just the one of us

words, etc.

[emmazakesgreen]

A Dam Breaks in a Dry Place, or, How I Spent My Summer Vacation

It’s late September and the summer is with me still - in snapshot, in fragment, in flashback - a hazy sense that Something Happened To Me. I’m still figuring out what.

Sweet days, east in the Greenhouse familiar, changed, making and unmaking the beds for strangers and family and friends passing through, candlelight on the front porch, a dear friend on four paws, coffee and kitchen tile and a pervasive sense of gratitude. 

The night we drove up to the beach - paddle boarding at sunset, mouth full of Campari and clams, fire on the sand, talking with Amy late into the night about childhood and old love and Things Turning Out All Right. The rain in the morning - my mother and I neck deep in knee deep water when the storm rolled over us, an infinite rush of raindrops on the surface of the Long Island Sound. Floating safely, together. Protected water. A gift. 

The cold currents in Maine. The ones that threatened to pull us under. The ones I fought with straining muscles, icy strokes, steady breath. The weight of a friend in my arms. The sound of panic. The sound of angels. Is there a boat coming for us? Yes. I’m the boat. Is there a boat coming to help us? I’m the boat. Is there a boat? Yes.

The clean grit of New England. Islands only accessible by foot at low tide. Empty shells, dead treasures, sand flies, seaweed. Cold beer, black cherry seltzer, communal food, the stuff of love served up in giant pots, pass the butter, pass the bread. Ghost stories and backgammon and candlelight and the mosquitos drinking blood like boulevardiers. Cod. Lobster. Corn. 

The lush warmth of a New York August. Theatre in a field. Theatre under the trees. Theatre in and out of a box truck in the heat, in the dark, in a dream. Creating something from nothing. Community from chaos. Learning to trust myself again - my eye, my voice. Learning compromise, priorities, the limits of time and space, the limits of my body. Pushing the limits. Pushing an antique radio across the grass. Fighting the urge to sleep. Driving over the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway at five in the morning and thinking of Verona, New Orleans, Los Angeles, the lives of the thirty-something collaborators and volunteers who have trusted me with their time, their money, their fragile, perfect, creative hearts.

Being a director is powerful. It is, at once, a weighty responsibility and a golden opportunity to preach a gospel of kindness. To walk a path of self-discipline, self-control, self-preservation. To be generous of spirit nonetheless. It is to feel everything, notice everything, want everything. It is to smile and listen and listen and smile and cry in the car and re-do the schedule for the thousandth time. To trust that the disparate and disassembled cogs of the imaginary machine will, in fact, come together. That the magic will manifest. 

Some days before opening, I sit in a field, sunburned, dehydrated, bruised, sweaty and grass-stained, thinking, “I’ve created an unwatchable monster and it’s all my fault. I’m the worst thing ever to happen to the American theatre. I’m about to subject innocent people to a ludicrous and poorly executed vision and they will laugh and cry for all the wrong reasons and I accept my failure and my fate.” And then - miracle of miracles - a play happens. It flows. It has heart and feeling. It has comedy and fighting and tragedy and no one dies in real life. My actors take on a sort of glow - they’ve started to have fun up there and feel all the feelings and audiences show up to see them and they have fun and feel all the feelings too, and afterwards there is bourbon and tequila and gathering in restaurants, bars, backyards, living rooms - I’m laughing through exhaustion with my joyful and delinquent cast of oddballs, bursting with love and a lost voice and a one-track mind. It’s like being under a spell - I’m swaying slightly while someone talks me into planning next summer, nodding enthusiastically, scratching at my mosquito bites and curling iron burns, because this is it, folks. The best madness, the wildest ride, the sweetest thing there is. 

All of the why to the what that I do. 

[emmazakesgreen]

Up to no good, as usual. #highlandpark #goldenhour #homesweet

[emmazakesgreen]

Tuesday, February 3, 2015 - House of David

I park in the small strip mall and walk around to the back - there's a pawn shop and a bail bonds place, a nail salon and a small cafe with a sign that says"delish!"

The air is white today - an uncharacteristic fog has settled on the east side of Los Angeles. Burbank feels like somewhere far away. China. Nantucket. Santa Monica. 

