My Personal Ode to Pomegranates.

This is my breakfast. It is my favorite food at the moment. Okay, it doesn't look so good in that picture. But do not be deceived by my breakfast's meager looks. It is AWESOME.

Sometimes I think I have a love affair with a certain kind of food – for a while it was Snappy Tom – that spicy tomato juice. I had to have it every day, every single day. I thought about my Snappy Tom when I wasn’t home and I looked forward to that rush of spice and tomato hitting my tongue. Then I began to have Snappy Tom several times during the day and the spices were so intense I began to be unable to taste any other food. Everything began to taste like Snappy Tom. You couldn’t have a glass of Snappy Tom and then have a bowl of cereal, for example. Your whole mouth was all Snappy Tom. Eventually I longed for other tastes, and so inevitably, one day, I broke up with Snappy Tom.

And I didn’t partake in him for months.

And then, slowly, he made his way back into my life. And we developed a more casual, realistic relationship – a Snappy Tom every once in a while when I was in the mood. It was never like it was at the beginning between Tom and me, but still – we found a way to be together in a more sustainable way. And it was like Snappy Tom and I would remember the old days, the days when I was obsessed with Snappy Tom. Sometimes I found myself chuckling as I poured a glass, thinking: “Remember when I was in a panic if I was out of Snappy Tom? Oh Tom, that was just nuts!” Or now, I order Snappy Tom on the plane and I shake my head – oh…Tom. Tom!

There were others, naturally. Fresh nine grain bread, bagel bread with blue cheese and tomatoes. And then, just…tomatoes. My neighbor grows tomatoes and when they are ripe I have a tomato sandwich every single day. I look forward to it – lunch today – dinner the next, and some days I have it for lunch and dinner! The tomato and fresh mayonnaise and fresh bread, a dash of salt and if I’m in the mood, pepper, and oh! During the rest of the year, I avoid tomatoes. None of them are as good as fresh – you can’t go back! You look at these stale, pale red, globs and think: they are selling these as -- tomatoes? There is no comparison with a fresh tomato just picked!

So, this winter, I have become obsessed with Pomegranates. My dear friend Julia, who is not me, but another person, who lives a couple of blocks away, came over one day with a grocery bag. Inside was low fat cottage cheese, a papaya, some pecans, some toasted sliced almonds, and…a pomegranate. She looked me deeply in the eyes and said in hushed tones, “Prepare yourself. Get ready to ROCK YOUR WORLD.” And then she handed me the brown paper bag. It was like she was handing me contraband: heroin, hullucinogenic mushrooms, pornography. "It just came to me, this recipe," she said. I love that. How it "came to her", the recipe sought her out, somehow. It's like when the Irish say, "The thirst, it came upon me!"

So, this is the basic recipe: 1/2 cup of cottage cheese, a quarter of a ripe papaya, two tablespoons of toasted sliced almonds, and a tablespoon of chopped pecans. Then, about a half of a fresh pomegranate. It takes a while, the pomegranate takes twenty minutes to cut up and get the seeds out. But I listen to the news on the radio and sip my coffee.

While I pick apart the pomegranate, I think about all things pomegranate. I think about being in Greece in my travels after college and seeing the locals – I think this was when I was on the Island of Santorini, and they would eat the pomegranate like it was an apple, well, they would break it open, so that part wasn’t like an apple, But they would just eat into it, even the white film around the vesicles of seeds and the juice would run down their faces and they looked like they were bleeding to death, but they were smiling ear to ear. I wasn’t so into pomegranates then. I was worried I would get red pomegranate juice all down my shirt and I didn’t want to have to wash it and plus, the people looked positively mad while they ate them. Oh, how little I understood pomegranates then…

Now, twenty or so years later, I can’t stop thinking about pomegranates. I live in fear that the season is almost over. For a week or so, you couldn’t find any pomegranates at my local grocery and I was in despair. I have this breakfast every single day! And it’s not the same AT ALL without the pomegranates. The pomegranates are the essential ingredient to this recipe. Seriously, I go to bed at night thinking about the morning when I get to have my pomegranate breakfast again! This morning I listened to classical music and spent a half an hour picking apart two whole pomegranates and putting their seeds, one by one, in a Tupperware container. This will get me through until I leave for Monterey on Tuesday. My pomegranate fix is fixed.

And there’s so much to think about while I pick apart the pomegranate. I think I’m Persephone, who Hades convinced to eat the food of the Underworld (the pomegranate, of course) and once she ate those seeds she could never fully leave the Underworld – that’s how strong the pomegranate’s hold was on her. Every year Persephone had to spend three months in Hades, where I imagine her eating this very breakfast that I’m making. During those three months, nothing would grow on earth and it was winter.

And then there are all those medieval pictures of the Virgin Mary with a pomegranate in her hand, a symbol of her hold over the life and death of her son (which was copied from the pictures of Athena who also held a pomegranate in her hand).

Even the Buddhists have pomegranates in their mythology – I saw pictures in Tibet of the goddess Hariti who was a child eater, but the Buddha cured her of her child-eating by substituting a pomegranate for a child, and Hariti was satisfied with the bloody, crunchy pulp – which I guess was SO like eating children. Anyway, Hariti reformed and afterwards became a protectress of little children. In Japan she is called Kishimojin, and she’s called upon by infertile women to help get them pregnant. She is shown nursing and infant, which is held in one hand and in her other hand she is holding...a pomegranate, of course.

But my favorite pomegranate legend is a Jewish one. The Talmud has a story where the wife of a Rabbi disguises herself as a forbidden beautiful maiden to test her husband’s fidelity. When the Rabbi sees her he is overwhelmed with passion. The disguised maiden tells him, "If you bring me a pomegranate you may ravish me to your heart's desire." So, he climbs to the top of this tree and gets a pomegranate. When he arrives back to where the maiden was, he is shocked to see his wife standing there. Ooooops. "Hi honey, do you care for a pomegranate?" Eeeek. The wife doesn’t seem to be too mad, she sort of laughs and says, “Hey it was only me all along, darling!” But the Rabbi is so devastated by his behavior that he says, “Nevertheless, I would have done evil.” And then he fasts himself to DEATH. Oh dear. Oh dear. That is really feeling bad.

So, I am reading this wonderful book by this wonderful author, "Deconstructing Jesus" by Robert Price. I met Robert Price once and I believe he's coming back to town to give at talk at CFI West in a few weeks. I will definitely be there. He is so insightful and he is so damn smart! I feel close to him because we have the same view of religion, reverent towards the power of religion and the necessity of community and all that, but harsh on the myths that religion is based on. I have only read about forty or so pages -- and it's a Prometheus book so that means the layout sucks and the type is too small, but it's really fascinating reading. I'm learning more about all the different Christian sects that were all over the place in the first two centuries of the common era, the very beginings of Christianity. (This is also tackled in "God Against The Gods" to a certain extent) If you know this stuff, the New Testament makes so much more sense! St. Paul's epistles suddenly read like a polemic against all the other Christian sects: Marconionism, Ebionism, Gnosticism. It's so sobering (and ultimately disturbing) to realize that the more freethinking sects, the ones that encouraged the most individual spiritual exploration (like the Gnostics) were not the ones that were so good at institution building - naturally. And they died out. I feel like that's our Democratic party today.

It's pouring rain here and Mulan has a stomach ache. It's going to be an inside kind of day, I think.

Happy Belated Valentine’s Day! I, myself, had a delightful day. I performed last night at the M Bar and I got to see many old friends and had a good time revealing myself on stage. Beth Lapides and Greg Miller, who produce the Uncab, were so much fun to catch up with. Taylor Negron was hilarious and I’m still laughing over his set, today.

So, I am working feverishly on my small projects. So, since I don’t really have time to compose a post, I thought, in the spirit of St. Valentine’s Day, to quote here in my blog one of my favorite passages of anything, ever, anywhere. Maybe everyone who might stop in here at my blog already has read it, but for me, Valentine’s Day is a nice day to reread it.

It’s from the prologue to Bertrand Russell’s Autobiography.

What I Have Lived For.

Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and the unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a great ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.

I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy – ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness – that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it finally, because in union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is what – at last – I have found.

With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, have I achieved.

Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes and cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by their oppressors, helpless old people a burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate this evil, but I cannot, and therefore I too suffer.

This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.



Bertrand Russell (1872 – 1970) won the Nobel prize for literature for his History of Western Philosophy and was the co-author of Principia Mathematica.

This is a very quick post, as I'm running to the theater momentarily. But I want to thank everyone who has posted - I wish I could stop and respond to every entry.

I had a great weekend, just great. I got to read the last ten pages of Origin Of Species for Darwin's Birthday celebration at CFI West and I am so honored that I got to do that. I got to meet all sorts of old friends and new friends. I finally talked to Brian Flemming who did the documentary "The God Who Wasn't There." I watched his DVD this morning and it was sooo good, it really fired me up to work! Wow, what an excellent documentary. Everyone should see this.

Anyway, I had a fun show Sunday and I hope I have another fun show tonight. I worked on my Letting Go Of God? script all day. Yeah, you saw that right -- the question mark. I think maybe I'll just add the question mark.

I went to a dinner for this writer, John Hodgman, who has a new book out. I got to see a lot of dear old friends I haven't seen in a long time. And I got to meet Matt Groening, who is going to be at TED next week too. That rocks! I am beat and my eyes are glazing over from looking at a computer screen all day. I will blog more tomorrow. This blog thing rocks.

More images from TAM4. This is me, Hal Bidlack, and his son Chris. I think Hal gave the best, most moving speech of the conference. I hear that James Randi is doing better and I am glad about that.

