This past week, I was asked to participate in a Read-a-Thon for a local elementary school. I was there with other “community leaders”, and I was the only one who hadn’t been a part of that program before- I was the only one who didn’t show up in a funny hat or overalls. I had to rely on my actual reading skills alone. It was an absolute joy to be in a grade-school library; as I’ve mentioned before, the library was always my place of solace as a kid and there are SO many cool new kids books to read.

I got there at 8:30 AM, but didn’t start my readings until 9, so I chatted with all the other readers. There were local writers, politicians, librarians, teachers, and business folk, everyone yawning and looking very serious in their funny hats. I was given my assignment, and allowed to choose a book. I was to read to two third-grade classes, and then a mixed-grade learning disabled class. I was told that I could read the same book to everyone. So I chose a mystery about some missing vegetables:

I went into my first classroom at 9 AM, book in hand, and was instantly enveloped with third-graders who were screaming “FRONT ROW SEATS! FRONT ROW SEATS!”, meaning they were vying for the spot on the ground directly in front of my chair. So I cleared my throat and started to read, doing all sorts of voices and generally really enjoying myself. I reached the end, closed the book, smiled up at the kids, and realized something was off. I had CLEARLY done something wrong, forgotten something deep and meaningful. The kids were staring blankly up at me, the teacher looking down her nose, and so I announced, “Well, thanks for having-” “Would you mind,” the teacher interrupted, “showing us the PICTURES?” Duh. I had basically read myself a story and not shown all the little chickens at my feet the pictures, which really is far more important than the story. So I went through it again, this time turning the book around as I read each page. One of the kids asked dismissively, “Why didn’t we do this the FIRST time?” I said, “That is a great question. Anyway…” I escaped out into the hall with a couple of minutes to kill, and was confronted with the latest third-grade art projects.

This was an art project for Martin Luther King Jr. Day. The kids made cut-outs of his face, and then wrote a little essay on him:

Sadly, you can’t read the best part of this essay. Where it reads “As a young boy he liked to” the kid answered “read big words”. That’s awesome. Of all the things MLK Jr did, he’s being remembered as someone who liked to read big words when he was a kid.

There were two other art projects as I walked down the hallway, one surrounding a famous work, another made of cutouts:

I managed to get through the next two readings with much more success. The mixed class was challenging- there were teenaged kids in there who just stared at me, not responding, as I unraveled the mystery of the missing lettuce. It was my last class, and as I made my way back to the library to drop off my book, I saw a big drawing all on its own at the end of the hall:

I know just how that kid feels.

I don’t know if I’ll be here a year from now, but if I am, I hope they invite me back.

Often, when I eat lunch at work, my stomach is so twisted into knots that I basically just push my way through and hope the eating is done quickly. It’s not that I’m curing cancer or saving lives here, but I do feel a fair amount of pressure. Particularly today, after staring at the ceiling during four of the eight hours I was hoping to sleep, and when I have the once yearly- ONCE YEARLY- meeting with my Advisory Board. I’m distracted and spacy from no sleep, and I’m doing my best to pull myself together. I got an incredible donation in the mail today from a local business, and I’m having a hard time finding the joy in that good news- it’s so fuzzy in my brain right now. I’m also starting to lose hope that I will be able to find the funding to sustain my organization. Theatre here is almost dead; if my organization goes away, so does all the networking for the visual artists. I’m a little broken-hearted today. Usually I find great solace that people are talking about the issues facing the arts; usually, just that the meeting today is happening is enough to keep me afloat. And tomorrow, we launch a new program that I am so deeply proud of. And yet, all I want to do is curl up in the 60-degree sunshine and take a nap.

I’ve noticed a phenomenon in my recent life: when you are soft of body, as I am rather right now, people mistake you for being soft of spirit. It’s a dangerous mistake that I see happening, even in those close to me who haven’t known me any other way. It makes me feel less close to all of them. When people who love you have no real concept of your depth, of your capabilities, you almost resent them, and you long to be understood.

I’ve been missing New York so much it hurts, down deep below my stomach. I don’t miss many of my friends from there, but I do miss my family, and I miss the roads and the potholes and the bridges and the electricity in the air.

My meeting is in two hours. And then I may have to go back to bed.

