all of us to watch what their union will produce. Everyone laughed and Steve blushed and said "that's not what I meant."
He's right, though and we can all feel it. Their love will produce so much (and yes, that includes children), and everything it creates will make the world a better
place. I am more sure of that than I am of so many other things.

EDIT: But you don't have to take my word for it, just take a look at the wedding vows Rachel posted today.

Misch is feeling grateful (is a corny status update)

Last night was my final Friday Night Face Off Show. Marcelo, Sean, Camilo, Shannon, Mish, Robert, Dana (and me and Steph) played. Serpico came out to MC despite his feeling under the weather. Kevin sat it out in the audience since the cast was already so large. The house was lively and peppered with friends and lovers. Steph and I truly went out in style surrounded by the best of the best and I couldn't have asked for anything more. Afterwards everyone "yes anded" a hike to Bukowski's and so I ended my stay with FNFO with drinks and feasting at that same place on a hot July day I was once welcomed into the fold.
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Recently I have been taking serious stock of how amazing the people in my life are. Especially people whom I don't expect special favors from, not because I don't know they are wonderful, but just by virtue of how removed our lives seem to be. For example, last week at work Joan gave me five meal tickets for free when I asked to buy one. And she wouldn't take my money. She said "So you can go back to Japan some day." What? I had no idea she cared. Amazing. Twice in the past month someone has driven a ridiculous distance to drive me home. John did it one night when it was snowing and I missed my train, and last week TC offered me a ride home just so I wouldn't have to leave karaoke before my name was called. What? Yes. And neither of them live anywhere near me. Laura stayed up later than she wanted to just to proof read one of my sketches the other night and make it funnier; Jay fixed my refrigerator light because it was driving me crazy; my aunt paid for lunch and called it Christmas, the other day. The list goes on and on.
It makes me happy, it makes me grateful, and it makes me want to be a better person.