A small chime rings when I enter the House of David. It is quiet and cluttered and the scent of old paper hits me right away. I breathe deeply, caught - the smell of church. A neglected library. 

The store is deserted but for an old man in black, wearing a kippah and shuffling through the narrow isles. I introduce myself - explaining that I'd called earlier, about the gold yarmulkes for the film – he waves a hand and stops me. "I'm a customer, same as you," he says.

"I didn't see anyone else..." I apologize. 

We wander silently through the piles of literature, glass cases jumbled with mezuzah and silver chains. No one appears to help us. 

"See? They trust G-d," he says.

In places like this, I ache a little. Some small part of me wants to be a believer. I want to know the words to the prayers and the shapes of the letters. I want my inherited nose to shine like a beacon of belonging. 

A second, ancient man in a kippah finally emerges, blinking from the dark storeroom. He looks a little like my grandfather and it makes me tongue-tied. He answers my questions patiently, and makes a joke about the film industry – the way it keeps him in business. The way it permeates the city. It is funny because it is true: an industry of make-believe connects Angelinos across the unlikeliest of lines. When he wraps up the purchases his gnarled fingers are steady and precise. I exit to the sound of chimes and he blows me several small kisses. I feel inexplicably sad.

Back in downtown Los Angeles, the sun is setting through the fog. It hovers and melts – a wavering circle of violent, desert orange above the rail yards and the warehouses.

Cars slam on brakes and lean into horns as they come over the hill and see it – huge and glowing – an apocalyptic vision. I swerve and stop in time, my armpits suddenly damp with adrenaline, something between a prayer and a curse on my lips. Then we're in motion again, the sun slips behind the smog, we tilt into the fiery rush hour. 

I breathe, and wipe my palms on my thighs. 

Some miles north, in the cool shadow of a newly built apartment complex, an old man carefully organizes his hand written receipts. Surrounded by dusty Judaica and an impenetrable calm, he shuffles quietly towards the future. 

[emmazakesgreen]

Sunday, January 4th 2015 - Leftovers

Because it was so cold in Los Angeles Around the fire I couldn’t tell if it was snow or ash Kicking at the dry wood with my heels on And stacking it - Just so.   In a circle we inhaled and exhaled  (our hale and holy ghosts) I couldn’t tell if it was smoke or breath And thanked the dim city stars For all the love and luck (and stuff) And smelled something sacred Going up with the logs.

Turning our cold sides flamewards (Again and turning) (Again and turning) I couldn’t tell if it was chance or planned.   Our faces lit up as if from within - Paper lanterns - Tethered - Just so –   In the frozen night In Southern California In the last hour of 2014. 

My simple, backyard prayers. Stretching towards heat, And a better year.   My heart quiet.   (For a change) (For a change)

[emmazakesgreen]

Friday, December 5, 2014 - Only Some Of The Things I Wrote In New Orleans

Orion hung just over the horizon all the way through Arizona, tipped lazily on his side, stretching over the dark desert. In Texas he stood upright and got brighter, spangled and milky and much farther away. I’ve been watching that shape in the sky for a long time now; he is the guardian of my travel by night.

 7 people. 34 hours in a 15 passenger van. A meal in Phoenix. A meal in Houston. Passing landscape, states of wakefulness, states of drift. We thrashed through the night, hands and feet going numb in our sleep, spasms of laughter, desolate vistas.

 And then  - deposited - a curb outside a theatre in the city of New Orleans.

 The city falls somewhere between plethora and want – acts of kindness and acts of violence. It feels heavy with ghosts. Plant life drips off wrought iron. Cats yowl like children. Old wood clatters and tumbles, things wash up in this delta, things have traveled for miles downstream, people come to visit and never leave, this is a basin. The end of the world. Fertile ground.

“We could all be dead tomorrow, “ she said with a shrug, before opening her mouth and unleashing the blues, vibrating like a human microphone, resonating every cavity of my body. The brass instruments sounded like human throats. This is what vibrant means – a physical quaking. Walking Frenchman Street from end to end, music in every venue, bar, doorway, corner, gutter, goosebumps, this is a desperate carnival. This is life and death. I lean over my whiskey and whisper, “If I ever go blind, I am moving to the city of New Orleans.”

