Author: Leslie Lanagan

Life cannot be contained in a text box, but I will try. Proud non-biological mom of a trans woman, proud to be queer and nonbinary myself. Anything else? Just ask. theantileslie at hotmail dot com.

COVID Blues, Part 2 -or- 18 Dollars

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

It takes nine dollars with Uber for me to get from my house to my doctor’s office, so yesterday (without even thinking about it……………..), I requested a car. I get there, and take the elevator to the 4th floor. There’s a sign on the door that says the doctor’s office is closed to everyone but patients, and all extra people have to wait in the car. It then says to call first, and there’s no phone number.

So, I call the number for the doctor that I have stored in my phone, and the mailbox is full. I should have known it would happen had I had any kind of foresight, but my doctor’s office hadn’t been closed before, and there was no notification anywhere (like an e-mail, text message, etc.) that it would be happening in the future.

Besides, I had to be physically present for two reasons. The first is that I take Klonopin,™ and since it is a controlled substance, the re-authorization has to be an original copy and not just a fax to the pharmacy. The second was that at my last appointment, my doctor told me that he didn’t take my insurance anymore. The front office clerk gave me a number to call to get insurance they would take, so I went home and got it. I needed to give them my new card.

I am truly flummoxed. I have no idea what to do, because even if I call the doctor’s office, it doesn’t seem like they’re open, and I don’t have another doctor… even though when I was considering staying on my old health insurance, I tried to book an appointment with a different primary care physician for the week of the 22nd (which by my count, is today), and no one has gotten back to me.

I’m supposed to take the Klonopin twice a day, but I often skip the second dose, so I have at least a week’s worth right now. So I have one week to figure out how to get my doctor to actually call me back without being able to let him know I need him. We are getting into “go back to a liquid diet” territory, which I do when I feel totally out of control. For some reason, my anxiety manifests as what goes into my body is the one thing I can decide on my own. Unlike other times in my life, it wouldn’t be awful. I wouldn’t go down to an unhealthy weight because constantly being indoors means that I am not burning any calories. I will continue being on the “fuck it” diet as long as I can, but at least I know that if I develop a block on eating, it’s not going to hurt anything, because the “fuck it” diet is based on walking everywhere I go. I haven’t left my house (other than yesterday) in at least four weeks, so I wouldn’t have to worry about looking like a drug addict again.

The one bright spot is that I’ve been in a huge fight with the state of Maryland for a while now, and it’s over. Maryland gave it their best shot- they’ve been stealing money from me for a long time now, but in the end, I won. Here’s what the fight was about. I moved to Maryland in April of 2015, so on my tax return, I filed with a Maryland address, even though I hadn’t started working here yet. I figured they’d need to know where to send my return, right? Well, the federal government notified the state government that I’d filed with a Maryland address, and they presented me a bill for about $3500 for tax year 2014. I hadn’t paid it all off yet, because I’ve been fighting it every step of the way, so hopefully at some point I will get my money back, as well as the right to get a Maryland driver’s license. I don’t drive, but I’d like an in-state ID (I have a Texas license and a passport).

It is possible (but not probable) that I would have enough money to buy a car. Here’s the thing. I’m over it. Because of my monocular vision, I have wrecked five cars and totaled three. In every single case, it was because I didn’t see something coming, or a light was out of my field of vision…. say the street was five lanes wide and I was in the far right, but the light was on the left, or vice versa. I just had to say “enough is enough.” My saving grace is that because the cause has been not seeing things, I’ve never had a wreck because of speeding, and therefore never been in a position to really hurt myself or others. I’m just embarrassed that it took me so long to realize there was an actual problem. I am certain that I would be able to drive a Tesla or similar because of all the safety features (like if you get too close to something, etc.), but I am not in a position to drop that kind of money, and even if I was, I have different priorities now.

Because of the excellent public transportation here, and Uber, I’m not dependent on my friends to cart me around, and that’s really been my only concern. I do live in the suburbs, but everything here is condensed. In Houston, the suburbs mean 25 miles out. My house is 11 miles NW of the White House. (I’m sure I’ll go there once I actually admire someone there. Besides, I went when I was eight. It hasn’t changed that much.) So much of the reason I moved here was to have that luxury.

Except the part where I was furious at having wasted $18 trying to get to the doctor.

 

COVID Blues

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

This is just one of those days where I feel like I don’t have much to say, but feel like I should be writing anyway. Life is different (for now) in a way that I never expected in my lifetime. My state (Maryland) is on lockdown. You can get arrested for going to a non-essential business. If you have a job, you are only allowed to go into the office if you have a piece of paper from the government that says you are an essential worker. Work is still getting done, of course, but through voice and video chats, most of DC and its suburbs working from home. I don’t know how long this is supposed to last, but some at the CDC say that we will experience breakouts until 2022, expanding and retracting the economy as we open up and experience a new wave. I am just like the protestors. I want a haircut. I’m just smarter than to actually protest. I’d rather be safe in my home. In that way, I feel like everyone else.

No one except the protesters think we all like being cooped up, but 99% of us recognize that it’s not safe to be out and about. If we get sick, there are not enough resources to be tested, much less treated. The president told the governors to get their own testing supplies. Governor Hogan did, and now the president is mad about it.

I’m sorry, what? It is a confusion which passeth all understanding, as are most reactions from the White House. It is as if we are rolling back into the Articles of Confederation, every state for itself, and we are taking those responsibilities seriously… And at the same time, even though the president is saying this is what the governors should do, his ego gets butt hurt that he can’t take credit for all that’s going right. With him, it is always a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation. I think that’s the hardest part, actually. Tweeting that we need to “liberate” states way too early isn’t helping matters… because of course, if said states are opened back up and restrictions are loosened, there will be another string of tweets saying “I told you it was too early.”

At this point, I am so shaggy that I am beginning to think I will have a ponytail before this is all over. That’s not a bad thing. It’s just that my hair is growing at all different rates and I have really thick hair, so I’m embracing the Harry Potter look. I did find water-based wax from Viking that’s making my life a little easier, but that’s not saying much.

I also find myself putting on makeup more and more often, because otherwise I think I look terrible on camera and will spend an entire video call picking apart my appearance. Most of the time, it’s just mascara and eyeliner so my eyes don’t get lost into my glasses. Maybe I’ll dye my hair red again to keep me from looking mousy on camera- but that depends on whether there’s any hair dye to be had. The last time I dyed my hair red was shortly after I moved to DC, where Samantha shoeshined my head and hosed me down in the front yard as not to make my bathroom look like a murder scene. I still have that towel, and everyone thinks that I’ve had blood on it for almost five years. Nope, it’s Feria, and it won’t come out.

But if whether or not to dye my hair is the biggest worry I have in all this, I’m not doing it right.

Well, actually, I am.

My anxiety at leaving the house is overwhelming, like nothing I’ve ever experienced. There’s nothing cool about getting arrested (although I would for the right cause…. this isn’t it). And I don’t know where people are getting arrested in the first place. I don’t want to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. I take Uber directly to the doctor’s office, then directly to the pharmacy and grocery store, and then I can’t get home fast enough. Public transportation is probably okay in terms of not getting handcuffed, but there’s so much higher a risk that I’d get sick. Even in the Uber, the drivers wear masks, and now I have my own. You would think that would make me more comfortable about getting out. So far, no dice.

I’m taking care of myself as well as I can. I still get dressed every day. Sometimes I even take a shower. That may sound gross, but if I shower too often, my hair and skin dry out too much, and no one’s going to see me in person, anyway.

Speaking of which, now that I’ve had two cups of coffee, I’m going to go run some water through my hair and see if I can come up with something relatively aesthetically pleasing. Maybe I should try a fork.

True HD

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 2 Comments

I have a netbook that is far less powerful than my desktop, but it has one thing my desktop doesn’t… a video card that supports HDMI. When I started using Zoom, I switched to the little computer. Why? So that my friends are always in true HD. I also use my most powerful headphones, so that their voices are as clear as they would be if I was in the room with them. It feels more intimate that way, and additionally presents a conundrum.

If I wanted, I could turn on my own web cam… but I haven’t, and can’t decide whether I want to or not. I know that my friends would probably want to see me- it’s been years- but here’s the thing. I’m not getting together with friends for happy hour. I’m going to church… and every single week (so far), the moment the music has started, tears have rolled down my face.

The first time I went, it wasn’t just one or two. I went into the ugly cry because so many things hadn’t changed, and the deep connection I’d felt all those years ago knocked me down with force. The next two weeks, I was mostly okay…. and then there was today- Palm Sunday- and if I’d thought for even a second before the service began, I would have known it was going to be tough. But I didn’t. Think, that is.

If I had, I would have known that the service would start with my favorite people in the world singing “Prepare Ye the Way of the Lord” from “Godspell.” I would have known because I’d been in the choir the entire time I attended while I actually lived in Oregon. I’d have remembered who started that tradition. I would have known whose voice would begin. I would have been more prepared for the way of the Lord than I actually was.

Again, I went into the ugly cry.

Then it got worse.

I was doubled over, tears and snot running down my face. I couldn’t get air into my chest, the physical pain of heartache almost unbearable. It was the closest I’ve come to hyperventilating in recent memory, probably because I haven’t had many moments in the last three years where I’ve felt this deeply about anything. Grief has a numbing effect for a lot of people- it’s extremely effective at keeping you from emoting so much more than is acceptable in polite company. Some people are very good at expressing their emotions. I used to be one of those people.

Now, I’m not.

I make an exception for this blog. This is because it’s so much easier to hide behind my keyboard, spilling emotions and letting readers have their own reactions without hearing them myself. I made the executive decision long ago that what people thought of me was none of my business. Even in my personal life, some of the deepest relationships I’ve had consisted of letters, because again, I could look at emotions from a distance. I wasn’t capable of exploding every mine that dots my inner landscape, and letters put neither me as the writer nor them as the reader on the spot (which changed when mail became electronic- mistakes were made).

