I'm in a New York State of Being/Honduras State of Mind

I remember a dream I had shortly before leaving for Honduras. I'd arrived in a desertscape version of Tegucigalpa with an empty backpack and no money. I'd instantly connected to the place, knowing I belonged there but feeling the sharp panic of having no resources. The dream seemed to have no end but was instead a sort of long personal narrative involving me searching the city for supplies. At the time I passed it off as an anxiety dream -- pre-trip preparedness paranoia. But now that I'm back in the land of Blackberrys and ballet flats, I see it for what is was: a dream about feeling spiritually broke; trying endlessly to draw on an empty emotional bank account.

I couldn't sleep the night we were departing. I was absolutely frantic imagining Tegus. It rose up in my mind, filthy, jagged, smelling of rubber and sweat and shrouded in industry smoke. I kept thinking to myself, 'This is the tradeoff. You have to suffer some to get the payoff. It has to be a little bit brutal and you have to be terrified or there won't be the afterlife of bus rides and beaches to transform you.' I guess I sort of realized in that tormented darkness that travel is about leaving a piece of yourself behind so that you can go out and fill that empty space with the richness of the world. I resolved to leave the terrified, emotionally bankrupt piece of me at home to go out and make a deposit of memory in its place.

I'm floating on top of my days now, not really in them but just slightly above them, my feet still (as my friend Kate says) in two places. I traded in my remaining Lempiras at the American Express office on Monday. Looking at the worn, crumpled pile of bills and their foreign president sitting in a stack on the clerk's desk, I felt the urge to cry. They seemed my last concrete connection to Honduras. As she sorted through each bill and placed them into an envelope I imagined my grip on little Eddie, our ten year old tour guide in Comayagua, and his angel wing eyelashes and fragile hands slowly dissolving.

I stared at the lifeless stack and thought of every bill as a snapshot: mountains of banana trees out the schoolbus window, bare feet and jungle vines, warm corn tortillas and Imperial beer on a picnic bench, the stone wink of a Mayan king, a hammock's imprint on sunburned shoulders, little hands and big cowboy hats, straw-colored dust and unpaved roads, backpacks, hundred degree afternoons shopping for jewelry, German Shepherd in the back of a pick-up, the cellophane sea, orange mud in a dripping green cloud forest, the camera's eye seeing something I missed, Mitch's dirty pant legs, Vicky's Mary Janes, and color, thriving, throbbing, living color everywhere. It's not a fair exchange: my American dollars for Lempiras, Lempiras for my experience in Honduras. Each of those worn bills is worth a million moments to me.

Honduras is rugged, gentle, hospitable, and raw. Travel there can feel isolating. Sometimes that's a feeling to be treasured and sometimes it's alienating. The country is extremely undeveloped and the environment lush but the cities are brutally urban. It's a place of enormous contrast. Still, the culture is clever and determined and we met wonderful people, Honduran and foreigners.

It's a country that got inside me, way down deep, and is now snaking its way through all my empty places and filling me with sound and scent and scenery.

We went and saw and captured our moments (22 plus hour's worth, to be exact) and Honduras captured us. I think it actually kept a piece too. That's the tradeoff, right? Leave half empty, go fill up, yes. But it's a bit like stealing if you don't leave some of you behind in return. I think I can speak for all of us when I say we'd be glad to go back and visit the Kate, Vicky and Mitch monument to Honduras anytime. Anytime.

"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom." -- Anais Nin

Hola Soldados Prójimos de Chrsyalis,
I had to use my my mini Berlitz translator for that. I only know how to say "airport", "where is the jukebox?" and "what did I just drink?" in Spanish. The rest is gonna be a language free-for-all. Good thing I'm traveling with the veritable Spanish dictionary Vicky Cavaliere for when I also need to ask "why would you say something like that?" or say "these pants looked really good when I tried them on at Target." Vicky's my friend of many years from Denver. She works here for NBC. We share a shameful, historic thread in the form of a few years spent at Cherry Creek High School back in the gay nineties. She's also my co-Producer on the project that is Honduras.

