“Each time I feel myself slowing down, losing vitality and strength, I am terrified that I will be drawn like a magnet back down those dark stairs and long halls to that awful time and place and self. I am still having smaller depression that typically respond to simple alternations in medication. I have good days and bad days. Really shitty things happen. I cry and curse in sadness, pain, and frustration. I get so mad I want to throw things. I get discouraged and demoralized. But it’s not depression. It doesn’t even come close.” – Martha Manning 

This is the quote that is guiding me now.

I can feel a healthy sadness for a tragic loss. Feeling empathy for how deep the pain must be cutting others does not mean I need to travel to those depths myself.  To have five month old twins and be killed by an illness is tragic. How it must be affecting all those involved is profoundly sad to think about. I know a different shade of that illness so my understanding may run closer to the surface. I send them strength.

Just found out someone I knew from high school killed herself two days ago. She had 5 month old twins and postpartum psychosis as her gift with purchase.

I had 12th grade British Literature with her. I spent the time making jokes and she spent it laughing and actually learning what we were supposed to.

I am thinking about her, her friends, and her precious family. I am also being selfish (in a necessary way) and doing everything I can to protect myself. It seems I know of more losses through suicide than most. Though maybe it is like a car. Do more people drive Subaru Forresters or does it just seem that way because I have one?

This loss is not about me and I will focus on remembering that and sending comfort to those who are affected.

Let’s let any stigma lift so those who need help can get it as soon as possible.

Showed up for my ECT appointment today and the sign outside said These doors are electronically controlled, and I thought, so are the people inside. Shock treatments #20 is about to begin and I couldn’t be happier. I have treatments 1-19 to thank for that. The nurse came to start my IV and I tried to figure out where I knew him from. I realized it was from my stay at the psych hospital last year. I felt like I was at a cocktail party for the mentally ill, trying to place why a fellow guest looked familiar to me. Today, as part of my test I had to name as many words as I could, beginning with the letter “B.” I decided to do it Scategories style, giving myself extra points for two or three word phrases. I was pretty impressed when I came up with buggy baby bumpers. Have a shocktastic Thursday.

“Children know something that most people have forgotten.Children possess a fascination with their everyday existence that is very special and would be very helpful to adults if they could learn to understand and respect it” -Keith Haring

My improv thoughts from a few years back:

I did the most awesome two-person improv set last night. Characters I’ve never done before, I don’t do characters, but this time I played a slew of characters including an insanely happy pirate. I had object work that didn’t feel like object work. It felt so real, not just me pretending to paint a scene for the audience, but like I was actually doing it right there in the moment. We didn’t second guess each other once. We did these scenes with these two guys; we were a construction crew superhero duo – Sick Foreman and Nick Jackhammer, creating them totally together, totally in sync. We got so excited by everything the other person was doing. It felt like play. And it was, it was just an afternoon of playing with my three year-old son and it was better than anything I’ve ever done on stage.

Because improvising with a three year-old is freeing. Any bad habit I might try to get into on stage, just isn’t gonna fly here.

Trying to force my idea in the scene? What, and get into a pissing contest with a three year-old? That’s ridiculous. Come to think of it getting into a pissing contest with another adult improviser is pretty ridiculous too.

Either of us having fear that the other person isn’t going to like our idea? Who cares about that when we’re just having fun playing with each other? Oh wait, isn’t that what I’m doing on stage too, and if it’s not then why the heck am I up there?

Just standing there as a talking head?. Have you ever worked with a three year old? You move all the time. You can’t play pirates by just standing there talking about cool pirate things. You jump off the couch and dive for the treasure together. That’s part of what makes it real and so much fun for them. And I’m pretty sure I’ve been told the same thing about what that does for an audience at a show.

Depth of emotion? A three year old can cry about his chips falling on the floor one moment, and laugh about mine falling on the floor the next. They don’t think ”How should I feel here?” They just feel.

So why don’t we do all these things consistently on stage? (Well at least I don’t. You, I’m sure are awesome.)

Because we stopped letting ourselves be three when we turned four.

