The word meditate came up four times yesterday.
1) I have been thinking about meditation for the past several months. I have been closing my eyes in the morning and getting to a quiet place. That usually results in me falling asleep. I have also been driving with the sound off in my car for years. I have been carving out quiet and alone time for myself as well. Going to the spa. Going to the gym. Not talking to my boyfriend when I come home. But I haven't quite made it to meditation. I've taken out two books from the library: How to Practice by the Dalai Lama and Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness and Creativity by David Lynch. I have had the Dalai Lama book for 3 months. I've picked it up, read it, been confused by it. I've checked it out three times in a row. Then I checked out the David Lynch book. I thought that was going to be a book that would tell me how to meditate. It was not. It was a great book that extolled the benefits of meditation. But it had nothing in terms of instruction. It was just, "Meditation is great. You should do it. This one time, when we were shooting Dune…." But I read it three times because it was so easy to read and it did feel comforting and it was related to how mediation affected his work. It was more of a pep talk in preparation to mediate. And for that, it was good.
2) My best friend Alanna responded to an email in which I requested some help working out some characters for a new pilot I'm writing. "I'll meditate on it." I thought that was an interesting choice of words, given my preoccupation with mediating.
3) My friend Jenn and I met up yesterday to talk about a play that she wrote and wanted my feedback on. Somehow we got on the topic of meditation and she mentioned to me a bunch of meditation apps that she uses and sent me some resources.
4) My friend Susan and I were talking yesterday about writing and family and other issues going on when she mentioned that she had started meditating again.
So it's in the air. I literally had it come in from four separate sources yesterday. Meditating is an important thing for me to do. I need to calm myself and center my mind. I have been thinking about it forever and it seems like the Universe is telling me it's time to get to it.
I need to find a quiet space. And maybe try out those meditation apps tonight.
I am grateful for the acknowledgement that my journey has been a good one.
I am grateful that I have friends who are talking about meditating.
I am grateful for my ability to listen to the Universe when it's speaking.
I am grateful for my upcoming trip to Portland.
I am grateful that I can see how everything that has happened in my life has lead me here.
I am grateful that I have come a long way.
I am grateful that I can finally see how long that way has been and that I can appreciate it.
Wednesday, March 26, 2014
Monday, March 24, 2014
My Uncle Died Yesterday
My Uncle Dai Hing died yesterday. He had been in a nursing home for years and he had a wife and family who were carrying for him. My Uncle also raised my Dad for three years and was the whole reason my Dad moved out to California from Hawaii.
When we went to Hawaii last year to spread my Dad's ashes, I went to visit my Uncle in the nursing home. I really thought I was just going to pay homage to him and fulfill a family obligation to see my sick uncle. What happened was astounding and life-changing. He looked like my Dad. He talked to me in a way that was instructive and gentle, even though he didn't know who I was. I had always thought about my Dad in relationship to his parents, but I never thought about the influence that my Uncle had on him. I described this visit in a previous blog post as having my Dad back for an hour.
I couldn't figure out yesterday why I was feeling so melancholy. I just figured I was tired. I figured I needed a day to just be slow. And now that I'm looking out at the windows of the library where I'm writing, I can see that Monday's weather is matching up with yesterday's feelings. But I now realize that my reflective and frankly sad mood had something to do with my Uncle.
I don't know if I would go as far as to say that it's like losing my Dad all over again, but I feel like another part of him is gone.
I am grateful that I had that visit with Dai Hing last year.
I am grateful that our entire family took that trip to Hawaii together.
I am grateful that I allowed myself to be sad yesterday instead of fighting it.
I am grateful that I have the memories of my Dad and my Uncle to keep me company.
When we went to Hawaii last year to spread my Dad's ashes, I went to visit my Uncle in the nursing home. I really thought I was just going to pay homage to him and fulfill a family obligation to see my sick uncle. What happened was astounding and life-changing. He looked like my Dad. He talked to me in a way that was instructive and gentle, even though he didn't know who I was. I had always thought about my Dad in relationship to his parents, but I never thought about the influence that my Uncle had on him. I described this visit in a previous blog post as having my Dad back for an hour.
