You Just Never Know – NYC NOVEMBER 2022 – Part 2

This is me with my rained out beehive AND Ari with his optimistic outlook, INSIDE the Central Park view of my INSTAGRAM post of a few days ago.

THIS post to be exact:

What a view, huh?

Looks ideal, right?

Well, moments before both of those shots were taken Ari and I stopped in the middle of an exhausted and VERY rainy cross-Central-Park trek from the westside to eastside towards The Met when I saw the above view and asked him to get my phone out of my pack for me so I could take a picture and when he said we could take it with his phone, I double eye-balled him, asserting that I wanted my own phone and then, with a resigned sign, he struggled with my damp side-pack to dig said phone out of it.

It was as grumpy a moment as it sounds.

Oh, traveling with a dear friend can and WILL be a moment…know that and surrender…AND I believe that if you do this thing, this surrender? Shit won’t be drawn out, making much needed space and time so you can enjoy the beautiful moments when they present themselves. AND this trip had many varied moments abounding, some colourful, others fabulous, some very sad and a few steeped moments.

No one ever tells you when you are growing up…at least no one told me…that ALL travel is an under-the-radar, calculated, possible risk/reward of a situation.
And just like how it would be awesome to teach us a bit more about taxes at an earlier age, that helpful and realistic information about travelling might make the unexpected challenging moments a bit more roll-with-it worthy.

It was on my mind when we booked this vacation that last time I was in NYC during the month of November, I had my 54 Below debut, and after that particular debut, my ex and I drove all night to get home,  straight from the theatre, because our dog, Buckingham was suddenly dying.
It was…unexpected. It was terrible…timing and the situation.
But I kept reminding myself later that no matter what happened to my sweet Buc, to remind myself that show before everything hit the fan was good…was quality.

That is just truth.
Two things.

Travel…leaving home…taking a chance on adventure…is not always going to be fun and/or easy and/or joyous and/or everything you dreamed it would be and sometimes? IT WILL BE more…because it can be two things at once.
I know, I know, I love that idea a lot.

Now, I am NOT implying that our recent trip this weekend was awful or that we fought…it was that it started with some very bad news…a loss.

During this trip Ari lost his Zadie.
It was almost right after we arrived, just moments after the SOME LIKE IT HOT curtain came down.
Ari stood inside a gritty doorway in Times Square with his hand cupped over the phone so he could hear the bad news.
His Zadie was almost 96.
And while the stories of his life, the ones Ari told me this weekend and the ones he told me before that, are not mine to share, I will say that if his age inspires thoughts that his life was intriguing, those thoughts are not wrong.
Ari talked to his parents who gave their blessing for Ari to continue on his trip till the funeral, which took place today. Ari left early this morning to be in attendance.

One of the things that was so amazing about this trip is that every single artistic aspect of our journey, the shows we saw (five for Ari and four for me), the visit to the Met (in which the entire building smelled like wet tourist), the wander through Drama Books that I mentioned in my last post, even that wet and dark walk through Central Park offered some gift of a memory or emotion surrounding the experience of loss, grief, death, life and life’s journey.

Mike Birbiglia’s AMAZING show OLD MAN AND THE POOL is ALL ABOUT life and death.
KIMBERLY AKIMBO is a very delightful show about how short life can be.
When we wandered The Met, we ended up standing in front of my favourite portrait…which is this painting of Joan of Arc by Jules Bastein-LePage:

 

As I looked at it and said to Ari:

“I’ve come through here when I was in my twenties and married, I’ve come here in my thirties and forties on my alone travels though I was still married..and here I am in my fifties standing with you…you who is one of my dearest people…you who I didn’t even know the first time I came here…standing in the exact same place I’ve stood all the other times..and this portrait is still the same…in the exact location that it’s been as long as I’ve been coming here in all the different stages of my life…it’s a bit overwhelming and comforting at the same time…you just never know where life will take you..you know what? I need caffeine, Ari.”

Everything that happened during the last few days has felt bittersweet and a bit important and, as I mentioned in my earlier post and the last paragraph…just a strange brand of overwhelming.

As we walked around the city, Ari and I talked about many things…his Zadie…his family…my family…family…life life life…and how happy he was to have landed where he has, in his new place of work and life…how content.

We talked about how I worried that there might not be enough time for me to do all the things I wanna do.
Ari, god bless him, disagreed.

We talked about the signs he felt were all around him that seemed to be the universe honouring his loss…from the show he attended (before he second acted SLIH) called LEOPOLDSTADT that dealt with a Jewish family moving through decades of life and love and questions, to Mike Birbiglia’s aforementioned comedic meditation on the things we don’t say, the truths we don’t acknowledge and the ways we view mortality.
I have to say, being in the flow with my friend Ari during the last few days…he was not wrong…signs were everywhere.
It got to the point when we would simply acknowledge them with a nod.

