I thought this was going to be an "after" picture, turned out it was a "before" picture.

I got to experience my first blizzard.  I've been in many snow-induced paralyses in New York when the snow was several feet high, the city was frozen, and almost every store closed down.  But apparently in order for a weather event to be categorized as a "blizzard," it has to have sustained winds over 40 miles per hour for more than three hours, as well as snow and cold.   So in that sense, and insofar as I can remember, this was my first blizzard.

I was extremely lucky to be able to be inside for all of it, in comfortable warmth, looking outside, and intermittently watching movies.  Is there anything that modern civilization offers that is sweeter than being able to experience extreme weather from the comfort of a safe and cozy house?   I think not.  I almost felt guilty about it.  But I got over that and had another cup of tea, and turned my gaze to window and it's moving whiteness.

Of course there was a lot of shoveling the next day but that turned out to be good exercise for a couple of hours.  My husband got his cross country skis out of the basement and he skied to the beach; me running alongside with our dog, Arden.  The snow was so high that Arden had to swim through it.  He looked like a dolphin, leaping and hurling himself through piles of snow.

I was going to post monthly all the movies I'd watched, books read, and music I'm listening to while exercising.  But I lost almost all my info for December - I'd written it down, but lost the notes.  So, I will only list five weeks of movies.

Movies Watched from December 26 through January 31, 2011

1. Please Give (Holofcener)
2. The Black Swan  (Aronofsky)
3. The King's Speech (Hooper)
4. Barney's Version (Lewis)  (I only watched 1/2 of it - I hated it so much I had to stop.)
5. The T.A.M.I. Show (Binder)
6. Date Night (Levy)
7. Pirates of the Caribbean (Verbinski)
8. The Fighter (Russell)
9. Ride with the Devil (Lee)
10. Night of the Hunter (Laughton)
11. Documentary on making of the Night of the Hunter
12. Vincere (Bellochio)
13. October Country (Palmieri, Mosher)
14. El Cid (Mann)
15. True Grit  (Hathaway)
16. Help! (Lester)
17. Waltz with Bashir (Folman)
18. How to Train Your Dragon (Sanders, DeBlois)
19. Toy Story 3 (Unkrich)
20. Mars Attacks! (Burton)
21. W.C. Fields, The Great Man, a documentary
22. Happy-Go-Lucky (Leigh)
23. Secretariat (Wallace)
24. The Black Stallion (Ballard)


Notes on films:  Well, my number #1 movie for last year is: True Grit.  But it was a close call for me, I also loved The Social Network, and The King's Speech.  But all in all, True Grit gets my best picture vote for 2010.  That said, I saw the original True Grit, directed by Hathaway, and starring John Wayne, and I liked it even better than the Coen bros. version!  I liked John Wayne's Rooster Cogburn better and I liked Kim Darby's Mattie better!  I was completely shocked and did not expect to have that reaction.  The bottom line is, I love True Grit. I love the story, I love the girl, I love Rooster Cogburn.  Okay, Matt Damon is infinitely better in the role of the Texas Ranger than Glenn Campbell.  And the Coen bros. version is more like the book, which is all from the girl's point of view.  Hathaway's is not exclusively from the Mattie's point of view, but then you understand more about the guys they are fighting and what's happening when she is not around in the his version, which I think makes it better.

Night of the Hunter is a masterpiece, and the documentary on the recently reissued DVD is really wonderful, there are all these outtakes that give you a very real sense of what it was like on the set.

I don't know if I prefer How to Train your Dragon to Toy Story 3 yet - they are so different, and both are so wonder-filled, it's impossible to compare them.

The other gem I would like to mention is Ride With The Devil, Ang Lee's western feeling, civil war movie made 6 years before Brokeback Mountain. (It was made in 1999)  The film is about the civil war in Kansas and Missouri; it's beautiful and a complicated epic that was basically dumped by the studio when it was released.  I just don't understand it.  Tobey McGuire stars, as well as Jewel(!, and she's good) and Skeet Ulrich and Jeffrey Wright.  Really fantastic.

Okay:

Books I read in December and January, which I can remember right now.

1.) Life (Keith Richards)  I read the book and listened to the audio which is narrated by Johnny Depp as well as Joe Hurley.  Depp is being mentioned a lot as the narrator, and yet he only narrates the first three chapters and the last two chapters.  Joe Hurley is fantastic narrating.  I hope he gets more work from doing this. The book is very long, it seemed like three weeks of listening - an hour each day while walking my dog.  A long, hard, slog.
     I definitely recommend listening to this rather than reading it.  It was funny to me, when I bought this book - at an airport just after it was released last fall, I looked in my iTunes collection of music, and out of 20,000 songs, I had NOT ONE SINGLE ROLLING STONES SONG.  I was flabbergasted. I wasn't particularly a fan of the Rolling Stones, but I wasn't against them either.  There songs are so ubiquitous, maybe I just felt I heard them enough already. Although you could say that about the Beatles, and I have every single CD of theirs.  So, hmmm...  I really didn't know all that much about the Rolling Stones.  So to me, listening to this book, it was all new.
     I realized I did have all the music that Keith says he was so inspired and influenced by: Muddy Waters, Jimmy Reed, Robert Johnson, John Lee Hooker, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley - all those guys.  I guess I didn't make the connection between these musicians and the Rolling Stones.  In any case, I went crazy on the Rolling Stones! I got a bunch of CDs and I made a set list of all Rolling Stones songs for my treadmill workouts.  For two or three weeks I was completely immersed in The Rolling Stones.  I got Bill Wyman's "A Stone Alone" and while I didn't exactly read it through, I skimmed it while I was reading "Life."   I got the recently published book, "The Rolling Stones vs. The Beatles" by Jim Derogatis and Greg Kot, the two guys who host the NPR show "Sound Opinions" - a show I try not to miss, a fantastic music show btw, and I poured over it.
     Keith is funny and articulate in ways that are surprising.  He is a survivor in such a particular way in such a specific time, it's really revealing and at the same time just what you'd expect.
    But I have to say, in the end, I didn't really feel I liked Keith all that much.  He is not kind to Mick Jagger - in really petty ways.  He says a lot of nice things about him, but the things he has against him seem peevish.  Worst of all, Richards is really defensive about his own horrifying behavior.  He is not apologetic at all about all the people he inconvenienced and lied to during his drug years and not the least reflective on his job as a father.  He totally leaves his son out in the world with no protection and barely any supervision and he is not the least bit concerned about it.  In fact he's defensive and talks about how Marlon turned out okay in the end.  Which is apparently true, but that is probably more about the luck of Marlon's staggeringly resilient personality than anything else.  I dunno. I didn't expect to feel this way about Richards by the end, I expected to really love him all the way through.  I did respect him more as a musician.  He is a character - truly a character.  You can see why Depp based his Pirate on Richards.
     However, I think my feelings about "Life" were colored significantly by the next book I read:

