Something Interesting (About You)

I'm sitting in a beautiful university library to write, but my first (procrastinating) step is always to attempt to get through the multitudinous amount of open tabs in my browser window. I finally reached the beautiful Guardian piece about the Secret Life of Nuns, which is in rather delightful contrast to the long-haired (they truly all do have long hair) under-20 set that surrounds me in various open-leg'd splays of be-cotton'd comfort, their lives containing any number of possibilities, with almost no rules. I try to imagine myself within a life of the strict constraints of a nun, and I reckon there is a kind of peace to removal. Removal of the petty distractions of modern life. Of course, they can only visit their family once a year, and do the same menial tasks day in and day out (hm, like motherhood then), and are sent to retire in the mountains of Abruzzo, where they live out their final days. I visited one of those retiree convents on an Aeolian Island off of Italy many years ago, which appeared to have been untouched since 1952. The telephones, the emergency car at the top, the laundry of postwar undergarments floating in the wind were all as anachronistic as the lifestyle, but then again, I barely saw anyone up there. The nuns were probably all in their rooms, resting, or in prayer. This was taken on our hike up to the convent:

There must be such a freedom in routine. It seems as though my life has and never has had any routine, whatsoever. I will be trying it on for size when Zoe begins going to daycare, to get dressed and go to a writing space and dedicate myself to one thing, all day. I have a certain suspicious type of envy of people who have a sartorial or victuals uniform, which takes the mental gymnastics away from getting dressed or eating (David Lynch, and his same tuna sandwich and coffee every day).

This specific type of gymnastics of choice brings me such a specific and unique type of pleasure, though! How strange that some choose to absolutely live without it. I attended a sample sale yesterday where I actually felt like I was high -- I hugged about three strangers on my way out and told the security guard "I'M SO HAPPY!!" as he opened the door for me and my stroller, and he threw his head back and laughed and I got the treat of seeing so very many gold teeth, glinting in the rich Beverly Hills sunlight. I'm assuredly not the first woman to have had a crazed look in her eye coming through those doors that day, but maybe I was the first to put that crazed feeling into words for him and him alone. "Here, stranger," I like to do. "These are my feelings! You were a foreigner in my land until just now, when you unknowingly bore witness to them!"

I like to close the gaps between strangers and myself. It's why I would tell anyone I could when I was pregnant. "TABLE FOR THREE!" I announced when Tyler and I walked over to the diner after our first doctor's appointment confirming my pregnancy." "Oh...okay," and she reached for a third menu. "Oh, it's just two of us...it's just that, I'm pregnant, and you're the first person I've been able to tell." I know my husband loves this about me, this (I think) gentle involvement of strangers in our lives, and yet still I never see him do it when we're out in the world. He keeps his feelings and his thoughts to himself or gifts them to the ones he loves or have the grace of being in his presence. I wonder if I'll ever rub off on him, but then again, his way of being in the world hasn't rubbed off on me. We exist so differently together, it's a marvel that I get to hold hands under the covers as we fall asleep with someone so drastically essentially different from me. Someone who would happily wear a uniform every day, and finds extreme comfort and safety in routine. My love diametric.

I wish there were more time, enough time for me to really read before having enough time to really write, as I am just not the type of creator that can sit down and jump inside of something. I need creative foreplay, but that's expensive when you factor in paying a babysitter for a tender warm-up. I am looking forward to December, when Rowan begins preschool and Zoe will begin part-time daycare and I can return to myself and my own thoughts a couple days a week, if just so that when I'm in a commercial audition and it's an interview format and the camera zooms over to me after asking the septuagenarian actor next to me whether he likes dancing and to "go ahead and dance," and I clap for him when he's done because I know how stupid and lonely he must have just felt, and I stupidly expect the same question next as it's only fair, but instead I'm met with "So, Kira, tell us something interesting about you," and I go blank, positively blank, as though I've never done anything in my life more interesting than standing in this room or having and raising two small children, so I talk about how I'm failing at being a DIY mom and making Halloween costumes for the first time, being finally faced with the prospect of needing to be "crafty," an aspect of motherhood I have dreaded long before Rowan was a twinkle in my eye or womb, which isn't interesting at all, not even a little bit, so much so that I redden as soon as the camera pans to my fake husband standing next to me and he is prepared for this question because it's his second time going into this audition and he has some fucking great anecdote which I know forget, because it made me hate him a little bit.

There were so very many things I could say to that stupid, infantile question - "Tell us something interesting about you" - I'm suddenly caught on a bad date, but my future savings account depends on the answer - but all I'm met with when I'm asked anything about myself is Rowan and Zoe, because I breathe in and maintain their existence every waking minute of my life. It's completely wild. Rowan is in a gymnastics class with one of my favorite comedians, a person whose book made Tyler and I both WEEP on a beach when we read it in tandem on our first vacation together, and then 7 years later when we had our first friendly, trampoline-side chat, and he asked me what I did for a living, I couldn't think of a thing. Not that the two of us had even PERFORMED STAND-UP AT THE SAME SHOW. Didn't think to mention it. Not that I host an international travel series that is my true dream job, and with such an incredibly unique concept that it would easily engender more of a conversation. No, instead I gestured to my son attempting his first somersault and essentially muttered "I, uh, play peek-a-boo and sing Itsy Bitsy Spider a lot and roast a lot of sweet potatoes for my teething daughter and am getting heavily into DIY Halloween crafting." Cool. He's been stoked to chat with me every Friday ever since, I can assure you.

George Packer wrote this fantastic piece for the Atlantic Monthly on the meritocracy of the school system, and said: "parents have one layer of skin too few. They’ve lost an epidermis that could soften bruises and dull panic. In a divided city, in a stratified society, that missing skin—the intensity of every little worry and breakthrough—is the shortest and maybe the only way to intimacy between people who would otherwise never cross paths. Children become a great leveler. Parents have in common the one subject that never ceases to absorb them."

Anyway, I'm hoping that once I get a couple of days to myself, I can fight my way back to myself a little bit again. Of course, I'll never be who I was. Sometimes I wonder, what was I distracting myself with before my kids? What was I spending all my time and energy on?" I could have written 70 screenplays and novels and pilots with the energy that I've given them. But I know now that I had to have these children in order to acquire this knowledge of the deep well of energy and dedication that exists within myself. I've just, never cared about anything as much before them. Now I can go forth and apply it to things I certainly will never care about as much as they, but maybe, almost as much. And that's okay. That's okay. Right?

(wonder if they call it "nundressed")

"At the end of every year, each nun must present a written report that underlines their desire and motivation to continue living in the community. If the nun understands that she no longer wants to continue on that path she will return to the secular life after a process of consultation with the Mother Superior. During these years, I met only one nun who chose to interrupt her religious path. When I asked her about this choice she said: “I would repeat the experience of being a nun, because I grew spiritually, personally and as a human and I learnt how to see things from a different perspective, I learned how to see the deepest aspects of human life, the ones you don’t normally stop to notice.”