I saw “Good Night and Good Luck” last night. I think it should win best picture at the Academy Awards. I don’t know if it is the best picture of the year, I think my personal favorite is “Munich,” but I think there’s too much controversy about “Munich” for it to win. Probably just being nominated is as winny as “Munich” is going to get. “Crash” absolutely cannot win or I’m not going to watch the Academy Awards ever again. That movie SUCKS. As my friend Jim Emerson said, the person who wrote it lived in the hills. Meaning that it’s a Hollywood Hills person looking down on Los Angeles imagining what he thinks life is really like out there on the streets. I was openly laughing at Crash with derision by the time it was half way through.

I did not do well on my personal writing yesterday. I kept going on the internet to look up places in Ireland. I am going to this International Atheist Convention in Iceland at the end of June. Richard Dawkins is going to be there, Margaret Downey, and I’m not sure who else, but I am so psyched to see Iceland. I think we will stay about a week there.

So, then, I figured, that if I’m in Iceland I would take Mulan to Ireland. There was a period of five years before I adopted Mulan when I went to Ireland every single year. I have friends in Clifden, in Connemara, on the West Coast. I actually have about sixty or so cousins in and around Dublin, but I don’t really know them. My great grandfather was a taster at the Jameson Whiskey factory just outside Dublin. Honestly that is a job and my great grandfather had it. In any case, if I could swing it, which I’m not sure I can, I would take Mulan to Ireland and she could take horseback riding lessons in Connemara – at this little stable where I took some rides from several years ago. Then maybe we could head over to Inishbofin, this lovely little island off the coast of West Ireland for a little while. Oh what am I thinking? I would have to get so much done in order to do this! I would have to have the book done, the screenplay done, and the TV pilot sold to someone. But all these fantasies kept me from writing most of the day. Even though, completion of the writing is what would allow me to fulfill these fantasies.

Turns out it’s not so easy to go from Iceland to Ireland. You’d think they’d have three flights a day from Reykjavik to Shannon or Dublin. But NO. You have to fly to London, and if we go to London, then we should probably see London and that adds a few days, a few very, very expensive days. And if we go to London, should we then, not fly in and out of London? And I could use my miles for the flights? But then it means back tracking three hours to Iceland. And now you see how a whole day gets lost in the planning and fantasy.

Even though “Good Night, and Good Luck” could have easily sent me spiraling downwards, like after I saw “Why We Fight” did, it didn’t. As my mother would say, I felt “uplifted.” It’s so hopeful, that film. It’s so filled with camaraderie and fighting the good fight and basically winning. I hope it gets best picture, I really do. Ohmygod, George Clooney is a genius. What a filmmaker! I remember when I was in the hospital over ten years ago now -- after my surgery -- when I had cancer -- and Quentin had George Clooney call me at the hospital and say, “I’m not a doctor, but I play one on TV.” This, of course, was when he was on ER. Then he told me that I’d get better, etc. So, y’know, I feel I am a close personal friend of George Clooney because of this conversation.

All right, back to the grindstone.

Here’s a picture of Daniel Dennet and James Randi, two white-bearded fellows that line up just right one over the other. I took this at TAM4. Oh, how I love that image. James Randi underwent by-pass surgery this week and I am thinking about him a lot and I am worried about him. What a wonderful conference that was. I am still basking in that weekend.

I am pretty pooped, so I probably shouldn't be writing. This could be meandering, but here goes:

Okay. The CD is underway. There is a conceivable possibility that it will, indeed, be available on Feb. 22nd. I spent most of the day getting the information ready for the layout. It will be a 2 CD set with a book that will have the text of the show. The book will be about fifty pages long, a real honest-to-goodness transcript of the whole show. This is not to be confused with “My Beautiful Loss-Of-Faith Story” which is separate and will be much, much longer – an actual book - and include this loss-of-faith journey in depth. I spoke with the audible.com people and it even looks like I may have it up on audible by the 22nd of Feb. as well. And if it’s on audible to download, it will also be on ITunes. All this work really makes me want someone else to be in charge of making the movie. It’s so much work! And I am already thinking of what I want to write next. But it is interesting how this whole cd machinery works. I didn’t know anything about this, of course, when I made my God Said Ha! CD for Warner Bros.

I saw “Why We Fight” tonight. It’s a documentary about our Military Industrial Complex. I was feeling a little sad on the way to the movies. I was thinking how precarious our lives are – how we could all just go at any moment. I have spent much of today thinking about my friend Kent who just passed away from colon cancer.

I am seriously fearful of the future. I keep thinking, I hope we can be lucky enough to hold it together as a civilization for just another 100 years. That gets me through my life and Mulan’s life. I know that is just nuts to think that way. I mean there will always be people who someone cares deeply about. Mulan will have her own people she will care about deeply, just as deeply as I care about her. But maybe I’m just selfish. I am not as worried about those people who I don’t know – this abstract group of people -- as I am worried about getting to live out my life in peace and happiness. I hope this doesn't appear as if I'm saying I don't care about people in the future. Or that I'm behaving deliberately selfishly or that I'm trying to make life harder for people in the future. I hope very much that I am not. I even hope I am doing things that make people in the future have a chance at a fuller life in my own little ways.

But I guess what I’m saying is: I’m not optimistic about the future in general.

And I am not normally so pessimistic about the future of mankind, or even of the future of our country. But we are in such a precarious place. Just being a part of nature makes us so deeply vulnerable, in ways that I never fully could see before when I thought God was up there pulling the strings. But even if you take away all the fragility that we impose on ourselves unnecessarily, we still are vulnerable as a piece of nature in a bigger natural setting -- a bigger natural setting that doesn’t care a wit about us in particular.

Sometimes I play down the fear of death as a negative by-product of my lack of belief. But the truth is, especially now that it’s been several years and I can look back on it a little more objectively, the fear of death – or rather, sadness about death – is a much bigger problem in my life. It is truly a trade off. I think you can see much more clearly when you give up all that gobbledygook of religion. But the stark reality of how fleeting life is – oh! See! There’s no way to write about this without resorting to clichés!!! But the reality of how fragile life is – every person, every relationship, how flimsy the fabric of civilization itself is – it’s much clearer. And starker. And depressing. Even while it gives life so much more meaning.

And this causes me additional stress, that’s all I’m saying. Comfort or meaning? Hmmm…

I mean, it’s probably – arguably – a trade off in the long view. Because there are some aspects to my non-belief that have alleviated fear and stress. But sadness and fear about death – it’s increased.

My worries have changed markedly. I used to worry about things and I think I secretly (even secretly from my conscious mind) felt would have an effect. I really thought that my worry had some effect on events! Like my worry was an extension of prayer or something. When you grow up constantly pleading with the universe to allow this or that to happen or not happen – it’s easy to make worry the same as prayer. Worry that so-and-so gets home on time, etc. Now I worry about that much less. I know that my personal concern over events outside my control is not going to affect the outcome.

But now I worry about completely different things. I acknowledge it -- it's things I ALSO have no control over, but they are just...I dunno...bigger things. I worry that there will be some enormous explosion caused by – well, by a bomb or an asteroid or a volcano and I will die and not know if Mulan is safe. Or I will not know what happened. Just that in itself is so upsetting! I think of all those people in the Twin Towers on 9/11 – they didn’t know if it was just their city or building that was hit or if the whole earth had exploded. I hate that idea – the not knowing what will happen after I die. That’s so fucking sad!!!!! I worry that I will suffer and that time will slow down – my mind will do it’s thing in a crisis and slow everything down for me to be aware of every millisecond – and in those milliseconds I will be in excruciating pain or emotional turmoil and then it will just be all over.

And I acknowledge that I have led an embarrassingly privileged life. I have never experienced war first hand. I have never gone hungry. I lived in a stable home town in a close knit community. The best universities were open to me; all I had to do was show I could get into one of them and figure out how to earn the money to pay for it. And I did! I got to spend my twenties pursuing a career in the arts and I live in a country where I have the freedom to speak my mind (so far at least.) I have been able to travel and I was not burdened by having to become a mother against my will. I didn't live in a culture that considered it freakish for a woman to have some control over her life and ambition for herself. I am stupifyingly lucky. I just happened to be born at the right moment in the right place. If I were killed tomorrow I would still be in the category of: luckiest of the lucky. I got 46 fantastic years! Still, I am worried. I covet a future where I will be able to continue to live in such privilege. Where my daughter will live with such joys. I wish more and more of the world got to live like me. But I have to say, the future is NOT bright. It looks dim to me. I feel we are all careening towards disaster. Maybe not in my life time but relatively soon. And it fills me with dread. It’s hard to combat. It’s really, really hard to be “zen” about it. It takes constant attention and diligence not to spiral downwards.

As I drove into the parking lot of the theater complex I went to tonight, I was thinking how, us humans, are all just dancing precariously at the end of a diving board – a high dive – over a big deep empty concrete pool. And we are just chatting with our friends and backing up and backing up and who knows if our shoes are half way off the edge? Who knows if all of humanity’s shoes are halfway off the edge?

All right, now comes the funny part. This was my state of mind BEFORE I decided to see, “Why We Fight.” Yeah. I was near tears as I walked in the theater. And then I saw one of the most disturbing documentaries I’ve ever seen. It’s all about the Military Industrial Complex and….well, I was a mess afterwards. I was really missing my dad, too. I remember, just before he died, he was telling me how he had never seen our country so in the clutches of big business, so clever in it’s deep hold on the American people because of it's ability to manipulate the news, and a media so cowed by this oligarchy that it couldn’t force some measure of transparency. And even though things have gotten even worse since he died two years ago, I was wishing he was around to talk to about this documentary.