I couldn't figure out yesterday why I was feeling so melancholy. I just figured I was tired. I figured I needed a day to just be slow. And now that I'm looking out at the windows of the library where I'm writing, I can see that Monday's weather is matching up with yesterday's feelings. But I now realize that my reflective and frankly sad mood had something to do with my Uncle.
I don't know if I would go as far as to say that it's like losing my Dad all over again, but I feel like another part of him is gone.
I am grateful that I had that visit with Dai Hing last year.
I am grateful that our entire family took that trip to Hawaii together.
I am grateful that I allowed myself to be sad yesterday instead of fighting it.
I am grateful that I have the memories of my Dad and my Uncle to keep me company.
Sunday, March 23, 2014
On a Spiritual Path...
What does that even mean?
I live in LA and over the years have listened to so many of my friends and acquaintances talk about how they're "not religious, but spiritual." I even used to describe myself this way for years. Now, I don't really defend myself. If people want to think of me as religious, that's fine. If they want to have a deeper conversation about life, then great.
Diana Nyad said something incredible about atheism about a year ago on an Oprah show. "Just because I'm an atheist doesn't mean I'm not full of wonder." That has to be the best description of atheism I've ever heard. Here's a woman who has clearly communed with nature and felt the expanse and wonder of it. There's a concentration and a tuning out of everything, a testing of one's body's limits, that in another context could be seen as a spiritual sojourn or quest. Atheism does not mean closed off. And religious or spiritual does not mean blind or naive or uninformed. Actually, being native can be a wonderful thing. It can mean childlike and fresh and full of wonder.
But all of those things are catchphrases. To experience true naivety or wonder is an amazing thing. It was naivety that got me on a plane to New York at 24 with no money in my pocket (well $800, but that's not much and I spent 1/4 of it on a dinner my first night in town). Naivety is responsible for a great many adventures in my life.
I didn't know it at 24 or at 14 or at 30, but I have been on a journey for higher learning, higher understanding and higher consciousness my whole life. It's even bigger than my worldly ambitions to be a career writer. I do care more about my personal growth than my financial growth. Maybe I'm ready to finally come out of the closet about that.
I don't have ambition. I thought for years that I did. I thought that I was the most ambitious person I knew. But what I thought was ambition was really curiosity. I am endlessly curious about people, about life, about how we are the way we are. I want to have experiences and I don't want to let any part of my life go unloved or my curiosity go unexplored.
When I was young, that curiosity had to do with education and had to do with exploring the world outside of my upbringing. At an early age, I knew I wanted to move to New York. At an early age, I knew that I would get out of my small suburb. I really was trying to get out of a consciousness that I could only do so much based on my physical circumstances: where I was from, who I was born to, what the belief system around me was. I quickly did away with that.
Then as my world got bigger, my curiosity became about my talent. Exploring that talent and that gift for all that it's worth. Fortunately, my curiosities don't just go away. I don't just move on from one to another. They get compiled and added to the group. I discovered my talent for writing truly in college and expanded that into graduate school.
Then I became more concerned with life and with gaining experience I didn't feel I had. As I got older and more attractive, I became obsessed with sexuality. And not addicted, per se. I realize now that my curiosity was strong in whatever area I focused on. And when I started to focus in on pleasure, well that became a real aphrodisiac, if you will. As a young person in New York in my 20s, I had sex with strangers and I had sex with friends. I went to sex parties. I went to sexual bars. I talked about sex. I thought about sex and I read about it. I wrote about it. I connected with people through sex and found a real short-lived intimacy with some of these people. It was all of these things at once: real, short lived and intimate. None of those things were a contradiction.
And how sexuality lead me to intimacy and how intimacy lead me to myself and how my self lead to spirituality is really the journey of my life thus far. It's why my plays are alternately and collectively about identity, creativity, sexuality and exploration. My curiosity has opened me up to write about loss when I'm feeling loss. Or about fathers and sons when I'm thinking about my own relationship with my father. This journey has led me back to the place I started at.
