peace

Posted April 23rd, 2005 by Michelle

I am writing from an internet cafe in Mendocino, California.

It is stunning up here, clouds and ocean and bluffs and extrememly animated coffee store workers even when it’s not quite 8 AM. I’m here with my mom, who is as much in need for this sort of weekend as I am; indeed, she is currently in hour 2 of her hot stone massage. I already had mine.

I took a walk this morning and the ocean breeze was making the tiny hole in my paper cup of coffee sing.

More soon… maybe.

transportal

Posted April 18th, 2005 by Michelle

Hi!

My name is “thisismysupercutenewJetta!”. Or at least I think it is- it’s what my driver says all the time around me. For a while I thought maybe my name was Lucy, because she says that name all the time too, but that name makes her weepy and I know for a fact that I make her happy.

See?

She parks me so I can see all the pretty flowers she’s been planting lately. I MUST make her happy.

We took a little trip on Saturday to somewhere called “sonoma” where she worked until almost 1 in the morning. I had to be very illuminating that night cuz she was super tired. She was all dressed up, working something called an “auction”. She apparently wasn’t just working; she came back to me with a huge armload of something that she said she won for her brother Sean at the auction. But I’m not allowed to say what it was until May 11th.

We also worked on Friday night, in this same sonoma place, at a winery up in the hills. I’d never seen anything like it!

I’m really glad that this blonde girl is my driver. I don’t know where I was born, but I spent months at the dealership where creepy guys took strange people for drives with me. When this girl walked by me the first time, I was yelling “PICK ME! PICK ME!” but of course she drove the Beetle first. They always do. But then I saw her frowing at a page of numbers, and she looked back at me fondly, and I knew she was the one for me.

She warms me up in the morning, and yesterday she even rubbed off all the icky bugs that were splattered on my headlights. I don’t know why she works so much. We had so much fun on Sunday, which is the only day she didn’t work. We went and picked up a bunch of pretty flowers (and she put sheets down on my backseat so I wouldn’t get dirty- see? She loves me!) and I hung out with her while she gardened all afternoon.

Sometimes at work I see her peek out her second-story windows to make sure I’m okay. I think what she really wants to do is take a long, long drive, far, far away. She knows that I’d take care of her if she did.

I hear her talking to someone in the house, but I never see who she’s talking to. She did say, however, that someone named “Fezzik” had a new nap place.

I think this “Fezzik” person is weird.

Michelle’s going to bed soon, so I better rest, too, so I can safely deliver her to work in the morning. Maybe tomorrow will be the day that we finally go for that long, long drive. But, if not, that’s okay. I’m patient. We’ll get there.

Lucy

Posted April 15th, 2005 by Michelle

My dear sweet little newborn,

You do not yet know that I exist. I’m your aunt, your dad’s little sister, and even if I was there your fuzzy baby eyes wouldn’t be able to figure out that I have the same hands, lips, and goofy smile as your dad. And, maybe, as you. But I think about you all the time, and I almost feel these little wisps, bright-white tendrils of me seeking out you, even now as you stare at the ceiling from your crib, even from 3000 miles away, I seek you. You are the first girl-child born to this family since I came on the scene, and I’m stupid with longing to hang out with you. I’ve only seen two pictures of you, once of which you look pretty weird cuz you are yawning, and even grown-ups look weird when they yawn. But your simple existence makes me long all the more to figure out my own life and find a way to give you little cousins. You will be the steward of the next generation of Williams and I can’t wait to be there, then, and now.

I have this very busy life, Lucy, that pulls me in a hundred different directions every single day. But since you came on the scene, I just don’t care quite as much. I’m still going through the motions but until I can come out there and see your mom and dad and your other uncles and aunts, I’ll just be biding my time. You are an anchor unlike anything us younger Williams kids know. And I can’t wait to know you.

Love,

Aunt Michelle

lost at home

Posted April 9th, 2005 by Michelle

I hardly know what it is I want to explore in tonight’s post. Is it the new car I might be buying tomorrow? Is it the death of a friend? Is it my relationship with my own body? Is it the evolution of my garden? Perhaps aching loneliness, wistful feelings about family, wishing I had had any semblance of normalcy as a child, my wishes for the future, the fact that I’ve sobbed about four times in the last week after not having anything to cry about for months? Really, I could wax on about any of this. And when a movie like “13 Going on 30” makes me bawl and hold my face in my hands, I realize I might be a little delicate right now.

Almost two years ago… scratch that, it was almost three years ago, I got an email from Tessa. At the time, Tessa and Ian were just, y’know, *dating*, and little Peanut was still wandering around on the 4th Mormon heaven wondering when she’d get a chance to come back to earth. This is what the email said:

“You know, it’s funny, the other day I described to Ian this image I keep
having: He and I drive to see you, very somewhere else, like deep woods
Maine or the mesas of Western Colorado, and you come out of your cool,
simple, beautiful house and you are radiant. Living another life. And
deeply satisfied.”