That’s it! - I thought – blinking through the bar’s smoke while the most beautiful button box accordion played on. This is a city without Neurosis. It doesn’t dress up or dumb down. It’s open. It’s raw. It’s a slippery slope.

Bemoan the fact that you missed the 70s all you like, or go to New Orleans. It isn’t tame. It’s voracious. We impulsively climbed aboard a psychedelic school bus, gutted, glowing, power rock, smoke, costume, and I thought –

I am a safe artist.

This is unsafe.

What does it mean to be unsafe?

What is my relationship to safety?

Do I have an obligation to be revolutionary?

Do I have an obligation to make the world a more just and loving place?

Do I need my art to serve that purpose?

A small voice inside me is getting louder. A small voice inside me says I’ve been hiding long enough.

New Orleans has old magic. Its’ awareness and rejection of mortality could blow the lid off your life, if you let it. I’m grateful to have had a small window in. I’m grateful to have, briefly, witnessed.

On the road home I drop in and out of exhausted sleep – dreaming of rooms shot-gunned to rooms, odd angles, graves above ground. A city sinking like a ship, playing brassy, feverish waltzes until the water rises with the sun. Behind my eyelids I see the dark road, gas lights, hands holding hands, Orion’s spangled belly, the tangles and waterways of my own heart – at once opaque and transparent, simple and unfathomable. 

[emmazakesgreen]

Oh yeah. That's some good light. #losfeliz #light

[emmazakesgreen]

Friday, October 3rd - Falling, Fixing, Finding

This is a fickle fall. I’m fidgeting in it.

The helicopters are circling, the plates are shifting. Last night there was a screech and a crash outside the window, and then the screaming of rubber on asphalt. There’s a high whistling in the pipes, and the bathroom cabinet door is hanging by its hinges. I am holding it together out here, but I might be using Elmer’s glue. My landlord might be doing the same. 

Richard and I walked up the hill gone hazy with heat, cold, cheap beer in our speckled blue camping mugs. It was my first beer in a while – I’ve been keeping clear. Autumn, even in Southern California, means the start of a New Year – it’s the high holy days and I don’t know as much about them as I’d like, but I feel them anyway. I invent rituals in the shower. I light more candles. I miss my family. I make wild speculations. One day I’m full of resolve – vim, vigor and vinegar. The next I’m paralyzed by choice – endless visions of my future self, swinging me from scene to scene, rooting me, transfixed.

Walking uphill with a friend. Sometimes that’s enough to steer me back to center.

This month I’m working on a play about diaspora and time and asking the past to explain the present and asking our ancestry to explain our everyday inclinations. It’s a play about home, and the loss of it, and the finding of it, elsewhere.

I feel at the height of my powers when I experience a certain confluence of Self, Place and Time.  This me, this city, this moment. I might be a little to the left of that bullseye right now, but I’m close enough for rock and roll. And I can rock and roll with the best of them. (You’ve seen me dance at weddings. It’s somewhere between aggression and ecstasy.)

The crux of this is: I’ve chosen art as my first priority. I’ve committed to live performance. They said it would be hard. It’s actually entirely impossible. Untenable. Unlivable. Ridiculous. Irresponsible. In direct conflict with the pursuit of a paycheck.

And yet.

I watched myself walk away from a pretty big job today. You know. For Art.

Part of me was beaming and proud.

Part of me just stared at myself in abject horror.

But here’s the thing:

I keep choosing love over money. So maybe I’m more constant than I thought.

Wish me luck, universe. I’m in this thing for better or worse.

[emmazakesgreen]

Thursday, September 11, 2014 - Thirteen Years

It’s been thirteen years since the scariest day I can remember.

Cold, crisp golden. September morning.

I remember what I was wearing.

I remember I was in second period art class.

I remember the Assistant Principal coming in to make the announcement.

We stared at him, blankly. We thought he was making a terrible joke.

I rose slowly, my head floating and buzzing, and went down to the main office. They said I could use the phone.

My father worked in lower Manhattan.

My mother was supposed to be getting on a plane home from Los Angeles.

I couldn’t reach them.

I went back to class.

Some teachers tried to stick to the script. Some just let us talk. Some tried to get access to the news.

I remember standing outside during lunch, crowded around someone’s portable radio.

We heard the Space Needle had been hit.

We heard Chicago was next.

We heard all of Manhattan was on fire.