Back in May, Vicky and I spent a summer afteroon at an Astoria Italian joint talking about the longer, stronger thread that we share as adults: wanderlust. Vicky's been all over the world and travel's had the same effect on her that it's had on me. It's created a fierce hunger to be shaped by where she's been and what she's discovered. She's just like me. Seeing some of the world has only made her want to see more.

One of the things I love most about New York is that it's such a fertile junkyard. So many cool people with cool ideas thrown on top of each other, once in awhile you're bound to find a treasure. Over pizza and wine, Vicky and I polished up one of those treasures for ourselves. We'd both talked about how much we longed to make travel and writing into work. I've certainly uncovered a truth over the twelve-plus years I've lived here. If you say how much you wish something was a certain way long enough, at some point it occurs to you that you should just fucking make it so for yourself.

Ouila, Honduras. We decided we'd create a travel show for people who travel like we do. We'd give it a spirited, personal revelation feel mixed with a tradtional guidebook style and we'd target an audience of people who want to see what else is out there. We chose Honduras because we've never been there, it's an eco/indie travel gem loaded with great things to do and it's in a region that's getting a lot of press but remains undervisited. We thought we'd go see why and then share it with our viewers.

As I write, I've received word that our multi-faceted Director/DP/Associate Producer Mitch Dickman of Listen Productions in Denver is at the airport and on his way to New York to join us on this adventure. He'll be with us for the entire two weeks, helping us chronicle the sights, sounds, smells, textures, foibles, risks and rewards that Honduras has in store for us. When we return, the skilled Chris Guido will edit our first episode. As we edit, we'll be posting web-exclusive footage and travel diaries onto our website as well as information about the premiere episode, which we hope to have ready to debut in May.

Come see us at Off The Radar Productions and say hello.

I'm taking you all along in my heart so that I can share beer and sunsets with you.

I know it's cheeseball as hell, but every time I leave, I hear this in my head:
"Goodbye to all my friends at home/goodbye to people I've trusted.
I've got to go out and make my way/I might get rich, you know I might get busted.
But my heart keeps calling me backwards/as I get on the 707.
Ridin high, I got tears in my eyes/You know you got to go through hell
before you get to heaven."

God bless Steve Miller. Anais Nin is damn good but sometimes you gotta keep it simple.

Vicky, that one's for you.
Nick, you are a true Doctor/Scientist.
And to all of you, fellow Chrysalis soldiers,
Las vivas y Gracias para leer!

No Camera Can Capture What Your Heart Can Hold

Damn, that's good.

I wish it were mine. It's a slogan I saw last week on a "Visit Costa Rica" ad. I'm holding onto it like a tiny, polished rock in my pocket as I make my way through this final week before my departure to Honduras.

As I write this, it's eleven degrees in New York. Our local sensationalist weatherpeople are pulling out the fancy descriptive words, dusting 'em off and throwing 'em at our tv screens. "Snap", "bitter", "frigid". The ancient "feels like it's" wind-chill hymn floats and winds its way through the barren branches of the few trees that line Park Avenue. I was going to say the weather is all anyone fucking talks about but I've just realized it's all I fucking talked about for an entire paragraph.

I left my backpack on the floor this morning, bursting from every seam with OFF DEET and little packets of oatmeal. I've got Advil, Cipro, Pepto, all the one-word remedies. I'm loaded up with mini bottles of every conceivable necessity. Packing up this weekend had its usual haunting familiarity. The routine of it, the sort of odd, jaded feeling that washes over me as I stare at a pyramid of rolled up underwear on the couch. It just always strikes me sort of hard in the chest that I can make a home out of something I carry on my back. It feels somber and empowering all at once.

I watched a travel show last week where the host described the Greek culture as having intense wanderlust tempered by a deep need to be home. Pow! Another hard strike in the chest. That's me--that duality. Wanderlust slowly tattoos itself onto my psyche, making itself permanent, ingrained, undeniable. A living, colorful scar. And then there's home with its comfortable magnetic pull. I'm Christina in the Wyeth painting: always crawling through the grass to get back. That's gotta be the strange, jaded cloud that hangs over my packing for a big trip. I need to go fill up my heart's camera but...well, I'll be leaving home at the top of the hill.

