Singer-Writer buys Overpriced Ski Package
February 8, 2008
Greetings from Middlebury College Snow Bowl……………… WHAT? Where????
I could blame cabin fever but I won’t. We got 2 feet of fresh powder last night. I shoveled the driveway and headed into Middlebury to return a video. I spotted a sign- “Ski Sale, fund raiser. 65% off!” I have not skied since 1977. I haven’t come close to skiing since 1977, but I followed the signs and ended up in a conference room at the Marriott. Looked like all new stuff to me. I’d assumed the Ski Sale was used merchandise. No, just a couple of shmucks from
Dr. Casey, when in the presence of a salesman in a small room loses her self control and self-esteem. Watching people try to make money makes me feel sorry for them. They’re doing you a great service, after all. Fitting the boot properly takes a professional, offering you a couple of ski tips, an added bonus. “I taught skiing at Killington for twenty seven years” said the salesman. “I make certain that every boot and every ski that I sell is exactly what you need. Being that you are beginning again after all these years, this is crucial. Good equipment can save your life.”
I bought the ski package. With my dog and two bags of groceries in the car, I simply drove the fifteen miles to the mountain and bought an afternoon pass. I was wearing pajama bottoms. I did not have a coat or parka, so I went to the lost and found and asked if I could borrow one. They gave me a mammoth apricot parka made for a lumberjack. I scrounged around the car for socks and hat and gloves, mismatched but clean.
Besides not skiing, I hadn’t done much of anything since 1977, when I decided that I was a singer, an actress, a performance artist, an artsy kind of person. Skiing, more than other pleasant physical pastimes like sex or swimming, was an expensive, inconvenient sport with too many variables. Weather, topography, crowds, driving conditions, seasonal limitations. I was never passionate about skiing and never very good at it, like my Vermonter friends, but for some reason, the sport invaded my subconscious.
I had been dreaming about skiing for quite awhile, and not only when I visited Vermont. In Florida or New York City or Louisiana, in the desert, on the ocean, through the years, a ski dream repeated itself: a beautiful day on a white mountain. Quiet. Snow falling. I am skiing down the hill. I am flying, I am open, I am strong. The cold, the wind, the white. I am free. I’m breathing deep and full and the inside of my body rinses out clean and the inside of my throat opens like it did when I started singing, before I equated singing with smoky dives and shit-hole apartments.
Friends say to me often, “Oh, if I could sing like you do!!” Then they start singing off-key to the radio, having a blast at it, a big laugh over it, life becomes one continuous Kareoke party. “Oh, I’m so terrible!” they groan, delighted, secure in their own talents–as mortgage broker, real estate salesman, landscape architect, hair stylist, baker: with paychecks.
They still have plenty of time left to do their “art” whatever it is. The difference: They do not build a funeral pyre with their lives for the sake of art. They do not flush themselves down the talent toilet, superior in their resolve to be what God intended, no matter the cost. I see them driving their Jeeps with ski-racks through town, rosy cheeked, en route to work or an oil painting class. They aren’t miserable because they can’t sing. They can live without it.
The ski package was $500. For $500 you can buy 100 head shots, or 2 photo shoots, or 3 hours in a recording studio, or pay a pianist and bassist for a three hour gig, or have 10 songs transposed into the correct key, or take 6 voice lessons or 10 acting lessons. You can rent 8 hours of New York rehearsal space, press and package 100 CD’s, publish 1/3rd of your own book, pay 1/4 the cost of joining Equity and Screen Actors Guild, buy plane fare to Los Angeles, one way.
I skied all afternoon. It was a beautiful day, a weekday, not many people. Sunny, new snow weighing heavy on the evergreens, the maples like shining crystal candelabras. No wind.
I was a lousy skier thirty five years ago. Due to major improvements in skis and boots, it’s much easier to be a lousy skier now. With the higher boots and round tipped skis, it is almost impossible to fall down. I was bent up like a downhill racer until somebody on the slope said, “Lady, you don’t have to do that anymore. Just stand up and ski. Turn the skis the way you want to go. ” I stood up and turned the skis where I wanted to go and the skis just went there and I followed.