In person, I will only tell you real things about me if I feel comfortable, and it is taking me longer and longer to feel comfortable as I age. As I act and react, more emotions get stuffed into boxes and locked. There are so few times when they leak, and when they do, I don’t want to be seen, heard, or touched. I make exceptions for my family, but if you are not in that tight circle, I would rather isolate than let anyone in. I am lucky that my family is not just biological, because if it was, I would have cut myself off from any support system at all (I live in Maryland, very close to The District, and my bio family lives in Houston).

I am becoming aware that this is a problem, that the pendulum has swung too far towards being alone. The thing is, though, silence becomes addictive. I know that I don’t want to be single the rest of my life, but I am terrified of putting myself out there. Open up to a stranger in hopes that we eventually have a deep enough connection to love each other? Please. One of my friends said it best when I told her as much and she said, “well, the dating scene is scary as all holy hell.” I’m not sure I’ve ever related to anything more.

My answer to this is not to date at all, but to cultivate good friendships and to put myself out there professionally, because I think networking will probably take a lot longer, but I’ve tried a couple of dating apps and the experience was mind-numbing, mostly because the person I wrote to for a few days was never the same person I met in person. I’m also not attracted by looks, in general, so it never mattered if their bodies matched up to their pictures. But it really mattered when their personalities seemed to flip. Not once did I ever meet someone who was so genuine in their chats/e-mails that I “recognized them.” Or, at least, I never met someone in a romantic way.

There was this one woman I ran across that said she was already married and just looking for friends, so I e-mailed her and said “let’s get together for dinner. Bring your wife if you want, because I’m not contacting you for romance. I just read your profile and it seems like you’re a really cool person. I’m new to the area and need to meet cool people.” After a few days of flipping each other quotes from “The Big Lebowski,” dinner was on with both women. It has truly been a blessing that it created a lasting relationship that’s only gotten better with time.

Mostly because it’s lasted long enough for me to get comfortable. I’m not sure I’ve ever been vulnerable enough to cry in front of either one of them, but I’ve at least come far enough that talking about myself isn’t a thing anymore. I don’t “run the game” with them, the game I always play with people I don’t know well.

It’s simple, really. 99% of people have a favorite topic, and that’s them. The game is “how long can I keep you talking about yourself so that you don’t ask me anything about my life?” There’s only one person in the world that’s better at that game than me, and can read me like a manual. There was no percentage in playing, because the competition was too fierce and I knew I was losing. I talked about myself because I couldn’t not. Grasshopper will never reach satori in that relationship, and for better or for worse, I’m okay with it. I definitely wasn’t at first, but after what seems like a hundred years, I’m coming around. By now, she’s family, and I make an exception for family.

Which brings me back around to whether I should turn on my web cam for church, because I can’t put my finger on why being vulnerable in front of that congregation is a thing. They raised me. I mean, I was technically an adult when I got there, not so much with the literally. Why do I care if they see me cry? It’s not like it hasn’t happened before.

Like with everything else, I’m going to overthink about it. Explode some land mines. Feel the heartache and know that it’s breaking me open to let light in. Reconciling who I used to be with who I am now. Wrestling with whether those two people are on their way to integration. I am sure it is why I wanted my friends in true HD in the first place. My question to myself is whether I get to be in true HD, too.

 

Allsorts and All Sorts

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

The Argo main theme is ringing in my ears as I start this entry, just to bring back the muscle memory of writing. However, I have created a playlist on Amazon Music called “Movie Scores” that’s on shuffle. It has all sorts of instrumentation to bring out different emotions:

  • The aforementioned Argo
  • The Bourne Identity
  • The Bourne Supremacy
  • The Bourne Ultimatum
  • The Kite Runner
  • The Danish Girl
  • The Imitation Game
  • Zero Dark Thirty
  • Syriana
  • The Ghost Writer

Most of the pieces have a Middle Eastern vibe to them, and that’s on purpose. I find that after I listen to them once, they fade into the background nicely, as well as challenging my brain with chords and progressions not typically used in Western music. However, listening to them once before I write to them is “key” (see what I did there?), because I will spend the time I should be writing trying to understand the the music with my one semester’s worth of theory knowledge… and besides only having one music theory class behind me, math and music are so inextricably interrelated that I’m not very good with either. I spent a lot of my trumpet playing years standing in a practice room thinking, “COUNT, dumbass!” Over the years, I’ve gotten better at it, but not by much. I get entire body blushes while sight reading with singing, because I can keep track of the rhythm OR the words. You choose.

My dad brought up something interesting, that it might actually have something to do with being oxygen-deprived in the delivery room. That my brain just works differently because of it, and it is also probably why I can’t play the piano by reading music (I do okay by ear)…. the difference with that and singing being that I can’t count two rhythms at once, either.

However, I can hear them and repeat it……. sometimes. I’ve been playing the first eight measures of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata for 15 years and that’s as far as I’ve gotten. But that’s all anyone knows of it, anyway, so I’m good.

At University of Houston, the core changed while I was there, and everyone had to have one performing arts class. I chose group piano because I hadn’t done anything like it before. I found out after the first few labs about the whole “counting two rhythms” thing, so I cheated my ass off to pass. Well, maybe you won’t think of it as cheating, but I did. I got my mother to play my recital piece over and over for me until I’d memorized every note cold. At the recital, I had to have the music in front of me, so I played with my eyes closed. If I’d kept them open, I would have gotten lost and confused within about 30 seconds.

[Editor’s Note: When I was a seventh grader, I had a t-shirt with Jesus color blocked like an Andy Warhol painting on the front and said “I once was lost” on the back. One of the English teachers at Clifton told me that it should say “I’m always lost.” I’m 42 and I still remember wanting to call him a jackass and I still regret not doing so . Would have been sent to the principal’s office. Worth it.]

I was definitely lost and confused at the grocery store. The last time I went, they were completely out of a few things, but most aisles looked normal. Yesterday, it looked like a Zombieland remake (although they did have Twinkies™). Thank God I already had a ton of staples (except coffee, which I was able to procure). What I noticed right off is that people were buying the cheapest items, so there was plenty of truffle oil, saffron, etc…. They were even out of American butter. My choices were Presidenté, Kerrygold, and Finlandia. I got Finlandia as I’d tried all the others (it’s good, but it’s not French salted butter good). And as I told my friend Kristie, “they didn’t have three dollar soap, but they did have eight dollar soap……….. so guess who smells like eight dollars today?”

I also picked up my favorite writing snack, licorice allsorts. They’re not nearly as good as getting the originals (Bassett’s) imported from England, but they’ll do in a pinch. They’re much less expensive and the last time I ordered the real ones, it took them three or four weeks to arrive. The only piece in Bassett’s mix that these don’t have is lime. Despite this egregious oversight, they’re close enough for government work.

I have found that during the state lockdown, I’ve been lonely for the first time since I moved here. This is because I spend most of my time alone, but I had the ability to reach out to friends and go out when I wanted. It was enough to know that I could go out, not so much that I would. There’s no way I would take public transportation to see my friends in Alexandria, all of whom have small children (happy 2nd birthday, Peter and Benjamin!).

I have been escaping with books, movies, and TV…. mostly books. So far, I’ve loved “The Murmur of Bees” and “Little Fires Everywhere.” With “Little Fires,” I saw the first episode of the Hulu adaptation and wanted to read the book. It’s AMAZING, the only thing missing being Kerry Washington (not sure I’ve ever seen a more beautiful woman, and roles like Olivia Pope and Mia Warren speak to me).

Fiction writers just flatten me, because I don’t do what they do, and not for lack of trying. I can’t build a world like good ones can, whether it’s a universe close to our own or complete fantasy. I mean, I’ve had “dementors” my whole life, but it took J.K. Rowling to make a word for them (in the Harry Potter series, they are the guards at the prison Azkaban, but Rowling has said they’re a metaphor for depression [I agree that after you see them, you need chocolate.]). I keep hoping that writing fiction is just something that takes muscle, and I’ll get better over time, but I see no evidence.

I suppose I am better off sitting at my desk with my allsorts, writing all sorts……….. except the ones I have to make up.

Get to Know Me: COVID-19 Edition

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Why not take a break from COVID-19 and learn about each other… Hat tip to all the people who’ve filled it out on Facebook and I shamelessly stole it because I had nothin’ for today.

1. Who are you named after?

My name was originally supposed to be Amanda Jane, and my parents were going to call me “AJ.” Then, my mother was sitting in a church service and the organist was listed in the bulletin as “Leslie Diane.” The rest, as they say, is history.

2. Last time you cried?

Two weeks ago, when I attended church through Zoom at Bridgeport UCC in Portland, Oregon (link is to the service, 10:30 AM Pacific). I saw some of my oldest friends in the world, and heard their voices. It was magnificent, and I was crying because I was filled with grief at my mother dying, and how long it had taken me to get back to the place where I was comfortable going to church again. For the first time in three years, I have now gone to church two weeks in a row.

3. Do you like your handwriting?

Absolutely not- it is a carpal tunnel pile of garbage that keeps getting worse. I use Evernote/Microsoft OneNote to keep track of my thoughts because if I write them down in a notebook, I can’t read them later.

4. What is your favorite lunch meat?

It used to be the disastrously unpopular olive loaf, and now it is the plant-based version of honey-baked ham (made into sandwiches on bread infused with maple syrup with Swiss “cheez” and margarine). I’m not sure olive loaf is even made anymore, but when it was, the grocery store never ran out…………………

5. Longest relationship?

I’m sure my dad wins this one, but if you mean romantically, seven years and change.

