The Readiness Is All

Torino, Italy - Photo by Ingi Erlingsson

I wrote an advice column in 7^th grade, West Sylvan Middle School.  My fellow counselor was Maggie, the new girl in school.  Some deeply innovative and collaborative thinking led to the name of our column, “Dear Hilary and Maggie.”  I saved the letters we received – they were carefully folded and placed in a silver Converse shoebox, stored under my bed.  I don’t remember as much about the advice we gave as I do about the questions and worries and dilemmas our fellow adolescents shared in their queries.  

I was reminded of this – one of my first social service endeavors -- during my recent retreat in Colombia, where I read Cheryl Strayed’s collection of letters and responses from her advice column, Dear Sugar.  I devoured the book, Tiny Beautiful Things, over several days of yoga, tropical fruits, meditation, mosquitos, song, and consultations with oracles of various kinds – all the while among an impressive multi-lingual group of seekers from around the world.  We were disconnecting from ‘reality’ and reconnecting to something more fundamental that exists in each one of us, asking the same kinds of questions collected in Strayed’s book -- and even those submitted to me in seventh grade.  That I felt I had advice to offer anyone about anything at age 12 is, on one hand, ridiculous -- but on the other hand, kind of makes sense.  Perhaps at that point I wasn’t influenced quite as much by my mind and all its impressive exercises of thinking and consideration, and maybe instead had a little more connection to a different kind of knowing – one that generally has to be recovered in adulthood and requires more subtraction than addition, more simplicity and less complication.

Anne, who sees

The beach, Colombia

Earlier this year at a Brooklyn house party filled with musicians, I’d asked my friend Andi -- playwright, professor, mother, and wife of one of my favorite songwriters -- to be my manager; I wanted someone to ‘produce’ for me, boss me around and tell me to get over myself.  She gave me an assignment, I said I’d consider it, and Andi reminded me that ‘considering’ was bullshit, that I should stop thinking and just do something.  Of course she was right; I had to agree that all my careful consideration isn’t winning me any Pulitzer Prizes or Grammy Awards.

Advice from Andi

Coming from a commercially-sponsored tour of the UK and Europe to film various football teams in the service of selling electrolyte replacement beverages, I’d put most of my personal and creative agendas on-hold, including my assignment.  The time in Colombia gave me an opportunity to shed cumbersome winter clothing as well as other unnecessary layers – and reminding me of Andi’s words of advice: Don’t consider it; do it!! Now!  Don’t think! 

Madrid, Spain - Photo by Jayanta Jenkins

night time departure

morning departure

Liquid light, London

Producers, Madrid

Dream production team, Madrid

Producer, London

Before returning to winter, I journeyed further south to meet my friend Doug – who was nearing the end of his global tour while the rest of us acquiesced to darkness and hibernation.  After a long journey and four airports, I arrived before sunrise in Buenos Aires to a lovely sparkly-eyed Porteño named Fernando, who ferried me back to his tastefully-appointed town house in Almagro with my suitcase full of filthy clothing to meet Doug.  Fernando welcomed us like old friends as we occupied two of the three rooms he and his boyfriend offer on Airbnb.  I slept for a couple of hours and went upstairs to the roof terrace to join the hombres for coffee.  Was I still dreaming, or were two men hanging my clean laundry to dry? 

February 

Colonia, Uruguay

Buenos Aires

Fernando

Church, Buenos Aires

Deep-and-meaningfuls continued as I spent the next days with these gents. Fernando – with his fellow Argentines, – has learned to live with a lot of instability and uncertainty, and has found in his work as an architect and designer that perseverance wins in the end:  Do something for long enough and you'll probably reach a reasonable level of accomplishment.  Doug’s mantra comes from Shakespeare, the readiness is all:  We can’t control what happens to us, but we can train and shape ourselves to be prepared for whatever may come.  It is no coincidence that Doug and I met and became friends years ago when training in martial arts.  I suppose it is again no coincidence that readiness is basically the same ethos that governs production: make plans but also expect the unexpected, and be ready to handle whatever happens.  Without thinking too much about it, I would borrow a mantra from Bruce Lee: be like water.

Post-birthday-feast in front of the glorious i Latina in BA

Chilleando

Light

Charlottenburg, Berlin

December in Berlin is grey and cold, and daylight is fleeting.  It’s further north than here.  By the time I'd showered and let my hair dry each morning, it seemed the sun was already beginning to set.  Nighttime lingered disproportionate to the day, but wore a cloak of luminance – a rain-glazed plaza reflected lights suspended in neat rows; a wide boulevard stood parted by bright sculptures and shimmering trees.  Night in Berlin was unlike the overcoat that wrapped the night in my neighborhood in Brooklyn – plastic nativity scenes erect before brownstones; blue, green and red, hanging and blinking in a window; streetlights casting a glow on pieces of trash escaped from uncovered bins.

My parents never put Christmas lights on the outside of our house in Portland.  We had one decoration: a large plastic Santa Claus that was stored in the attic most of the year, transported first into the house and then to the upstairs deck each December by my dad.  That Santa Claus had a light inside, and an extension cord that reached an outlet where he was connected.  There was also sand inside him, so he wouldn’t be carried off our deck and into the darkness by a strong wind.  He faced outward so cars driving up the street past our house might glimpse his friendly jolly countenance from below.  When we sat there in the evenings, we could see him turned on through the dusty curtains covering the sliding glass door in the living room.  We could feel his warmth, even while he turned away from us.  As I grew older and my belief in Santa Claus died, I came to appreciate the Pagan Solstice on December 21st more than December 25^th.  The Solstice: the gradual return of the light, the lifting of obscurity.