It was a wonderful, simple day. I was doing something that other people were doing, and we were all doing it for its own sake and it was simply a day of life. Up the hill, down the hill. Up the hill, down the hill. Flying free in whiteness, like a dream. It seemed to soften the sharp edges I’d carved into my youth and middle years. Years of moving from city to city, gig to gig, this rehearsal, that show, another audition, too young for the part, too old for the part. Money, never enough for a frivality, like skiing, but plenty to burn away on head shots, false starts, half-baked dreams, classes and more classes, this city, that idea, those plans. Without a lucky break, it was beginning to look like I was out of luck. So hell, why not buy some skis?
After thirty years, I bought skis and drove up to a mountain and put the skis on. I heaved my aching, reluctant body toward the chair lift. I skied. It was white and silent. I was happy and when I got home I made a cup of hot chocolate instead of coffee.
Will the ski dream continue or has its purpose been fulfilled? Can I guess at it’s meaning? I have to sleep on it. Talk to you tomorrow. -Laurel
The Gift of Enlightment at Private Writer Yoga Retreat
February 7, 2008
Surely you know a person who needs help. Why not offer them a gift that keeps on giving? Enlightenment. Send your damaged friend to the Nameless Top-Secret Writers/Yoga Vermont Retreat. They”ll be forever in your debt. Certainly you say that you care about your friend but actions speak louder than words. So does money. Call your depressed, lazy, self-obsessed friend today and tell them to expect a miracle. They’re expecting one anyway.
Writer/Yoga Retreat opens in Vermont
February 7, 2008
For a mere 1,000 dollars a day (sliding scale available for artists) you can completely unlodge your writers block, lose weight and become enlightened. 100 percent money back guarantee. Private chef, maid service, manuscript toning, metaphysical experiences, meditation hikes, organic booze, electric blankets, large library, private, isolated cabin. No telephone, internet, no cell phone service, no TV, no radio, no transportation. One on one Ashtanga Yoga sessions. Psychological counseling. Hashish. Cash transactions only. Minimum stay: one week.
One Step Closer to Enlightenment
January 30, 2008
Pictured above: Buddhist Monk arrives for winter retreat at Camp Casey. He smokes, he drinks coffee, he reads, he sleeps, he thinks, he thinks some more, he sits at a desk and sketches little pictures that resemble kites in a black book. He eats, he makes hot chocolate, he sleeps, he thinks, he sews a button on his coat, he smokes, he smokes hash, he smokes cigarettes, he is always shoveling something into his mouth or down his throat. Anything but alcohol. Anything. Keep the Voo-Doo Vodka Devil away from my door! He owns one pair of pants and one shirt. He is penniless, and yet I have witnessed him give a bum on the street his last dollar and his last cigarette. He has taken me one step closer to enlightenment. Slowly, through the years I have come understand his thought process. He is living without a safety net, beyond the bounds of social acceptability. You know, that two step that the rest of us do in order to fit in? Or at least fit in as misfits, artists, wierdos, etc. We all pretend to be independent of societal pressures, but we march to different drummers in a very straight line. Do you know how straight YOUR line is? Let me tell you about my line. It is now laced with Adderol. I am severely ADHD. Look it up if you have to. It has destroyed my life. so far. Things are going to change very rapidly now that I know what the matter is. I remember the I.Q. test I took when I was twelve. My score was 81. Below retarded. I believed it. My teacher believed it. My parents believed it. My boyfriend believed it. Idiots. The score was 181. Watch out, world, here I come…………….