6. Do you still have your tonsils?

Yes, but I’ve had tonsillitis enough that they probably should come out to avoid recurrence. It is so unpleasant. It’s a good thing antibiotics work fast.

7. Would you bungee jump?

It depends. I probably wouldn’t do it on my own, but I’d never turn down a dare.

8. What is your favorite kind cereal?

The brown puffed rice at Whole Foods with real chocolate.

9. Do you untie your shoes when you take them off?

Mostly yes, because I wear Converse All-Stars high tops more than anything else.

10. Do you think you’re strong willed?

It depends on who you ask. I don’t think I’m particularly obstinate unless I’m standing up for someone else. My friends think I’m stronger than I do.

11. Favorite ice cream?

Every flavor of ice cream I’ve had with plant-based milk is my new favorite. Almond milk with almonds and chocolate is probably at the top of the list right now.

12. What is the first thing you notice about a person?

Whether they like small talk or not. I’m not attracted to the small questions.

13. Football or baseball?

If these are my only choices, it’s Baltimore Orioles baseball. My real favorite is soccer of any kind. Doesn’t matter the gender or the league. I collect national team jerseys, and interestingly enough, I don’t have the United States. Oh, and I have one MLS jersey… DC United, of course. 🙂

14. What color pants are you wearing?

Uniqlo Extra Warm leggings and lounge pants made of grey t-shirt material.

15. Last thing you ate?

A Nutella and strawberry jelly sandwich.

16. What are you listening to?

  • Miles Davis
  • Lots of podcasts- too many to list, but if you want recommendations, leave a comment.

17. If you were a crayon, what color would you be?

Dark grey or Cornflower, the colors I use the most often in HTML. The grey is #333333, and the blue is #336699.

18. What is your favorite smell?

I have two- tea tree oil and lavender anything…. although I had to take a break from lavender while reading the Outlander series. It turned my stomach for a while.

19. Who was the last person you talked to on the phone?

My sister, Lindsay. She’s cooler than you are.

20. Married?

I used to be, and it would take an act of God for me to do it again.

21. Hair color?

Brown, with a little grey and white mixed in…. which is such a blessing because it stops me from looking like a ten-year-old.

22. Eye Color?

Espresso… well, brown, but I’m being, ummm….. creative.

23. Favorite food to eat?

Anything I’ve cooked myself. I’m good at it, and I get immense satisfaction with that kind of accomplishment.

24. Scary movies or happy ending?

Why choose? My favorite scary movie is “Get Out.”

25. Last movie you watched in a theater?

This is one of the funniest things that has happened to me in a while. I went with my friend Jaime to see “Jojo Rabbit,” and since I’d already seen it, I went about halfway through the movie before I got ridiculously thirsty. I leaned over to Jaime and said, “I’m getting a Coke. Do you want one?” She nodded and I left. So I come back and it is the most heart-wrenching part of the film and here I am stumbling in the dark to my seat while the rest of the row would have murdered me if it wasn’t illegal.

26. What color shirt are you wearing?

White. It’s not my color, but it’s warm.

27. Favorite holiday?

Any that involve a three-day weekend.

28. Beer or Wine?

Not much of a drinker, but I love anything Belgian.

29. Night owl or morning person?

It depends. I have a lot of energy at both ends of the spectrum. I also enjoy when I can’t sleep, watching the sun come up when I’m normally “not there” to see it.

30. Favorite day of the week?

None right now- they all blend together.

31. Favorite animal?

I am absolutely over the top crazy about Fiona the hippo. When it’s nice outside, I like taking my tablet and Bluetooth keyboard to the zoo and sitting in front of the giraffe enclosure.

32. Do you have any pets?

None of my own, but there are several dogs that live in my house. It’s the best of both worlds- puppy love and no responsibility.

33. Where would you like to travel?

I am consumed by the Middle East, both in terms of “walking the Bible,” and seeing things in movies I’d like to experience for real, like the Blue Mosque in Iran, the Beqaa Valley in Lebanon, and the mountains of Afghanistan. My mom and dad went when I was very small, because it was safe to travel there for tourists (at least to Israel, Jordan, and Egypt). I’m not holding my breath in terms of my lifetime.

 

Sacred Ground

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Yesterday contained a mountaintop experience for me. I experienced a high that I hadn’t felt in years, and I am so grateful. It is carrying me through the rest of my week, as mountaintop experiences are wont to do.

Last week, my old church in Portland announced that they were going to be livestreaming from Facebook and Zoom. Because Zoom has a native Linux client, I downloaded it and got it running. At the appointed time, I logged in. Instantaneously, I was connected to faces I’ve looked to for love for almost two decades. I was reminded of the days when I was preaching, the days when I showed up for church so low that everyone couldn’t help but notice, and the days when a hug from them meant more than anything in the world. And, as a Virgo (an earth sign), I am deeply tied to setting.

Looking at the sanctuary made me flood out, and I looked at the ceiling so I could stop crying. Right in front of me was the banner Sash and Lisa made for our performance of John Rutter’s Requiem, s-l640intense colors and “Out of the Deep” written in their own “font.” It was a blessing remembering the day I truly became a singer, instead of a trumpet player who faked it. I was the soprano soloist for the Pie Jesu movement, and I don’t think I would have gotten the chance to spread my wings anywhere else… as was the chance to pinch hit for the pastor.

I was lucky in that my very first sermon ever was well-received, so I got to preach more. I wasn’t always the best at it, but when I was on, I was unstoppable.

The service started and the people connected to Zoom weren’t shy about singing, and I heard voices I hadn’t heard since I moved away in 2013. It was exactly what I’d hoped would happen… that I would find myself wanting to go to church for the first time since my mother died, focusing on what was mine there instead of what had been my mother’s domain. I was not so wrapped up in grief that I couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t feel comforted, couldn’t breathe…….. Waiting for the service to begin was one of the great Shatner ellipses of my life, and I was changed by it…………………………

God and I have always had a tight relationship, but church and I have been at odds. When I was little, my mother was everything in the church, from choir member to accompanist to children’s choir director. There was nowhere I could look that didn’t feel like a ghost rising, and I couldn’t smile. I couldn’t feel my own joy at everything I’d accomplished on my own that didn’t have anything to do with her. I think it was because I wasn’t in my element. I hadn’t lived in Silver Spring very long, so I didn’t have a connection that reached two decades down and had the ability to grab my hand.

I cried quietly, tears running down my face when Karen read poetry, Wendy sang, and Stacey’s mic was hot in the chatroom. I also laughed with delight, the kind of laugh that lights up your whole face and you can feel it with your whole body.

I realized afterward that it was also important that I was in my own room, with no one else to witness what was happening to me as I fell apart- and my congregation put me back together. I didn’t have to feel shy about anything, didn’t have to feel embarrassed. I could take it all in, letting the power of the Holy Sprit run unimpeded.

I do not think I am finished with this particular journey, but it was a step down on sacred ground.

Blogging Isn’t Writing

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Especially because of the pandemic we’re experiencing, I thought it would be fun to watch movies that deal with them. The first one I watched made me laugh so hard I almost choked and died (no lie). Jude Law plays a blogger/journalist [Alan Krumwiede] who wants to break the story, and LaurenceMV5BMTY3MDk5MDc3OV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwNzAyNTg0Ng@@._V1_ Fishburne as Dr. Ellis Cheever provided me with this gem: blogging is not writing. It’s graffiti with punctuation. One of the best movie quotes about blogging of all time and space. #fightme

I tend to think of it as emotionally vomiting all over the Internet, but what do I know? 😉

The movie has an amazing cast, and held my attention. When I watch movies, they generally run in the background as I do a hundred other things, but I actually sat down for this one. I am a huge fan of both Jude Law and Matt Damon, and love it when they work together. The Talented Mr. Ripley is a masterpiece. I also love Laurence Fishburne’s voice, and I could listen to him read the phone book and be extraordinarily happy with it. The movie itself is great, but what really pushes it over the top is the actors chosen.

I am sure I will keep watching disaster movies, because they are timely and generally have great soundtracks. I am a sucker for a well-composed score….. and isn’t it interesting how life imitates art?

Speaking of which, no show in recent memory does this better than Homeland. For instance, two or three weeks ago it was about negotiating a cease fire with the Taliban. Truly, with the exception of a Bipolar I case officer, this show is the most realistic I’ve ever seen.

Why would a Bipolar I case officer be ridiculous? The CIA would never let it happen. I think it’s probably a little unfair to discriminate against mentally ill workers that don’t leave Langley- with the exception that they have to be in treatment at all times- but field work would end in disaster, and not for the reasons you think.

If a Bipolar spy was captured in a third world country, they may not even have access to your medication. If they do, how likely would it be that they would actually give it to you? It didn’t even occur to me until Carrie herself got made, and descended into madness from lack of medication after getting captured by the GRU.604px-Apple_logo_Think_Different_vectorized.svg

That being said, a Bipolar analyst might be a good thing. Mental illness isn’t fun, but you gain a tremendous amount of ability at being able to see things others don’t, because you’re always thinking outside the box. Carrie’s murder boards are absolutely insane in terms of always being spot on. She can make connections that no one else can or does. That part is amazing in terms of mental illness visibility, because she highlights all the bad and the good. The problem comes in when analysts are required to be forward-deployed. I have no idea how that would work, but it’s a balance of pros vs. cons. I don’t have an answer, I just think it’s something that might come in handy, especially when Think different. becomes a thing….. because trust me when I say no one is better at it.

There have been a lot of people saying that Homeland has gotten predicable and boring, because Carrie is brilliant and then has a breakdown every season. The producers’ response was amazingly kind (at least to those who have it). Carrie doesn’t get a break from it. Why should you?