2.) Just Kids (Patti Smith)  I had another complicated and evolving relationship with this book.  Her mindfulness about herself and her situation, her insight into herself as a young woman, the decisions she made - having a baby and giving it up for adoption, and then this being the catalyst for her to quit teaching school and go to New York and become a poet, were riveting and filled with nuance and detail that made me love her so much.  It was odd to read "Life" just before this book, the time is overlapping, and the writers are both icons of a certain generation, but Patti Smith - and forgive me for using this overused, tired phrase - is SO MUCH MOVE EVOLVED AS A PERSON.  She's more insightful and more complicated and seems much more honest.  She is constantly saying how emotionally unprepared she was for certain things, like Mapplethorpe bisexuality in a very naked, honest, and clear way.  Her writing is plain and yet poetic and also precise.  Although, I have to say, by the end, I was also leery of Patti Smith - and I really didn't expect to be.  She really drops out so much stuff in the second half - why she left New York, and who her husband was and why she and Mapplethorpe stopped communicating.  I had this pervasive sense of someone not wanting to get into the details of their relationship changing as they both aged.  Things that she would have included at the beginning of their relationship and things that made the book really resonate with frank honesty.  Again, I didn't expect to feel this way.  In any case, both books are worth the read.

3.) My Stroke Of Insight (Jill Bolte Taylor)   I have been meaning to read this book for a long time.  I had read about this woman, and a friend who loves this book loaned me her copy.  I really liked the beginning, I love learning about the brain and it's architecture.  I also liked her description of what it felt like while she was having a stroke.  I think it was profound, her description of energy and waves and how during her stroke she felt like an energy field.  I mean, it was a bit of "ain't it so cool I had a stroke and I'm also a brain scientist"-y, but okay, it must have been cool on one level.  Unfortunately, the rest of the book makes all these leaps that I don't follow about her experience and God and praying and playing these card games - the Angel cards, over and over again.  I have to say by the end of the book I had lost all respect for her and thought the book could have easily been an article in a magazine and not a book.  To me the lesson of this book is twofold: 1.) We are all trapped in a way of viewing the world by the way our brains are structured and by habit that makes it difficult to see how strange and beautiful all of life is.  2.) Even brain scientists can fall for the schpiritual gobbedlygook and become wrong-headed and full of new age bullshit.

4.) The Reason Why: The Story of The Charge of the Light Brigade (Cecil Woodham-Smith)  Over the holidays I was in Los Angeles visiting my mother-in-law and said to Mulan, "Yours is not to reason why, yours is but to do or die."  My mother had always said that to me and it made me laugh.  Norma pointed out that was from the poem by Tennyson, The Charge of the Light Brigade.  Then she handed me this book, and I devoured it.  It's a very well written - tragic and funny (my favorite combination) account of a horrifying battle in the Crimean War.  It centers on two aristocratic men, Lord Cardigan and Lord Lucan and how their hatred of each other - as brothers-in-law no less - managed to orchestrate the horrible debacle of this campaign.  Both are really unsympathetic characters, and Woodham-Smith so deftly and articulately describes how the British obsession with aristocratic war leaders pushed them into positions for which they were ill suited, and truly incompetent.  The book has this awful foreboding about it because as we learn about these two men from babyhood, we know what it's all leading to, and it ain't going to be pretty and it does not turn out well.   Now I am looking forward to reading Cecil Woodham-Smith's other books - the first of which is going to be "The Great Hunger" about the Irish famine.  Last night Michael and I watched, "Restrepo" - a documentary that is up for Academy Award nomination and seeing those poor boys in Afghanistan trying to retake this valley, how scary it is, how horrible battle like that really can be - it caused me to go to sleep thinking about the Crimean war and all wars.  In "Restrepo" the war leaders are competent, but the whole endeavor is so much messier and serendipitous and chaotic and uncomprehending than we can understand from the outside.

These are the audio books I listened to over the last month and a half.  I listen when I walk the dog which works out to about an hour to an hour and a half per day:

1.)  The Bedwetter, Sarah Silverman   Oh my god, Sarah Silverman is so fucking funny. She is really great. I like her a lot.  I know her a little bit, as we were on SNL together for a year at the same time.  She was a kid then, 18 or 19 I think.  She has really developed into one of the best comediennes.  This book made me laugh out loud so much. Mostly in the first part, however, the last half which deals with her show and her life after she became famous is less interesting to me.  But damn, I was laughing and laughing and I still think of lines here and there and laugh out loud.  I made my husband listen.  This book is really good.  I like listening to her read it, hearing her voice.

2.)  The Accidental Mind, David J. Linden  This book is much better at describing the brain, how it evolved, and how it works than My Stroke of Insight.  Our brains are such inefficient kluges of added on evolutionary adaptations, it's actually hilarious.  It made me want to do a comedic monologue about brain architecture.  Linden describes things really well.

3.) Nothing to Envy, Barbara Demick.  Okay, this book - of all the books I've read or listened to in the last month or so, this book is at the very top.  It's about North Korea, and Barbara Demick, who is a writer for the Los Angeles Times, and who is currently bureau chief in Beijing, but was previously working in Seoul, describes the lives of about six North Koreans and how they managed to escape the country.  All her subjects are currently living in South Korea.  If you are reading this, you must get this book, or listen to this audio.  It's really fantastic and the stories are so well told, so intelligently interwoven and constructed, so climactic when they are all trying to escape.  The writing is exemplary, and Demick is a master at telling these people's stories. In fact, one of the most compelling stories - well they are all compelling - is about a young teenage couple in love.  I cannot stop thinking that their story just has to be made into a film.  The end of their relationship is devastating and real.  The famine is so awful, and people dying everywhere, and the North Korean regime is so hateful and life is just - this book really emphasizes the point that politics so profoundly affects people's lives.   We are so lucky not to be living in North Korea, I don't think there's any place quiet as horrible in such a particularly communist - dictator way as North Korea.  It makes me so fearful for the future and I am really hopeful that - maybe China? - can put them in their place, or maybe help them out of this catastrophe.  I really had no idea how North Korea was separated from South Korea (practically arbitrarily in Washington D.C. looking at a map) and how it came to be. It's all so recent, and happening now too.  Riveting and important, that is what this book is.  I got the actual book from the library and now I'm going to read it (again, for real?) and just let it all sink in another time.  What a great writer.  Demick also wrote a book about Bosnia, and I want to get that too.  