And whether it was at four or seven or ten we started putting judgment into our play time.

I was at a child’s birthday party recently. All the kids were two or three, except for these two delightful eight- year-olds. All the kids went around in the circle and said their name and their favorite food. Then it got to the eight-year-olds and one after the other they both said “I don’t know.”

Of course they know what foods they favor, but in this moment they thought there could be a wrong answer to this question – a wrong answer to a question about their personal preferences. They were afraid their answer would be stupid, or boring. They we’re afraid it would be judged. And I imagine if the adults in the circle had to answer, they would have all panicked, over thought, worried like crazy.

What are we doing to ourselves? It shouldn’t be this hard

When I play with my son it’s fun for me in a different, maybe even better way than for him because I’m a thirty-two year-old playing like a little kid. And really that is what improv is all about – Playing like a three-year-old with all the life experience of an adult.

Now if I can just do it on stage.

My freshman year of college was the first time I was away from home for the High Holidays. I had the pleasure of spending Rosh Hashanah with my amazing Chicago family. They are just delightful and I loved playing the role of the cool college cousin. I’m pretty sure they were unaware that this was the role I was playing, but that really didn’t stop me.

Yom Kippur took place in the middle of the week though, so instead of going back to Chicago, I stayed on campus. I was put with a local host family and was pretty psyched about this holiday adventure. It seemed so college-y. I went to the grocery store and bought a plant to bring them. This plant showed that I actually paid attention when my parents taught me how to be a good dinner guest.

Yom Kippur began hours after the O.J. verdict was announced. I was picked up by members of the host family and before they drove away, the wife asked. “So do you think he was innocent or guilty?”

And a L’Shana Tova to you.

I told her I thought he was guilty. I am pretty sure if I had answered innocent I would have been asked to get out of the car and return to my dorm room. The ride to the house was a non-stop discussion led by the wife about how stupid Kato Kaelin is and how Marcia Clarke was proof women could be lawyers, but don’t have what it takes to be in the courtroom. She paused now and then for me to say the expected ”Uh-huh.”

We got to the house and I proudly gave my plant to woman who opened the door. She threw it on a stack of mail as she kept smoking away on her cigarette. I don’t know where I was, but it was not a Yom Kippur dinner, at least not in the world I was raised.

I was expecting a long table, nicely set. This would not be the case. It was just the four of us and we sat at a kitchen table eating dried out beef and listening to the wife share her exact same OJ rant.

And then the worst thing possible happened. The dried up beef meal was over and that was it. There was no dessert. Everything to this point was ridiculous and beyond understanding. But no dessert, that is unacceptable and, to be frank, very un-Jewish.

I helped clear the plates, because again, that is how I was raised in my world of This is How the Holiday Should Go.

The family took me to services and back to my dorm. And during this time of repentance and forgiveness I thought about this evening and what really matters. Then I picked up the phone and called my mom and I mocked everything that had just happened. Because, much to my enjoyment, that is how I was raised.

The Sweetest New Year

In the past 15 years I have had many difficult Rosh Hashanahs. Depression, suicidal thought, all the stuff that says “Yay, Happy New Year! Let’s celebrate.” My life is affected this time of year in a way that seems beyond coincidence. I have found it easy to focus on this pattern. It is easier to see the shit then the rainbows (yet another magnet from my anti-inspirational quote line.)

Yet if any holiday should overwhelm me with joy and hope, it is this one. Six years ago on Rosh Hashanah I had the best day of my entire life. I gave birth to a 5lb ball of serotonin. My life has been touched by this singular day with goodness at every poop-filled (from dirty diapers to potty humor) turn.

As the new year’s honey was about to flow my water broke, this is most likely the most disgusting image I can possibly create. We headed to the hospital and met our delivery nurse, who, while I was pushing, would find herself distracted, asking my Veterinarian husband questions about her cat’s tumor. I don’t ask for a lot of attention in life, but when my child is crowning, it seems like a good time to focus on my down belowness. He was delivered with ease nonetheless and has been a pretty low maintenance guy ever since. Like a puppy, he is cuddly, provides laughs, and is consumed with thoughts of treats.