In terms of my own mental health, Carrie and I are very different. Bipolar II does not cause such extreme variance between depression and mania. The depression is full strength, but the mania is basically the Bipolar I Diet Coke™ counterpart. There’s only one time in my life that it’s gotten out of hand, and it was so memorable that if it ever happens again, I’m locking myself in my room and air gapping my computer. I will leave you to your own devices as to what happened, but it cost me more than I’ve ever spent… in fact, it reached into my five dollar life and made change… the scary part was that I was on my medication when it happened, and I thought I was going to have to start a whole new protocol.

The reason that’s always scary is that changing your medication is often trial and error, so I could have been through the wringer several times before getting right again. But as it turned out, my doctor added Neurontin™ & Klonopin™ for anxiety and left the rest alone. It thankfully, blessedly worked miracles. That was four years ago, and I haven’t had a recurrence, mostly because I’m so afraid of it that I will go to the doctor at the drop of a hat.

Nothing has really changed in terms of always feeling better, but nothing has felt worse, either. I think my ups and downs are just life, not my brain causing them. For instance, my disorder didn’t get worse when my mother died. I just experienced grief like a normal person (or as normal as I get, anyway). I walked around dazed and confused for months, not getting out of bed unless I had to. I’m guessing that particular reaction is common for people who have lost a parent or a spouse, and not an indication of something worse. Although I knew that the grief would be bad, I truly didn’t expect a fog to settle over my brain that would make me constantly feel as if I was on a heavy sedative, forgetting what and who was around me…. such as putting ice cream in the refrigerator. I leaned heavily (and still do) on the friends who have also lost parents, because they can tell with one look how I’m doing that day.

The thing is, though, now that it’s been three years I am still grieving, but over different things… like losing the sound of my mother’s voice in my head, or forgetting things I should probably remember, like childhood memories. As I get older, my first decade fades. Grief is an interesting balance between being grateful for the years you got and being cheated out of the ones you were supposed to have. It is a totally different thing when your parents don’t die in their eighties.

And, to be frank, you get irrationally angry at people who say the wrong thing, because they don’t mean any harm. They’re trying to be supportive, they just don’t know what to say. The people that do know what to do become precious- the ones that just say “I’m sorry,” because they know there are no words in the English language that will make things better. Bonus points for hugs or an arm around your shoulder. I don’t think I got enough affection at that time, because I just didn’t have as big a support system then.

The one exception was Prianka, because it was so amazing to have my best buddy pick me up at the airport when I landed at DCA from that particular trip. It was nice to relax on the way home rather than having to struggle with my bags on the Metro as I got lost trying to find my way home because I couldn’t think properly. If I had been driving, I would have realized I was going the wrong way at about Richmond.

All that being said, it was really nice to know that I was having an objective experience rather than subjective, because my feelings were so universal. Deep grief is not a club you want to join, but there is an amazing community to receive you……..

Especially other people who also graffiti the Internet.

ADHDDB

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

For years there was a running gag between Argo and me, called “The Argo Daily Briefing,” or “The ADB.” I thought it was funny, and if it’s funny once, it’s funny a thousand times. The bullet points ranged from agony to ecstasy- an entire spectrum of emotion. They jumped around so much that I finally started calling them “The ADHDADB.” The reason I thought it was hilarious is because the subject line was so #dclife. Now, you’re getting the same update, it’s just that the second A is missing (don’t you hate it when your A is missing?), and don’t think I’m not sad about it. At this point, it’s neither here nor there.

Let’s move on.

A few weeks ago, I had a “coming to Jesus” meeting with myself. I’ve been ADHD all my life, but the fight within me every day, the fight where my spirit and I wrestle without keeping score, is how to get it handled. 514r9aJ33SLIt affects everything, from my relationships to taking care of myself…………………………………… poorly.

I searched Amazon for a Kindle book that might help, and I bought “Queen of Distraction” (it was free with all my digital credits). There is a seminal work on ADHD that’s recommended by most therapists called “Driven to Distraction,” by Edward M. Hallowell & John J. Ratey. If you’re ADHD or related to someone who has it, it’s the first book you ought to buy, but it’s not the last… particularly if you are or the person you know is female.

ADHD presents differently between genders. Girls and women often go undiagnosed for years on end, simply because they’re not as prone to hyperactivity. Therefore, no one notices how differently their brain works except them. The difference is that when they notice, the internal fight is not “my brain is different and I have to develop coping mechanisms.” It’s “why am I so shit at everything? Why can’t I get it together?” This is because no one has noticed that they’re ADHD and it didn’t occur to them on their own.

I realized I needed to read some more books because I refuse to live a life on Adderall,™ even though I severely need it at times (severely). If Strattera™ worked for me, I’d be golden, but it doesn’t. I need more skills and tools, because the longer you’re on stimulants, the more disastrous the side effects become. For instance, my teeth aren’t much better than someone who’s been doing crystal for five-10 years. Actually, all of my medications cause side effects, and I have to choose between tolerating them or remaining sane. I will always choose mentally well over physically sick, but it’s annoying at best.

In fact, a lot of my therapy has been about frustration over this very thing. Until they started making several different brands of generic Lamictal,™ there was only one pill and I called it “The Blue Diamond of Death.” I think Dana might have come up with it originally, but too much time has passed for joke attribution. No matter who named it, I was still so nauseous that I felt like I’d been pregnant for over a decade.

I have done a trial run with going off meds at least twice, and it has always ended in disaster. I’ve just rendered myself useless, so down I couldn’t function. I will never be able to get off of depression medication, but ADHD is this whole other thing that requires management. I have tried to go off meds for it before, and I was unwilling to admit how bad it got, even to myself. I can’t “adult” properly when I can’t find anything. I can’t work in piles as effectively as I try to convince myself I can.

I am desperately hoping that it is because I haven’t done intensive cognitive behavioral therapy, and that I can develop habits that will help. As of right this moment, I have no habits to speak of (with the exception of habitually turning my room into total chaos), and it no longer serves me. If this doesn’t work, I will resign myself to medication. I think I’ve mentioned this before, that I like to do short courses so the side effects don’t catch up with me. But after years upon years of this, I had to admit that it doesn’t work. I am truly having a last-ditch-college-try moment.

Why hasn’t it worked in the past? Well, part of the problem is that with ADHD, you really have to develop enough drive to want to get better, because your willingness to actually sit down and read the book falters. As with all things, the first chapter gets read along with promises to read the rest later…… and later never seems to happen. We’ve started another fifty projects.

In fact, one great way to tell whether you have ADHD or not is your start to completion ratio. If your TO DO list looks anything like mine, it is chock full of things that are half or mostly done.

And one of them is getting my ADHD under control. The difference is that now I know this is a top priority so that the rest of my life can sail more smoothly. Up until now, I don’t think I had a stark clarity about how much it affects me. Trying to get by pretending to be as neurotypical as possible while also suffering alone doesn’t cut it anymore. Trying to manage myself with caffeine is far less effective than I used to think it was (it was a good start, though, and doesn’t give me appetite suppression). However, any medication I would take is much cheaper than a Starbucks habit. I tend to sip on coffee all day long rather than having a huge dose of caffeine all at once. I don’t need to get wired, I just need to keep the bus from going under 50.

I’m hoping I can eventually get my house in order- both literally and figuratively- without having to change my blood type to Folgers.

Redacted

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

The bassoon solo from The Bourne Identity main theme is ringing in my ears. People ask me all the time why I’m so interested in intel. Well, if you’ve been reading for a long time, you already know. For those just joining us, I had a great uncle in the DIA who died when I was very small. The mystery of how has stayed with me since I first heard the story. The public one is a helicopter crash, but I don’t know if the public and private match……… It is possible that his identity died, but he didn’t. The only reason I think that is that his personal effects weren’t sent until over a decade later. I’ve also always loved Bond (well, all intel) movies, and a huge part of it is the music.

So to me, it’s no wonder that I ended up being fascinated by spies, but I don’t have any interest in being one myself……… which is good, because I don’t think I’d make a great one. I’d be excellent at interrogation, especially if I had language skills equal to English in Russian and Arabic…….. crap at nearly everything else. I would probably make it a life goal to drive my IT guys crazy, but I’d have everyone’s back. Well, except for the part where I’m 5’2 and 125 and the added bonus of when in a war zone, a terrible shot. I mean, truly exceptional at being bad. I have even less desire to be a desk jockey at Langley. Oh, and even though I take medication for it so it’s not generally an issue, I’m Bipolar II and I don’t think The Agency would take kindly to it.

So here we are.

I go to The International Spy Museum and collect signed books like baseball cards….. and as I told my friend Jaime,IMG_0025 “since it’s clandestine, you never get their rookie year.” The last lecture/book signing I went to was The Unexpected Spy, by Tracy Walder. I was particularly interested for two reasons:

  • The book is about to become a TV show, called The Sorority Girl Who Saved Your Life produced by Ellen Pompeo of Grey’s Anatomy. Why they couldn’t call it “The Unexpected Spy” is beyond me, because the name is ridiculous. But still.
  • We were both born with “floppy baby syndrome,” which was the precursor to my CP diagnosis. It is fundamental to who we both are. She said in her talk that she takes spills all the time. It made me feel much better about myself, because I’ve never seen a movie spy that moved like me in any way. But a real spy does.

The reason it’s redacted on the autograph page is that I asked her to do it. The Publications Review Board at The Agency blacked out a lot of her manuscript, and the style choice to leave it all in was pretty badass.

She took it seriously and wrote the comment, then scratched out one word. Then, she decided it wasn’t black enough and went over it with a Sharpie. I was laughing so hard I was crying when she handed it to me and said, “there. Now no one knows WHAT I told you to do to the world.” And then she laughed, and at that moment, she was the most beautiful, kind person in the world to me. Literally awesome.

Which only made me more angry at her treatment by the FBI, but I won’t get into it because it’s a large part of the book.