I started writing as a way to interpret what I was seeing in the world. It was a way for me to digest what I was learning. It was a filter, a microscope, a telescope, binoculars, and a camera. Sometimes it was my naked eye.
I have been on a part of my journey for the past ten years which led me outside of myself. Some of that has been seeking approval outwardly. Some of that has been very dangerous and a threat to my naivety and my curiosity. But none of that ever went away, it just laid dormant and waited out the storm. But the effect of the storm is that it decimated everything and forced me to rebuild, to reevaluate and to restore.
The reason I say that now I realize that I am curious and not ambitious is that if I was ambitious I would have said yes to an agent ten years ago. I would have done everything in my power to climb the ladder of material success. Ambition is seen purely as positive and as drive. Curiosity in this instance was easily mistaken for lack of drive or laziness. Some of it was fear, and fear was the catalyst of my 30s. But I wanted to have experiences that would make me a deeper person and that is exactly what happened. I got exactly what I wanted. It took me to some dark places in my life. It filled me with doubt and depression and put me in harms way through my own relationships with people who were addicts.
I realize now that my curiosity is what fuels me. And it's an alternate fuel. It can have the same power as ambition. But while ambition is the straight path, curiosity is the scenic route. Ambition is the plane ride. Curiosity is the road trip. It can be longer, but it's fuller. It's more enriching. It's taking time to stop at the sights and read the signs. It's discovering a trail that's not in the guidebooks.
So I will still get to that destination: to being a relevant TV fiction writer. I will staff on a show and create my own work. I will be a writer of note. But the person I am, in the skin I am in, will be different than the youngster who just wanted those things for outside validation. I don't judge that, but I have always been seeking a fuller existence. And that is what is right for me. I believe that having a public presence is vital to living. We have to share our experiences. But how big that sphere is really is up to us. We can expand or contain that sphere based on fear, based on our own needs, based on our need to share.
All of that can be both misguided and ordained. I now understand the power of words. A lot of this journey was about understanding the power of my gift.
Years ago my friend Brian said to me, "Oh, you're still at it." Meaning writing. And I felt a lot of shame after he said that because I felt like he was staying that I hadn't fulfilled my promise. I heard him say, "Oh you're still at it." It took me a long time to get over that. And knowing Brian like I know him, I know he didn't intend it to come across as a core-shaking judgment. I took it on that way.
But yes, I will still be at it for the rest of my life. That's the idea. It's not a destination that I will reach and then put my feet up. I'm not done.
I'm still curious. I haven't lived a life of expanse yet. Not expense, but expanse. I have not taken these lessons and curiosities global. And I believe that's a part of my journey. If all of this prosperity and gain is just for me, then I don't think it will be mine. I don't think that's my deep purpose. The journey is more than that. My expanse has to benefit everyone. My material wealth has to have a purpose. My adventures to countries outside of the U.S. have to carry a greater resonance. My joy has to mean more than just what benefits me.
So yes, I am still at it. I am still curious. And that's what keeps me connected to the fresh soul who arrived here to explore. I might have more stamps on my passport, but I'm no less excited and curious as I was when I got my first one.
I am grateful for Super Soul Sunday's episode with Shirley Maclaine.
I am grateful for Oprah.
I am grateful for these words that seemed to explain so much in ways I have not been able to access.
I am grateful for a life well lived and that will continue for years to come.
I am grateful for my curiosity.
I am grateful for the opportunity to satisfy my curiosity even more.
I am grateful for the distinction between curiosity and ambition.
I am grateful for the understanding and the acceptance that comes with that distinction.
I am grateful for the joy that understanding and acceptance bring me.
I am grateful for the peace that comes from that joy.
I live in LA and over the years have listened to so many of my friends and acquaintances talk about how they're "not religious, but spiritual." I even used to describe myself this way for years. Now, I don't really defend myself. If people want to think of me as religious, that's fine. If they want to have a deeper conversation about life, then great.