I think of this email all the time. It was written on August 8th, 2002. So long ago, and in such a different time, that I had to search my “friends” email folder rather than my “family” folder to find it.

I suppose that I have to remind myself that it’s the journey to that simple, beautiful house, as well as the simple existence of it, that should propel me to not despair. But until I follow that path, to deep woods Maine or Colorado or Spain or Africa or maybe right where I am, I will be neither radiant nor deeply satisfied. But the path is obfuscated by great wine and renown and the honeysuckle climbing over my garden wall.

running away

Posted March 29th, 2005 by Michelle

Today at work at about 1:30 in the afternoon I realized there was something terribly wrong with me. I was utterly exhausted, yawning every few minutes, and making stupid mistakes like meaning to forward an email but replying to it instead, with what might be considered an inappropriate reply. For instance, a very sweet girl emailed me today from one of the high schools. Apparently she is “Miss” something or other in this valley, as in, a pageant winner, and she has decided that her platform is “A Little Art is Not Enough”. I mean, I’m giggling about it right now. I sent it to my program manager, and we went into fits of giggles impersonating this sweet girl. “Um, hi, so I think that a little art isn’t enough, in fact, maybe lots of art isn’t enough, and, plus, World Peace.” But unfortunately, I sent my first response, intended for my program manager, right back to this very sweet and sincere girl-almost-woman who really wants to help out in our arts ed program. When you work at a struggling non-profit, you really need the chance to laugh whenever possible, so while we will work with this enterprising young woman, we will still giggle at her platform’s expense.

Anyway, when I started making mistakes like that, I realized something was really wrong, and I couldn’t stop pushing my keyboard out of the way and laying my head down on my desk. On Easter, I had a long talk with Tessa about running. I was like, “Why does this hurt so much?” and she basically said, “Quit being a fool!” although she said it much more gently and with terrific advice. Turns out beginning runners should run twice, three times a week at best, and I’ve been doing six times a week plus working out. Uber, uber stupid. The last time I put my head on my desk, I lifted it and checked out runnersworld.com and looked up all the tips for beginning runners. Dear Tess was quite right. I had skipped my morning run yesterday, but went on it today, thinking that one day might vastly improve my performance, but of course, instead of running I went to the gym. Basically, today, my body decided it had had ENOUGH ALREADY, and it shut down. At 2 PM I turned off my computer, came home, went to bed, and woke up at 6, still exhausted, but with a little more clarity. Tomorrow, I shall do nothing active, and perhaps- maybe- go for a walk on Thursday. It’s difficult when the only way to keep self-loathing at bay is to get out and run away from it.

I’ll admit in a sad sort of way that when I am out on the road at 6:45 PM, or on the treadmill, or doing my third set of reps, what inspires me is that I will be able to serve everyone in Africa so much better if I’m strong. I think about Peace Corps, and/or New York, every single day. I don’t know how soon I’ll finally be able to do either, and when I finally do Peace Corps, I don’t know if I’ll end up in Africa. But the idea of being strong, and being able to run if I have to, truly motivates me to keep on going. That dream, that passion is no less strong than it was two years ago when I stayed up ’til four AM completing my application. Indeed, I feel like the skills I’m learning right now will only make me a stronger Peace Corps candidate, and a stronger candidate still when I return for whatever I choose to do next. I don’t know when any of this will happen, but I guarantee it will.

But, for now, I’m going to go back to bed.

sickened

Posted March 22nd, 2005 by Michelle

One of the most truthful lines in the movie “Hotel Rwanda” was when a fuzzy-faced Joaquin Phoenix says “I think people will watch this footage and say, ‘oh, that’s terrible’, and go back to eating their dinner.” Phoenix’s character had just captured footage of militant Hutus hacking Tutsis with machetes. The movie is, actually, relatively tame in its depiction of the horrors of the Rwandan genocide. Tame in a respectful way; the filmmakers didn’t go for gore, they went for story, and I thank them, because had there been just the slightest bit more hacking, I simply would not have made it through. I have a pretty good idea what happened in Rwanda in ’94, and my memory and research of those events filled out the movie for me more than I might have wished.

And then, today, driving to work, I hear about the student in Minnesota who gunned down 9 people in his school, and possibly his own grandparents. Will everyone in this country hear about it, shake their heads, and go back to whatever they were doing before? Our asswipe president is trying to intervene to waylay Terri Schiavo’s wishes, but will he actually *do* anything about the student who shoots his peers? Will anyone? Driving to work, I wondered if I should go into politics, but does anything actually get done? Would the change I’d want to affect ever actually happen? Will anyone take responsibility for any of this?

When Bill Clinton was on Larry King, he was asked what the greatest mistake of his presidency was. “Personal mistake or presidential mistake?” Clinton said. “We all know my biggest personal mistake.” He smiled and then said that not intervening in Rwanda was the greatest mistake of his presidency. Little comfort, but a rare moment in American history. And what must the Rwandans feel today, when we have a president who spends billions of dollars to invade a country under false allegations? Why haven’t we done anything about Darfur?