If there are any people who hire spies reading this web site, she also said in the Q&A that she might be approachable after January (who could possibly tell why?). For now, she is doing the work of angels- teaching high school. For the record, it wasn’t me who asked the question.

She had said during the lecture that she wished she had spoken up more at the FBI, possibly taken them to court. I told her that I had a comment and a question. She nodded and I said, “I’m a writer, too, and I know that while you may regret what happened at Hoover, you are more powerful than you can possibly imagine. You’ve taken ‘I’m telling’ to an international level.'” I then asked her about hypotonia- what limitations she had, how she overcame them, etc. She said that I would be surprised, that being in the CIA wasn’t as physical as she thought. That didn’t come in until the FBI, and even then, it was at Quantico where it really mattered.

And then we shared a look between us that was so intimate I will never forget it. Just the complete understanding of someone who knows what it’s like to be the other one.

Because there are no pictures and I don’t think anyone in the room noticed (and maybe I’m projecting and wrong [I don’t think I am]), in years to come I will smile to myself and say, “that’s redacted.”

 

Dish

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

This was originally posted in response to a first time dishwasher in the dishwashing subreddit, and got a lot of karma. Reposting it here:

If you are offended by anything, don’t work in a kitchen. No joke is off limits. Being in a high pressure situation leads to dark humor. There has to be a release valve somewhere……

As for the work itself, you will come home some nights feeling like you aced it, and some nights feeling like you are one step away from being fired. Because your schedule is going to be different than 99% of your friends, the kitchen will take over your whole life. Anthony Bourdain said it best…. “a tribe that would have me.”

You will never be more tired in your life, but you will often feel a sense of satisfaction that can’t be found anywhere else. And lots of cooks, perhaps even the chef, will let you work on other projects when it’s slow and you can up your cooking game as well. Dishwasher is basically the only position in which there is forward motion. You might want to be promoted someday to a prep or line cook. I loved both jobs equally- working on the brigade was just as enjoyable as being queen of my own domain.

Before you start, know that you have to have a strong backbone and be able to take a lot of criticism… but it’s not just that. You cannot be afraid of yelling at a line cook if he/she puts knives in a full sink, etc. Sharps under the water is probably the most hazardous part of the job. Don’t ever do it, don’t ever let anyone else get away with it, even the chef (in my restaurant, dishwashers didn’t even touch sharps- we made the line cooks wash and put away their own).

If you get fired for standing your ground, dishwasher jobs are a dime a dozen and none of them are worth deep, permanent scars on your hands…. and before the scars, possibly great big infections because you’ve been cut in water containing “used food.”

Being a dishwasher is not for the faint of heart. You will have to show up on time, every single day, and absolutely bust your fucking ass. I promise that the simple act of showing up on time, every single day, will win you more brownie points than you can possibly imagine. Kitchen folk are not necessarily the most dependable, reliable people on earth……………

Your work ethic also means a lot, because anyone else in the kitchen could walk out at a moment’s notice and the kitchen would still function, except you. You are the key to the whole operation. Take pride in that fact. The motherfucking chef doesn’t mean as much as you do, and most chefs, if not all, know it even if they don’t say it. I’ve been lucky enough to have chefs say that out loud.

In some restaurants, you’ll get tipped out at the end of the night. In some restaurants, you won’t. You’ll make a fourth of what the servers make, but it’s worth it not to have to deal with customers. Bet on it.

You’ll know within one shift whether the job is right for you. Don’t stick around if you can’t hack it. Not everyone can. But you’ll gain an immense respect for everyone able to take the heat, as it were. Don’t walk off- finish out your shift and tell the chef you just can’t do it. There’s a 19 year old Salvadoran who is 80 times better than you waiting in the wings if you’re not capable.

And if you have any negative thoughts about illegal immigration, cut that shit out before you even apply. Illegal immigrants have been the backbone of every restaurant in which I’ve worked. Literally the people keeping it running. I find that most immigrants in kitchens speak Spanish (although where I live we also have a huge African immigrant community as well, so no promises). It won’t hurt to learn a little, and you’ll pick it up on the job.

Also, I love working in kitchens because in my former life, I was the IT person connected by the umbilical cord to my work phone and laptop. In kitchens, there’s none of that crap. When you’re off, you’re really off. People ask me why I’d rather work in kitchens than make more money in IT. That’s easy. Being in a kitchen gives me energy, being in IT sucks my soul every damn day and I am too exhausted to take on anything else. I’m not cut out for it- I’m a writer, and I need the calm after finishing a shift to write late into the night. I joke that Anthony Bourdain stole my career- or at least I did until he died. After that, it just wasn’t as funny.

If you have never, ever worked in a kitchen before, do yourself a favor and watch the episode of No Reservations at the Texas border. Read Kitchen Confidential- it will tell you everything you need to know about whether you are capable of taking on this lifestyle. You’ll become a night owl if you aren’t already, you’ll sleep during the day, and you will develop a sense of humor that would make Andrew Dice Clay blush. Over time, you’ll realize that you don’t quite fit in with your friends who have “normal jobs” (I have often forgotten where I was and who I was talking to and jokes landed with a thud and “what’s WRONG with you?” :P)

Once you leave the kitchen, you may not want to go back, but you’ll most likely remember it as one of the best times of your life, because there really is nothing like it on earth. Good luck.

What They Made Me

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 5 Comments

As I was cooking breakfast, I was reflecting on everything I’d learned while being a professional. Though I feel I can’t return to the kitchen, I do feel it is part of my soul. My last gig convinced me (though not a unique experience, by far) I have the heart of a chef, but my body just won’t cooperate. I do not mean that I have earned my stripes to be a chef already (which literally means boss, and too many people call everyone who cooks “chef”), I mean that if I didn’t have so many physical limitations, I would have bagged all my other ambitions and gotten the experience I needed to run my own kitchen.

It’s not just the work that calls to me, it’s the lifestyle. I would finish in the kitchen around 11, then come home and write late into the night. I’d sleep until noon or one, then do it all over again. It fits my circadian rhythm perfectly, because truly working overnight just about killed me (I once worked at an IT help desk with customers in the UK, so we were open 24/7). I was fine until about 0400, but even if I napped my entire lunch hour, staying until 0800 made my body scream for mercy.

What made cooking different is that it never drained me. It gave me energy rather than taking it. Putting the perfect plate of food in the window to give to a customer always made me smile inside, and it showed. 1d3d025b-e006-47e8-a9b7-8bd71b0ce971_screenshotMy coworkers literally compared me to SpongeBob Squarepants…. and I’ve worked in three different pubs, so the comparison is not unfair……

But my chef’s heart didn’t start beating until I got some menu control over the brunch program at the first one, and then did Cajun fine dining for a while, where I worked with higher caliber ingredients and people (in the professional sense- everyone has personally been fine). At Tapalaya, both the chef and the sous had been to culinary school, and were impeccable about teaching everyone else.

In terms of what my chefs made me, it is that I wouldn’t even be the same person today….. and also jambalaya, which Chef would present me at the end of a long shift with an Abita Purple Haze. He found out on the first day that I liked it, and the moment the restaurant closed, one would magically appear. It was just one of the ways that Chef showed me he cared, both as a boss and a friend (we were friends before I worked for him and still friends today). There’s also one moment between us that will seem so small that it is insignificant, but even thinking about it makes tears come to my eyes.

Working in the kitchen is a meritocracy. You start at rock bottom and work your way up, even if you’ve been to culinary school. If you have been to culinary school and think certain jobs are beneath you, it is literally the quickest way to get fired. The moment I’m recalling is that Chef asked me to taste something and tell him what it needed. I took a bite and closed my eyes. “Salt. It needs a little more salt.” He dropped some in. No big deal, right?

It was everything. Absolutely everything. It was the first time in any kitchen that I’d won enough merit to have an opinion, like getting into a doctoral program, because that’s generally when you’re allowed to think for yourself (in publishing, anyway). And if you ask Chef, he’d tell you that you were right. It was no big deal.

Yes, it was. It was the moment I realized I was really good at my job. Where the problems start happening is technique, never palate. With enough time, I can do anything, and in a professional kitchen, it’s the only thing that’s never on the menu.

I’d worked with my ex-wife, Dana, and she allowed me to have plenty of opinions, but never because she was compelled. At work, I deferred to her judgment, because she had been to culinary school and I hadn’t. It was that she had seen me cook for years, both at home and at work, and trusted me. Our joke was that with my palate and her technique, between us we had a complete culinary education.

For instance, she would often start a soup and then come to me and say, “fix this.” And it wasn’t that it didn’t taste good originally. She just knew I would “put it up to 11.” Those moments were fantastic, but I can’t put them on the same level with Chef. It’s not that I respected Dana less, it’s that she was my family, someone I didn’t see as having as much objectivity as someone unrelated…. like not believing I was actually a good singer until I was well-received by people other than my mom. Everybody’s mom thinks they’re a good singer. Everybody’s spouse thinks they’re a good cook if they think they’ll be sleeping in the backyard if they don’t. 😛

I made the connection early on that cooking was like driving a car with a manual transmission, and that analogy carries me, because it applies to nearly everything.

For instance, let’s start with mayonnaise. You put three egg yolks and one tablespoon of acid into a bowl (doesn’t matter if it’s citrus or vinegar), and then whisk it until it turns white (called the sabayon stage). After that, it is like the balance between the clutch and the gas, the egg and vinegar mixture vs. the oil….. the stallout being the sauce breaking (that means that the acid and oil have separated). Usually, this is caused by adding too much oil at one time. Three egg yolks and one tablespoon of acid will stretch to accommodate quite a bit, but it has to be added at a drizzle while you’re whisking like mad. Sometimes you can save it by continually whisking and adding a tiny bit of water, but most of the time, you’ll have to get the starter to turn over……………..

