prayers

Hamilton
Orpheum Theatre

There really is a God.

I know this for a fact because she’s answered my prayers. Or at least two so far.

1.) She gave me boobies back when I was thirteen and prayed every night for them. I prayed and prayed like a nun in a whore house—so how could she say no.

2.) I got Hamilton tickets. Two of them. For $89 bucks each.

Now, this may feel like a waste of a prayer to those of you who live on planet Earth where shitty stuff happens. But believe me, I pray for world peace, I have since I was little and I’m still waiting to see an improvement.

I pray for children to go to sleep at night with bellies as full as my dog’s, cancer to be eradicated, aging to be reversed and a cure for shortness. I’ve done the legwork and I haven’t seen great results so I don’t feel like a jackass throwing in the nightly ask for a lottery win aka Hamilton tickets.

Now, I know my limits. I’m not gutsy enough to pray for Hamilton tickets on BROADWAY. I have it on good authority that Jesus Christ himself walked on water all the way to NY and even HE couldn’t get tickets when Lin-Manuel Miranda was the star so…I waited until I heard the touring company was going to be in LA before I ramped up the BIG ASK. Every night before I went to sleep I’d just say in very conversational tone so as not to seem too desperate, “Gee, (Gee is a great prayer opener. It makes it seem like it’s God’s idea. She likes that) Gee, wouldn’t it be great if I got some Hamilton tickets?”

See how open-ended that prayer is? It allows God to come up with a myriad of ways to make that happen.
I wasn’t specific about how many, when or the price.

The price. Good Lord, the price. I say, good Lord because he had nothing whatsoever to do with keeping the prices of tickets down where someone without a trust fund or a hedge fund or any other type of fund had a rat’s ass of a chance.

I saw tickets on certain third-party sites going for as much as $12,000 a seat!

Listen, I love Musical Theatre as much as well, more than the next guy (unless the next guy is Nathan Lane) but I like to eat too. And have a roof over my head. So as much as I wanted tickets my fiscal sobriety kept me from overpaying.

Last Thursday my sister Sue and I walked up to the theater box office with great confidence and fanfare. Not really, we were sufficiently terrified. We’d heard an Urban Myth that claimed that tickets for Hamilton could be purchased—at the box office—for (wait for it) FACE VALUE! In other words, a mere $175!

Hazah!

The dude at the window was a millennial hipster. One with a particularly epic eye-roll. I know this because he rolled it in our direction several dozen times.

“We’re here for Hamilton tickets!” I announced.
He rolled his eyes pushing the seating chart toward us.

“We have these,” he said pointing to the middle Orchestra section, “For $650 a seat.”

My sister and I looked at each other and gulped. That’s a lot of Botox, we, I thought.

This time he looked bored while he rolled his eyes.

“You got anything up your sleeve?” my sister asked good-naturedly. He twisted his face like a baby tasting a lemon for the first time or a guy with a wooden arm at a poker game.

“Ha, ha, ha, ha,” I laughed my big, fake snort-laugh. “Like nobody ever asks you that!” I think I slapped Sue’s back.

Yuk, yuk, yuk. We waited. There it was. The eye roll of all eye rolls. I’m surprised the momentum didn’t flip him over.

Remember trying to get into those exclusive clubs and restaurants back in the day when you cared about stuff like that and you had to work the guy at the door? Yeah, me neither, I used to just flash my boobs (thanks again, God). But anyway it felt like that seemed.

We had devolved into a female version of Bevis and Butthead and I’m pretty sure he took pity on us. Or it was getting close to break-time. Nevertheless, he pushed the seating chart forward again.
“We have these over here” he was pointing to a little section of about six seats on the side. “This is usually for wheelchairs but we’re putting folding chairs there…”

“How much?! I interrupted.

“Eighty-nine dollars a seat.”

“Can you see the stage? Is there a pillar in the way? Is the sound obstructed? Is that the night all the understudies go on? Is there an orchestra? Is it sock puppet show? What the fuck is wrong with these tickets?!!!” I was getting slightly hysterical at the prospect of actually seeing the show.

It was not how I expected this to go.

“Nope.” he said with a minimum eye roll, “Just folding chairs.”

My sister looked at me gobsmacked “Those are actually decent seats.”
“I love a good folding chair,” was my reply.

“We’ll take three!” we sang out in unison.

And the heavens opened and the choir of angels sang (Something from the soundtrack) and we walked away with cheap-ass folding chair seats to Hamilton.

So, clearly you guys, there is a God.

The End. And Carry on,
xox

“Dear God, please change this person/place/thing so that I can feel better.”

What kind of prayer is that? If you said disempowering, you get a pony!

We all know that change is an inside job, goddamnit! 