I have two things to say about Why We Fight and then I’m headed to bed. One is that Hal Bidlack must go find the woman in the documentary that was in the military and left after twenty years, disgusted at what our country has done in Iraq and how the war was handled. Oh, here: her name is Karen Kwiatkowski. Where ever she is, Hal, you must find her and marry her. Also, I think I have to marry the Charles Lewis from the Center From Public Integrity, who is also in the film and he is AMAZING. Julia Lewis. I think it sounds good.

Past and Future

This is what I’m trying to do. I’m trying really, really hard to be in the moment. It’s almost impossible. It’s like our brains aren’t designed for it. Hey, maybe that’s even true. Maybe there’s some evolutionary advantage to us for our brain’s to be constantly planning or remembering.

Maybe it’s because the present minute is too intense. Being in the moment is so real, so overpowering in its mundane authenticity. Maybe that’s why people feel the most “alive” when some raging emotion makes them stop and slow down time. The ecstasy of infatuation, the adrenaline rush of danger, these are feelings that make people feel very in the moment. But what I want to be is present for all the moments: when it isn’t life or death, or I’m not feeling the rush of competition or I’m not intoxicated with the hormones of romantic love. It’s very hard to not spend all my time thinking either about the future or reliving the past. Just being here now – it never gets easier!

Maybe that’s why I like acting on stage. You simply cannot be anywhere but right there. It’s really pleasurable at the moment to be performing my show once or twice a week. The perfect amount. I don’t know my show well enough to allow for shopping lists to be created in my mind while I’m on stage. So there I am, right there, remembering it all, saying it all. It’s great. I love it.

This week’s New Scientist has an article about how our brains process time. I guess we have some sort of ticker in our brain that creates a perception of time. We can control it, we can slow down our brains and teach our monkey minds to take in more. The way to do this is nothing new: meditation, t’ai chi, practicing focus & concentration, etc. What is interesting is that there are parts of our brain that scientists are now just beginning to identify that keeps an internal check on time. It’s called the pacemaker-accumulator or something. Also, it turns out that dopamine controls how our brains keep track of our subjective internal clock. Schizophrenics feel the world is just “crazy” and “accelerating beyond their control” and if the dopamine is regulated or brought down they see the world more accurately. Okay, maybe less accurately, but more conducive to civilization! Caffeine affects our dopamine levels, so does Valium.

We are watching the Super Bowl right now as I type. Mulan, at six years old, is actually into football. Frances, our babysitter, has gotten Mulan hooked. It’s hilarious to me because I could care less. I would never watch this game if it were just me at home, alone. I used to watch games with my dad because he loved sports. He’d even been a sportscaster before he was a lawyer. I grew up with some kind of game on the television, usually on the little black & white we used to have in the kitchen. My dad would have dishrag in his hand, in the middle of washing the dishes, and he’d be bent over the counter concentrating on the television screen and he’d yell, “Oh” “God!” like he’d been stabbed or something. I always thought watching him watch football was much more interesting than simply watching football.

And now I’ve got Mulan begging me to watch the game with her. She’s sitting at her little kids table, which is set up in the living room, and she’s totally engrossed. Of course we’re rooting for Seattle. She just yelled, “Touchdown!” See – now I have someone new to watch, watching football. We called up to my brother Jim and he’s having a Superbowl party in Seattle. How I wish I were there. I like being around people watching a game. I could read, do the dishes, be with my own thoughts and have people nearby engrossed in some activity. That’s heaven. Maybe someday. See – now I’m in the future and the past again! Damnit!

We spent the whole weekend cooking, pretty much. We made vegetable soup last night. It took us both about three hours to do the whole thing, and we soaked the beans overnight (garbanzo, white & kidney) and added them to the soup this morning. Then today we made a chocolate cake – a traditional old-fashioned chocolate layer cake. In a minute we are going to have a bowl of soup and split a piece of cake.

Robert came over this morning and we listened to the final, final, final cut of the “Letting Go Of God” for the cd. It’s really pretty good. I am proud of it and I’m never proud of anything. He did an amazing job. You can’t hear any background music in it. This was my big stumbling block, getting the rights to music. But you can’t hear any of it. Tomorrow we meet with the company that’s going to press the cds and design the artwork. I have all the elements together, finally!! The photo, the credits, the transcript, etc. I had a moment today when it occurred to me that it was all truly going to happen – I was going to get this CD out! Jeez. It’s taken way, way too long. I’m so embarrassed it’s taken so long. On the getting things done front, I finished a version of the “Letting Go Of God” screenplay this week. So it was a very, very productive week. This week I begin assembling the book. One step in front of the next. That’s my mantra for the week. Also, it’s a helpful mantra for the treadmill, I find. And one I’m more likely to follow.

I had a day this week where I considered changing the title of my show (AGAIN!) to “Are You There God? It’s Me, Julia.” My friend Julia J. had suggested it and it really makes me laugh. But I can’t change it to that. It feels like I’m stealing someone’s title. But I do wish I had a title that didn’t keep people away. Maybe I’ll think of something this week. I explained this whole dilemma to my friend Brannon this week and he suggested I call my show “God’s Vagina.” Which made both of us laugh for a long time. It would be funny to you too if you knew how we were talking about “The Vagina Monologues” beforehand. Ooops, I guess you need that set up before it’s funny. See Julia Sweeney in God's Vagina.

What about “Me & God: Breaking Up Is Hard To Do.” Huh? Huh? I have two more days to decide. Damn, I wish I could just think of something better than “Letting Go Of God.”

On a sad note: Kent Hirohama, who I worked with at the Groundlings, died yesterday of colon cancer. I’m very sad about it. He did the lighting and sound for me on “In The Family Way” when I did a run at the Groundlings, two years ago now.

At the time, I was having friends come and open for me before I started my show. One week, I didn’t have anyone. And I convinced Kent to play drums. He was part of a Japanese style drumming group – Taiko drumming I think it’s called. Anyway, one week he came and set up his drums and did a demonstration – a performance before my show. It was mesmerizing. His body flew across the stage in these precise movements. It was unexpected, somehow, this military precision coming from Kent. But then it all made sense too – this determined quiet soul who didn’t do anything carelessly. The audience thundered with applause. We had many nights together before the show hanging out backstage. I was so sad when he was diagnosed with cancer. I spoke to him only a couple months ago. I am just really, really sad about his death. He was such a sweet, dear, loving, observant, funny, sly person. Even when I heard his kidneys had failed, a week or so ago, I refused to let myself think that death was inevitable. God, life is so fucking short. I can’t get over it. Suddenly all those moments I spent with him are golden and then, fleeting from my mind even as I try to re-grasp them with deeper detail. Life is going too fast. I can’t process everything, everyone, or even every idea. I feel that moments, people, situations are ripped away and even when I try to be present and conscious my memory starts doing it’s dirty, prejudiced work – mixing in this and that.

I’m going to take a picture of this cake before we cut into it. Mulan just ran in and said, “The other team won! We lost.” Only the way she said it was not upset, more like she’s happy for the other team. See, it’s all a win for her. Just, maybe…not technically.

This is me and Murray Gell-Mann at TAM4. Clearly I am now just bragging and flaunting who I got to hang with over the weekend. But I cannot help it! Also, it's true.

Update on the cd of "Letting Go Of God." Many people are writing to me because I announced on my website that the cd would be done by now. Well, it looks like my cd will be available on Feb. 22 or maybe even before Feb.22. This is when I head up to the TED conference and I already promised I would bring the cd with me. I am meeting with the designers this Monday to go over everything. It will also be available on audible.com to download. I will make an announcement to anyone who has written to me about it. The delay is partly due to my own chronic indecisiveness with regards to a few things like which performance to use, which music we were going to use, etc. It's also due to juggling too many projects at once. So, if you are interested in the cd, I apologize. But it's coming! It is, it is.

Oh, the James Frey Fracas Continues…

It has been a supreme act of self-discipline on my part not to spend much of my working day reading about James Frey. I hate that guy so much. And he is such an addict! He still doesn’t appear to really, truly understand how his distortions of the truth were unethical. His answers still attempt to save some face, to make other’s recollections possibly incorrect as well, to salvage some of his reputation. It reads false, STILL. I don’t believe this has chastened him or made him change his behavior. My instinct is that he is predominantly thinking: shit! I wish they’d never have found out. I got screwed!

I think people who adhere to truth, no matter how painful, boring, or un-beneficial to themselves, are those people that I admire the most. And in some ways I’m so GLAD all this happened because this is what my book is all about. Finding a method for exacting truth or as close as possible to what we can agree truth is, and then going with it. This is basically the opposite of what I was taught by my family and by the church. What I was taught was: look, it makes you feel better to believe such and such, so just go ahead!

Oprah did a good thing to have the show denouncing him, but she did this only when she basically had no other choice. Her knee jerk reaction was not only to defend him (which really means she’s defending her very public support of him) but also, to call in to Larry King about it – to come to Frey’s defense. Only when it all spun out of her control did she jump on the bandwagon condemning his assertions.

But still, even though there was still self-interest on Oprah’s part for admonishing him to his face with all those reporters, etc. I am glad she did this. It made me like her even more. And I really hope this experience ends up meaning something to her. About how important truth is, in general. Not just at how meticulously researched memoirs are for accuracy.

I didn’t even speak to my mother about this until today. Of course she defends Frey. She says he only lied a couple of times and she feels bad for him. OF COURSE. Because truth is not a value for her. Now, that sounds awful, but I think she would agree with me. She often says: if it makes me feel better, I’ll believe it. And I will offer my usual disclaimer here: I love my mother deeply and we get along well in spite of this difference between us. But it is a fact that truth was constantly suppressed in our home in favor of what might be more appealing or less inflammatory or convenient or comforting. And I think it’s had detrimental effects.