We celebrated in the hospital with apples and honey and every year that’s what I hope will be the image I think of when I think of Rosh Hashanah.

I am more shades of lucky then a sexually frustrated woman’s bookshelf has shades of grey and I will try and make that my focus. My rainbow to shit ratio is pretty darn good and when it comes to my son’s rainbow percentage, it’s so high it could be a national merit semi-finalist.

Much of me thought I would not make it to his sixth birthday. When I felt the absolute worst though, I was still blessed with this ever-present rainbow and I knew taking my life would forever take away part of its color.

Tomorrow this Star Wars-loving, fun-filled rainbow will be six and I cannot wait to celebrate.

Shehecheyanu.

To perform improv successfully, it helps to not be a moron. (I imagine the same is true for life in general, but improv is a smaller topic to cover. Well, unless you’re an improviser and then, at least at some point, you are convinced improv is even bigger than life.)

Back to the whole improv/not being a moron thing. In improv it is important to know specifics about as many topics and life experiences as you possibly can. This alone will not make you a good improviser, but not having this skill limits you. A lot.

When I do workshops or lectures for an older crowd I often talk about how comedy is looked at as a young person’s art, but how older people are actually at more of an advantage. When you have experienced more in life you have more to offer.

There are many topics and life experiences I know a lot about and then there are things I have three general references for and I’m out.

“Oh, did someone say science? I have a sweet Avogadro’s number joke I have been dying to try out.”

By the way, having a sweet joke you want to try out is a really bad way to do improv. Improv is not about jokes. But I have digressed, a lot. Here’s what I basically want to say.

I know jackshit about art.

I can make some Georgia O’Keeffe vagina painting references and some Jackson Pollock splatter paint remarks, and then I got nothing.

The only other art thing I could tell you about is Keith Haring. I love Keith Haring so hard. The bright colors and simple shapes he used. The love and respect he had for both art itself and his audience. To him anything could be a canvas and art should be accessible to anyone. 

In high school I bought myself a Keith Haring daily planner. Like my text books, I probably stopped using the planner a week after I got it but I still brought it to class and flipped through it.

The planner was awesome. I learned all about Haring and his work. Also it included all sorts of random holidays, like Boxing Day, so I felt super superior to my friends who knew nothing about what the English did on December 26th.

After my first taste of Haring through this kickass planner, I was in love. I started buying all sorts of stuff with Haring art. For my wedding, my sister gave us a huge Haring poster beautifully framed. Besides pictures of my kid, it is the most happy thing to look at in my house.

In May I went to New York and it happened that there was a Haring exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum of Art at the same time. It was the best museum experience I have ever had in my entire life, and that includes walking through the stinky ear at the Cleveland Health Museum.

This New York trip took place pretty shortly after I started feeling better and that added a whole other layer to the experience. After I left the museum, I e-mailed a friend and told her “Today was amazing. I was reminded of my ability to feel in so many different and wonderful ways. All my expectations were exceeded and I cried with joy.”

That is what this exhibit did for me.

And now when I am doing an improv show and someone shouts out “art” as a suggestion, I don’t need to go with my surefire pointillism reference. No, I can just tap into what I felt that day and goodness will happen. (Or the scene might suck, but at least I won’t feel like a hack.)

Before I left the museum I stopped at the gift shop. It was a multiple orgasm experience for any fan of Haring’s. After looking at everything, seven times, I bought myself his journals. Keith Haring died in February of 1990, way too young, from AIDS. His final entry was written on September 22, 1989. In it he was talking about the leaning tower of Pisa. Haring’s last line was “Every time you look at it, it makes you smile.”

On that same September day, 17 years later, I would give birth to my son. And every day since has been like looking at the leaning tower of Pisa.

“Let me see your beauty when the witnesses are gone”
-Leonard Cohen

This is the challenge I have given myself for the new year. I will treat those closest to me with the utmost kindness whether I am around others or in private.

That and enter some sort of competitive eating contest.

I can already see the betterness.