The patron saint of that prayer is the caterpillar, but can you blame her? She has eaten herself silly only to find herself inside of the equivalent of a deprivation tank. You can call it a chrysalis if it makes you feel better. That’s such a pretty word for a device of torture. Or a coffin. Or the box magicians use to cut ladies in half or turn rabbits into a Maserati’s.

Metamorphosis — A change in form or nature of a thing or person onto a completely different one, by natural or supernatural means.

That sounds magical, right? Death…rebirth…

(Screech) Not so fast.

Let’s check back with the caterpillar.
The guy on the corner in the dark glasses and the trench coat, otherwise known as The Big Guy—or God—he promised her wings. To fly and shit.
But first she had to part with all of her worldly possessions; her BMW, her westside condo— her ravenous appetite—and her wallet.

It all sounded too good to be true to her. No more black back fuzz. No more Spanx. Just color and beauty and flight.
What could go wrong?

What she wasn’t aware of, what no one had told her, what wasn’t even listed in the small print—was the goo part.

In between caterpillar and butterfly, the poor thing is…simply put…well, she is goo. A gelatinous mixture of arms and legs, fuzz and butt cheeks, heart, soul, hopes and dreams. It’s ugly AF but this stage cannot be skipped. This is where the magic happens. The change.
And where the fervent prayers began.
The bargaining.
The begging.
The looking for every loophole.

The nearest exit. The thingy to break the glass on the fire alarm. The cord that stops this runaway train of pain.

If you had the ability (which, thank god you don’t) to hear her muffled cries for help and you, in all of your misguided frenzy to free her, cut the chrysalis open at this stage to hand her a lifeline or her cell phone—she would ooze all over the place like so much snot.

The goo stage. We’ve all been there and unfortunately, there is no short cut.
If there was I’d have found it and sold the patent to some twenty-two-year-old silicon valley wunderkind for a bazillion dollars. I would be sipping a Pina Colada, sucking the toes of the cabana boy on my own private island and I most certainly would NOT be writing to you about goo.

Anyway… back to metamorphosis.
If there was a handbook it would be titled “On Your Way to Better—Via Hell.”
Using alchemy. And magic. All of that eye of Knut and horn of toad kind of stuff.

Who said this was going to be fun? Oh, that’s right. no one!

Listen, nobody wants to be goo. We may want change but we sure as hell don’t want to go through the really messy part in the middle. The part where we’re not quite a butterfly but we can’t go back to being a caterpillar. The point of no return.
In other words the goo part.

I have written more goo related notes to myself and my friends these past few months than I have my entire life.

Everyone seems a little gelatinous lately. It appears we all prayed to feel better and now we’re stuck between a rock and a wet place.

If you can relate take solace in the fact that you are not hanging upside down from that branch alone. There are a whole bunch of us here and you know the old saying “Goo loves company”, well it’s true. We do.

Here’s my theory and I’m convinced it’s true. Only the bravest of caterpillars take the dare to metamorphose into butterflies. The others opt for the cash and free passes to the all-you-can-eat buffet and never look back.

Wings don’t come cheap y’all. There’s always some sacrifice involved.

“If you were born without wings do nothing to prevent them from growing” ~ Coco Chanel

Hang in there (pun intended) you courageous ones.
And
Carry on,
xox

You guys! I wanted to let you know that we did it! As per my post on Tuesday, my dear friend got her test results back and lo and behold, she’s fine! The cat was alive you guys! Thank you to everyone who helped us out with this thought experiment. We are SO fing powerful!  She is out of the goo and has her wings!

xox Love you!

Photo by Roberto Melotti
http://www.robertomelotti.net

* I haven’t written a poem in a while. I never know who’s gonna show up to write, the storyteller, the f-bomb dropper, or the poet.
This one wrote itself in the last few days, ’cause Lord knows I can’t write poetry…but I can take dictation 😉
My wish is that it gives you peace.

There side by side they stand,
Faith and Hope, on the other side of Fear.
Beckoning me to come toward THEM.
Back MY way they won’t come, that’s clear.

I scream prayers but they don’t listen,
I yell and don’t make sense.
This new way has not been christened,
I weigh my options, I straddle the fence.

Insisting I take a step forward,
reassuring me, guiding me home.
They never waver, they won’t judge me,
no matter how off course I roam.

“Don’t you dare suggest forgiveness,
when my heart is broke in two!
Never talk of “new tomorrows”.
Look through MY eyes and see THAT view!”

But come with me they wouldn’t,
down my dark and twisted trail.
They explained they really couldn’t,
if I wanted healing to prevail.

“You can only catch a glimpse of us,
there inside your angst.
To really see us, drop defenses, mend those fences,
practice gratitude – then give thanks.”

“For inside every dilemma,
every horror known to man,
lies a nugget of redemption,
You’ll find it, we know you can!”

Faith and Hope stood side by side,
at the end of that dark trail.
They had walked a ways ahead of me,
THEY had done it first – so I couldn’t fail.

Hang in there loves,
xox