We were 25 miles away from the towers, and we knew nothing.

New York City was a hollow shell of itself for a long time afterward. The streets were quiet. Flyers of faces, vigils, flowers, candles, everywhere. I’ve never seen our church so full. I’ve never seen people be kinder. There was a palpable sense of grief and danger, but also a fierce sense of community.

The patriotism came to us naturally. We all started flying flags – across party, race, economic lines. We did it because we felt scared, and lost, and words were hard to find. It felt good to be united under something simple. It didn’t feel like a symbol of the right. It felt like the right symbol. It felt inclusive. 

But something shifted.

It was swift, how they did it.

I’ve always felt that our grief was taken away from us, swiftly co-opted into political fodder. We were pushed onto a path of violence and righteousness before we were ready, and we’ve been fighting blindly ever since.

I miss New York today. It’s an extraordinary city, full of extraordinarily strong people. Trauma takes a long time to heal from. Maybe it takes forever. 

Today, I’m thinking of the moment my father walked in the door.

Today, I’m thinking of my mother’s voice on the phone.

Today, I’m thinking of Tara Cole, who held Olivia and I tightly.

Today, and all days, let us please be kind. 

[emmazakesgreen]

Saturday, August 30th - Calling Out

August 28th, this video was posted on Fox News. 

(For the record, it was not the worst thing I'd seen that day, though I hate comparing awfulness to other awfulness.) 

The idea that there is a "debate" about the flattering vs. unwelcome nature of catcalling misses the point entirely.

Catcalling as a practice reflects the engrained idea that we live in a man's world - that public spaces are male spaces, that a women's body, passing through those spaces, is decorative.

These “compliments” are thin veils for the constant, insidious reminder: your body is not your body, but a projection surface for an outside gaze. Your body is available for observation and comment. Your autonomy is at risk.

The women on this show make me incredibly sad. They are telling viewers that female worth and value is to be determined by this unsolicited attention. That we should seek and welcome the validation. That we should perform – “give an extra wiggle” – in this small, sexual farce, especially as we age.  

What the women on this show fail to mention is that, more often then not, the commenters on the sidewalk are not saying, “Oh my, I couldn’t help but notice that you look very nice today.” In my experience, strangers tell me about the parts of my body in graphic terms. They tell me what they would like to do to it. They tell me about the size and shape of their own genitalia. Non-response often leads to anger and slurs. I have been honked and swerved at.

This happened to me at age 12. This happened to me yesterday. This happened while wearing shorts. This has happened to me while wearing a winter parka and hat. The question of what I was or wasn’t wearing at the time is utterly irrelevant.

The people on this show are telling me that my experiences of fear and harassment are invalid. They do this by making those experiences invisible.

Finally, the sentence “Men will be men” is insulting to men. It implies that they are incapable of self-control, growth, or change. It suggests that men are ruled by baser natures and cannot be held responsible for their urges and actions.

I am lucky to have so many incredible men in my life. Men that I love and trust and respect and admire. Family. Brothers. Allies. This kind of ignorant, lazy thinking negates their worth as well as mine.

Fox News: taking a proud, shiny and indignant stand against progress.

I ask you to consider this:

The terrible irony of being told,

“Smile, bitch.”

[emmazakesgreen]

August 17th, 2014 - The Hard Conversation.

I tend to keep quiet about politics, especially on social media. I tend to listen. The majority of my family and friends share similar views - I haven’t had to define myself in opposition in a long time, which I think explains my slow, general shift from activism to passivism – or pacifism, in a kinder light.

 Don’t misunderstand me – listening is valuable. The world could use more listeners. But if I continue to listen without joining the conversation, then what does that make me?

 Let me say this plainly.

 I have a hard time talking about race in America.

 Its harder still to admit that, though I’m not sure why. Of course it’s hard. It’s the hardest.

 Because it’s hard, and absolutely, 100% necessary, I’ve created a two-step system for myself.

 1)   Be prepared to be uncomfortable.

2)   Have the conversation anyway.

 This week, my sister and I took the shuttle from Grand Central to Times Square – the subterranean was swarming with men and women in uniform, hands on their batons, gathering in concerned clumps and moving swiftly across the station in every direction like a military force. My sister and I instinctively power-walked to the nearest exist. White, walking calmly, committing no crime, and still, alarm bells rang deafeningly in my skull. Later, headlines informed me of arrests in Times Square during a peaceful protest demanding justice for the shooting of an unarmed Michael Brown by the Ferguson police.