Music.  I said I was going to post what I was listening to, my exercise music list.  I'm worried this makes this blog so blathery and I'm tired of it myself, but still, I'll post it.

I change my exercise playlist every month.  Last month was all Rolling Stones.  This month, I have some old faves - some songs can never leave the list - like Talking Heads, "Slippery People."

1. "Burning Down The House" Talking Heads
2. "Finest Worksong" R.E.M.
3. "The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight."  R.E.M.
4. "Give Paris One More Chance" Jonathan Richman
5. "To Hide A Little Thought" Jonathan Richman
6. "Istanbul (Not Contantinople)" They Might Be Giants
7. "California" Rufus Wainwright
8. "The Sunny Side of the Street" The Pogues
9. "Spanish Dancer" Patti Scialfa
10. "Smells Like Teen Spirit" Nirvana
11. "Corrina, Corrina" Bob Dylan
12. "Lovely Rita" Beatles
13. "Rita Mae" Jerry Lee Lewis
14. "Dying Day" Brandi Carlile
15. "While My Guitar Gently Weeps"  Santana with Yo Yo Ma and India.Aire)
16. "Love Hurts" Gram Parsons and Emmy Lou Harris
17. "Slippery People" Talking Heads


What am I doing these days?  Well, I'm working on a book - and I'm writing a screenplay.  Both are actually moving forward, slowly, but I'm happy about it. I've been getting into a nice working groove. If I can keep this up for a few years, I will make some traction towards my goals.  Which I mostly do achieve, although slowly and in a tedious incremental manner.  

I'm so full of it.


You see, I plan to resume being a public personal story teller.


Oh what a difference a mere nine months makes.


I was mortified by telling the frog story (see last post.)  I stopped telling it.  Mulan was glad, she didn't like that I was telling that story.  That story threw me a curve ball about telling personal stories.


Then Mulan decided she DID like the story.  She came to a couple of my shows, she wanted me to tell the story.


I thought:  I have to protect her from me.  She doesn't realize that it's potentially embarrassing.  But oh, it was fun to tell that story.


Then a bunch of time went by.  Mulan grew up more.  We talked about it from time to time.


I was asked to write the story out for a publication.  I dithered and dathered.


Much discussion was had about the difference between a video of a story and a written story.  Our theory (meandered to while driving with my husband and my brother -in-law, Joel) was that no one really reads, and so the written story would not be read by anyone that might cause embarrassment to Mulan.  What could be embarrassing was the video, which was already up on the TED website.  It's out there.  I can't take it back.  It's done.


Plus Mulan liked it.


Very confusing.  


So I couldn't decide if I should write the story.  I wanted to do it.  I didn't want to do it.  No, I really wanted to do it.  But maybe it wasn't right to do it.  Plus I already made a big announcement that I wouldn't.  Not that anyone is closely following my mercurial agonizing over what to do.  Except me.  Or maybe you, if you happen to be reading this.  ARGH!!!!!


So I decided to do it.  Only the title of this thing is not just that frog story but several other parenting stories.  All the other stories seem very clear to me.  They are really about me, not about Mulan.  My blunders.  The only borderline case is the frog story.   But the really embarrassing way to tell it for Mulan (potentially) is already in existence.  So I would only be adding to this by reiterating it, in writing.  The least embarrassing way.  


So, I'm doing it.  I'm writing it,  I'm almost done with it.  Therefore, I am full of it.  (see above)


Plus, after last March, I really did start focusing on my scripts and my book.  Not writing a lot of blog entries really did help me focus on long term projects.


But this thing happened:  my book became really personal.


It's going to take a long time to finish - two years at least, for reasons that - if it really does get finished and if anyone sees it and simultaneously is reading this, will be understandable.  Oh dear, I'm speaking very murkily.  The point is, I guess I am a public personal story teller.  Even though I really have - obviously - mixed feelings about it.


In the meantime, Jill and I had a blast doing our shows during the summer. We went to Colorado, Montana, Vermont, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania.  We really had fun and the audience seemed to like it.  It was so win-win.


Jill encouraged me to do a few shows in the Northwest. Since we'd done a show in Denver, Jill's home town, she said she wanted to see Spokane.  (I love her so much for wanting to see Spokane!)  


So we booked a few shows in mid-March in Spokane, Portland and Seattle.  Then we booked a New Year's Eve show in Evanston.  Dave, our bass player and dear friend, is going to fly out too and we will have fun and a happy, laughing New Year's Eve.  I'm looking forward to it.


Even though, on some level, Jill and I are still thinking this is the end of it - or maybe not.  Or I can't even say, because every time I take a stand I have to take it back. Like I'm doing right now.


Lord in heaven.


So, that is that.


But this is my new idea.  A monthly blog posting.  Why?  Because I read other people's blog postings and I am always interested in what they are reading, watching, and listening to.




I thought I would simply post:


The books I read during the month
The movies I saw during the month
The audio books I listened to
The treadmill music-playlist of the month




Anyway...  Here goes:


November 2010


Books read:


1.)  Freedom (Franzen)  My review: Eh.


2.) Ms. Hemple Diaries (Bynum)  My review: pretty damn good.


3.) Life (Richards)  I'm currently halfway through "Life"  and oh my god, I am now obsessed with Keith Richards. I keep putting down the book and googling various people.  Last night I was focused on his girlfriend Linda Keith basically discovering Jimi Hendrix.  That's not the whole story of course, but it's still a thrilling anecdote that I cannot stop picking at on the internet.


Movies I saw:


We have a home theater in the basement and I watch movies there. It makes all the difference.  