Of course this is exactly what the Catholic Church taught me too. Look the other way, don’t look too closely: see how comforted people are by this lie we tell them. And then people train themselves to devalue truth. They say truth is relative and that what people believe is true, IS true. It lulls people into this P.C. slackness that means they don’t offend anyone and that reality is just in the mind of the beholder. ARGH. The worst sin of all is that the Church lies about death and life. It encourages people to do things for a later reward that they full well know isn’t coming to them.

The thing I am grappling with is that I think my mother may actually be happier than I am. And I’m pretty happy – don’t get me wrong. But this policy of believing what is convenient or comforting seems to work from a happiness quotient. That’s what KILLS ME. But I have traded that comfort for authenticity. And when I am deeply happy, I feel I am happy for reasons that are as close to truth as I can decipher. And those moments of deep happiness are worth seeing all the horror of reality or feeling very depressed, often, about what’s happening in our world or even in my own life. Plus, what is more important to me, even more than happiness, is purposefulness and meaning.

The Catholic Church in Spokane, the Spokane Diocese, is flooded with lawsuits right now about priests abusing young children. The diocese may even go bankrupt over it. I mean, I have my own problems with this happening – because I know memory is so unreliable and it’s hard -- it’s a difficult problem of our penal system – when there are no witnesses besides the people involved. But still, my mother’s comment about it all was: What I have to say to those people who are suing the priests is this: get over it. Lots of bad things happen to kids. They get over it.

That’s what my mother wishes she could say to those people.

And believe me, I have a lot of “just get over it” inside me. Twenty years ago or so I was kidnapped for several hours and beaten up and – well anyway, I went to a Victim’s Group Therapy for women afterwards for people who had been abducted. And that’s what I thought too: get over it. These people were redefining themselves because of this one unfortunate crime. So, in that sense, I understand where my mother is coming from.

On the other hand, it’s another example of a knee jerk reaction to side with authority and suppress the truth. And that’s just what Bush is doing, that’s just what the Catholic Church is doing, that’s just the same mindset that allows Frey to write what he feels like writing without a flinch – with no deep wrestling inside him over what is true and what isn’t.

It really gets me riled up.

Clearly.

Okay. I've talked to several people today and read all the comments and I'm not going to change the title. I like it the way it is too. My favorite alternative came from my friend Julia J., which was: "Hello God? It's me, Julia." Which I thought was hilarious. But not worth all the hassle of changing it.

Wendy Wasserstien is dead.

I just am in shock. I didn't know her, but was a fan. I liked that she decided to have a baby by herself at age 48. That was an inspiration for me. That means her daughter is only seven or eight. I identified with her, for perhaps obvious reasons. Not that I think I'm as talented or funny, it's just...oh. Oh. Oh. She had a sibling die of cancer too. And...oh jeez. Sad. Sad. Worrying. Life is so short. Oh gawd. This can't derail my writing today. It just can't.

Another thing. The reason I'm posting right now.

There are those who think I should change the name of my show to something other than "Letting Go Of God." To something else. To something that does not give away where the show is headed. These people who think this...they are smart people with a lot of experience in show biz. I don't know. I just don't know. These people say, "This title turns away the very people who need to see this show." Hmmm... Hmmm...

Okay, it could be this: Letting Go Of God? Breaking Up Is Hard To Do.

This is a long title, and includes a question mark. But it makes me laugh.

Or there is this: The God Monologue.

This was my working title before I came up with Letting Go Of God. I usually would shy away from the word monologue in a title since it seems like a lecture: or boring. But since The Vagina Monolgues popularity, maybe it's okay.

The only reason this has to be addressed right now is that I am just about ready to put out the cd and I want everything to have the same title. So, if you are inclined to weigh in, I would love your thoughts.

My Personal TAM4 Report

The picture is of me, Daniel Dennet & Mulan with Eddie, her companion elephant.

I guess I'm breaking my own self-imposed rule about pictures of Mulan on my blog, but since so many people took pictures of her already this weekend, I was thinking it's sort of moot.

I had, just, the most wonderful weekend in Las Vegas at the TAM4 convention. I can’t decide what the biggest highlight was, there were so many great moments. Best of all, is that I’ve been to three TAMs in a row now and I have a group that I have become friends with and it’s really nice to be reunited. Hal, Phil, Ray – I see them during the year here and there, but it’s nice to hang at TAM together.

Hitchens had a good speech to start. The thing he said that’s stayed with me is the allowing the Creationists to call their theory Intelligent Design was a major win for them. Just the name is brilliant in itself. And I think he’s right. ID is hard not to cozy up to if you don’t understand science well.

Daniel Dennet was brilliant too. I can’t wait to dig into his book, “Breaking the Spell.” He’s thinking about religion in ways that I am wondering about – only he’s just a billion times smarter and farther ahead than I am. How awesome to hang out with him.

Murray Gell-Mann was fantastic too. Oh dear, I am going to end up using too many superlatives.

And I’m falling asleep. Drove back from Vegas today. Mulan watched, “Cheaper By The Dozen” on my computer as we drove back. Her tenth time watching it, I think.

I will try a stab at this tomorrow.

But I’ve decided (as far as I can decide anything) one thing that has caused my mind to really settle down. And that is, that I’m going to move to Spokane in three years. That means, when Mulan starts fourth grade. That may seem so abstract as to be not worth deciding, but you have no idea how that changes the hour to hour drama that occurs in my head daily.

I figure three years more allows me more time to make my career Spokane-friendly, it gives me time to make more money and save it, and it still means Mulan would essentially grow up in Spokane.

Also, while driving back, I decided that I just couldn’t send Mulan to the Catholic school in Spokane. I just…couldn’t.

All those things means that I am of a more happy and calm mind. And just how I contructed that last sentence shows me that I should be going to sleep right now.

Chris Penn is dead and I am sad about that. I didn’t know him, maybe I met him once or twice, I can’t remember. I just know that I was a fan; I thought he was amazing in Reservoir Dogs and Short Cuts. And I know Michael, his brother, and I just love him and I’m really sad about him losing his brother. That sucks. Oh, sad, sad, sad.

Had friends over for dinner last night, friends we see all the time, and Mulan acted bratty and awful, even though we spoke about her weird, defiant, horrible behavior around these same people, who we both care about a lot, before they arrived.

Sometimes it’s hard not to strangle your kid.

I used to think: how COULD someone ever hit a child? And now I think, how do people NOT hit their child? Not hitting your child takes enormous self-control. I feel I am a self-controlled person. I am amazed – mind-boggled - at the amount of control I have to exert over myself, not to use the fact that I am four times larger than this teeny kid to my physical advantage. Luckily, for me, Mulan is pretty great 90% of the time. But oh dear, that other 10% makes me NUTS. I turn into that awful controlled-rage mother, and I feel like veins are popping out of my forehead and my eyes are bugging out across the table while I try to carry on a conversation. And then, when I take her out of the room to have a talk about her behavior and the consequences it will bring if it continues, she gets this sly smile across her face: glee! Like, she's thinking, "I won already! You had to leave the room to talk to me personally! Yippity Yah! I mean, oh yes mother I won’t act like that anymore, you’ll see."

And she does act better, but somehow it doesn’t feel like I’ve won entirely – it feels like she has. And even just phrasing it this way sounds so bad – like it’s warfare rather than guidance. Oh parenting is so unlike what I thought it was before I was a parent.

Everyone should read Jimmy Carter’s “Our Endangered Values.” That man is amazing. He’s the guy all those Christians should be reading. He is the type of Christian that made me proud to be a Christian (way back when…) it blows my mind that he even was our President. The book is really well written, well reasoned, and it will scare the shit out of you. It should be filed under “Horror.”

I wrote my screenplay version of the play all day and ended up thinking I should just shoot it the same way I did God Said Ha! Which means I may have just spent thirty hours or so, this week, on something that is moot.

I am watching Jared Diamond’s PBS National Geographic special on “Guns, Germs & Steel.” I bought it when I heard his lecture on Sunday. It’s really pretty good. I have one more segment to watch. I also bought the Skeptic Society’s Diamond lecture on his book, “Why Sex Is Fun.” Sex? Fun? WHAAAAT?

Off to Vegas today with entourage -- five hours in the car. I will be listening to Rick Moranis' "Agoraphobic Cowboy," my current favorite cd.

Getting a lot done and taking a break.

This is unusual for me. I am actually getting a lot done on my screenplay version of “Letting Go Of God.” And also, I nearly finished with the work left to be done on the CD. I am working seven to nine hours a day in my office. I feel on a roll, as they say.

But yet, I am feeling low. Usually when I feel this low, I am unproductive. But this time, I am productive. I don’t know why exactly. I think it’s partly because I have made myself this really intense schedule where I finish the book by April 9th and where I finish the work on the cd and the screenplay by the end of the month. It’s intense actually. I will probably have to work until eight or eight thirty tonight to get to the place I need to be in the script for tomorrow’s push. And then on Thursday I go up to Las Vegas. Then I come back and have only two days to wrap everything up before the next set of self-imposed deadlines.

Why am I so low? I’m not sure. I’m just…low. I debate constantly whether I should move to Spokane. I just cannot seem to shut that debating voice in my head, even though, if I did decide anything there is nothing I can do about it. Until next year at the earliest.

I went to hear Jared Diamond on Sunday at Cal-Tech, at the Skeptic Society. He spoke about societies in crisis. Jared’s wife is a psychiatrist that worked at a crisis clinic for some time and wrote things about people in crisis, which is similar to societies in crisis. And while he was speaking I realized that I am in crisis. Well, let’s not overstate it. No one died (recently) and I’m not starving (in fact, the opposite) and I love what I’m doing for work (in general). So, what is it, exactly?

I dunno.

Will I turn out like the Japanese or the Greenland Norse?