 We live in a world where we expect this kind of crime. It’s a nightmare, and we’ve built it, and the fabric of our country seems to rip a little further every time another person of color dies at the hands of an ignorant and oppressive force. Our collective hearts break a little harder. Are more people mobilizing behind the victims of violence now? Will it help? Can we force change? How many times is enough?

I’ve seen the police make unarmed kids – young men and women - lie on the pavement in my own neighborhood. I was driving to work at the time – I saw it, engine idling at a red light. The signal turned and I kept driving. I should have stopped the car and pulled out my camera. I still think about it.

 I also still think about the shameful way multiple friends have been treated by the police after bravely reporting sexual assault and domestic violence.

 I also still think about the shameful way several friends have been treated by the police while pulled over.

 Sexual orientation, perceived gender, and color of skin were all factors in how badly these matters were handled.

 A reminder:

 It is perfectly legal to record and film the police at work. Risky? Yes. Dangerous? Potentially, but as we don’t have a police force willing to hold itself accountable for the actions of its trained officers, we need to continue to bear witness. We need to keep our lenses open.

 Who is watching us, if not us? Who will save us from ourselves, if not ourselves?

 America loves its mythos. America loves to tell America complicated lies about America. The discrepancy between our lofty, honorable rhetoric and our broken, bitter institutions of governance breaks my American heart.

 The systems we’ve woven for ourselves are frayed and flammable.

 More and more, I long for sparks.

[emmazakesgreen]

Wednesday, July 9, 2014 - From there to here. Loose Change. Small town throwdown.

The thing I can’t get over is the trees. My eyes are drinking them up. Color, height age, roots. Wind moving through full branches. There are leaves in my dreams.

Wander in the desert for a while. Nothing will make you more sure that trees have a conscious wisdom. They reach for each other over the roadways. I’m moving through tunnels of green.

New York City is awake at 3:30 in the morning. New York City leaves a residue on my skin. New York City is yesterdays’ clothes on the train and surrealist theatre and barbeque, rust and warm whiskey and mosquito bites and tomatoes, coffee, hot, iced, black, grey, constant. In vigor, vim, home, inveterate. My spine is swinging through crowds of faces, sinews taut, bodies bending, old friends embracing me, I am braced for this, I know what this is. I smell salt and steam and motion. I taste my own sweat. I pedal in a red dress from the west village to the top of the park. I’m a taxi. I’m a truck. I’m a traveler.

Home east, catapulted into summer after a spring spiked with storms. It was hard to get from winter to here. It’s been a year in the world, now, and I’m putting this MFA to good use, spending my evenings in the woods with some old, familiar words. “Be not afeared. The isle is full of noises – sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not!” I hear Rafaels voice, many voices, in my head, his fingers tickling the highest notes on the classroom piano. Be not afeard, he growls. Noises, he croons. Sounds and sweet airs, he sighs, squawks, squeals, sings. Give delight. Hurt not.

 I think of every teacher, every mentor from the past four years. I’m pulling scraps of magic out of my pockets, I’m wrapping their patchwork wisdom around me like a cloak. Directing is hard. Impossible, even. But somehow, I feel the pieces pulling together. In three weeks, there will be a show. People will gather, and say words, and tell a story, and I will sit in the back row, nervously stroking the bridge of my nose like a poker tell, silently cheering them on. 

Here in Port Chester, it’s just enough change to be disorienting. There’s a bar and beer garden in the old train station. There’s a Whole Foods’ in what used to be Caldor Plaza. In the Greenhouse, there are walls where doors used to be and doors where walls used to be and they pulled out the horrible carpets and the pale blue paneling, and found old, old wood underneath. My high school bedroom feels like a log cabin in the sky. It feels like, as stewards of the Greenhouse for 25 years now, we’ve done right by it.

We drove to Buffalo for the Fourth of July. America, America, Americana. Diners with 3-dollar breakfasts, hot wings in piles, canals, broad, quiet streets, post-industrial detritus, potato salad and coleslaw, unregulated firework displays, university kids with pink hair, three, four generations of family in the backyard. We drive by my grandmothers’ house, and then my mother’s. 