Yesterday, I sat on the Hudson River at a really lovely diner, doors flung wide to enjoy the last fake day of fall, and talked with my dear friend Jason…who always offers me a place to stay when I’m there..about how in the past we’d both been fixated on having a person in our lives and how we both feel that the living-in-harmony-with-ourselves part of life is now far more important.

Jason even encouraged me to write a mutual friend that I thought I might have lost and tell them I missed them..and after FIVE prior reach outs…she wrote me back about an hour later.

Jason also came to the Mike Birbiglia show that I cannot seem to stop mentioning, and I introduced him to Ari, and then the three of us sat front row balcony of one of my fave theatres, the Vivian Beaumont in Lincoln Centre, and laughed so hard together that I almost choked.
How is it not truly living your very-best, 100% happy life while laughing your literal head off with people you love?

SIDEBAR: There was a woman who sat on the other side of me at that performance that I cannot seem to stop mentioning, who asked at the top of the show if I was a fan of Birbiglia’s  to which I answered a hearty YES. She commented that she’d never seen his work before, but got the tickets on a lark. I told her to hold onto her ass. For reals. This woman who I clocked around 65-ish, laughed so fucking hard she cried. Halfway through she and I started ELBOWING EACH OTHER when we had a real laughing jag. WHEN IS THE LAST TIME YOU LAUGH-ELBOWED A STRANGER?  She was wearing a mask, by the way, which made it all even sweeter somehow. END OF SIDEBAR.

After the show we went out to diner with Jason and we all talked about family…they talked about Shakespeare…I listened politely, if not enthusiastically. Friggen Shakespeare.

It was…it was a weekend.

It was full…it was weird…it was wonderful…it was tiring…it was moving…I was afraid of the COVID and tried to set myself up for health at every turn…it was inspiring…it was vexing…it was everything.

YOU just never know. We don’t, people. You never know what kind of time you are buying a ticket for.

But…we gotta buy a ticket.

Well, you don’t actually HAVE to buy a ticket…you can TOTALLY stay at home…but the rewards of showing up can be so profound…the act of just trying can produce memories that will last forever.

From this trip to NY in November of 2022, I will remember laughing with Jason and Ari, then sitting at the Indian restaurant across the street from the Lincoln Centre in an evening that was so warm all the windows and doors were wide open.

I will remember Ari and I sitting in the seats he got up early to buy for us to see SIX, which was also amazing. It was all I really wanted to make sure I saw and finding tickets was proving to be near impossible and it looked like I might be shit out to luck but THEN Ari got up the night after he heard about his Zadie and took a chance found them at the box office. Then there we WERE in our awesome seats later that night! I FUCKING LOVED IT. I was so excited that when the overture started, water flew out of my eyes…not tears, WATER…it was like peeing my pants in opposite land.

I will remember wandering around The Met…tired as a rag, but suddenly bolstered by the paintings of Bastien-Lepage, Van Gogh, Seurat (the tiny last study for Sunday on the Island of La Grande Jatte) and the room filled with paintings of nature that made reminded me how much my city-girlness is changing.

I will remember Ari and I drinking the very best hot chocolate I’ve almost ever had (the best is at REVEL in Stratford, ON) at a little place on 8th. The girl at the counter wrote DEBBIE on my cup because I THOUGHT she was asking me was “how are you paying” and I answered Debit…when she was obviously asking my name. Well, obvious to her and Ari…not me with my menopausal tinnitus.

I will remember how happy I was to walk in the park with Ari, even in the rain, even before and after the phone in the back pack moment.

I will remember walking to the subway last night after we ate cheesecake at Junior’s and I set Ari up in a UBER to take him to an airport hotel…towards his early flight to Toronto and his Zadie’s funeral.

After I left him, I walked up 8th in the really spotty rain, remembering all the times I’ve been to NY for auditions, for call backs, for my debut at Joe’s Pub (one of the greatest weekends of my entire life), the first time I went to NY with my ex, for my debut at 54 Below the weekend I lost Buc, my return to 54 Below (a wonderful week spent with my sister Gwen), my return to NY for the first time after I was solo and staying at Jason’s house in Inwood and sleeping through the night for the first time since the end of my marriage.

Like that painting at The Met, NYC has been there for all the stages of my life…all the ages of my life…and has stayed steady, resilient and strong, like a super dependable friend.

I wonder how I will see her next?

That room in Jason’s house is magical.
I also slept through the FULL night (yes, menopausal friends…the WHOLE night) last night as well.

I sat in the window seat this morning before I left and thanked the universe for the gift of the room, the visit, the sleep, for my friends Ari and Jason…and all the people who I love all around the globe…and my continued relationship to this exhaustingly splendid city.

I loved going to NY. It was complicated. I am glad I went. It was…everything, really.

Of course it was everything…it’s fucking New York.