[As an aside, if you’re a home cook, you should really learn to make mayonnaise, because it’s the basis of every salad dressing ever. If it’s ranch or bleu cheese, mayonnaise is the base. If it’s a vinaigrette, there’s no mayonnaise, but the concept of balance between acid and oil is the same. Also, at home there’s no chef barking at you that you’re cheating if you use a mixer or a blender so you have a free hand to hold the oil steady. You can also make Hollandaise quite easily, extrapolating the concept by using melted butter instead of oil and lemon juice for the acid.]

The same stick shift analogy can be used with other balances, like adding an acid if something is too salty, or adding more sugar/fat if something is too spicy.

Once I learned the concepts behind palate, it didn’t matter what type of cuisine, down to the dish, that I was making.

Like jambalaya.

 

A Major Key

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Sandra Cisneros just floored me while listening to “On Being with Krista Tippett.” She said that the Sufis say life keeps breaking your heart over and over until it *stays* open. Words to live by, because heartbreak is inevitable in a multitude of ways, and to me, this saying gives it a purpose. It is a deep, lifelong learning.

It came up in my Facebook memories this morning that Dana and I broke up five years ago today, and so the quote was especially apt in that light…. I feel that heartbreak was so great, it is the one that keeps me open to the world. No one ever expects to start a marriage preparing for its end, but I felt especially blindsided by all the things I couldn’t (or didn’t want to) see. There were many things I took seriously, and things I didn’t take seriously enough. In retrospect, knowing which was which is still a mystery. I just know they exist and don’t feel the need to talk it out with her, like some sort of post-mortem closure. I don’t care to know how she feels. It is not a matter of feeling heartless, just done.

And in fact, I care even less about how our marriage came apart than I do about our friendship, which preceded marriage by almost four years. Though it’s not like we talked daily when I first moved to DC, we did talk a few times and laughed a lot. But there must have been too much pain roiling underneath to keep it up, and that is the beginning and the end of it to me. I don’t have need to cause her more pain just because of something I wanted. Her feelings do matter in that respect. But it was extraordinarily difficult to go from talking from the moment we woke to the moment we went to sleep to absolutely no communication, ever. I didn’t insist on it, but I respected her wishes. It was a large factor in my moving to DC, because I am not the best at emotional boundaries. I figured that with half a country in between us, it would be so much easier to find new people to fill the void, and I was right.

I met a swath of people who had no connection to me as a married person, didn’t think of me as “DanaandLeslie,” and for that I can be grateful. Friends who had no connection to my history at all allowed me the freedom to discover who I was on my own again. I was alone, but was not then and never have been lonely. I decided to move into a house with landlords on site and three other roommates so that I would not come home to an empty apartment every night. I figured that with my mental illnesses, living alone with no one to drag me out of my shell would be a very bad thing. The last time I lived in a one bedroom, even then I sort of had a “roommate,” this loud, brash best friend who never really wanted to go home because her own house was empty….. and I grew to love her company more and more every day.

Eventually, there were three of us, all single and looking for family. I don’t know why my apartment became the hang, but it did, and I was grateful. I knew ahead of time that in DC, I didn’t have the built-in connection of friends of friends and church and all that, which is why I opted for a group house. It would take at least a few months to reconnect with the friends I’d made here before, and to find a new church because with public transportation, my old church was too far away to really get involved on any kind of deep level (I was actually involved with two of them back then- Westminster Presbyterian in SE DC and Fairlington UMC in Alexandria, VA).

I realized I could make it on Sunday mornings easily, but not choir, and choir is far and above the biggest reason I love going to church. I feel that I am a much better soprano when I can feel the other moving parts under me, and even though I’ve done solo work (even well), it’s not my favorite (my favorite is actually singing in a quartet so I can hear myself think……..).

It was also important to me that I be free of any connections to Kathleen, my first wife, as well. I bear no ill will toward her, either- we never should have gotten married in the first place, but I was filled with so much hope as an early 20-something that it didn’t register that even though she was bisexual, her preference wasn’t women….. or at the very least, it wasn’t me…. and we’d attended both of those churches together. stone_labyrinthOne of my favorite memories of that time in my life was helping to put in the stone floor labyrinth, because, of course, you can still see my handiwork…. but you better get there fast because they’re about to build a new building. 😛

I also went to Foundry United Methodist for one Sunday just to check it out, but Fairlington was so much closer to my house and just as liberal (one of the first Open & Affirming congregations in Virginia).

Now, I don’t go to church at all (but will someday…. just be patient and stay tuned…), but do go to Foundry on Thursdays for a mental illness support group when I can feel confident about getting out of the house when I don’t specifically have to do so……

It also took me a while to get out from under the burden of people thinking I moved here specifically to be closer to Argo, because that was never the case…… just a persistent rumor that affected me greatly because it was never true. What was true is that I could have moved in next door to her and she still never would have seen me, because I tend to hole up, anyway. As I have often said, I mostly sit at my computer or tablet with my headphones blaring, so a bear ripping out the side of my house wouldn’t even have registered unless I was facing that direction.

Even though I thought of DC and Alexandria as my “home towns,” I still didn’t want to take the chance of feeding that rumor even more than it already had been, so I chose Maryland. It turned out to be the best decision, anyway, because my cousin Nathan (who is a psychiatrist in Alexandria) told me about all the mental health services available in Maryland that Virginia couldn’t even touch….. and even if I was perfectly healthy when I moved here, going through a divorce still would have required talk therapy, especially after a friendship of over a decade and a marriage of seven years and change. So I got hooked up with talk therapy and a psychiatric nurse practitioner that really worked with me instead of at me, which I require because I know enough about medicine that I abhor being patronized. Additionally, I have suffered enough that not only do I know the drugs that do work, I’ve been through the list of everything that doesn’t.

There are two instances where my nurse practitioner really shone. The first is that he wanted to change my SSRI to Prozac, and I shuddered. He asked me what was wrong, and I said that it made me so nauseous that I couldn’t function or eat. The second is that we were talking about ADHD, and he asked if I’d tried Stratera. I told him that it was interesting, that opioid agonists work on me, like Tramodol, but methamphetamine agonists didn’t. That was how our relationship matured quickly, because he raised his eyebrows at the fact that I knew the word “agonist,” and his tone quickly changed to “ok, we’re equals now.”

He really listened to me as I told him that I liked to do short courses of Ritalin or Adderall in order to get my coping mechanisms under control, then stop them until I felt I needed a refresher course, and I liked the lowest dose possible to get the maximum dopamine effects without the awful side effects.

At the time, I didn’t have any weight to lose. I was so sad that I wasn’t eating, anyway. I survived on drinks, because I had a block on eating. Things like Carnation Instant Breakfast, Slim Fast, Ensure, etc. were the basics of my diet until I felt better. I am now up to a healthy weight, but back then I looked like a heroin addict (which, for the record, I was not). I also stopped drinking alcohol almost in its entirety, because I noticed that I felt and slept better when I didn’t, and I really needed sleep to let my body recover from trauma. Divorcing from Dana was traumatic on so many levels, like the fistfight that ended our relationship permanently because I didn’t want to leave the house at all until the bruise under my eye was gone and the phantom pain wasn’t all day, every day.

And it turned out that the phantom pain lasted for months, because I was devastated and that’s how it manifested. It’s gone now- forgiven but not forgotten. But I was so weak in the moment that even a punch to the face didn’t stop me from wanting to get back our relationship at first. It was moving away and really reflecting on what happened that convinced me that while I could accept friendship, I could never accept getting back together, because I couldn’t live in fear that something like it would happen again.

I was not innocent in that fight in terms of emotional escalation, but when Dana broke the physical barrier, I went off like a rat dog with a Napoleon complex…. an apt description because Dana was over a hundred pounds heavier with a fist three times bigger.

And perhaps that is yet another reason I’m so much more willing to talk about Argo now than I am about Dana, because Argo has never hurt me…. I mean, she has, but less than I’ve hurt her and never in a physically threatening way.

I actually just put that together, that I can’t extricate myself from thinking about Dana without going back to that moment in time where my eye was bruised and my heart was broken….. and that with Argo, all I think of is love and laughter. It’s just so much easier to go back to those moments, because even when I try my absolute best to only remember the love and laughter with Dana, I still hang my head in shame.

Although I do hang my head in shame at the relationship with Argo crumbling at my own hand, because even though it was never true that I moved here to be closer to her, it would have been a dream and a half to get to know the real her instead of just the black and white version….. to include her in my family of friends rather than always being on the outside…. my Raggedy Man.

My body memory is so strong for both of those days, my love for both women an intrinsic part of me, just in vastly different capacities. I saw a funny memory on Facebook the other day about having to stop calling Argo my “wine and yoga pants-type girlfriend” because I kept getting ads for wine and yoga pants on my feed. 😛

It was an unfortunate side effect that at the beginning, my wires got crossed and I had a mountain of shit to work through regarding the toxic version of friendship that was presented to me at a very early age, the part where all close friendships initially made my teenage heart go haywire. But to my credit, I worked my way out of that hole, just not as quickly as I would have liked, because first I had to get rid of the toxicity that made me think those things in the first place….. and I did, very successfully. Now I am in great shape when it comes to friendship, being close and vulnerable with people I respect and admire without the emotional baggage of my own teenage “stuff.”

I feel it is apt that “Clearing Iranian Airspace” from the Argo soundtrack just started playing, because I am ending this entry on a major key.

Amen.

Wilted

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 2 Comments

I started my morning by making coffee and a “kitchen sink” wilted salad with over medium eggs on top (I am a vegan who cheats. A lot. #noguiltever). By “kitchen sink,” I mean I just threw in whatever fruits and veggies were available.