Visiting a hometown, once you’ve left it, comes with a lot. There are pieces of myself scattered all over and every time I leave the house I wonder dimly if the person I just passed in the grocery store was in marching band with me. I love the smell of the air and accents in my ears and the attitude of that guy at the local bar. I know every street. I know how this works. The woman behind the counter at Staples doesn’t need to ask my name when I pick up my order. We were in the same 4th grade class. She dressed up as a bride for Halloween that year, and the image of her in a tiny veil eating orange frosted cupcakes flashes across my consciousness. She hands me the box of freshly printed scripts and a small spark of recognition flies between us, but neither of us says a word.  

After all, I don’t live here anymore. 

[emmazakesgreen]

Sunday, May 4, 2014 - For a Friend

When I got the message I burst like a dam – unexpected torrents of water and a howl from somewhere deep in my belly. When I found words, they were clumsy rasps of helpless bewilderment.

Grief has its own anatomy. Grief takes the body you thought you understood, and turns it into a battlefield of pain and confusion. Stomachs knotted, we eat without apatite, swallow without taste. Our heads split and crack, chests like windows blown open, eyes swollen, red, and raw. We’re wearing our hearts on our faces and it is horrible.

The last time I saw JoJo was at Jumbo’s clown room in North Hollywood. He and Cyndi were laughing with Megan and I hadn’t seen him for months. We hugged – fierce and grinning – what a joy to see that face!

I remember that day in class, when we sat next to each other, buried in our respective notebooks. I looked over and saw the incredible lines of his artwork spidering across his page. I tapped his shoulder, pointed to his work, and touched my heart. He pointed to mine, smiled big, and touched his.

Ours was a quiet, developing friendship based on mutual admiration, enthusiasm, and appreciation. JoJo always brought his whole heart to the table, in a way that sort of floored and inspired me. That kind of commitment takes bravery, generosity, and an absolute love of the work. He had all three in abundance.

And then there is a phone call. A text message. A news report. This strong, resilient, passionate, talented, young, young, young, man is suddenly…missing. There is a tangible difference in the fabric of our community. There is a hole. And it is awful.

We did what we knew how to do once the news broke. We wrote words, and made phone calls, and gathered in homes. In Matt and Genevieve’s backyard, we stood together, and sat, and held each other, and cried, and ate, and drank, and smoked. We made a fire, and burned sage, and poured drinks on the ground, and lit candles, and talked. We laughed sometimes, and were sometimes silent. We cried more. We listened to his poetry, crowded around the glow of a small screen in the dark backyard.

The first time I saw JoJo act – he was playing Romeo to Ashli’s Juliet and he was glowing.  

And perhaps my favorite memory - backstage at showcase, shaking off nerves and negativity the best way he knew how. JoJo put on old Michael Jackson and we danced like maniacs in the crowded dressing room. 

Yesterday should have been a summer barbeque in the year 2089. We should have all been one hundred and two years old. And JoJo should have been there. Dancing.

Love to Jose Estrada’s friends, family, and many communities.

It was an honor to share space with you for a little while, friend.

[emmazakesgreen]

Monday, March 17, 2014 - Tremors

“Be someone who pulls it off”, she said, standing in the dark parking lot outside the dance studio at 10:00pm. It was my last commitment of the day. I’d woken at 4:00am and driven to a scenic turnoff on the Pacific Coast Highway in the dark, two large containers of hot coffee on the passenger seat. On set that day two stunt helicopters flung dust at our clothes and faces. The salt got into our hair, the fresh scent of ocean into our lungs. As the sun hit the horizon, the light went from hot to gold to blue. I managed to disappear into my car and fly east, over the mountains, past the valley, through the taillights, into a scalding hot, two-minute shower, to a brightly lit room. Marley floors, mirrors, movement cloths. Bodies stretching and moving. Trumpet on my lips, looseness in my shoulders, bare feet. I am in another world. I am living double, triple, quadruple lives. 