I think one thing is that I’m not sure whether it’s going to all come together to do the show in New York. I only want to do six shows a week and this makes it very unattractive for investors. And doing eight shows a week – which I have done before when I was on Broadway with “God Said Ha!” almost made me lose my mind. And now I have a kid! Everyone understands, of course. But it changes EVERYTHING. And I wonder if I’m being wimpy.

And my editors at Holt want the advance back on my book, which is understandable since it’s been three years since we made the deal and at least two years since I got the money. In some ways, it might be better to be out of that contract because then I can shop the book around after it’s finished and find a possibly more appropriate publisher that is more interested in the history and science of it. On the other hand, I feel I just blew it. Totally blew it. I loved my editor – he’s probably the best editor I could possibly have ever gotten for a writer like me, and… Anyway, that's over.

Then I think: keep your nose to the grindstone, Sweeney. If I keep on my schedule that I’ve been on for the last week, I can probably make my personal deadlines.

And then, I miss Mulan. I mean – she’s here. We’re together. She’s at gymnastics right now. But with the babysitter. And, well…I want to be the babysitter. I want that job.

Why do I want to live in Spokane so much? Is it because I’m not in a relationship at the moment? Is it because I’m just so tired? Is it because I’m romanticizing my friendships there? And devaluing my friendships here? Is it because I’m really connected to the land there, or because I’m not connected to the land here in L.A. all that much? Is it because I miss my dad so much and want to just be around the buildings and parks that he spent his life in?

I have to admit, it’s a great comfort to me to be in places that my father, and my grandmother Henrietta, and my brother Mike, spent so much time in. It gives me this deep comfort. And when I look up in the sky in Spokane, it’s like nowhere else. It feels like home. When I pop into the Davenport Hotel, I feel so glad that my grandmother used to work there. That she went through those same doors. When I drive down N. Division, I have these memories, like I remember Mike in my car and us laughing and laughing about all the crappy looking Chinese restaurants along the way. Or running up Division late at night in high school. Or...y'know, like everyone has in their hometown I guess.

When Mulan and I were in Spokane over Christmas we went out to Holy Cross Cemetery and looked at all the graves. Mulan sat down on my dad’s gravestone (which is close to Mike’s gravestone) and said, “So, are you going to be next door to him when you die?” And I said, “Well, that's where Grandma's going to be. But, yeah, I'll be around here somewere, I suppose.” And Mulan looked into the middle distance and sighed, this deep, too-old-for-her-age kind of sigh.

I spent so much of my life wanting to just be in the biggest city, and now it feels like millions of strangers all packed together. Who are these people, I wonder? I used to feel so inspired by New York and L.A. and now it feels like there’s not enough calm and space to do the thinking and creating that I really want to be doing. People seem tense and competitive here and that's what I used to want be around and driven by so badly. And of course I am drastically over-generalizing. Now all I want to do is hike and read.

I have been listening to Mozart's Requiem all day while I work. Maybe this has contributed to my mood.

Last night Mulan made me watch “Cheaper By The Dozen” with her. She had seen it twice before. It was so funny, she would tell me about each moment coming up before it happened. “They don’t like their sister’s boyfriend, so they’re going to trip him. But don’t worry, he’ll be okay.” And then at the end, when the little boy is lost – and then found – she started to cry. Her eyes just filled up with tears. It broke my heart to see her cry at a movie, and I looked at her and she looked away, embarrassed. And then she said, while looking at the wall, her ear to me - “You know, sometimes you cry when you’re happy.” And I said, “Yeah, I know all about that.” And then I had to force my tears not to fall down my face.

This weekend I reread much of the New Testament. Mulan had a friend stay over night and at one point they came in while I was sprawled out on my bed with the Bible, and Mulan's friend said, "Reading the Bible?" And I have been laughing about that. Yes, me -- reading the Bible. AGAIN. I wanted to reread the Gospels since a reporter I did an interview with this week said she felt I had...well -- she didn't say it like this, but what she meant was -- that I had unfairly characterized Jesus in my show. So, I just wanted to read the Gospel narratives: Matthew, Mark & Luke and just remind myself how they read. And you know, I stand by my characterization. Yes, I leave out the Beatitudes and a lot of good stuff, but still, Jesus was a deeply erratic, impulsive, reactionary. So, I felt better about that comment after I reread it.

OHMYGOD this is the saddest blog entry. And now I have to get back to work, or I won’t meet my deadline. And I just have to get this done. It's pretty fun, actually, imagianing my show as a surrealistic tale on locations. This is the way it could possibly be done. It would be wild.

Oh -- I've been thinking about this. While I was listening to the Alito Senate hearings, he said, "No one is above or below the law." And I was musing on that phrase, no one being above or below the law. I hadn't heard that before. Then it dawned on me: fetuses! That's what he probably means. Unborn fetuses are below the law in his opinion. Oh -- that's a good one. The Anti-Choice Senators and politicians probably all wink-winked over that -- no more questions, sir! We know where you stand.

This is going to be it. This is going to the Supreme Court that will dominate law for the rest of my life. It's so depressing.

Brad Mehldau takes my breath away.

I went and saw Brad Mehldau at the El Ray tonight. Robert, who is producing the CD, came over and we worked on the mix until seven, and then we ran over to Wilshire to see the show. The line of people waiting for the concert was around the block. It was cold – seriously cold for L.A. The wind was really blowing hard. It was a shivery kind of nighttime weather, especially for a Hawaiian like Robert. They weren’t even letting people in until eight. We went to get coffee and watched the line from across the street. It barely moved. Finally, at eight thirty, I said, “Screw it, let’s leave. I’m already tired anyway.” Even though I love Brad Mehldau and I wanted to see him live, I was just too tired, too old to stand in that cold long line of people. I longed for a bed, for warmth, for a glass of wine.

We walked along Wilshire. The art deco buildings are gorgeous in mid-Wilshire. I forget how beautiful L.A. is. Then Robert said, “There’s a line of people that couldn’t get tickets that are waiting to see if they can get in, we should at least give them our tickets before we bale.” And it was true. On the other side of the long line of people who already had tickets, there was another long line of people hoping to just buy tickets and stand in the back. I guess the show was sold out and the theater was waiting to see how much room they really had. But the line of people with tickets was still hundreds of people long. In any case, we headed back to the theater.

We went right up to a security guard and I said, “Look, we aren’t going to stay for the show. We have tickets, but we don’t want to go in and..” And suddenly this security guard recognized me and she said, “I know who you are! Come on it, come on in.” So suddenly we were in the theatre. It was unfair, but welcome. Sometimes being recognizable is GREAT. I admit it.

By another stroke of luck, having nothing to do with someone recognizing me, we got amazing seats (it was open seating.) The show started at nine on the dot. The first song was astonishing, transporting, amazing, titillating. An improvisation on Paul Simon’s “Fifty Ways To Leave Your Lover.” There’s just Brad on piano and a bass player and a drummer. That’s it. I had a great bulls-eye view of Brad’s hands as they slid across the piano keys. I’ve never seen anyone play piano like that. I’ve never seen jazz musicians play off each other like that – seamless in unity, yet individual –sometimes it felt like they weren’t in the same room with each other, then in an instant they were tighter than any band I’ve seen before. Mehldau’s back sways and his hands are carried over the keys in this precise, off-handed, carefree way – totally both extremes at once. Disciplined and drunk, exacting and erratic. In some ways it didn’t even seem to occur to the musicians that we, the audience, were even there – that’s how little they were playing for the crowd. It felt like they were playing only for each other for minutes, tens of minutes on end – and then suddenly they’d realize we were all there watching and they’d shift their attention to us. We were privileged to watch such an intimate back and forth between them and it was something -- a tone, a reverie I’d never experienced before. I've never, ever, ever seen musicians in that kind of place -- that improvisation hallucination, but still tinkering on the edge of reality.

Robert and I walked down Wilshire afterwards, spent from the wonder: basking in the spectacle that is that trio. To think I almost missed it! And then the cold wasn’t so bad. The wind down Wilshire took the edge off, even – sobered us up. And it wasn't even all that late.

I love Los Angeles. I love Los Angeles.

This was dictated to me by Mulan. She insisted that I write down exactly what she said, nothing more, nothing less.

"My family has thirteen people. Of the Sweeney's. My Sweeney family is the best family ever. They are very helpful, and they have so much fun with me. It's really fun when I have some time alone with my real Sweeney family. It's very nice when I be really nice for my family. I love my family more than any other family. I love my cousins Megan and Kaitlyn and my other cousins Nick and Katie. And my grandma and Aunt Bonnie. And I love Jim and Tammy. And Bill. And Sandy, and Wanda. And Meg and Tsuyoshi. And that's my whole thirteen family. I want to have a family night at my house with thirteen people. My family gives me lots and lots and lots of care. I think I give so much, a million, and a kazillion pieces of love back to them. I love my whole family, so much. I just want to have so much time with my family. Do you think I love? I love my whole thirteen family. Nobody knew that we had thirteen people in our family.

Love,

Mulan"

A Writing Life that (at least for today) includes no writing.

The blog is working. The blog is working insofar as this: once I wrote in my blog about how painful it was to get rid of so many books, and how I buy so many books, well – somehow, just because I wrote about it maybe? -- Anyway, I was ready to really get rid of A LOT of books.

