The Rains

It started raining on Monday.

On Monday I went to a screening of Nicole Holofcener's new film "Please Give" with my friend Jenny. We met at the Westside Pavillion mall. First for hot dogs and really good Pinot Griggio. I thought the Pinot Grigio would stop the rain from coming. Wrong.

When we watched Nicole Holofcener's movie I just lost it. I mean really these tears were crying me. The movie was about loneliness and a family living in New York. It was simple. But what I like about Nicole's films is that she reveals human character, and doesn't really make us something we're not.

I don't know about you, but there have been moments, let's say in Bed Bath and Beyond where I have had to clamp down on my lip, to keep the tidal wave of irritation and annoyance, at just plain life, from spilling out. Take mortality. Mortality makes me just about lose it, at Bed Bath and Beyond, almost once a year.

I want to scream at the other patrons in the line

"We don't have that much time! Why are we waiting in line? Why is so much of this gorgeous experience spent in line? Isn't there someone you have to tell you love? RIGHT NOW???"

I am the "Beyond" of Bed Bath and Beyond. I am THAT woman in line. I like Nicole's movies because she seems to write about THAT woman in line. After the screening there was a Q and A, which she gamely participated in. Although, I could tell some of the questions were annoying her. And she didn't hide that she was irritated, and this made me cry even more. Seriously. I'm surprised Jenny's still my friend. I just feel like so much of being human requires hiding how it actually feels to be human.

When the screening finished the guests filed out, all three hundred of them except for me and Jenny. Jenny had a much bigger problem on her hands: me. I was fine, I had thought before the movie. I had had Pinot Grigio and red vines, the combination usually quiets the rush of my own humanity. Jenny sat with me for a long time.

"I'm scared to go home" I whispered. "I'm scared to be this single."

And as Jenny coached me on the fact, that I wasn't that single, that yes, it was true that everything recognizable in my life was gone, but perhaps I could take up painting, more and more water fell out of my eyes. Then Jenny said the kind of thing that Jenny says, "You need to lean on your friends more". And when Jenny says that kind of thing I listen. Jenny is the hearth, the light we gravitate towards. Jenny is a human embodiment of a candle flame.

Before the movie Jenny had run into an acquaintance who's husband had died unexpectedly of a brain tumor in their first year of marriage. At Christmas. So. Go figure. I don't know. That made me cry too. The crew was dismantling the equipment used for the Q and A. They kept kind of tip toeing around us. I was THAT girl. The one crying in the theater. Finally I wiped my face. Trying to get the mascara before it dried.

We crept out of the theater, but the tears would not stop. We stood in the florescent lights of the outside world. I glared at the red vines, in the glass case.
You let me down. You stupid red vines.

And then Nicole Holofcener, her husband and mother walked by us. Trust me if I could have a superpower of fading into the wall, and if I could have used it just once it would have been then.

Nicole, stopped, looked at me and whispered, almost in awe "You're crying."
"Yes" I said.
And then I said "Thank you for your beautiful work. It's not easy out here in LA being a single chick".

Then I started to cry some more, (somehow my tears sprung tears), then, Jenny started to cry, and then Nicole started to cry, and her mother started to cry and we all stood there crying, making the red vines blush.

But the crying didn't stop it kept on keeping on. I cried at Real Food Daily with my friend Brian. The waitress came over and asked if everything was okay, then noticing my tears whispered- "oh". Again almost in awe. "Life's just really complicated" I whispered back. I didn't know what was wrong with me. Or why the torrential down pour. But here they were. The rains.

When I was a little girl of 8 my father died. And I never cried. But I never expected the tears to come, like a flu, so many years after the fact.

The entire time my father was dying (two months) I refused to accept it. Instead I woke up at 6:58 am, almost religiously to watch "my shows".

My poor mother would creep into the living room at around 7:15am and ask if I would like to join her at the hospital that day. "No Mom," I would say solemnly "I have to watch my shows". I followed Gem and The Rockers, as if they were animated angels.

I find myself now, however many years later, waking up early and turning on the TV. Gotta watch my shows. I make some breakfast and sit in front of the TV, alone, and try and ward off the impending loneliness. For anyone reading this, who might feel the slightest bit lonely, let me say that I have found that being around people who love you is a really great solution, whereas sitting in isolation just prolongs the problem.

I don't know if it was the tears, or the luxury of being single, but as I reached for the remote, to press that green power button- I didn't.

Instead I throw my running shoes on and head for Runyun Canyon. I run up the hill. And as I'm about to sit/crawl down the steep part, on my ass, as I've always done, an elderly gentleman and his wife slide past me. The man stops, looks up at me, and then in a very fatherly way, explains, that if I go down the hill, looking for rock rather than dirt, and walking on train tracks rather than on a tightrope, I'll have a much more successful descent.

So I do, and then perched above the city, above the smog, above the buildings and houses- I find a rock- I sit on the rock- and you guessed it- I cry. I rain all over Runyun. I let myself really go. And it feels so good. To be in my body. To have my feet in the dirt, my head in the clouds. It feels good to be a joiner.

When you watch a parent die as a young person your sense of time gets so warped. That is why I get so Beyond, in Bed Bath and Beyond. So irritable. It's why I can't get off the phone without saying "I love you". It's why I tell the Barista at Starbucks that she really means something to me. Because sometimes all I can hear in my ear is: tick. tick. tick.

I didn't realize setting off on my single journey that I was this terrified of being alone. Of being in the world without a father, a boyfriend, or a lover. So I let myself cry. And cry and cry and cry.

ee cummings wrote-

let all go
dear
so comes love

Or in my case... so comes dinner.

It's the following Monday night, Dionna , one of my buddies, glamazon, rock star, sweetheart, (who seems to cascade into a room on her life force alone) and I drive over to Nicks, in Silverlake. Nick has invited us for dinner. I stand in his kitchen between my two friends and look at the light hitting the dishes, the light on the tomatoes, the steam rising from the frying pan, the bread fresh and sliced. We carry trays up the stairs to sit on his deck. I see the fancy houses surrounding Nick's, I hear the traffic, I smile at my friends, and in the distance is this proud fucking mountain, just standing there, bearing the light.

I feel like a city looks after it rains.




Nick's Basil-Butter Broiled Swordfish for 3

Cook the swordfish in the broiler on high for 4 minutes, on each side, with some improvised compound butter
about 1/2 cup to 1 cup of Thai Basil leaves (but any basil or herb you like with fish works)combine with about 3 or 4 tablespoons of softened butter
Combine the basil and butter with a mortar and pestle, but you can use your hands if you're willing

For the mustard sauce, (from Mark Bittman's "How to Cook Everything")

"Combine 1/4 cup olive oil, 3 tbsps Dijon Mustard, 1/4 cup minced shallots, 2 tbsps minced fresh parsley leaves, 2 tbsps freshly squeezed lemon juice and salt and pepper to taste"

If you happen to have Zinfandel Mustard from the Hop Kiln Winery in Sonoma instead of Dijon all the better.

*Oh Nick, I think you are the only person I know who would "happen" to have Zinfandel Mustard from the Hop Kiln Winery, in Sonoma.


Real Food Daily
414 North La Cienega Boulevard,
West Hollywood
(310) 289-9910
www.realfood.com



Bed Bath & Beyond
1557 Vine Street, Hollywood
(323) 460-4500
www.bedbathandbeyond.com