The earthquake lurched me awake this morning at 6:30am. I flung myself at Paul, sleeping to my left. One sharp jolt, a tremor, then stillness. A fifteen-second reminder that we can be shaken off. Paul and I lay in the cool morning brightness, hearts pounding. We, like most people I know, reached for our phones to check twitter, seeking immediacy to make sure we hadn’t imagined it. I think of Paul’s house around us, solid, squat stucco. Moving. I think of my own apartment over the hill and about the glass jar with the tin birds in it, rattling precariously in the empty room. 

It’s hard to sleep afterwards, and later, at work, everyone is bleary and talking about it.  Someone makes coffee and we drink it quickly and it makes me uncharacteristically jittery. My hands tremble over the spreadsheets and shuffle receipts.

On this job, there is one other woman on set and none in production. I am growing used to being in environments where I am the only one. The youngest. The newest. The blondest. Largely, my ‘PA brothers’, as we’re called over walkie-talkie, are cool and respectful. I’ve been on fantastic all-male crews where my gender never is only minimally discussed. I don’t know why I am still surprised at the number of men who seem inclined to call me ‘hun’ and ‘sweetheart.’ It makes me twitch, every time. I lift some metal truck siding. Everyone has something to say about it. I scuff my Doc Martin’s against the sandy parking lot and think about the older guy who asked if I was a lesbian. ‘I’m a whatever’, I said, and regretted answering him at all. Later, he would try to convince me to have a look around on an empty, dark, star wagon. His intentions may have been harmless and friendly, but the alarm bells rang in my head.  I’m protective of myself in the world. I have to be. I feel casually coiled tight, calm on the surface, ready to spring. 

My calendar days blaze with multi-colored bullet points, from here through April. Lists, streaks of commitment glowing across my computer screen – it’s been at least three weeks since I started moving at this pace and I haven’t had a chance to catch my breath yet. I like the velocity of it. There’s wind moving through my hair.

The moon was full last night and I howled in the car.

This morning the earth shook.

Spring is an animal I’ve learned to ride.

[emmazakesgreen]

Monday, March 3, 2014 - Across the Water

It rained for four days. Sheets of water, thunderclaps, flashes of light. Rain like a long awaited answer to so many dances done in secret, prayers from parched places. When it stays so dry for so long, the city holds its breath. 

And then - the release! This wet, tumultuous exhalation. Brown rivers of water four feet wide churned down the gutters. Lost palm fronds lay in the streets and piled up on corners - fallen, hazardous, those once-green spears thrusting odd-angled at the thick, grey sky. 

L.A. was an alien landscape. Something to run and duck and weave through. Unpredictable terrain, transformed by flood, moving earth, car crashes, vegetation. The soundtrack - steady drumming on the slanted roof. Sirens. 

Slowly, the water makes its way downhill and west. The gutters shrink, the puddles evaporate. We lift our heads and return the one umbrella to the back of the closet. The air is clear and everything smells like flowers - jasmine, eucalyptus. I suck it up through my nostrils like I'm hungry for it. Like it's food. I can see the hills, layered each on each. The bougainvillea shocks through the remaining grey. I feel sun on my left shoulder blade. 

L.A. is a city in denial about its own draught. It's own dust. 

For a moment, though, we had abundance. For a moment, we had more than enough. 

[emmazakesgreen]

Here's a throwback to 1996 and the Hudson River, in honor of a Los Angeles flood. With love from west to east, from present to past. 

[emmazakesgreen]

Thursday, February 6, 2014 - Feminist Western

I’m sitting in the lamplight lifted tonight by some sort of kick in the pants – we all need one sometimes – simple as wise words on the telephone line.

I’m trying to extend my energetic tendrils tender over the desert to make manifest my destination, wild west.

I’m thinking in clusters of letters again.

Words crackle in my mouth like old paper.

My nostrils are rimmed with dust.

I thumb grease over the counter of my medicated lips.

It’s not wet enough.

The sky burns.

Listen.

Don’t pay attention to snakes.

When the night flips up dark and cold and smacks you starstruck dumb and you start to hear words slither from a sweet forked tongue and the doubt creeps quietly up the bones of your back and something coils its way around your ankle and tells you to turn back:

Kick hard with your left leg.

Shoulder your pack.

Plug your ears with cotton.

Cut no man no slack.

Remember where you came from.

Remember where you’re sent.

Remember where the water is.

Remember where the water went.

[emmazakesgreen]

What we're dealing with. #highlandpark #losangeles