Diana Nyad said something incredible about atheism about a year ago on an Oprah show. "Just because I'm an atheist doesn't mean I'm not full of wonder." That has to be the best description of atheism I've ever heard. Here's a woman who has clearly communed with nature and felt the expanse and wonder of it. There's a concentration and a tuning out of everything, a testing of one's body's limits, that in another context could be seen as a spiritual sojourn or quest. Atheism does not mean closed off. And religious or spiritual does not mean blind or naive or uninformed. Actually, being native can be a wonderful thing. It can mean childlike and fresh and full of wonder.
But all of those things are catchphrases. To experience true naivety or wonder is an amazing thing. It was naivety that got me on a plane to New York at 24 with no money in my pocket (well $800, but that's not much and I spent 1/4 of it on a dinner my first night in town). Naivety is responsible for a great many adventures in my life.
I didn't know it at 24 or at 14 or at 30, but I have been on a journey for higher learning, higher understanding and higher consciousness my whole life. It's even bigger than my worldly ambitions to be a career writer. I do care more about my personal growth than my financial growth. Maybe I'm ready to finally come out of the closet about that.
I don't have ambition. I thought for years that I did. I thought that I was the most ambitious person I knew. But what I thought was ambition was really curiosity. I am endlessly curious about people, about life, about how we are the way we are. I want to have experiences and I don't want to let any part of my life go unloved or my curiosity go unexplored.
When I was young, that curiosity had to do with education and had to do with exploring the world outside of my upbringing. At an early age, I knew I wanted to move to New York. At an early age, I knew that I would get out of my small suburb. I really was trying to get out of a consciousness that I could only do so much based on my physical circumstances: where I was from, who I was born to, what the belief system around me was. I quickly did away with that.
Then as my world got bigger, my curiosity became about my talent. Exploring that talent and that gift for all that it's worth. Fortunately, my curiosities don't just go away. I don't just move on from one to another. They get compiled and added to the group. I discovered my talent for writing truly in college and expanded that into graduate school.
Then I became more concerned with life and with gaining experience I didn't feel I had. As I got older and more attractive, I became obsessed with sexuality. And not addicted, per se. I realize now that my curiosity was strong in whatever area I focused on. And when I started to focus in on pleasure, well that became a real aphrodisiac, if you will. As a young person in New York in my 20s, I had sex with strangers and I had sex with friends. I went to sex parties. I went to sexual bars. I talked about sex. I thought about sex and I read about it. I wrote about it. I connected with people through sex and found a real short-lived intimacy with some of these people. It was all of these things at once: real, short lived and intimate. None of those things were a contradiction.
And how sexuality lead me to intimacy and how intimacy lead me to myself and how my self lead to spirituality is really the journey of my life thus far. It's why my plays are alternately and collectively about identity, creativity, sexuality and exploration. My curiosity has opened me up to write about loss when I'm feeling loss. Or about fathers and sons when I'm thinking about my own relationship with my father. This journey has led me back to the place I started at.
I started writing as a way to interpret what I was seeing in the world. It was a way for me to digest what I was learning. It was a filter, a microscope, a telescope, binoculars, and a camera. Sometimes it was my naked eye.
I have been on a part of my journey for the past ten years which led me outside of myself. Some of that has been seeking approval outwardly. Some of that has been very dangerous and a threat to my naivety and my curiosity. But none of that ever went away, it just laid dormant and waited out the storm. But the effect of the storm is that it decimated everything and forced me to rebuild, to reevaluate and to restore.
The reason I say that now I realize that I am curious and not ambitious is that if I was ambitious I would have said yes to an agent ten years ago. I would have done everything in my power to climb the ladder of material success. Ambition is seen purely as positive and as drive. Curiosity in this instance was easily mistaken for lack of drive or laziness. Some of it was fear, and fear was the catalyst of my 30s. But I wanted to have experiences that would make me a deeper person and that is exactly what happened. I got exactly what I wanted. It took me to some dark places in my life. It filled me with doubt and depression and put me in harms way through my own relationships with people who were addicts.