About the camera, for a moment. I am going to find home in a backpack for two weeks, indeed. But before I go, I promise to let you all in on what exactly it is we're doing in fair Honduras. Look for one more post from me before I go with a few precious details. Let's say we're hoping that this post's title is true only on other trips.

If all goes as planned, when we return on March 1st heart and camera will be equal.

Ice, Ice Baby

Hola, Chrysalis Cronies,
After my last post reflecting on change and why it can't just do its whole change business a little faster, I tried to send it into high gear myself. This is something I have a history of: being frozen, acting like that's a choice (worse, even saying it is) and suddenly trying to blast out of my own atmosphere in a little one-man pod on a mission to some new frontier. Blam! There goes five inches of my hair! Blaz! I really wanna be a travel show host! Blowie! I gotta quit my job! In like, eight months! Okay, that one's gonna be a process. But it's all proof positive, I guess, that I'm still trying to move under the ice.

Some of you know that one of the thought-amoebas I've been swimming around with under the ice is this notion of going back to school. I've been so busy trying to decide if it's a real idea that I've gone ahead and done absolutely nothing about it. As has happened before ('I'm gonna run in a race. On my 32nd birthday!'), a serendipitous moment involving Time Out got me off my mental ass. I saw an ad for a seminar on courses at NYU. The last of the series was on their writing program and I went.

Now, back to the ice for a moment. I've been thinking a lot about being frozen. Winter's a great time to think about that kind of shit. This glacier-thick sheet of ice I slip under and pretend is some important phase of development is self-imposed in every way. Duh. Moving on to the real revelation now...

I've been trying to figure out what it is. The ice. I think it symbolizes this big legitimacy issue I have. Are you asking yourself if you somehow wandered onto a Dr. Phil thread? I promise I'll avoid the pop-psycho language if you promise to stay with me.

When I walked into the seminar classroom in Cooper Square last Thursday my hands were shaking. I'd worked myself into a frenzy of anxiety about whether I should be there. See, I was wearing this sparkly shirt. I'd bought it before the holidays and hadn't found a proper occasion for it during all the mistletoe insanity. Still, it's somewhat fashionable and has its place with a pair of dark jeans. So I wore it that morning thinking I should be a bit fancy for the seminar. But it felt too disco-y, too lady of the evening, and I figured that out too late. When I stepped into the stark, fluorescent room to find a combo desk/chair, I swore I heard some sorta Sister Sledge or something playing underneath me. The point is, I didn't feel like a student. Which is ridiculous. I struggled the entire length of the seminar, shoulders up to my ears, feeling out of place--even in a room with several other adults who'd walked in late, carrying all their belongings in plastic grocery bags. Afterward I went to an advisor to ask a question and thought I felt his eyes widen and zone in on my shimmying shirt, instantly identifying me as illegitimate. 'Not a writer', he noted. 'A cocktail waitress.' Why do I do that? Freeze myself under the ice like that?

I had a great chat with a lovely person the other night. We agreed that this struggle for legitimacy might partially come from the duality of being an artist and simultaneously trying to make a living at a day job we don't connect with. For years I found myself apologizing for one entire aspect of my life, as if it wasn't the one that really sustained me: "well, I am an actor on the side", "well, occasionally, I may have to step out for an audition", "well, I do a bit of writing here and there." I've gotten so used to apologizing for what I love to do that it's become second nature to think I can't do it.

I'm really considering going back to school. But I'm gonna have to start thawing out. I can't go on believing my own bullshit about myself or I'm gonna turn into a fossil.

The Only Constant Is Change

When I started running four months ago there was no agenda. It was just a dare: "See if you can do this". I was slow and labored. But somehow the intensity of my feet pounding on the belt, the gasping for breath, the beading sweat gradually became an even pace. The drone became hypnosis. I did it: I adapted. I grew. At first, I simply wanted to be stronger. I wanted to feel faster, sleeker, more reliable; like the silky lines of a new car, hard and shiny and built for speed. But slowly, clawing to move the red decimals as they ascended on the treadmill screen in front of me, I moved forward and yes, eventually began to change in spirit and shape.