I am working on my own memoir and I am in the part where I’m at the Bible Study class. I haven’t decided exactly how to approach this part of the story yet. In any case, I was suddenly referring to several of my books on religion and the Bible and so forth and my books were so disorganized -- I haven't really organized them for over two years. I had been putting the new books I bought on top of the old books, all willy nilly. So, I couldn’t find a particular book I wanted to refer to. This caused me to stop all writing and begin the arduous process of organizing all my non-fiction. This is an enormous job. Then, I began to think about how – realistically – I wasn’t going to ever read several of the books I was organizing. The realistic part of me began to taunt the horder part of me, saying, “Seriously Sweeney, when are you going to get the time to read “Word On The Street – Debunking The Myth Of Pure Standard English” ??? Plus, I know the basics of the book since I heard McWhorter (the writer) lecture. Or I thought, “Do you really need to keep “Shrub” by Molly Ivans? I mean Bush already won the election, TWICE.” Or, do I need to keep “The Taliban” – which was written and read long before 9/11?? NO. The answer is NO. Also, why should I keep “Wired” by Bob Woodard? I mean, I read it a thousand years ago. And I saw Al Franken on TV talking about how much he hated that book and how inaccurate he felt it was. He said it was like Bob Woodard had recorded every time someone puked in high school and then written a history of high school including only those details. Not mentioning the Dostoyevsky that changed people’s lives, etc. So, why do I need to keep this book? The answer is, “I Do Not!”

So, first I organized the religion section and that led to philosophy and that led to science and then back to “current affairs” (or what I like to call the "We Are Fucked" secion) and that led me to ponder whether I was really, HONESTLY, ever going to read “The Coming Plague.” And how I ALREADY am totally expecting a plague. And this book was written ten years ago. Why do I keep it? I don’t need it! That’s what I thought. Then I had another heretical thought. And that was: “What if keeping all these books means that I am preventing someone ELSE from reading them?” And then it seemed churlish for me to keep them.

Now I have about three hundred books in the corner of the hallway, ready to be taken to the local library. I have all the religion I’m keeping separated by topic. I have the science separated by author and topic. The places of honor are: Daniel Dennet, Michael Shermer, Richard Dawkins, Stephen Jay Gould, Diane Ackerman, Susan Blackmore, Steven Pinker. Oh Joy! Organization! It’s been so long!!1 The dust behind the books makes me sneeze and cough. Magazines from two – three years ago are wedged behind the books, a cradle of dust bunnies resting inside them.

It’s amazing how, in even a few years, the internet has changed my attitude about books in general. Encyclopedia type books are really no longer necessary – dictionaries, a lot of history seems easily accessible if I tried to find it.

I am worried this project is going to eat up my day tomorrow and it just, simply, cannot. But I am burnt out.

Today I went to NBC, to a pilot reading for the executives. Charles Durning was also in the pilot reading. We sat next to each other. I actually met him yesterday at the rehearsal. It was really a thrill to meet him. He told me today, as we waited to read, about growing up in New York, in Hell’s Kitchen. He said you had to join a gang or you were done for. He said he chose a bad gang – the Westerners – I think he called it. He said they started to hurt people, seriously hurt people – robbing them. He said they even started to kill people. He said he got scared. You couldn’t leave the gang or you would be dead. So he joined the army. That was the only way he could figure to get out of the gang.

What a thrill, to get to talk to Charles Durning.

Today Mulan said two adorable things. Stop reading if you can’t stomach this kind of stuff, I totally get it, if it’s nauseating. She said, “You are my favorite adult.” And I said “Adult?” And she said, “Well, you are my favorite Mom.” And I said, “But I’m the only Mom you have.” And she said, “But I know a lot of moms, and I think you’re the best.” Ha. I love how she’s done a survey and I get top marks. The other thing she said while we were watching “Good Eats” on TV tonight (we watched a rerun about “oats” while we ate dinner – I know, it’s bad to eat and watch TV, but we did and so…there…) and Mulan wanted me to rub her back. And I said “Where do you want me to rub?” And she said, “Along my vine.” And I said, “Your vine?” And she gestured towards her spine. And I said, “Your spine?” And she said, “No, isn’t it called a vine?” And then we talked about how similar spines and vines were. And I just – oh jeez. I love having a kid. Stuff like that. A vine. Yes – it’s a vine! I love that to Mulan, she’s built just like a plant.

My friend Phil Plaite is writing a book about the moon. I also talked to him today about this. I am all over the moon. I just watched a “Naked Science” all about the moon. I had no idea how important the moon was to our existence. Just no idea. DAMN. I lost half my life to ignorance! I didn’t even care about stuff like the moon before I was forty. I didn’t understand how the moon was formed, nothing. It’s embarrassing. Anyway, I reread in “Rare Earth” about how important the moon was. I even went outside tonight and looked at the nearly full moon. I practically howled in delight and appreciation.

Oh, I found, to my embarrassment, that I have bought some books twice. Like, "A Darwinian Left" by Peter Singer. Or "Moral Animal" by Robert Wright. What is wrong with me? How could I forget that I bought those books?

Next weekend I will be heading to the TAM conference in Las Vegas. I am SO excited to go. Mulan and the nanny, Frances, are coming too. A whole entourage.

Tomorrow I am making oatmeal the way I learned how on "Good Eats." Brown the steel cut oats in a little butter before cooking them. Add the salt after it's cooked. I'm excited to see if there is a difference.

This is a test. I am testing putting up a picture on blogger. This is me and Mulan at the Davenport Hotel on Christmas morning about five thirty a.m. We stayed at the hotel two nights. I picked this one because Mulan is hiding her face. It's probably not cool to put her picture on my blog. So, that makes this picture just perfect.

Truth and Memoir

Oh, I am so all over this James Frey story. I hate to gloat, but…

I guess I will. Okay, here’s my history with “A Million Little Pieces” and my recent history with Oprah and Dr. Phil and Dr. Phil’s Wife and My Mother.

Two and a half years ago – I think around that time – I was in Amagansett with a group of Sex & the City writers over Labor Day. We had been working in New York and we all went out of the city for the long weekend. While at a bookstore I saw that book, “Million Little Pieces” and I liked the cover and it looked interesting and I bought it. I also bought about five or six other books.

You see, I have a problem with books. And I’m not trying to brag that I’m such a big reader – although I do spend much of my free time reading. My problem is that when I’m in a bookstore I can’t control myself. I buy everything I’m remotely interested in. I was buying so many books on Amazon.com that my UPS driver actually called me on it one day. He said, “You can’t possibly read this many books.” And he was right. If I were suddenly stuck in my house for the rest of my life, I would probably not be able to read all the books that I currently have that I have not yet read. I’ve tried to do big reductions from time to time. Before Mulan arrived, I actually got rid of half of my books. I only kept what I hadn’t read and what I loved so much, I sincerely thought I might read again. But then I started to mourn the loss of the books I let go of. I wished I’d kept the Herman Hesse and the first copies I had of all the Jane Austen novels – all those books I read in high school and college. This sadness made me even more out-of-control in my buying of books. Like I was making up for what I lost.

I am telling you all this because I want to emphasize how many books I buy – many of which I don’t get the time to read – and how I don’t care so much about the money. It’s my addiction and as far as addictions go, I’m letting myself just have this one. I am also telling you this to make it clear that when I, the next day after purchasing “A Million Little Pieces” took it back for a refund – yes – I read ten pages and hated it so much and thought it was so full of shit that I couldn’t stand to own it and I didn’t want to own it and I wanted to make a point at the Amagansett book store about how much I hated it – what an anomaly that is. I can only remember returning two books in the last ten years. (The other was a Huston Smith book of essays that made me so depressed because although he knows so much about religion he knows nothing about what science is or how it works…) ANYWHO – I took “A Million Little Pieces” back. I TOOK IT BACK. And I remember that it was a hassle to go back there too, I think I made Cindy Chupak take me. Or maybe Amy -- anyway, you could say that book stuck out in my mind. I remember that weekend and returning that book.

Cut to: last Fall. My mother calls me. Oprah and Dr. Phil are her heroes. Every day she watches them and she LOVES them. When it is almost three o’clock in Spokane, wherever she is, she races her car home to watch her Dr. Phil and her Dr. Oprah. And so my mother tells me that there’s this fantastic new book that Oprah is endorsing and how she got it at CostCo very inexpensively and how she bought two copies. She planned to give one to my brother Bill who is a very troubled in many of the same ways that James Frey shows himself to be. (Not exactly in the lying part of it, but the alcoholic, drug, defiant, screwed up part of it) And she planned to read the other copy of the book. I told her my story and I actually said, “You know Mom, I guess I was wrong. I should have read that book further than only ten pages. I like Oprah and what she picks to read. It’s probably a great book.”

Then, almost every time my mother and I talked on the phone she mentioned the book and how Bill was reading it too and maybe it would help him and blah blah blah. Then, Mulan and I go home to Spokane for two whole weeks over Christmas. Many days we all race home and get ready to watch Dr. Phil and Oprah.

During one Dr. Phil show I said, “I hate to say this, Mom, but I just don’t trust Dr. Phil. And I don’t know anything about him. If I were watching his show with the sound on mute, I just would say I didn’t trust him. His facial expressions don’t seem sincere to me. I don’t like how he gets a light in his eye when he delivers a “zinger.” And when I do listen to what he says, he seems like he’s exaggerating everything. I hate how he tries to make complex problems simple, and how he emphasizes one small part of a problem, often inflating it over what it really is, and then acts like he’s solved it. And I feel uncomfortable with Dr. Phil’s wife watching him with such blank adoration. I don’t trust her either.”

Okay. I am embarrassed to have written that I said that. I am probably a difficult daughter to have for my mother. I probably shouldn’t have said that. Well, my mother -- it was as if I had said Jesus sodomized little boys the whole time he was preaching and I have proof – she said, “You. Don’t. Know. Anything. About. Dr. Phil!!!! His. Wife. Is. The, MOST. WONDERFUL. Woman. In. The. World.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” And on and on.

So, I capitulated. I said, “Okay. I don’t know anything about him. I just…don’t like his way, his way of…being. His mannerisms. I just don’t like it. But you know, I don’t know him.”