I realize now that my curiosity is what fuels me. And it's an alternate fuel. It can have the same power as ambition. But while ambition is the straight path, curiosity is the scenic route. Ambition is the plane ride. Curiosity is the road trip. It can be longer, but it's fuller. It's more enriching. It's taking time to stop at the sights and read the signs. It's discovering a trail that's not in the guidebooks.
So I will still get to that destination: to being a relevant TV fiction writer. I will staff on a show and create my own work. I will be a writer of note. But the person I am, in the skin I am in, will be different than the youngster who just wanted those things for outside validation. I don't judge that, but I have always been seeking a fuller existence. And that is what is right for me. I believe that having a public presence is vital to living. We have to share our experiences. But how big that sphere is really is up to us. We can expand or contain that sphere based on fear, based on our own needs, based on our need to share.
All of that can be both misguided and ordained. I now understand the power of words. A lot of this journey was about understanding the power of my gift.
Years ago my friend Brian said to me, "Oh, you're still at it." Meaning writing. And I felt a lot of shame after he said that because I felt like he was staying that I hadn't fulfilled my promise. I heard him say, "Oh you're still at it." It took me a long time to get over that. And knowing Brian like I know him, I know he didn't intend it to come across as a core-shaking judgment. I took it on that way.
But yes, I will still be at it for the rest of my life. That's the idea. It's not a destination that I will reach and then put my feet up. I'm not done.
I'm still curious. I haven't lived a life of expanse yet. Not expense, but expanse. I have not taken these lessons and curiosities global. And I believe that's a part of my journey. If all of this prosperity and gain is just for me, then I don't think it will be mine. I don't think that's my deep purpose. The journey is more than that. My expanse has to benefit everyone. My material wealth has to have a purpose. My adventures to countries outside of the U.S. have to carry a greater resonance. My joy has to mean more than just what benefits me.
So yes, I am still at it. I am still curious. And that's what keeps me connected to the fresh soul who arrived here to explore. I might have more stamps on my passport, but I'm no less excited and curious as I was when I got my first one.
I am grateful for Super Soul Sunday's episode with Shirley Maclaine.
I am grateful for Oprah.
I am grateful for these words that seemed to explain so much in ways I have not been able to access.
I am grateful for a life well lived and that will continue for years to come.
I am grateful for my curiosity.
I am grateful for the opportunity to satisfy my curiosity even more.
I am grateful for the distinction between curiosity and ambition.
I am grateful for the understanding and the acceptance that comes with that distinction.
I am grateful for the joy that understanding and acceptance bring me.
I am grateful for the peace that comes from that joy.
Thursday, March 20, 2014
Food and Memories
Tonight I was at the local Mexican supermarket in my neighborhood…
Seeing the brown faces at the deli
Or the grandmother's picking out produce
Or the smells coming from the carneceria
made me think of my Grandmother.
So I grabbed an apple turnover from the paneceria,
brought it home
and now I am enjoying it with my hot tea.
(I gave up coffee three years ago)
It's almost like my Grandmother's old ritual
of sitting down at 9:30 or 10 at night
and having a little pan dulce
with her cafecito.
That's pretty much the extent of my Spanish.
Food.
And food is pretty much my entry into
a lot of experiences.
I noticed that there's a ramen festival in San Gabriel
next weekend.
That's something my Dad would have taken me
to.
Everytime something tastes delicious I think of him.
He loved the stories of my food adventures:
the orange creme angel hair in Florence,
the wild boar ragu,
wines,
sushi,
anything adventurous and exotic. My Dad loved to hear about it all.
And my Grandmother would take us to the market
and we would watch the tortillas being made by machine.
My Dad would take us to really stinky Chinese or Korean
markets.
Or we would go to the Chinese deli and eat something that
was chock full of sodium.
I remember the looks I would give him
when he was sick
and he dragged me to the Asian market
so he could get jok, a rice porridge,
or lau lay with butterfish and pork.