I just watched a magnificent PBS documentary, Savage Earth, about volcanoes--Mt. St. Helens specifically--and how they change their surrounding landscape in a fraction of an instant. But that's just the explosion part. The shift, the stupefying destruction and eventual overhaul of a spectacular bang is really the result of an agonizingly slow effort at growth. The split in the earth's crust where volcanoes form is visible, actually visible right now, in the shape of a giant chasm-like faultline somewhere in Iceland. It's separating Iceland from the rest of North America at a rate of one inch per year. It's taking forever, but it's expanding. That sounds more like the change I know: contract, swell, widen. Inch by inch. Slowly, slowly...slowly.

When I decided things had to change I thought it might be like a blitz. Lights out, head between knees, everything into sudden oblivion and then all quiet. I've got the all quiet part down pat. But there's a big faultline between deciding to change and changing. It's taking my version of millenia. I'm scared to leave my job. Not because it's a good job. Not because it makes me stronger or better in any way. I'm scared because I've been one dormant hill on a map for awhile and I'm not sure what I'll do if I become a glowing, ingnited volcano ready to crack and split and become something else.

Running's wonderful because change feels tangible with each forward step. Time is measured in seconds and minutes, not aeons. I need to see those little red decimal numbers ticking along to the beat of my stride. They remind me that I'm going somewhere. I'm closer to the exlposion than I think.

It'll be okay to contract, swell and break apart.

Who Am I Anyway?

God, I love that song from A Chorus Line: Who am I anyway/Am I my resume?/That is a picture of a person I don't know.

I've just wrapped up one of those office-heavy weeks that had me playing "phone-tag", commuting "off-peak" and performing any number of hyphenated professional cartwheels. On Wednesday I found myself in my fifth major identity crisis of the year when I received a solicitation, addressed to me personally, for a subscription to Office Professional magazine. Seriously. How general is that? It's not even as though it's a magazine for people who go to a certain kind of office. It's just for people who go to any office. Any Office Professional magazine. My left brain screamed "YOU ARE NOT YOUR JOB!". My right brain screamed "THIS MEANS EVERYTHING. LITTLE PIECES OF YOU ARE SLIPPING INTO THE STRATOSPHERE AND YOU'RE BECOMING ANOTHER EMPTY BLUE SHIRT!"

I don't have a resume. I haven't had one, professional or creative, for many years. I've built my own work artistically, which means I've never really had to detail my every accomplishment for anyone on paper. And I've worked the same day job for seven years, so there hasn't been anything to update anyway. Yet, I've been thinking maybe it's time to put myself into black and white, get these last seven or eight years down into those tidy little resume paragraphs. Me, concise and easy to understand. But, shit. The resume. Professional or artistic, it's just a mere cinebyte of what I've done--fragments, flashes. I feel like a Picasso painting: abstract lines and skewed blocks of color trying to be a work of art.

So, if I'm not an office professional or a fading commuter, then who the hell am I? I'm thinking about all the "me"s I've been just this week...

Am I the woman on the cover of Scizophrenia Digest on the Scandanavian coffee table in my psychopharmacologist's office? Am I one of the detached, whimsical crazies who walk into her office in a fog and a baseball hat mid-morning on a Thursday?

Am I the woman I see in the reflection of the 5:30 a.m. Amtrak to Philly? Am I one of those commuter zombies staring back at me in the train window across the tracks? A single speck of beige and navy blue in one of two glass stacks on a steel train, surging forward.

Am I the woman thrashing about to Bulgarian dance music at midnight on a Friday, drunk on Astika and freedom and wanting it never to end?

Or am I the woman who just bought plane tickets to Honduras, mental bags already packed, about to embark on a new journey into the world of travel television? Producer, writer, traveler....am I her?