I’ve never done the math or applied for a grant, but I figure I spend several hundred dollars every year keeping my small apartment ablaze with candles – soy, paraffin. . . some tall with sublime scents and others small, quiet and plain.  As a DIY teenager in Portland, I collected cans from frozen juice concentrate and transformed my mom’s kitchen into a colorful mess sponsored by Michael's Arts and Crafts when my supply was depleted. Yesterday I emptied my freezer of store-bought candle holders, liberated them from their wax and metal remains, washed and promoted them to the cupboard, where they would be reused as vessels for other essential life-giving elements.

Night contains the darkness and day contains the light – and each of us contains a little bit of both.  We try to hold them in their proper balance.  Sometimes, especially at certain times of the year, one overtakes the other – as in the northern parts of the world, depending on the season.  

Having a little sand inside isn't a bad idea, either, lest we be carried off by a strong wind.

Lucky seven: Charlottenburg, Berlin

Peregrinations

Baby Jesus, wrapped in plastic

A year ago, I visited a remote coastal area in Oaxaca state in Mexico.  While there, I met a tall Spaniard who told me, among other things, about the first in what ended up being dozens of journeys around the globe – his pilgrimage at age 16 to Santiago de Compostela.   I remembered learning about this tradition from the summer I’d spent on the NW coast of Spain, where I lived with the family of yet another Spaniard -- much shorter -- whose family politely looked the other way from his exuberant gayness and welcomed me as his girlfriend without asking too many questions about the nature of what was our totally platonic friendship. 

This year, I had occasion to mingle with an equally worldly audience at The Financial Times’ Summit on the Business of Luxury in Mexico City – people with Hungarian fathers, Argentine mothers, childhoods spent in Mexico City while attending German school – and then college in Paris. . . this type of ‘global citizen’ gathered to discuss emerging markets, the growing middle class in Mexico and their taste for luxury goods, art, fashion and empire building.  Although I spent a full day wishing for an early death in a fancy hotel room, the parts of the conference I experienced were all quite fascinating – and stood in stark contrast to my much more modest (though still delightful) bus ride to Guanajuato at the summit’s end. Like any pilgrim, I had to travel long distances and endure bodily misery to better understand the turns my journey needed to take.

Mexico City

Mexico City

Mexico City

Mexico City

A group of wealthy youngsters from Mexico City descended upon my friend Hugo’s stone-hewn bed and breakfast in the hills above the historic center of Guanajuato shortly after my arrival to witness their friends’ marriage in the neighboring hacienda. . . while resolutely insubordinate to the house’s minimal rules (showing up for reservations, paying the bill, etc).  Among the guests was a fellow bedecked in indigenous beadwork and crystals, his wild mane leashed by a headband.  Standing apart from the other guests, he confessed that he wished he could hang out with Hugo and me in the printmaking studio.  We learned from those more pop-culturally literate than ourselves that this man was a Mexican soap opera star and model. To me, he just seemed like a man with a resonant voice and a firm handshake, so I asked what he did.  He explained he was a former opera singer – now pursuing acting and producing, and maintaining homes in a handful of locations.  He left out the part about modeling, which I thought was in good taste. 

Lágrimas de Visión

print making studio

Toward the end of the wedding weekend, a wind swept through Guanajuato as I sat on a balcony of a restaurant in town, eating a salad as buglers paraded in the street below.  While there are various theories about the exact meaning of these processions, the entire month of May is dedicated to the blessing of workers.  Today was the day of the blessing of the bus drivers.  Another day is dedicated to miners who work in the local silver mines.  I guess there's no shortage of groups within the world population to be blessed and looked after by guardians or patron saints, real or imagined.

La Casa de Espiritus Alegres, Guanajuato

La Casa de Espiritus Alegres, Guanajuato

La Casa de Espiritus Alegres, Guanajuato

Alma del Sol, Guanajuato

We spent the last few days in Patzcuaro, in the beautiful and ­­­­­­­­troubled state of Michoacán.  Hugo and his friend Janet and I escaped a rainstorm by ducking into the town Basilica.  We marveled at the electronic prayer candles, the offerings to the Virgin (which included a full human hair braid pinned to the Virgin's dress), and at how successful the Catholics were in inspiring devotion from the very people they colonized and sought to dominate – not unlike the way Republicans manage to win support from parts of the population most disenfranchised by their policies.  The Stockholm Syndrome came to mind in my amateur psychological analysis.  A similar conversation came up yesterday when driving past a very unsubtle HQ of one of the cartels, while enroute to visit friends in a neighboring village.  Like all organized criminals throughout history, the cartels use money, the illusion of protection, and religion to gain loyalty -- or at least obedience.

Janet and Hugo

Our drive through this questionable territory led us to the home of yet another Spaniard – a 92 year-old gay man, Picasso doppelganger and bon vivant.  We spent the afternoon sipping wine, talking, and hearing stories about his days as a ballet dancer in Paris in the ‘40s (he later became a two-language translator at the UN for the first 20 years of its existence).  In Paris, he’d fallen in love with a German soldier – ultimately collecting information to help the resistance effort.  As if his life wasn't already colorful enough, he had also starred in both Broadway and film versions of "West Side Story."  Born in Franco's Spain, escaped to the U.S., returned to Spain, studied in Paris, spent more years in the U.S., and eventually landed in Mexico -- where he seemed content to spend his final years in a quiet mountain town, where the shadow of the ruling cartel sent people heading toward their homes at sunset.

Michoacán

Michoacán

Plaza Grande, Michoacán