It all had too much salt in it,
and he had to watch his salt
because he was dying.
But he was really dying from hearing me
talk about all the foods he couldn't eat.
But he didn't care.
He didn't want to live
in a tasteless world.
So if he was digging himself
into an early grave, he was
happy to hold the shovel.
I wish he had just told me earlier,
"Listen, I don't want to live, so
let's just go out eating whatever
the fuck I want to."
I wish now we could have had some
crazy extravagant meals.
It would have been fun to take him out
and show him a few things I knew
about eating.
I remember the last lunch we had out.
We met up with his friends at a steak house
in Van Nuys called The Sherman Room.
He ate all the steak, fries and ketchup he
could handle.
I looked the other way.
I wish I had been more permissive.
Food was what he loved.
And I kept restricting him from it
because I thought it was keeping him
alive.
I kept restricting love.
How ironic because that's
what he did with me
my whole life.
I guess I learned from the master.
My Grandmother never kept any indulgence
from me.
Her tamales were the best.
We haven't made them in years,
since my Dad got sick.
I think we need to make them again this Christmas.
I miss them both.
It's hard.
To have those memories
and not to continue to share
with them,
or create new ones.
I am grateful for those memories.
I am grateful for the traditions that have been passed on.
I am grateful for my ability to cook.
I am grateful that I have a niece and two nephews to pass on those traditions to.
Seeing the brown faces at the deli
Or the grandmother's picking out produce
Or the smells coming from the carneceria
made me think of my Grandmother.
So I grabbed an apple turnover from the paneceria,
brought it home
and now I am enjoying it with my hot tea.
(I gave up coffee three years ago)
It's almost like my Grandmother's old ritual
of sitting down at 9:30 or 10 at night
and having a little pan dulce
with her cafecito.
That's pretty much the extent of my Spanish.
Food.
And food is pretty much my entry into
a lot of experiences.
I noticed that there's a ramen festival in San Gabriel
next weekend.
That's something my Dad would have taken me
to.
Everytime something tastes delicious I think of him.
He loved the stories of my food adventures:
the orange creme angel hair in Florence,
the wild boar ragu,
wines,
sushi,
anything adventurous and exotic. My Dad loved to hear about it all.
And my Grandmother would take us to the market
and we would watch the tortillas being made by machine.
My Dad would take us to really stinky Chinese or Korean
markets.
Or we would go to the Chinese deli and eat something that
was chock full of sodium.
I remember the looks I would give him
when he was sick
and he dragged me to the Asian market
so he could get jok, a rice porridge,
or lau lay with butterfish and pork.
It all had too much salt in it,
and he had to watch his salt
because he was dying.
But he was really dying from hearing me
talk about all the foods he couldn't eat.
But he didn't care.
He didn't want to live
in a tasteless world.
So if he was digging himself
into an early grave, he was
happy to hold the shovel.
I wish he had just told me earlier,
"Listen, I don't want to live, so
let's just go out eating whatever
the fuck I want to."
I wish now we could have had some
crazy extravagant meals.
It would have been fun to take him out
and show him a few things I knew
about eating.
I remember the last lunch we had out.
We met up with his friends at a steak house
in Van Nuys called The Sherman Room.
He ate all the steak, fries and ketchup he
could handle.
I looked the other way.
I wish I had been more permissive.
Food was what he loved.
And I kept restricting him from it
because I thought it was keeping him
alive.
I kept restricting love.
How ironic because that's
what he did with me
my whole life.
I guess I learned from the master.
My Grandmother never kept any indulgence
from me.
Her tamales were the best.
We haven't made them in years,
since my Dad got sick.
I think we need to make them again this Christmas.
I miss them both.
It's hard.
To have those memories
and not to continue to share
with them,
or create new ones.
I am grateful for those memories.
I am grateful for the traditions that have been passed on.
I am grateful for my ability to cook.
I am grateful that I have a niece and two nephews to pass on those traditions to.
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