Falling on My Face

I've made a mess out of several things this week, like fall-on-my-face / wow-i-really-just-did-that mess. My body reacts and despite my best conscious efforts I get a fuzzy, migraine head. The first two days are living in disbelief that I could actually do something so stupid and I berate myself for such. I feel small and fragile, as if a rain drop could melt me. The air is too thick to breathe; I wonder *again* why I've chosen a field where I endlessly place the soft flesh of my neck on the chopping block. (Then I reconsider my prescription meds and their 'loss of memory / confusion' side effects.) I find myself not wanting to even mention the names of the people involved with the incident. I shy away from any thought or memory path that will lead me back into the uncomfortable encounter with the incident.

But today was different.

I woke up to an email response that simply said, "stop fretting." I responded in contrition and with the sudden perspective that comes when you realize your neurosis has bled all over the computer screen with a simple, "yes ma'am." It put the rest of the mess of the week in it's place and I started thinking about Failure once more and my intimate relationship with it.

I realize what a gift I have as a performer to be presented with the opportunity to confront majestic, big failure on a regular basis. While it never gets easier or less painful, I'm getting better at it, decreasing my lag / recovery time. I'm learning to bulldoze into the aftershocks instead of recoiling back from them. How true is it that there are people walking around in this city with one big failure hung around their neck and they can't let it go. It stares them down, mocks and bullies them. It wins every single day.

We all know that feeling though. It's not neuroscience to see how that happens. I have to talk to my heart like my therapy patient when Failure strikes again. "Elizabeth, don't let the shame of disgust with yourself bind you. Don't try to hide in the corner from your own idiosyncratic

hang-ups that drive you and everyone else nuts. So you're imperfect. That's not news! You are broken and flawed and in need of Grace for survival. So press into this failure."

I literally have to feel myself pressing forward. I imagine ways I can take the failure and flip it for profit, searching for angles I never would have had, had I done the job perfectly. I smile. I write a card and reach out and get proactive instead of being the victim. I make myself write the person or incident's name down so I don't create secret ways to hide from myself. Is this easier for a man? I'm getting better.

For most of my life, up until the second year of grad school I wouldn't say the word "nose" in public or let pictures of my profile be taken because I hated my nose so much. My entire face was a failure until I was 24 years old because I didn't have a straight nose. When I finally learned to press into it, to say the word at my Shakespeare professor's dinner table with my MFA classmates one late Fall night, I started learning about what a friend we have in failure. And then I had the Joseph Scriven hymn in my head all night.

I don't know if any of this is right. All I know is that Failure is a tool in my tool belt. I am not its servant. And that makes the air a little less thick. Holy Ghost, rush.

Indian Joe

I spent a day in Waco, TX recently. It was hot. 108 degrees hot. Usually Waco is muggy and miserable with a dripping-wet, humid heat. This time it was a dry heat that I could almost enjoy. I baked. I won't tell the locals I actually enjoyed the frying-on-the-pavement feeling it provided.

I went to Waco for a day to see an old friend. I hadn't seen this friend in seven years, though innumberable phone conversations have kept us connected. When I last saw him he was homeless, 59 years old & cancer free. Now, he's off the streets and in a house he shares with an El Salvadorian, taco making couple, old enough to draw social security checks and riddled with bone and prostate cancer.

He's in it for the fight, though. He always has been.

"He" is Joe Lightfoot Gonzales, the Native American / Hispanic man that has filled so much of the last 12 years of my life. Recently, however, we've learned 'Joe' isn't his real name. It was simply the name given to him by his siblings since he was immediately tossed into the foster system and never had a present mother. His real name, recently acquired to get social security and Medicade, is free of a prison record; something 'Joe Lightfoot Gonzales' can't necessarily boast.

Our reunion is made with my mother-in-law present. He attempts to impress / scare her by saying, "Oh, you lived in north Dallas? Yeah, I used to run over there. I huslted a lot of rich white folk over there. Made a lot of dough."

I call his bluff and we burst into laughter.

"Oh, I've missed you girl. I'd take a bullet for you."

We go to his chemotherapy appointment. He talks too loudly in the waiting room and he tells me how nothing else matters now but getting right with God, makes duplicitous and incorrect political statements and asks how my family is. We read the newspaper. They call us into the office to check vitals and time has marched on: seven years flashed before me as Joe sits there weakly.

I've missed you too, Joe. I've missed you, too.