Then we watched Oprah and my mother was delighted because James Frey was on. They were rerunning the show with him and his parents. And I said, “You know…I have to say, I don’t trust that James Frey either. I don’t like the way he’s even sitting there. I get a bad vibe from him.” Once again my mother said, “No! He’s wonderful! You have to read the book! He’s gone through so much!!!!!”

And as if on cue, Oprah said on the show, “As I was reading I just couldn’t believe that this guy was actually still alive! I kept flipping to the back cover of the book to look at his picture, he’s alive! He really lived through this whole thing!”

My mother glared at me. I sunk down in the chair and put my hands in my pockets. I said, “Wow. I really should have read that whole book. I made a mistake taking it back to the bookstore.” My mother eagerly told me she would send me her copy as soon as she’d finished it.

So, you can imagine my joy when my friend Jim Emerson e-mailed me the link to the Smoking Gun story. I had told him this whole story with my mother and we had laughed about Dr. Phil and my mother’s energetic defense. I read every single word of the smoking gun article. And now I am gleefully watching this whole thing explode.

Because it is important if what he wrote was true or not. It does make a difference. Oprah is just trying to protect her choice by saying that it doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. Because if it were a book labeled “fiction” she wouldn’t have bought it. And she herself said that what was so amazing to her was that this person who wrote this book was still alive. So it was important whether it was true.

So, I take away two things from this: One is that Mary Karr rocks. I love her so much. She wrote “The Liar’s Club” and “Cherry.” I LOVE both of those books. She is being very outspoken about this James Frey fabrication fiasco. She says it makes all memoirists look bad. That three months in jail is substantially different than a few hours in jail! This is not an exaggeration, this is a lie. I love that Mary Karr is saying this. I liked her before and now I like her even more.

The other thing I take away is – it’s important for me to be as truthful as I can in this memoir that I am writing at this very moment. And it’s very hard. For my show, “Letting Go Of God” I had to rearrange some details to make it more dramatic. Like, I adopt Mulan at a certain point in the show that is not exactly when I adopted her in real life – although adopting Mulan is really a very, very side note in my show and I spend very little time on that. And I debated for a long time whether I should have me explore Buddhism before I thought God was “nature” or after. Because the truth is not clear and linear in this case. But these are about ideas, not events. The other thing I do is make a composite character of Father Tom and I give him the comments that several priests made. But all in all, I feel good about my show and that it is true not just in spirit but in fact as well. Plus, I would have a disclaimer. So, I’m glad this happened to James Frey. It’s helpful for me to remember how important truth and honesty is.

I think he should say, “Yes. I fucked up. I made most of it up. And I hope that with my next work of clearly labeled fiction, I will prove to you that I am a good writer. I am embarrassed and humiliated. I may never live this down. I am so sorry.”

What about that?

Okay – on a completely different note – while on the general subject of Oprah and Dr. Phil and his wife – my mother said to me after I made those disparaging comments, “You don’t know how wonderful Dr. Phil really is. This is how he proposed to his wife: ‘I’ll make the living and you make my life worth living.’ Isn’t that the most romantic thing anyone could ever say?”

I’ll make the living and you make my life worth living.

I’ll make the living and you make my life worth living.

I can’t stop thinking about that. I just hate it so much. Or maybe I just wish someone had said that to me. But if they did, I think I would just have laughed at them. I mean, what does that mean???

“I am the focus and you are the support team and if you make things smooth for me, I will compensate you with my shared income.” Is that what that means? He said, straight out, that her part of the deal was to “make his life worth living.” That’s her job. That’s her side of the marriage, to make Dr. Phil’s life worth living.

I mean, I am all for a division of labor for efficiency. I would totally get it if someone said, “It’s more efficient for me to go have this big career and you to run support if we are going to have a family.” That – I totally get. But it’s the…make my life worth living. That part of it. Hmmm…

Also, I’ve been thinking that my bullshit reader/meter on James Frey seems to be pretty good! And I have no idea about Dr. Phil, I could be completely wrong on him. But then I was thinking how my bullshit meter is so wrong on people in real life. Not always, but often enough. And THEN I realized yesterday that when I am in a friendship with someone, or in some type of interaction where the person wants something from me – I can’t detect bullshit so much. I don’t get the distance and calm to do it, because I am all flummoxed and lit up over our interaction and what they want from me and what I want from them. It’s made me dead wrong on some people, and some boyfriends too. So, I guess I should see people on TV first and then try to be friends with them because the TV gives me the distance to judge them better. HAHAHAHA. Oh, this is going to make me laugh all day to myself.

Two things, no three things. Maybe four things.

1. My mother admonished me over Christmas because I had said some disparaging things about “Polar Express” to my brother while we were on the cruise. My brother, who has never seen Polar Express, said he was putting the DVD on for the girls to watch. The girls are my daughter and his two daughters.

I said, “I think that movie is one big advertisement for having blind faith and I really hate it.” Or something like that. In any case, the girls still watched the movie (or whatever it is that kids do when they are jumping up and down on a bed, talking to each other, and a movie is on in the background.)

Anyway, this conversation morphed itself into my mother saying over Christmas that I said, “I hate that movie because it has too much fantasy.” I would, of course, never say that. She told me that my brother felt “shut down” by me after that comment and that I am too judgmental. Or worse: I have too many “opinions.” Yes – what a horrible fate for me, to have turned into a woman who has opinions!

In any case, my mother and I got along splendidly over the holidays. And this little blip was not even a bump in the road. I actually had such a great time that I am openly considering moving back to Spokane before Mulan starts second grade. My real dilemma, if I move, is whether to put Mulan into a Catholic school. But that’s another blog for another time.

So, was thinking about Polar Express, and the whole “just believe” thing. Why couldn’t the boy in the movie been told to “just imagine”? Why did it have to be believe? I was reminded of this again when my adorable niece Katie showed me a Christmas present she received: some words to put on your wall – those cursive, wood-cut words. One of them was: believe. Believe!

I guess if you mean, “believe” in the sense of “have confidence in” – then I’m all for it. But I don’t think that is what most people think of when they see that word. I think it’s meant to be taken in the same way the boy learns it in Polar Express. Just…have faith.

2. The second thing I wanted to say is: being an at-home writer rocks. I love it. I am in my newly painted office in the backyard. And actually writing. Oh, my goodness, I hope I can actually finish this book and the screenplay and the cd.

3. The third thing is that I probably won’t have the cd done until after February. I feel really bad – that I probably won’t have this cd out until no one wants it anymore. But I am waiting to get the music rights and it’s taking longer than I thought. The rights for the background music is what I’m referring to. Oh dear, oh dear.

4. The fourth thing is that I booked more dates at the Groundlings to do my show, "Letting Go Of God." I have been selling out the Sunday morning shows, which is really great. This Sunday’s show is totally sold out. So, I just booked myself into the theater for nine more shows on sporadic Sunday mornings, Monday nights and Tuesday nights. If you are interested, please check the website (juliasweeney.com) to see the exact dates.

Back to work. Happy New Year!

p.s. Munich is so good. So is Brokeback Mountain. So is Wallace & Gromit. I want to go to the movies!

December 7, 2005

I am on the Grand Princess. I am doing my best to keep my sprits up. This is the type of place that makes me seriously worried that I suffer from depression. No matter how I explain what is awful about it and no matter how good my counter arguments are that rage in my head all day long about why it is pleasant and comfortable with even a smattering of great and lively moments, no matter how much I tell myself it’s not so bad, I can feel myself slipping down – almost into the ocean beneath me, into a paralyzing sadness. Even writing that sounds so extreme, I am already angry at my actrressy penchant for hyperbole, my lack of ability to calm myself and see the bigger picture, my snobby attitude towards everything about this trip. Then I rage again at myself – who am I and why can’t I just enjoy it – why must everything be such a big deal?

Okay, I’ll back up. My first thought, after spending a few hours on this ship, was that I had wandered happily into a Denny’s restaurant, when the doors suddenly slammed shut behind me. And my smile vanished and my eyes widened at the wave of realization: I couldn’t leave for seven days. The horror! The horror!

Maybe not Denny’s. Okay, this: a TGIF with a Doubletree hotel above it and a Circus Circus type gambling deck lodged into it’s side with a Bally’s gym in it too. And a band that is screeching day and night; songs like, “Margaritaville” and “We Built This City On Rock and Roll” too loud to allow for any conversation, not that you’d want to have any. Have I mentioned yet that the motto for the Princess line is, “Escape Completely”? Escape. Completely.

Oh, I am so snobby. Why can’t I relax? I want to jump into the ocean and swim away, away, away instead. Mulan is having the time of her life and so is my mother. And I enjoy my aunt so much – what a saving thing it is that she came on this boat too. And my brother and his wife and their kids. And my brother’s wife’s family – I really, really like all of them.

And yet, at night, I wonder how much money it would cost to be airlifted off the boat. What kind of malady I would have to conjure up? How long I would have to keep the lie going?

Eventually, some muscle relaxed and I just accepted my lot and got really lethargic and sad and I drunk up my books and couldn’t’ stop reading. And eating chocolate chip cookies. That don’t taste all that good. Neither does the lemon meringue pie. That didn’t stop me from finishing them, though. Oh no. Not me. I finish the bad food to be nice. To be nice to…the food. Because what if the food realized I didn’t like it? It would be sooooo hurt.

Not everyone on this boat is overweight. Not everyone. I, myself, am among those that could lose twenty – thirty pounds. I have found that I need a certain quality of food – fresh, well made, carefully prepared. That’s what makes me feel full. If I don’t have that kind of food, my body mistakes quantity for quality. I eat and eat and eat, trying to get some satisfaction, but none comes. I look at all the larger people on this boat and they actually seem to be starving to me. I want to kidnap them and take them home and make real food – let them feel truly sated for once! Then maybe we could all stop this grazing, compulsive, desperate, constant desire to eat and eat. Trying to fill something inside that is un-fillable.