I suppose it’s no surprise that my country cares little about brown people overseas, when it shrink-wraps its own tragedies to fit neatly in the evening news and then flushes them down the toilet of our consciousness. How long will anyone be talking about Red Lake High School, except as reference when the next shooting occurs?

And what can I do about any of this?

Not to talk about the weather, but…

Posted March 19th, 2005 by Michelle

… it is truly extraordinary outside. Not 72-degrees-sunny-breezy extraordinary, but crazy confused and wonderful. It POURED all morning, and then it just got mad outside. Bursts of downpours followed by warm sun, sprinkles, then wild winds. You’d need your whole closet to properly dress for this day.

I’ve realized how much New York is still in me. (No bad jokes here, Sean.) I was able to rent my cottage because I was the first to respond, and then I systematically romanced my landlady-to-be. If I ever get this car, it will only be because I was the first to call and because I have persevered. I’ve been waiting to buy a VW Golf for over a month now- it’s exactly what I want- but it has had some issues passing smog and now is in the shop awaiting a new catalytic converter. Anyway, there is a good chance that on Wednesday it will be mine. People were calling for both the cottage and the car up to a month after they were listed, thinking they might still be available. There is a tempo here, a lackadaisical pace that runs the whole valley, and as of yet, I’ve been unable to fall in step. I’m accustomed to everyone being at least fifteen minutes late to hour-long meetings; it seems as though if we can’t fix it in forty-five minutes, it can’t be done. Anyhoodle…

Yesterday, for the first time since I moved here, my body felt different. I was walking up the stairs to my work and my legs felt strange in my pants. It’s hard to describe. Just a week ago today, last Saturday, I finally figured out how to run. Not, you know, how to sorta hop from one foot to the other whilst propelling myself, but how to keep going when every part of me is screaming “THIS IS BORING AND STUPID AND DOESN’T FEEL GOOD AND LET’S EAT FRENCH FRIES”.

I cycled almost 400 miles in four days during the Northeast Aids Ride a few years ago, and there must have been a hundred moments during that ride when I crested a hill just to see a vast, steep, new one waiting for me on the other side. One day on that ride there were forty “hills of note”. Of NOTE. That didn’t count any of the little ones.

When you hit hill of note 25, and you know you have at least 15 more to go, and you have at least 40 more miles to go, and you rode all day yesterday, and have two more days ahead of you, you are presented with a choice. You stop, let the sweep truck pick you up, and get to camp early and get first dibs on the taco bar. OR, you keep going. You seem to lose the connection to your legs because you are so far past your breaking point but they keep going, they keep circling, they keep pushing and pulling you up the hill. When you round the bend of hill 40 and people are screaming and cheering and someone yells, “WHO JUST RODE YOUR FIRST CENTURY?” and you raise your fist and your friends are smiling around you and you are abso-fucking-lutely sobbing from the pain and exhaustion, you know that something has happened and you are just a little different than you were yesterday.

Nothing like that has happened to me in a long time. I reached that point too many times in my years in New York, having no idea how to pace myself, never stopping until I landed in the hospital with migraines or hemorrhoids or a bike wreck. I came to Napa to recharge, and god knows I’ve done that. I’ve learned how to be soft, I know what it’s like to be rock hard, and I want to gravitate to the space between where I can be most useful. My friends here don’t really know the authentic me; they know someone plagued with an ugly mixture of self-loathing and pride. But I feel as though I am rediscovering me, and that is what is most important. I feel like I’ll be able to do it right this time.

I’ve been power-walking/jogging almost every morning for a couple of months now. I’ll jog for a minute, then power walk for a while, then jog, then walk. No matter the weather, it’s gorgeous down my road, so it’s easy to get up at 6:30 AM and get outside. But last Saturday, I was jogging, and then I realized I was past the marker where I usually start to walk again. And I kept on going, and kept on going, and suddenly it was like that feeling I had as a teenager when we went on a road trip to Santa Cruz and I didn’t eat meat for three days. Then, I said to myself, “Well, if I can do this for three days, I can do it for the rest of my life”. And I have. Or like in high school when I was in yet another unbearable class and I would say to myself, “I can do this for forty-five minutes. What’s forty-five minutes? I can do this for twenty. For ten. For five” until the class would end. So, Saturday, I passed the next marker, and the next, and then realized that if I could run for ten minutes, I could run for twenty. If I could run one mile, certainly I could run two. Two translated into four this morning, in the pouring rain. Because yesterday, my legs were different in my pants. They were markedly stronger, barely smaller, as if the last few months of exercising were suddenly slapped awake by my short runs.

I’m still chubby as hell, and by god, my writing about it is not an open invitation for anyone in my family to give me shit about it. And this is probably no big deal to any of you runners out there. But it reminds me that I can climb hill 40 and still get back on the bike tomorrow.

back to books

Posted February 27th, 2005 by Michelle

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.

insomnia

Posted February 22nd, 2005 by Michelle

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.

good

Posted February 13th, 2005 by Michelle

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.