1.) Design For Living (Lubitch)


2.) Peter Ibbetson (Hathaway)


3.) Read My Lips (Audiard)


4.) Auberge Espagnole L' (Klapisch)


5.) Red Shoes (Pressberger, Powell)


6.) Agora (Amenabar)  Watched this twice - fantastic!  


7.) City Island (De Fellita)


8.) Adventures of Milo and Otis (Hata)


9.) Men In War (Mann)


10.) Music Man (Da Costa)


11.) Russian Dolls (Klapisch)


12.) Sea Inside (Amenabar)


13.) Kids Are All Right (Cholodenko)


14.) Somewhere (Coppola)


15.) Iron Giant (Bird)


16.) Kirkou and the Sorceress (Ocelot)


17.) To Sir, With Love (Clavell)


18.) Funny Girl (Wyler)




Audio Books listened to:


(I listen while walking the dog)


1.) At Home (Bryson)


2.) Cleopatra (Schiff)  - I'm halfway through with that one.




Treadmill play list


I do the treadmill about four times a week for an hour.  I change my playlist monthly.  I think you can tell I am exactly 51 years old by this playlist.  November was:


1.) Psycho Killer (Talking Heads)
2.) In the Aeroplane Over the Sea (Neutral Milk Hotel)
3.) Fuck You (Cee Lo Green)
4.) Devil's Haircut (Beck)
5.) Shiny Happy People (R.E.M.)
6.) Nightswimming (R.E.M.)
7.) Radio Song (R.E.M.)
8.) I'll Be Back (Beatles)
9.) Blackbird (Beatles)
10.) Black Horse & the Cherry Tree (KT Tunstall)
11.) The Sunny Side of the Street (Pogues)
12.) Light You Up (Shawn Mullins)
13.) Take Me to the River (Talking Heads)
14.) Slippery People (Talking Heads)
15.) Paint It Black (Rolling Stones)
16.) God's Child (David Byrne & Selena) 

I plan to stop being a public, personal, storyteller.

Let me explain:  I went to TED last month, which is a conference in Long Beach, and was asked to perform a 3 minute story in between speakers.  I got up and told this story about Mulan learning about sex for the first time.  I call it the Mulan-frog story (it begins with frogs…)   It got big laughs and even a partial standing ovation at the end.  People really loved it and I was so high and happy afterwards. 

I'm proud that I have the skill to tell a good story and make people laugh. I have a million happy memories of being onstage and making people laugh.  There is always a dark side however.  I am usually telling some story that could embarrass another person or I’m talking about something that irritates me about someone specific.  

When I got home from the conference I realized that if Mulan saw my story (or a fellow student did) she could be very embarrassed.  I was mortified and could not believe that I hadn’t considered this before.  Mulan looks good in the story – a curious, smart nine year old.  But the whole topic is embarrassing to a girl her age. 

I was really struck deeply about what I do onstage and the fact that I have a child.  I hated telling stories about my mother because I knew that it could be hurtful but I did it anyway because I loved getting the laugh, I loved getting to vent, and I felt I had the right somehow to talk about her onstage.  I guess I thought there was some sort of unwritten code that made parents fair game.  I actually feel that’s true and if Mulan grows up and tells stories about me, no matter how unflattering, I will gladly accept that as her right.  (I’ll be in the front row, no – wait!  More lovingly, I will not be anywhere near the place!)

But the other way around, me telling stories about her… That’s different.

After much agonizing, little niggling things that I have hated for a long time about performing stories about my own life fulminated to the surface.  I no longer wish to be so naked and bare.  I am surprised I ever did want to do it.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad I did.  I am proud that I learned to craft my experiences into a story and I am proud that I learned the craft of being on-stage.  But now, I need to stop doing it.  I am happily married, for one thing, and it’s boring and inappropriate to talk about.  My daughter is ten and she reads my blog, (OMG!) she goes to my shows.   In fact we have spoken at length about the stories I tell about her.   Not that, at ten, she is really capable of understanding the ramifications.  Still, she says it’s okay to tell the Mulan-frog story.  But ugh.   I don’t think she really understands.  I feel the need to protect her from myself!

In some ways, this is just another example of our Internet age.  When I started telling stories about my life, it was in a basement club in L.A. called Luna Park, in 1994, where the maximum capacity was 50 people.  We were recording the shows, but it wasn’t for mass consumption.  What I mean is that I could speak as if it were “off the record.”  This lulled me into a sense of secrecy and intimacy and allowed me to say anything no matter how raw.  I was uncensored.

But, there is no more “off-the-record” anymore.  Anything can be posted online.  Immediately.  I think this is, on balance, good – it makes people accountable in a new and direct way.  But for me – well let’s just say I would probably never have begun telling stories about my personal life if I’d thought they could be available to any interested person, instantly.  But once I started, I got used to the open-nature of talking about my life.  I learned to live with the downsides, the embarrassment, possibly even when it hurt or embarrassed other people.   Then, when blogging came along, it seemed like such a natural thing to do. 

Jill Sobule and I have been working for a few years now doing a show together.  I tell about ten to fourteen stories in our show.  (She sings songs, I tell stories)  We have worked hard to make the show work dramatically and musically. I think we’ve succeeded.  In fact, I think our show is at least as good as any other show I’ve done, maybe better.    I’m glad I tell all those stories in our show. 

But I don’t want to tell any more.   The stories that are out there, well, they’re out there.  But then… after this… well, I want to retire from it.   At least for a while.  Maybe forever, I dunno.

We have about 12 scheduled shows for this year (2010).  Mostly in the summertime and mostly in the Northeast and the Northwest.   After talking this over with Jill, we have agreed to do those shows.  We may actually add a show or two.  We may also find a way to film our show in the autumn.  But by the end of this year, I plan to stop doing this show.  And then face 2011 not performing.

I haven’t written in my blog because I am always so suspicious of any type of big revelation or big announcement.  I almost felt that if I announced that I was going to stop performing, there would inevitably be some reason not to stop it.  I have mulled this over for the last month or so.  And it feels good.  It feels right.

Sometimes I feel that my creativity, (and not just mine, but everyone’s creativity) is like the snow on a mountaintop melting a little at a time.  All my various outlets – performing and writing in all its manifestations -- create little rivers through which the snow can melt.  I always liked having so many things going at once.  I always felt that in show business, you had to have five pots on the stove just to get one of them to boil.  I benefited from being so multi-able.  I could do voice over and then perform at a club, I could write a monologue and then write a pilot for a TV show. 