I've been all of these women just this week. I've been so hungry for direction, purpose; for some concrete identity for so long that I've felt panicked, desperate. I want to know who I'm going to be. Abstract painting? Empty shirt? Glossy magazine cover? Or can I just finally come down for a landing somewhere (urban jungle or Honduran jungle--I'll take either) and feel like myself?

The song goes on...

Dear 2007, See Ya, Wouldn't Wanna Be Ya

Happy new year, chrysalis comrades. So, I know it's customary to do the "year-end wrap-up" at, well...year's end. But the ride's just come to a full stop. I've only now pulled the tinsel from the soles of my shoes, reapplied my red lipstick and readied myself for daylight. Jesus. Year 2007: may it melt into memory without another murmur. I think the best way to reflect on just about anything is through a half-empty glass filled with something of at least 14.5% alcohol content. Champagne seems festive. Even now. Alright, here's how the 2007 mental smackdown's gonna go: in the gratitude tradition, I'm going to raise a glass of the golden and fizzy in its honor before I stub it out. I've long been paranoid enough to believe that proper gratitude keeps snarling years like 2007 from rearing their oozing, filthy heads again for at least six months. Barring that, champagne always works. What unemployment? What fiscal hardship? What self-doubt? What...the fuck was I saying?

With that, when I say "hey!", you say "salute!":

All hail Gogol Bordello's gypsy punk. I thank them for many sweaty hours, arms in air, fists clenched, inhaling the fleece coats of the self-conscious seventeen year olds in front me. Their raunchy, gawdy, life-affirming sound punished my ugly inner beasts and ran them out of town. "HEY!"

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Glory be the fiery red dust of the Grand Canyon's Hermit trail. I'll never completely understand why I go down carrying a forty pound load only to somehow leave enough of myself scattered about in the desert to walk out lighter. To me, it's the starkest version of paradise imaginable. "HEY!"

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I bow down to Gertrude Heiob Bland, my treasured grandmother. Even though she died just two days before 2007 dawned, her death became a wave I rode the crest of all year. Frankly, I probably learned more from watching her die than I did from watching her live. But she'd be okay with that. Life was pretty damn good to her. Dying was another story. "HEY!"

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Cheers to getting over myself and falling in love with Beirut and Devotchka. 2007 will be the last year I let too much buzz kill a band in my mind before I've listened because the hype-y, snipe-y music press loves 'em. I'm so into the feeling there are drunk, German ghosts in the room every time I listen. They're perfect. The bands and the ghosts. "HEY!"

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Cin, cin to a bit of feeling like an animal...in a good way. My annual backpacking trip into the great, looming lonliness of the Grand Canyon reminded me that I am in fact a beast. I can be faced with things that really fucking hurt, are at times totally demoralizing and seem without hope and still press on. When I came out of that hole in September I decided I wanted to feel that way more than just once a year. Suddenly, it occured to me to start running. I'm absolutely sure the metaphor wasn't lost on my subconscious. Four months later, the movement, the sense of going somewhere, the feeling that I'm built for more than apathy has created this clawing beast inside of me. That's the only caveat attached to finding out you're stronger than you knew: you have to do something about it. "HEY!"

.

I suppose the real reason for an absolute Big Gulp of champagne is that this is the first year in my life I've risen on New Year's day with no resolutions. I resolved not to resolve. I just got up and walked into the day, as if, for once, it was actually unfolding moment to moment. I wasn't thinking about wanting to leave my job in March (which I do), I wasn't thinking about leaving for Honduras (which you'll know more about shortly), or fixing my ass, arms, or thighs (I just can't think about that shit anymore). I was thinking about what it's like to fold up a piece of aluminum foil and toss it into a fire: it's shiny and then it's crumpled and then it's consumed. When it's all over, the foil still exists but it's no longer shiny. It's covered in soot and blackened and sort of hiding under a pile of ash. That's you, 2007. You were shiny and then you weren't. And now you're at the bottom of a new, blazing fire that I can't wait to roast clean, white marshmallows over.

Here, here, 2008.