Territorial Greeting Ritual
January 25, 2008
Standing in line at a 
Behind me, the man, also middle-aged with the steely thin frame of a mountain climber or jockey. Salt and pepper beard, scruffy hair. He is not smiling either, and why should he? He is standing in line waiting. Nobody likes to wait. I turn to him and smile. I am very close to him, my face about three feet from his. His eyes instantly divert, avoiding mine, and he stares past me, earnestly studying nothing, holding several plastic bags of nuts to his breast. I continue to stare and smile. I said “hello” No response. “Hello” again. I waved my hand in front of his face.
He looked at me with confusion, as though he should know my name, and when he did not, he froze, waiting for me to explain myself.
“I’m just saying hello” I said.
“Oh.” He seemed baffled and slightly sad, as though I were playing a trick on him.
It seemed I had broken protocol. I’d been away from Vermont for a couple of months and had stood in several grocery lines in Washington D.C. where I smiled and said hello to just about everyone who was standing behind me and they all smiled and hello back. The people in
This natural impulse, acknowledgement, has little meaning until it is not forthcoming. The man forced a grin and tried to save face. “Oh, of course, hello”
“Hello” I repeated, louder.
“Well, yes, hello!” he chucked.
Strange. A woman in a grocery store, standing in front of him at the check-out smiling at him and saying hello for no good reason. What could she want?
His forced smile was fleeting, his voice terse, and a shadow of panic crossed his face. His eyes widened, his pupils dilated as he prepared himself for a shopping line conversation. But what could he say? He couldn’t think of a thing.
“Why doesn’t anybody say hello in
“Wha-? Uh…”
“I mean” and I turned to the woman in front of me, “I mean, why don’t people in
“We certainly do say hello and smile” she said, not smiling.
“You didn’t smile at ME” I said.
“I didn’t see you.” That may have been true and I gave her the benefit of the doubt.
“I’m busy bagging my groceries here” she said.
I had overstepped, offending the cashier, the man and the woman, with an unthinkable premise: People in
I couldn’t back down.
“I’ve been in
The cashier, not smiling, said “Well, everybody says hello and smiles at me”
“That’s because you’re the cashier” I answered.
Uncomfortable pause.
“Well, hello, then” hissed the woman, a hard smile stretching over her big teeth, her eyeballs trembling like black, boiling peas. “And, good-bye.”
“Hello, hello hello.” Sing-songed the hippie cashier, throttling my grocery items as she rang them up, heaving them violently toward the stack of paper bags.
I turned, once again, to the man behind me. He wasn’t smiling.
Vermont car
October 20, 2007
Vermont, mud and all
July 17, 2007
There is somebody in my house in Vermont. A nice man is renting my house and I am thrilled because that man is renting my house and sending me money so that I can rent an apartment in Providence. Now, wait a minute. Does this make sense? I thought so, a few weeks ago, when I was working here, singing, planning, organizing, hob-knobbing, but as of today, as I lugged a bunch of my crap up two flights of stairs on the East Side, all the while knowing I would have to lug the crap back down the two flights of stairs a few months from now— as of today, I thought to myself, “Gee, I don’t feel very good in my head” I sat on the stairs, dirty stairs, very dirty, and considered my situation. I blamed the town of Bridport , Vermont, for not having a Dunkin Donut’s or a Cafe, a bar or a nightclub, a college, tennis courts, health club, movie theater. Then I blamed myself for wanting those things. Then I blamed myself for having those things here in Providence and not taking advantage of them because I like staying home and reading in bed. Now, if I like staying home and reading in bed, why don’t I just move back to my own home, in Bridport, and wait out the winter with Charles Dickens and Mark Twain? Now that I have rented my house, I miss it. It is not available. That is why I was so sad today, moving into what I thought was a nice apartment on the East Side. It is somebody elses house and always will be, no matter how many knick knacks, rugs, paintings, books, personal items I stuff into it. Renting makes me feel insecure, more insecure than worrying about how to pay my property tax. It’s silly, because none of us own anything fully. Still, sombody is in MY house and i am in somebody else’s house, and it’s ridiculous in a way that I can’t quite comprehend and it is making me very very sad.