But lately it feels that I have fragmented my focus with this policy.  I want the snow to melt into a couple of larger rivers, not into several smaller streams. 

And so, after the TED experience, I found myself wondering what I’m doing with myself.  How am I directing my energies?  I began to look at the darker side of telling stories about my personal life.  The guilt, the anguish, the desire to emphasize this over that, the slant, the small or large exaggeration, the worry that someone I’m talking about will see or hear me.   Then I suppose you could say the tipping point was Mulan.

Also, many things have changed.  I am now more able to be isolated (having moved to the Midwest from Los Angeles) and conversely, I am now in more regular and intimate interdependence with people.  I guess what I mean is that I have a husband and a child.   There is already a lot of interaction in my life, and I have begun to crave more and more alone time.  I desire privacy.  I don’t want my personality to be so known anymore.  (My personality has been so slutty!  Time to join a convent!)

So, in the last few weeks I have beta-tested my new views.  And it’s already had such forceful and creative results.  I am focusing on a couple of screenplays; with my writing partner Jim Emerson.   I may or may not finish writing the memoir of my letting go of God time, “My Beautiful Loss-of-Faith Story.”  Of course, I’ll do the Jill & Julia shows with Jill Sobule during this year. 

Then I plan to hang up my mouth. 

I can see Jill and I doing another show, someday, but not until way into the future.  (If she wants to!) (In ten years!)  I do honestly have that fantasy.  Or I can imagine that I will change in a few yea rs time and want to get back up on stage.  Or maybe I will develop the skills to talk about things that aren’t so personal and private, like many other comics do.  That could happen. 

But I doubt it.  And at the very least, I doubt it for the foreseeable future.

Anyway, here I am making a big pronouncement, just what I didn’t want to do.  I’m trying to write this in a way that appears that I’m mindful of the unpredictable events that could occur.  But insofar as I can plan ahead, and insofar as I can predict my attitude, and insofar as I have the ability to point myself towards one thing over another, I feel the plan to stop talking about myself publicly is right.

So, this means that I won’t be blogging about my family.  Or really blogging at all.

I am so thankful for all the people who have read my blog and commented.  Please, if you can, come to see one of the Jill & Julia Shows this year.  For me, this show is so meaningful; it’s an end of an era.   For 16 years I have been getting on stage and spilling my guts while simultaneously attempting to make people laugh.  That’s a long time.  This decision feels like a death.  It’s hard to envision myself as myself without the outlet and the drive to get onstage and talk about it.   On the other hand, it doesn’t seem right to continue either.  This decision feels inevitable and yet surprising and mostly very, very right.  I’m so excited about this, to be honest.   Imagine me, a private person!  (I recently joked with Jim Emerson about how I feel I was a butterfly but I’m morphing into a caterpillar!)

I’ll be posting all the places where Jill and I have booked shows very soon.  Thanks for reading.

Botanic Gardens, Kauai Hawaii

I took this pic a few years ago when Mulan and I spent Christmas with friends in Kauai.

I've been thinking about Voltaire a bit.   In our last writing session, Jim reminded me of the poem that Voltaire wrote after the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 when all the priests were railing against the people themselves for being the culprit.  The disaster occurred because of their sinfulness.  And now, 255 years later and we still have the like of Pat Robertson and his voodoo/pact-with-the-devil/Christian belief that Haiti brought all this on itself.

Here is Voltaire's poem: Poem on the Lisbon Disaster - Wikisource

And here is a good excerpt:

What crime, what sin, had those young hearts conceived
That lie, bleeding and torn, on mother's breast?
Did fallen Lisbon deeper drink of vice
Than London, Paris, or sunlit Madrid?
In these men dance; at Lisbon yawns the abyss.
Tranquil spectators of your brothers' wreck,
Unmoved by this repellent dance of death,
Who calmly seek the reason of such storms,
Let them but lash your own security;
Your tears will mingle freely with the flood.

Pat Robertson is an anomaly now.  The public is ridiculing him.  This makes me optimistic.  In Voltaire's time it the Catholic Church was everywhere and this was the general attitude. I really think things are changing.  SLOWLY. 

What shocks me is that while the mainstream may mock Robertson, they don't seem to take it a step further.  If God didn't cause the earthquake then does God cause anything? Is he a sad bystander?  Is he able to do anything about it?  Of course not.  Then why believe in any God at all?  But no one takes it that far.  It's PC to extoll the belief that God IS there to rely on, you can cry on his shoulder, you can ask for strength.   Why is that so acceptable?  

And why did the font on my blog just change?  OH!  I cannot stop and noodle with it, I have dinner to prepare.

Val, my cat, on my desk

Here is an experimental blog post - a straight-up diary of my day.

So...

This was my day...

Got up, nudged Mulan along as she groggily got dressed for school.   Got her breakfast and made some coffee.  Helped her look through her homework to make sure everything was done.  Nudged her to finish a math page and a bonus challenge homework page.  Gave her a pre-test for her spelling quiz.  Nudged her to get her teeth brushed and especially to floss.

After she left I took the dog, Arden on a walk to Lake Michigan.  I listened on my iphone to an audio biography about Paul Durac, a British Theoretical Physicist.  I am convinced he had asperger syndrome only the biographer doesn't mention that.  I get jelous of Dirac's life where everything is arranged so he can work constantly, I wish I had a Mancy (his wife's name) who made sure I was undisturbed, had food, and could take long walks.  Today as I walk it's very deceptively icy. The sidewalks look clear but they have the thinnest layer of ice. I almost fall down a hundred times.  I don't like the cold today.   The lake is sad looking, a lot of dirty looking piled up snow on the edge of the lake. I look closer and see that what I thought was dirt is really sand.  I marvel at Lake Michigan and all it's sand.

Get home and Michael is completely absorbed in some lighting project at the house.  He is a man obsessed with lighting.  He wants to program every single light in our house so that we can stand at the door and push one button and every light we don't want on will go off. This requires a lot of work, hooking up this outlet but not that one, etc.  He is frustrated with the software for the program and it's the third incarnation of this software he has worked with. He has been up for two nights until at least one or two a.m. working on the lighting project.  I kid with him and say, when he gets it done I expect him to say with glee, "Now all you have to do to turn down the lights in the family room is log onto this website on your computer, enter a certain number, and the light will automatically dim!"  He does not like my joke because you see, it's not really a joke.