I had the extraordinary experience this week of working as a writer, a singer, and an arts advocate. Even more extraordinary was that I was fully capable in all three arenas- I wasn’t full of shit on any three accounts, and that is a wonderful feeling. So often when I talk, about politics, about music, about relationships- anything meaningful to me- I always have this haunting feeling that I actually don’t know nearly enough to talk about anything at all. I have the passion and the conviction but not nearly enough information… and yet still I spout, and although sometimes I simply cannot keep quiet, the whole time I understand that I’ll never really know enough and it becomes a humbling situation very quickly. Maybe it’s because I get very tired listening to people who believe they are the foremost authority on any subject, or people who dismiss or make broad statements based on very little facts, and I just can’t bear to be one of those people. But most times when I open my mouth, I know that I could have done more research.

Not this week.

This week I wrote an article that cracked me up, I sang at an event where there were a few moments when I utterly kicked ass, and I opened the eyes of several possible investors who didn’t really know the state of the arts in our valley. And not once was I full of shit. Not once was I speaking out of turn, or with bad information; not once was I underprepared, or plain old dumb. I felt like I was actually *me*, and those moments are so rare.

Also, I stayed at a resort all weekend, and after our second show last night, I drew a hot bath, drank a glass of champagne, lasted as long as I could in the deep, heated water, and then climbed naked into the kind of king-sized bed I used to dream of when I was young- it was like the cloud that Zeus pulls over himself in Fantasia when he’s ready to rest, vast and fluffy, white and clean and enveloping. It was bliss.

I’m thankful for this past week and weekend. I’m thankful for my gifts, which when I use them, are rich and giving and make me feel the only contentment I know. I’m thankful for Cole Porter and Irving Berlin. I’m thankful that I am a musician, that I am a singer, and that I’m not a terrible person. I’m thankful that I’ve been reminded that I’m a singer, and I’m thankful that my voice is still here and as strong as ever. I’m thankful for the life that beckons.

I got home from work after 8 PM and poured myself a glass of water and went to put on my jammies and in the thirty seconds it took for me to walk into my bedroom and open a drawer, my cat jumped up on the table, knocked over the water onto the work I’d brought home and then watched as the glass fell off the table and shattered. I keep calling him an *asshole* but I don’t think he’s noticed.

I’m still looking for a car.

In the time I’ve been single, I could have gotten an undergrad degree. Or two. “Single”, though, is a very relative term, since I consider myself single for four years in that I haven’t been in love for four years. I just wrote a piece for my local paper about being single here in wine country, and I think it’s pretty funny, but it’s hard to tell. My mom was editing it, and forced me from the general to the specific (“it’s funnier if YOU are pathetic, rather than the situation being pathetic”). It was actually pretty cathartic, to come out and say, not only am I single, but man, ya’ll are a bunch of LOSERS! Except I don’t mean that, either. I also managed to write this 1500 word article without directly insulting anyone I’ve dated since moving here. Sometimes the facts speak for themselves.

I’ve lived a lifetime of pearls before swine, and apologizing for any wails of despair, and wondering (briefly) if particular choices were good or bad. But lately… lately, I just don’t think about it too much. I feel very done with apologizing for anything, or second-guessing any of my actions. I also feel very done with looking for a god in the mere mortals who surround me. Really, it’s laughable, some of the men I’ve met in this valley, and some I’ve met all over the world. I’ve latched on to the two or three traits that seemed bearable and promptly forgotten about everything else, even if just for an hour or two of remebering what affection and intimacy feels like. But I also know that my idea of what affection and intimacy feel like is utterly warped. I don’t want what I’ve already had; I want something totally different.

And so I’m not so much dating right now. Actively, in fact- actively not. I know, in the well of my heart, that he’s not in Napa, and that I’ve yet to meet him, so until that time, I hope to keep my pearls to myself.

In years past, the “holiday” coming up next Monday was a fluorescent marker, an obnoxious road sign, a yellow flag on the playing field of my love life. One year single, two years single, three… But this year, it feels like the nothingness it actually is, the meaningless. I have loved, and I’ve loved well, and I don’t love right now. What I am doing is singing, writing, and being of service for a living. My family feels a million miles away, and my work is covered with water and cat hair, but, well. I really can’t complain.