I started out with sesame seed oil, onions, garlic, mushrooms, diced Granny Smith apples, and ginger. To finish, I added a mixture of shaved brussel sprouts and spring mix (red romaine, baby spinach, radicchio, green romaine, arugula, red mustard, red chard, frisee), then put some rice wine vinegar in the bottom of the pan and let it reduce, helping the to greens soften and mix.

When the veggies were ready, I pushed them to the sides of the pan, making a perfect circle for two eggs, spraying the pan with sesame seed oil again so nothing would stick. I was going to do sunny side up, but I didn’t have a lid for the pan, and I grew tired of waiting for the yolks to cook, because it takes so much longer without steam.

The dish turned out perfectly, and I am my harshest critic. I was hungry in a now sort of way, otherwise I would have served everything over wild rice and lentils as well.

I have a rice cooker made by Instant Zest, and it is the best kitchen purchase I have ever made, because it was cheap and has settings for white rice, brown rice, steel cut oatmeal, quinoa, and veggie steam (which I have also used successfully for soft/hard boiled eggs).

It’s actually been a few days….. almost a week….. since I’ve cooked, because I had to gather the courage to do it again.  I was cubing raw sweet potato, and I cut myself in such a spectacular way that I don’t think I’ve ever had a worse kitchen injury. It happened so fast that I’m not even sure where I made the mistake. I don’t know if the cutting board slipped, the knife went sideways, it wasn’t sharp enough for raw potato, etc. It could also have been something I wouldn’t have caught, like my monocular vision making me think I was cutting a straight line, but I was actually cutting diagonally. This is a problem that is as equally likely as an accident I would have seen coming. All that being said, no matter what the cause, the effect was the same- absolute searing pain and bleeding so severe that I should have gone to Urgent Care/the ER to see if I needed stitches, but I didn’t.

My kitchen training was just too ingrained…. fix the problem and get back to cooking. It took forever to get it to clot, even using a styptic pencil for vasoconstriction. Once it did, I put on some Band-Aids and finished what I was doing. Two days later, I was taking off the Band-Aids to change the dressing, and it ripped open again, which led to another half hour of trying to fix profuse bleeding. Though I’d bought a first aid kit and very advanced bandages, I’d forgotten to get the one thing that would have really helped, and is a staple in a professional knife roll– Super Glue. If I’d gotten some, once the bleeding stopped, I probably could have avoided ripping it open again. You can chalk that one up to #dumbassattack, and it won’t be happening again.

Believe it or don’t, this is the first time I’ve cut myself in many years. When I was working professionally, at home I ran on sandwiches and hot dogs. The last thing I wanted to do when I got home was cook for myself…. so, the only time I used knives was at work, where everything is built for safety, even for short people like me. The counter is lower, the cutting boards are heavier and held in place by wet rags, at least one person in the kitchen has honing and sharpening tools, etc. I had plenty of injuries when it came to burning myself, but that was it.

It was funny the emotions that came up for me as soon as the knife went from sweet potato to the side of my finger and nail. I thought of all the professional chefs and cooks I’d worked with, including my ex-wife, Dana, and shame washed over me. I felt like I’d let them down. It was my own moment of feeling wilted.

For a home cook, it’s just an accident. For a professional cook, it’s “you were being a dumbass and whatever you did got you hurt. What the hell is wrong with you?” And believe me, with some chefs, that is the nice version of what they would have said. And if the chef wasn’t in the kitchen, your coworkers would do their job for them. For instance, Dana used to work in a high-end grocery store for the meat, sausage, and fish department. One of her coworkers sliced into his finger while filleting a fish, and the entire department called him Filet-O-Finger for YEARS ON END.

Speaking of which, the only time I ever got a nickname was due to no fault of my own. During junior college, I was on the waitstaff at my local Chili’s. It was a busy shift, and they hadn’t switched over to plastic mugs yet. So, this waiter broke one of the heavy glass mugs and like an idiot, just stuck it back in the rack. The manager made an announcement that the glass was broken, but I was delivering food and not there to hear it.

The way the mug was stuck down into the rack, you couldn’t see the broken part, so I came around the corner and it’s (of course) the first thing I pick up. Little shards immediately went into my pinkie at the knuckle, and it was definitely bad enough for stitches. The manager rushed me to the ER, and I didn’t go another day in that kitchen without being called “Worker’s Comp” by somebody. The reason that memory is still seared into my brain is that it’s been 20 years and the scar is still visible.

I have no reason to doubt that this cut will be the same. 20 years from now, I will still remember the day I was dicing raw sweet potatoes, because the cut is deep enough the scar will never fade.

So, today was about ignoring the fear I felt about cutting myself again so I could move past it for real. “Act as if,” you know? In fact, as everything was cooking, I kept cutting. I didn’t need but about a half of diced apple, so I cut the rest into very large dice, and did the same with another whole apple. It was enough to fill two Zip-Loc bags. With the first, I shook in a small box of sugar free cherry Jell-O powder, an idea my mom got from a magazine and is delicious with any flavor. A moment of grief washed over me, because I couldn’t remember the proportions and she wasn’t there to call and ask. She used to put Jell-O apples in my lunch box as a kid almost every day, so I knew she would know off the top of her head…… and Google is just no substitute.

It was yet another moment of feeling wilted, but due to the hopelessness of the situation, I just had to move on.

I figured I would learn on my own when I tasted them if I’d gotten it right or not, and moved on to the second bag, to which I added some rice wine vinegar to keep the apples fresh for cooking savory dishes or adding to a salad (Hmmmm…. there’s goat cheese in the fridge……).

The last thing I was thinking today is that my knife is so sharp that there’s no way it’s time to sharpen again, but it probably needs honing. I’ll call around and ask how much it would be, because I’ve never learned how to sharpen and hone a knife properly….. and no matter how much I spend on an electric honer/sharpener, it will not meet my expectations. I have seen the most expensive ones chew up a knife and spit it out, even if it worked perfectly before.

If it is more expensive than another chef’s knife from Chicago Cutlery, I’ll just get a new one and leave this one in the community block…. but I’m really hoping that it’s not, because this knife, since I hide it from my housemates, has become mine. I never got first blood on Rachel (so named since she was as sharp as a Maddow takedown), or the three knives before her. I haven’t named this one……..

It’s probably going to be “Worker’s Comp.”

What’s Making Me Happy

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I did not come up with this title on my own. One of my favorite podcasts is NPR’s “Pop Culture Happy Hour,” Pop Culture Happy Hourand they end with the panelists saying what piece of media is speaking to them. Their recommendations are always solid, and I hope that mine can be as well. I’ve gotten several that have stuck with me, such as “Steven Universe.” It has become more important to me over time, because it takes place on a Delmarva beach (code for the coast of Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia), and I have a college friend that reminds me so much of Steven that it’s hard not to believe that I am actually watching him. In the same vein, they also introduced me to “Adventure Time,” which I have found to be a complicated, winding mythology that is supposedly for children.

These panelists have encouraged me to make my own list, important especially because I often need to look back and find things that will make me feel better when I’m grieving (grief is too small a word to encompass all the emotions one experiences). Sometimes I exhibit behaviors that I don’t even realize are connected to grief, but if I dig down deep, I find they usually are. The media I have to recommend is sometimes hilarious, and sometimes heart-wrenching because I need the catharsis. One of them comes from last night.

“This is Us” is not an easy show to watch, and I would never recommend a binge, even though they are on their third season. It is listed here because of the episode “A Hell of a Week: Part Two.”

***Spoiler Alert**

Kevin’s most significant love, Sophie, calls him to tell him her mother died. He decides to go to the funeral, and when she starts to break down during her eulogy, she looks out into the crowd and sees Kevin’s face, allowing her to continue. Flashbacks of Kevin’s relationship with Sophie’s mom populate the episode, but the thing that touched me the most was the reflection of my own feelings. She says her husband has been great through all of this, but she can’t believe she’s going to be married for the rest of her life to someone that never knew her mother. She also looks pained that her husband’s parents are still alive, which if my experience is any indication, it’s the reason she called Kevin in the first place.

Particularly in the beginning, I only wanted to talk to people who could understand my plight implicitly without me having to explain it in words that always failed to get the point across, anyway. People have told me I have a gift for words, but I could not find any that would explain in the moment how my world had turned completely upside down. I didn’t know the path to the new normal. I didn’t even know how to take the first step. I was in complete and total shock. Part of it was that my mother had died, and that was enough, but the insult to injury is that it happened in an instant. I wasn’t there. I heard the news over the phone… and so did Sophie. The difference between us is that her mother had multiple sclerosis, and had suffered for a long time. Her mother’s death didn’t come out of nowhere. If you are just joining the fray, my mother was perfectly healthy save a broken foot, which caused an embolism that loosened and traveled straight to her brain. She did make it to the hospital in an ambulance, but lasted less than a half hour there. My only comfort is that a couple of days before, I got to have a phone conversation with my mother that lasted two and a half hours. Though we did not talk about life and death issues, it still felt like we got to talk long enough that there was nothing left unsaid, no unfinished business. In fact, a good bit of the conversation was that she wasn’t working at all. She’d recently retired from teaching (elementary music), and the church at which she was playing the piano/organ had closed. She didn’t know what to do with herself. So, my absolutely black humor that makes me laugh to this day is, “Mom, if you’re bored with retirement, maybe signing up for yoga would have been a better choice.” I didn’t cry through the episode, I was excited to see my emotions reflected back to me. Enough time has passed that it just felt comforting in all the right ways.

I am also finding solace in books, some fiction, some nonfiction. The last novel I read that cut right through me was “Where the Crawdads Sing,” part murder mystery, part love letter to the North Carolina coast. I don’t want to give anything away about this book. I will just say that the prose is transcendent, and the ending a true “AHA! moment.” Telling you more than this is just robbing you of picking up a book you might not have read on your own and finding a rare treasure. It is one of the few that I might listen to as an audiobook later, because there are some sentences that I just want read to me, with the ability to rewind.