I leave and go get a mammogram. I have not had one for a few years. I, having had cervical cancer, should be more vigilant, but I have let things go.  I get to the Evanston Medical Center and read the book I am completely absorbed in. "Lacuna" by Barbara Kingsolver.  It's such a great book, a fictionalized account of a young Mexican American in the thirties who befriends Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera and Trotsky.   I am pulled out of my reverie by a stern woman asking me to put on a gown.  The gown is awkwardly configured so even after you tie it in the places it wants to be tied, you have to hold it closed otherwise your whole front shows as you walk down the hallway to the mammogram machine.  The woman inside is friendly and I'm thankful for her warm hands as she manipulates my breasts this way and that.  I think about what a weird job she has.  I wonder if she says to people, "I just sort of fell into it."  There is no hidden meaning in that configuration of words, I just wonder if that's the phrase she'd use.

As I leave we discuss the gowns.  She agrees, they suck.

I leave and take a moment to consider that I could get a bad response on my mammogram and have cancer. I fantasize what I would do if I learned I had only one year to live.  I decide that I would just go places to look at animals and nature and the sky at night.  I would go to the Galapagos, or Hawaii and just sit and watch. I don't need to see any more people, I've seen big cities, but I've done it.  I get it.  Big vibrant city.  I crave quiet and nature without people.  I decide that I would have to pull Mulan out of school to go with me to Hawaii or the Galapagos.  Of course Michael would have to come, he'd have to shut down his business and come.  Jill Sobule would have to come too, as well as Jim Emerson.  I guess there'd be some people.   Then I think, it would be bad for Mulan to be pulled out of school right now because  she is really doing well and loves her school.  Then I remember this is all a fantasy.  I blink back tears and come back to life.

I go to my favorite bread store in Evanston.  It's Friday and I get challah.   I don't ask for challah bread.  I used to do that.  Then Michael told me that was like asking for Guinness beer.  You just say Guinness, not Guinness beer, just as you just say challah.  We like to buy challah for french toast on Sundays.   I don't have Mulan with me but I remember while I'm at this store that this was where Mulan made her first decent pun.  She said they should put a sign out on Fridays saying, "Celebrate, it's Challah-Day!"   While I'm at the bread store I also get a turkey sandwich on their popeye bread.  It's so good, it's worth all the points.

I come home and eat my sandwich while I watch some TV footage about Haiti. I get really upset.  I start to cry.  It all seems so hopeless.  What if you were stuck and had so much time before you died to know it was going to happen?  Or worse, you didn't know if your loved ones were okay or not.  Or even what just really happened out there.  This is happening to someone right now.  This makes my heart heave.

I answer a few phone calls.  I speak with a woman at Minnesota Public Radio about doing a show at the Fitzgerald theater in St. Paul in March.  It seems like it's going to happen.  Then I do some business paperwork, for example, I send $1000 to Sony for the rights to sing "Is That All There Is" in "Letting Go of God" for one year.

Then I try to write.  I decide my book of essays is not as important as "My Beautiful Loss Of Faith Story" the book i've been working on for years. I wonder if I can reach my goal of finishing it this year. I wonder how many years I've had this goal. I feel depressed.  I remember we have no food in the house and Mulan is bringing a friend home after school.   I go to the grocery store.  I buy chicken noodle soup and oyster crackers for Mu and her friend to have after school.  This is Mu's big TV day.  She cannot watch any TV during the week, but on Friday after school it's a TV free-for-all.  I also buy vegetables and after I come home, I quickly make a pasta sauce in the slow cooker.

I run to meet Mu after school, but I am a few minutes late and she is nearly home and I end up meeting her half way. She has her friend with her. Mu got 100% on her spelling quiz and I am elated.  I heat up the chicken soup for them.  Nadia comes over to watch the girls because I have a hair appt.  Michael has gone to work.  I get my hair cut really short. I really look like a nun now. And I like it.  I feel I am in "A Nun's Story" as I leave the hair salon.  I tell myself that if my hair is going to be this short I really have to remember to wear lipstick.  I love my hair dresser.  She gets my hair.

I come home from the salon and Michael is already home and working on his lighting project again. Mulan is upstairs in our room watching TV.  I make everyone eat the pasta and sauce.  It's only okay, not great.    I beg everyone to watch the Netflix movie I have, "Winged Migration."  I already saw it when it came out (in 2000) but it was so great - all about various birds' migrations across the earth.  Michael wants to work on the lighting project, Mulan wants to watch iCarly, they don't want to watch it.  I'm too tired to do anything useful.  I briefly decide to go read my book in the basement, but then rally and force everyone to stop what they're doing and watch "Winged Migration."  I really have to push.  I momentarily hate everyone and wonder why I'm doing this.   I think that if I'm going to die in a year I really must finish the screenplay that Jim Emerson and I are working on. We are having so much fun.  Working with Jim has been one of my life's great joys.  Just as I'm giving up on Mu and Michael they agree, yes, let's watch the movie together.  I suddenly feel a huge surge of love for them.

Before we watch the movie, we make popcorn in the microwave.  Michael has experimented and experimented and if you take 1/4 cup of popcorn and a dab of oil and put it in a kid's paper lunch bag and staple the top, zap it for exactly 2 minutes, it turns out great.

We watch.  Michael loves the film but is skeptical about how much they doctored itto get certain types of shots.  Mulan is rapt with the film, and so is Arden - it's the first time my dog watched most of a movie.  But when it's over Mulan announces she's thrilled she's now let out of this horrible prison I've put her in, forcing her to watch this movie.  Also, she announces that she will never eat a bird.

Ohmygod, I love my family so much.

Mulan goes to her room, Michael goes back to the lighting project, and I come in here and write about my day.

Snow, snow, everywhere...

And I love it.

Wow.  All those posts to the last blog entry have my head in constant conversation.   I think the post that I've thought about the most was the one which indicated I was breaking the question down in a poor way.  (Well, there were many posts pointing that out...)  This one broke down the debate in a different way - between religion with supernatural claims and religion without supernatural claims.   That is true.  I guess I don't normally think of or remember that there are religions without supernatural claims. Buddhism is the only one I can think of. (Not all sects of Buddhism.)   Or the Unitarian Church.