Ugh.

By the way, I hate Ayn Rand too. Yes, it was completely unexpected. I imagined us to be wonderful friends – I so looked forward to the philosophy book I brought with me. But it too was a major disappointment. I hate when people write and ask me if I’m mad at God, or “what happened to me” to make me turn away from Jeeezhus. It always seems so beside the point and a reflexive jab on the part of a threatened reader. But honestly, I, myself, kept thinking, “what the fuck happened to Ayn Rand?” The exaltation of capitalism is disturbing. The deification of individualism seems naïve. It reads like she’s saying, “All you mediocre people out there are just standing in us geniuses way!” At then end of the chapter on capitalism, Piekoff writes: “Capitalism is practical, Capitalism is moral. Capitalism is true.” I dropped the book when I read that. Literally dropped the book on the floor. I waited a few seconds to pick it up again. I agree that it’s practical. I’m not sure if it’s moral. I am wary of anyone who uses the word “true” in this way. I’m not sure what “Capitalism is true” really means. That it exists?

I don’t get philosophy, I guess. It seems quaint and old fashioned to me – all those ‘isms’ this and ‘isms’ that. It doesn’t seem to reflect what we know about ourselves scientifically – that we are social animals who collectively create societies using strategies that range from altruism to selfishness. And the result is a successful survival of the species. It seems to me like Ayn Rand didn’t know a lot about biology and consciousness and how species survive. Rand doesn’t acknowledge the enormous efforts, the gigantic collective efforts that got her reared and educated and even in the U.S. with an ability to drive on roads and drink clean water and breath clean air. Unrestrained capitalism does not protect the common interests of individuals; it subjects them to the sociopathic greed of the marketplace, which values profit over long term sustainability. That seems so obvious to me.

Okay, don’t lecture me about Ayn Rand yet. I haven’t even really read her. I haven’t read the novels. I just read a PART of this survey of her philosophy. I know, I know, I shouldn’t say I “hate” her. That’s too extreme for someone I don’t really know. Or even have given a chance to.

There are some things that are great here on the boat. Guinness beer, for example. They have it in all the bars. It costs $5.50 a can, but it’s worth it. And then one night the pizza buffet had a garlic pizza with real big chunks of garlic and mozzarella cheese and tomato sauce and it was so good I nearly cried and ate three pieces and actually, for the first time, felt wholesomely full. I remembered the taste and lingered over it for hours afterwards. Garlic pizza. Mmmm…

Also, there’s a gym here. I walked an hour on the treadmill for two days in a row – it won’t let you go longer than sixty minutes. I suppose I could have started up the machine again, but I didn’t. And you watch the water go by as you walk because the machines look out the window on the upper deck and it’s pleasant. I fall asleep early -- I am sleeping so much, it’s indecent. I go to bed at eight thirty or nine or ten and sleep twelve hours. I think it takes a lot of energy for me to hate everything all day and then yell at myself for hating everything all day. Exhausting. But if I could stay awake at night I would go look at the stars. Everyone says how wonderful they are – more stars than they’ve ever seen before. I am so angry at myself for having missed it so many nights, but I can’t leave the cabin with Mulan asleep. We don’t have a view – well we have an obstructed view – there’s a life boat just outside our window – next time we’ll splurge for a balcony – wait what am I saying, next time? I suppose I could convince Mulan to go with me to the deck – sleep outside perhaps? Maybe I will try it tonight.

Today, right now, we are at Cozumel. It’s our last stop. Then two more days and we are back in Galvaston.

I won’t leave the ship again. I did for two outings, one in a place called Playa Maya and then in Belize. It was miserable. It took over a 90 minutes just to disembark the ship – there are two thousand six hundred passengers. We had signed up for tours and after getting off the boat we went into groups and stood in line for another hour before getting on busses and driving for another hour. In Playa Maya – a completely made up city by the way, in the last three years, by developers who cater to the cruising industry, I went to the ruins of Checkaban. I went alone, Mulan didn’t want to see it. Good thing too, the bus ride was long and there were no other children on the tour. Along the way there were lots of signs for the housing developments that they are building along the coast. The signs have pictures of kidney shaped swimming pools and women floating – blonde, white, American women of European descent. Clearly they are trying to woo more than the cruise ships here.

The ruins were moving to look at. I couldn’t help but think that their lost culture was so much more sophisticated than ours as we stood there looking at the pyramids overgrown and beautiful, us in our culottes and big t-shirts and pink sweaty faces and floppy hats, mouths agape, coca cola in hand, taking pictures of each other before we heard the guide even explain what we were looking at.

In Belize we signed up for a bird sanctuary tour. The guide kept making the most awful jokes, it was excruciating. “We have the biggest stork here, do you Belize me?” Ha ha ha ha ha. The “sanctuary” took two hours to get to and was swampy and hot and with lots of little sad houses here and there, garbage strewn along the streets, old closed up stores, and rusting ancient cars…and hardly any birds. My aunt Bonnie and I and Mulan stayed on the bus with a few others while the larger group trampled around and all looked at this and that bird who was always flying away and out of site and unremarkable and depressing.

I realized something too, I buy things to just make people stop selling them to me. This is a new insight into myself. I realized it here on this ship. In one of the “nice” dining rooms the waiter kept trying to get me to buy this box of three bottles of wine that they were selling for passengers to take home. He kept telling me what an amazing value it was. It cost something like $140.00 I have no idea if it’s a good value or not. It could be lime vodka in the bottles for all I know. But I find it so deeply uncomfortable, people trying to sell me things. I am embarrassed for them – like I’m seeing them naked, like I’m looking at their dirty underwear or something and I just want them to stop it. And so I buy the damn thing they are selling to me, just to make them go away. I am sure I have spent thousands of dollars on things this way. So, I bought the wine.

Last night, without planning it, several of the members of our party met together in one of the bars. People were drinking and happy and suddenly, without expecting it, I was happy too. I had some Chianti Reserve and potato chips – the only “appetizer” they were serving in the bar. I could feel my cheeks get red and hot and that lovely lilt and my sister in law, Tammy, was being very sincere and sweet and we were talking about how our children all adored each other (the kids were off together in this Kids Club day/night care thing they have). We began to talk about when Tammy got pregnant and before she knew she was having twins. And we had all gone on to a cabin on the beach for my dad’s seventieth birthday. And how Tammy had this enormous appetite. And how my dad teased her about it and bought her this long extending fork because she was eating everything in site. And we were laughing and remembering my dad. And I suddenly was reminded how much my dad loved Tammy. I think he was really proud of his son for marrying Tammy. And then I glanced in the mirror at my gray hair and glasses and had this acute feeling of being so old – that even my father would be struck with how I’ve aged. How un-young I’ve become. And how alone I feel. And then it was almost time to go get the girls and I volunteered to go get them and take them back to my room and wait while the other adults stayed at the bar and continued partying. And part of me thought I was so sad I might die. The ocean beneath us was how sad I was and the only thing that kept me from being engulfed into it was this thin little piece of ship wandering around the Caribbean.

I think I’ll go get on a treadmill now. My brother has taken Mulan into Cozumel with Tammy and the twins. After they left I laid on my bed for hours dozing and thinking and reading a bit here and there. I think people are beginning to drift back onto the ship because I’m seeing those enormous terry-cloth cover ups with appliqués on them and “Cozumel” written out across the front. I always wondered who bought those things and now I know. There are four or five other ships as big as ours in the water right now. Very big destination for the cruise industry. There’s all these fake Christmas trees all over the ship – not that I’m putting down fake Christmas trees, to me it’s the only way to have one. But it’s so incongruous—the spruce’s with the pine cones and just past them the harbor at Cozumel. In Belize, at the bird sanctuary, there were plastic santa clauses nailed onto the roofs of a few of the houses. It was so hot that the Santa’s were melting onto themselves. I wondered if the Santas were made in China, I bet they were. I wanted to find out. I’m not sure why. As if that would mean something.

I can’t stop hearing couples yelling at each other. I walk behind them and they bicker and snort at each other. Not a big advertisement for marriage, this place. Or maybe I’m hyper aware of it, something that makes me feel better about being single. I’m not sure. But it feels like everyone had this euphoria as the trip began: Here we are! Adventurous! Trip-taking! And then… now… four, five days into it, they are reminded that they are in fact married to each other and they hated each other just the same here as they did back home. It’s so hard to be with another person all the time. And yet, it’s all you want to do. I myself get sick of being with Mulan, all I want is some relief, and then when she is gone, I feel blue and empty and I miss her laughing, ringing, ebullient voice. I wish she were with me now, it feels a year since I’ve seen her and it’s only been a few hours. Where is she? Is she going in the ocean?

This morning at breakfast Mulan said that in “real” families people look like each other. Like how the twins look exactly like Tammy. I mean, the twins look precisely, almost freakishly like Tammy. They are identical triplets, only one of them is thirty years older than the other two. It makes you wonder if any spec of Sweeney is even in those girls, these identical replicas of their mother: blonde, full lipped, hazel eyed, long faced little Tammys. And luckily Tammy is gorgeous.

But anyway, Mulan said, “my real family is in China, but I guess they couldn’t take care of me.” I said, “We are your real family. Your real family is the family that raises you. But yes, you have parents in China, biological parents, who couldn’t take care of you.” She said, “But our hair is so different. And our skin is different. And the twins look just like their mom because they came out of their mom’s stomach.” “Yes.” I said. What more can I say to her? She has to deal with her situation. I tell her how loved she is everyday. She knows it too, but still. I think about her biological mother all the time. How beautiful she must be. Was, or is, she sensual the way Mulan is? Hyperactive too? Flexible, laughing, crafty, defiant, loving? What did she do today? Is she even alive? We’ll never know.