In terms of non-fiction, I am reading two books on very disparate subjects.

The first is “Spydust,” by the incomparable Jonna and Tony Mendez. Though it is technically about espionage, I wouldn’t classify it completely in that category. It is also a love story between two spies who have each other’s back at work…………….. and slowly realize they want to support each other in all areas of their lives. While learning about spycraft is infinitely interesting, I am really enjoying the parts of the book that explore spies’ lives beyond their operations. For instance, Jonna is on an op in which she writes a letter to her sister, “Jennifer.” It is not clear whether Jonna’s sister knows she is writing in code by saying that she’s “traveling,” and that’s why she missed her birthday, or whether her sister only knows that traveling is part of her job. My only clue that “Jennifer” actually does know is that from the letter, it seems as if the sister does know where she is, but the letter only references “this part of the world.” I would think that letters (and now e-mails) to family and friends are so hard, constantly wording them in such a way that they are not outright lies, but highly necessary sins of omission.

It is possible that is why so many spies date each other, but even that is problematic if you don’t have the same levels of clearance. You can get into just as much trouble for reading your spouse in on something that is above their pay grade as you can for talking about your work with family and friends…. which I learned from a TV show called “Covert Affairs,” which makes me ridiculously happy because it is not a dramatic procedural in which everything has to be spot on. In fact, it’s kind of ridiculous, but highly entertaining….. exciting without taking all the myelin off your nerves.

The second is by one of “my kids,” the term of endearment I use for all the computer users I tutored in the lab for the Graduate School of Social Work at University of Houston. Her name is Brené Brown, and even though I know there’s not a chance in hell she would remember me, I enjoy knowing that I had a tiny role in getting her papers in on time with the correct formatting. The book is called “The Gifts of Imperfection,” a book that “explores how to cultivate the courage, compassion, and connection to embrace your imperfections and to recognize that you are enough.” It’s probably one of the books I’ve needed to read since the moment it came out, but I’m glad I found it recently. Brown’s work on vulnerability and shame is slowly bringing me back out into the world, because vulnerability is not one of my strong points unless I am writing. In conversation, I have trouble letting people in. I do have two friends with whom I am completely authentic because I’ve known them for a relatively long time and they were there for me when my mother died, which carries a lot of weight. With people I do not know well, they are unlikely to hear anything from me that’s deeper than a glass of orange juice.

The last thing that’s making me happy is the movie “Jojo Rabbit.” Set in WWII, it’s about a little boy who wants to be a Nazi soldier and fight for his country…. to the point that he daydreams that Adolf Hitler is his imaginary friend (brilliantly played by Taika Waititi of “What We Do in the Shadows” fame). It is a farce, with many, many laugh lines… but also packs an emotional punch as Jojo begins to realize that being a Nazi isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

Oh, wait. There’s one more thing. Coffee. Coffee is making me happy. You want a cup? I’ll make it for you myself. Do you prefer Cafe Bustelo or Kenya single origin?

[_])

Jazz Tales

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I got into The High School for Performing and Visual Arts in 1992 as a trumpet player. I sort of made a mistake in choosing four academic classes and three performing groups.HSPVA Old Logo I was in the wind ensemble, the symphony, and Jazz II, the preparatory band for the one that won all the awards. I got my chance to audition for Jazz I, and I blew it. In hindsight, I could have won had I not been exhausted, because my embouchure was never right. I could only play for about an hour before my face started sliding down into my neck…. and because I was in three performing groups, I never had the time to back off and correct it. Plus, the audition was after school, where I’d already played for three hours.

When I was good, though, I was on fire. I wouldn’t have gotten into a performing arts magnet if I wasn’t. An audition is one slice in time, and it determines the big picture- the entire school year, possibly the entire time at said school altogether.

I am comforted by the fact that professional musicians don’t have it any easier. It’s just as common to blow a huge audition as it is a small one. The thing that made me the most angry is not that I didn’t win. It’s who did… a girl who straight up bullied me from the first day to the last. For some reason, she didn’t have a horn at one point, and my dad thought he could make it better by lending her his. It did not work. For some inane reason, a group of kids in my English class called themselves a family, and said bully said I was the dog. She barked at me every day, and this is just one example out of many.

I have a really, really long fuse… but after a year and a half of this, I backed this girl up to the balcony on the second floor and grabbed her. I wasn’t strong enough to throw her over, but she didn’t know that. I said, “this is going to stop. Right now. My family has been kind to you and every day, you still treat me like shit. That IS OVER.” Unsurprisingly, it didn’t stop the bullying altogether, but it helped. At least when she wasn’t bullying me, she had the good sense to give me the silent treatment. In retrospect, I can think of several good reasons why she was my high school bully, but that isn’t my story to tell. I will only say she was fighting a battle I couldn’t see and didn’t feel the need. Her sob story would have provided context, but not an excuse for the way she behaved. I wasn’t interested.

I was also outed to the entire school and my parents simultaneously, thanks to my counselor “being concerned” and calling them. The entire school came first- someone posted a flyer with a picture of me saying I was a “dangerous lesbian” or some crap like that….. which led to one of the percussionists holding up Playboy centerfolds where only the trumpet section could see them. I don’t exactly remember how long this went on, but I learned early to stick to my guns. If you weren’t bothered, they got bored. It all came to a head when I was sitting out on the lawn, eating my lunch, and the evangelical Christians came outside (link is to a PDF), carrying their Bibles, and read me all the clobber passages they could find. (As an aside, “clobber passages” is code for all the verses that Biblical literalists take at face value and think that the Bible is condemning homosexuality, when in reality, they’ve missed the point entirely.) I ran to my counselor and told her what happened, and she said, “well, what did you do to provoke them?” With that group, all you had to do was exist.

During that time, though, I got to hear some of the greatest jazz minds in Houston, and have now graduated to the international stage. Times like these are what made it all worth it… stars such as Robert Glasper, Eric Harland, and Jason Moran. I am very lucky that I have gotten to see all of them in concert, two here in DC (Glasper & Moran). Robert Glasper played The Reach, and Jason Moran played a small theater inside the “KenCen.”

The Glasper concert was crazy in a good way. So many hip-hop fans, with lights,IMG_0026 sound, and special guest Yasiin Bey. I managed to get an okay picture of them, because I was in the balcony and had to use optical zoom to get their faces. In case you are not familiar with either of them, Robert is at the piano and Yasiin is standing on the left.

After the concert, I wanted to joke with Yasiin that he was my favorite alien (because I for damn sure wasn’t going to tell the Ford Prefect he was my second favorite). By the time I made it to the crowds of people surrounding Robert, he was already gone. I did get to tell Robert that he’d sat behind me in history at HSPVA, and that was enough. It was literally the most fun I’d had in ages. Because I was a high school friend, I got more hugs than everyone else. 🙂

Jason’s concert in a small venue was something I couldn’t say was fun as in raves. It was fun like the way spelunkers explore a cave. There were just levels upon levels of mind-blowing musical figures, something he’s been able to do since high school and has just upped his game more and more over time. I got to talk to Jason afterwards, but more on that later.

The concert shook me to my core. It was music I wouldn’t, couldn’t forget. It was centered around the 20th anniversary of “Black Stars,” with The Bandwagon and Sam Rivers. The intro was a documentary about the making of the album, and then they played it live. Sam Rivers is now dead, so they brought in another player that was so reminiscent of his sound that when I closed my eyes, he was right there.Black Stars

I left the concert shell-shocked. The frenetic music was playing in my mind, and instead of going home, I walked down the steps from the Kennedy Center and out onto the path on Rock Creek Parkway. I meandered to the Lincoln Memorial, then just kept on going. It must have taken me three or four miles before I even considered finding a Metro station. The entire time, I was trying to think of a way to turn Jason’s music into words, and I still don’t have them. I suppose the best I can come up with is “you just had to be there.” I’m listening to the album right now, and nothing will ever be as transcendent as the live show (of course). The piano gave me a brain race that I don’t experience unless I am listening to jazz that’s hard to understand on the first pass. And by that, I do not mean that the music is inaccessible to non-jazz fans… only that I was analyzing it from top to bottom, trying to put together the theory behind it. Music theory has never been my strong point, but I made a barely-educated effort.

As for talking to Jason, as soon as I said my name, recognition hit him. He said, “how long has it been?” I told him that with the exception of Facebook, probably 20 years, maybe longer. I asked him about his family, and told him about writing to “Ten” for over a year. He honored me by turning around and telling his bandmates, “hey! She wrote to “Ten” for a year!” I asked him about his commute, because he lives in Manhattan and is also The Kennedy Center’s artistic director for jazz. He said it wasn’t bad, and I was so glad to hear it, because it meant more Moran concerts in my future. He told me that in the spring he was going to do a Duke Ellington series. I said, “you are a brave, brave man.” We both got tickled, and it was so much fun to share something that really made him laugh.

For the uninitiated, Duke Ellington grew up here. His first job was selling peanuts for the Washington Senators.senators

To announce an Ellington series for his home town crowd could only take someone of Jason’s caliber. The crowd would trust him to play Ellington well, and if I know Jason at all, I know there will be some of his own ideas- paying tribute to Ellington in the most sincere way possible, but jazz is meant to evolve over time. All jazz players influence each other, and the music moves forward…. but it’s not just jazz. Jason listens to and remembers all kinds of artists. I remember from an article a distinct Björk phase……….

My only wish is that I could have seen the big picture with my little freshman mind. I got to be “raised” by the best- master classes with Clark Terry and Wynton Marsalis, and literally the best jazz director most musicians will ever experience. Dr. Robert Morgan is internationally known for being the teacher of some of the greats.

And also me.