To me, religion works best as a ritual keeper and community builder.  These things are very important.  In my observations - which are mostly about my upbringing in Spokane in the Catholic church and then watching my friends who have stayed in the church - the best thing they get from their religion is the shared rituals and community.   These are the things that I really craved, in retrospect.  I had mouthed the words and didn't think all that much about the readings, I liked Bach and the candles and the idea that I had stood in this same church year in and year out on one particular day that earmarked the dead of winter or the beginning of spring - saying the same things, hearing the same songs, watching kids grow up, flirting with boys, seeing who was getting married, mourning those who had died.  All those things can be a part of a life without the supernatural.

On the other hand, the supernatural specifics of what we were all supposed to believe were, in my opinion,  a great hindrance to the development of a skeptical outlook and even general critical thinking skills.  So, the ideas we were so benignly taught had an insidious price.  We paid with our critical minds.  SOME of my friends from Spokane, for example, have - in my humble opinion - undeveloped political opinions.  Worse, they back off from any debate.  They make ad homonym attacks.  Tragically, some of them have no understanding of the tenants of other faiths, and even of their own faith.  Sometimes it seems that they are even proud of their lack of information.  Is the Church to blame?  Hmmm... I kinda think so.  I hate to say, I do.

But the rituals and community continue to give.  And I can see that it is a great value.

I think the Unitarian Church can offer this, but not at the cost of your critical mind.

But for me, I do not feel in need of the community anymore!  I like the idea of it, but not the practicality of it.  It involves a great deal of socializing and I feel that I am filled up with that. What I crave now, (and I am fifty, so maybe this is a natural thing to happen,) but I want less socializing and social obligation in my life.  I crave quiet and contemplation.  I want to learn.  I feel I am hungry to learn and read and think,  well, it's almost as if I had scurvy and were in need of an orange!  And true learning and thinking take a lot of time and quiet.  With a husband and a child, as well as a few very close friends,  I feel I am up to my ears in interaction with people.  Adding a church would put me over the edge.  Even if Mulan may benefit from it, she would have an even more frazzled mother and I don't think that is good. (I could just see myself getting caught up in it at first, volunteering for five committees, nodding "yes!" to the bake sale, and then being in the worst possible mood about it all for the next six months...  Wait! This is what being at a public school is like already!  I've so far been able to back away from most things...  But yes, I feel guilty about it.  Guilty or Angry? That's always my dilemma...)

I think me and my friends would have been better served by a Church that did not subscribe to supernatural beliefs.  We would have gotten the ritual and community but not the inanity.

But sometimes I wonder, would we stick to it if it didn't have a whiff of a real God on High?   I might not have.  It would require inculcating me about the need of community and social obligation and not about someone looking over my shoulder who could see everything.

...I wrote the above jumbled blog entry this morning and was intending all day to get back to it, reread all those wonderful posts from the last entry and rewrite it. But now it's late, and I have to fly to New York in the morning.  So I'm just going to throw this out there. It's woefully inadequate in it's musings upon this topic.

Jill Sobule and I are doing a show on Sunday night at Joe's Pub in New York and it's sold out. That is really exciting!!!!

Bahai Temple, Wilmette, IL  early Christmas morning 2009

I took this picture early this morning on my dog walk.

Mulan, Michael and I opened presents, had breakfast, and then flew to L.A.  Now I am here, and I realize how much I miss it!  Yippity yah, five days in L.A.

Not much to report, but I wrote this (below) last week and I guess I'll paste it here now...

Amongst the non-believers of this world, there appears to be a split in thinking between:

1.) Those that think religion is good - regardless of truth - for some people.  Religion is useful for those who are trying to get sober, for those who have no where to turn, for those that might not follow society's rules, for those who might not otherwise respect others, for those in complete despair, and for those that need the idea, the concept - as a new drug - to get off another one.

2.) Those who think religion and the idea of God is never good for anyone.

I have always put myself in the #1 category.   It suits me because I don't want to proclaim that seeing stark reality, which is very dark and full of potential catastrophe, is good, or possible for everyone.

But this thinking is very condescending.  It's Plato saying religion is good for the masses.  It's Will Durant saying how religion helps to bind people together, and so for society it's good.  It's AA using the idea of a higher power to get people to let go of another, actual drug.

But #2 is so arrogant too.

I mean this is all just for the rumination - religion and the idea of God is not going away and most likely never will - so this is all just blathering about the number of angels who can dance on the head of a pin.

 I have always stayed away from the #2 thinking because it puts me in a position of dismissing so much in others. I am not comfortable with it.  It's very judgey.  Of course, that is no way to decide what you think.  Being judgey is the point of this whole debate!

But in my private thoughts, what do I really think?  It's like a little debate between Plato and Voltaire.  Plato did think religion was good for the masses.  Voltaire believed religion enslaved people.

Truthfully, now I'm beginning to lean towards Voltaire.

I asked my husband yesterday if he thought religion did any person any good at all.   "Think about Anne Lamott, a nice, liberal, happy Christian, " I said,  "Or people who get off drugs and alcohol because they find Jesus.  I mean, aren't we all better off because of that transfer of the more dangerous drug to the more benign one?"

And he said, "Maybe. But now those people are primed to follow.  Jesus might be the idea for now, but it really could be anyone. They have made themselves programmable and basically they are sheep and now anyone could lead them - it could be to the top of a mountain or it could be off a cliff."

Again, I am paraphrasing and adding imagery for emphasis.  And may I remind you that I do not hang on this guy's every word, far from it!

But I thought about that all day.  I mean, I have always thought #1 was the benevolent point of view, the humble point of view, the less-judgemental and superior point of view, but actually that is wrong!!

The #1 thinking is really so cynical and superior and #2 has all this faith  in everyone to use rationality and critical thinking to get through.   #2 is actually the humble - or no, the optimistic point of view!  (Not that being humble or optimistic is some sort of proof for an argument!)  But you know, neither of these words is right, it's more like empowering - it's the empowering point of view.

I have not really come to any conclusions about this.  But I'm just realizing how there is this split in thinking and I'm not sure - I vacillate between those views.

Arden, in the backseat of the just-bought mini-van, as we drove from Los Angeles to Chicago, embarking a year ago today, Dec. 17, 2008.

A year ago Mulan and I, after watching a moving company depart with all of our possessions, joined Michael as we drove together from California to Illinois.  There was a huge storm which prevented us from taking the route we wished to take - through Santa Fe and instead we drove south, through Arizona and then Texas.  It took four days.  We had a dog in the car who wanted to kill, really truly kill and eat, the cat in the car.  We stopped at Motel 6s, we saw billboards in Texas that proclaimed that Obama was not born in the U.S., we watched Arden pee in ice for the first time.  It was an adventure.

We arrived here just before Christmas, slept in our new house all together on sleeping bags in the master bedroom, and wandered our neighborhood thinking, "What the hell did we just do?"

And what have I done this year?   Adjust, be a mom who's around a lot, do a few shows, write a pilot, and empty a bunch of boxes.  The house is still not totally organized - the basement is on it's way...  But I am much happier here and thrilled to be in this new family.  It really does feel like a family.  Mulan can barely remember life before Michael.  Last night we talked about the drive.  For Mulan, this was our biggest adventure of all.  She often refers to the drive and wants to do it again - with the cat and the dog. (That part was not so much fun for me.)

Anyway, as I have not taken a picture the last couple of days, I thought I'd throw up that one of Arden, a year ago, on his way to his own new adventure here.

What am I thinking about?  Well, I am very sad about the healthcare "overhaul."  I am very sad about Obama and I am wondering if he is really who I thought he was.  I read Robert Reich's and Glenn Greenwald's articles on Salon and I am just really so sad, and so disappointed, and I wish they would not vote for this deal and I like Howard Dean even more than I ever have and I hate Joe Leiberman, even though this demise is not all his doing.

(Last night I overheard Mulan telling Michael, "Mom was in the car driving and yelling, 'That Joe Leiberman!' and her fists were clenched.")

Anyway, let's change the subject.  What other things am I thinking about?

I am thinking about all the letters I have gotten from people and how much they mean to me. I want to write back everyone, and I hope to send at least a thank you.  I am trying to just be present and take it all in.

I am thinking about some of the questions that people have asked.  Some people worry about having meaning in a world without god in it.  I don't have the best answer for that yet (I am mulling on that one) but I remember once being at a convention with Daniel Dennett (such a hero of mine) and he said (Dennet is a philosopher and scientist at Tufts and has written several books, some of which really impacted me) and anyway, he was talking to someone else and he said, "People say to me, 'You're a philosopher, what is the meaning of life?' and I say, 'I don't know but I do know the secret to happiness.  Find some subject that you love and spend the rest of your life studying it from every angle you can.  That is the secret to happiness."

I've thought about that a lot.  I would add to it. I would say, find a subject or a skill and spend your life getting better at it, or understanding it better.  I think skills are really important and something that has been totally left out of the education system the way it's organized now.  I actually think that before kids read books like Catcher In The Rye, or Animal Farm, they should know how to do something tangible, a skill society needs, a skill that requires skill, a skill that can be used to earn money - and then after that they should tackle the bigger stuff.

I'm just musing.  I'm just thinking about it.

Also, I am afraid of religious people.  I mentioned this to my husband yesterday and he looked at me like, "Duh."   But really - before I did my show, the religious people I was exposed to were so benign - the twinkly eyed priest, the social activist nun, the devoted church group that does things for people in Chiapas at my aunt's church.  When I thought of religious people, I thought of people like Jimmy Carter or the Dali Lhama.  I thought of the kind persons likely to be out sweeping in front of the churches I would pass by with my dog while on a walk.

But now I get these letters from people, and...  I dunno.  I just want to GET AWAY.  I really am not predisposed to enjoy conflict. I wish I were.  I look at people like Rachel Maddow, for example.  She is so great - she loves the debate, she relishes the argument, she enjoys the banter and she is doing really good things in my opinion.  For example, the last months shows have focused a lot on this Evangelical Christian organization called "The Family" in D.C. and how they have enormous political power and how, through their influence and encouragement, the government of Uganda had a bill for a law before their government that would allow the killing of gay people.  Anyway, Rachel has lately been using her show to shed light on this atrocity and she has actually seemed to have done something to get this kind of law either stopped or disavowed.  Anyway, I wish I could be like that.  I wish I was glad to get these letters and I wish I wanted to spend a lot of time writing to people and arguing with them about their beliefs.

But....

But...

I just... oh god, those people... I just want to get away from them.  I want to pretend they do not exist.  That is my first impulse.  My next thought is, This person scares me.

When I talked this over with Michael, of course he said that even the examples of the kind-priest - he has never had any warm feelings about those people and  he has no interest in being around religious people of any type.  He thinks a religious person is someone who - well, it's as if they have a sign around their necks that says, "I have unreliable and faulty reasoning.  I lie to myself and I'm likely to lie to you too."  (This is my analogy, not his.)

Anyway, I used to be more benevolent, I guess. But now, all these letters I'm getting...  I dunno.  I think I am off the whole thing too.   And I'm actually not getting so many hate letters.  No - it's at least ten to one, affirmative to negative.

Of course, that doesn't mean I don't want to attend a nice candle-lit Christmas service this year.  HA. I am serious, I really do want to.

Also, I like getting suggestions from people in the letters and even criticism.  For example, I had one letter criticizing me for my quick dismissal of Buddhism in my show. I think they are right.  I think it's so much more complicated than I made it.  It's just that - even though I think Buddhism has some great insight into human psychology and human nature, and a good prescription for living with the inherent difficulties in life - it's not really a religion to me, I guess. I thought it was, once it wasn't, I moved on.

I would be Buddhist but I have found other strategies for living that are working really well for me.  I don't need it, I guess.  Or I'm incorporating the parts of it that are useful to me - mindfulness meditation, yoga - that sort of thing.

In any case, because of this letter, I purposefully took the image of Buddha off the DVD cover.  I also took every image off, but still - it was prompted by that letter.

Now I have also read a comment on the Amazon DVD page about how the show is not enough about how to live as a non-believer. It's 3/4 arguing back and forth about whether there is a god or not and then barely anything about how to live with this worldview.  I agree with that too! In fact, that letter is really firing me up to write a book about just that.

The point of all this is, I don't mind the critical letters. I just mind the religious crazies.  And that definition to me is getting broader and broader.  I wish I had more oomph for fighting them, but I just... don't.