November 2025 Snapshots

Started off November with a book signing event at the Barnes & Noble near my house in my home state. It was very meaningful for me because my friends could come, my family, my mother, my aunts and a couple cousins drove down from Massachusetts. Judith Swift, the chairperson of the URI theatre department when I was a student there, agreed to come and have a discussion about the book and film. Again: so meaningful. She’s known me since I was 16! The event was a success, and it was overwhelming. All the kids came, my nieces and nephews, all sitting out there listening to their Aunt She She babble on and on. They sold out their Frankenstein book stash! All in all, a huge success. My friend Michele, whom I’ve known since I was 5 years old, hosted a party afterwards and basically everyone came. So I have family mixing with grade school friends to college friends, and others. The whole thing was overwhelming.

Two days later I was off to California.

The timing couldn’t have been more perfect. We gathered together at Dillon Beach. We were all actors in Chicago together. We did shows with each other back then. It’s how some of us met. Mitchell, Jackie and Jim were college friends, and we all ended up in Chicago too, and we all worked together. The groups melded. There was a glorious time when we all were in Chicago together, doing shows, starting theatre companies, working hard, creating shows out of thin air, or – with Derek, who formed a theatre company at the age of 24 – adapting works of literature for the stage (James Agee’s A Death in the Family, Anne Frank’s diary, Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist … etc.). George has gone on to be a hugely successful playwright. Derek and Rachel reached out to us months ago, saying they wanted to create something – or start something – we’re not sure – and invited us to participate. It was going to be called The Hearth. Rachel said, “When I sent out the email, everyone RSVPd within 5 minutes.”

Derek and Rachel co-hosted. It was a gathering of old friends but it had a purpose, and there was a loose game plan, made up of theatre exercises and games, just like in the old days, but now seasoned by our collective multiple centuries of experience. Rachel and Derek called it the Hearth because the hearth is where people come together, where people gather and tell stories, warm their hands at the fire. In times of such disconnect and divisiveness, where our spirits are bruised by the cruelty of the world and our “leadership”, the hearth is political. We need each other. Derek is a theatre director and activist. (If you haven’t seen his film Remember This, starring David Strathairn, you must. It was based on the theatrical show Derek created, also starring Strathairn). Derek is a heavily accomplished person, and we all met when we were all starting out together. Finding our way.

Jim and I got on the plane in Rhode Island, and we had a layover in Chicago. Mitchell joined us at the airport, and the three of us flew out to California. We arrived a day early and stayed with Rachel and her partner Bruce. It’s been a couple of years since I’ve seen Rachel, but she is a forever friend. Her house is beautiful. The funny thing is … or not so funny … is I have not been to San Francisco since I lived there – sort of – for about two months when I was 23 years old, kind of sort of breaking up with my boyfriend at the time, who got a job in a corporate law firm in San Fran and I went there with him, while also living – alone – in Los Angeles, and having a nervous breakdown of EPIC proportions. The nervous breakdown culminated in the breakdown of our camper van (I wrote about this here … IN 2004), which led directly to me fleeing the scene and moving to Chicago. My now-ex-boyfriend put me on the plane in San Francisco airport. We were both wrecks. Turns out I wrote about THIS too. In 2005. My God, I have been doing this too long.

So the three of us got off in San Francisco, and I had this eerie time-as-accordion feeling. My 23-year-old self, drowning in her own tears, getting on the plane to go start my new life. Here I was again, for the first time since. It seemed like a good way to start The Hearth. Past and present, simultaneous, trying to heal and renew, refresh, gather strength for moving forward. We took a bus to Mill Valley, over the Golden Gate bridge – which I remembered well (of course) from my time there. We’d drive over and go spend the day doing … whatever it is we did. I do remember driving over the bridge and going to some really cool bookstore which opened up onto a wide courtyard, cafe. I bought books there, books which – as it turns out – I read during my first month in Chicago. (I had no idea when I visited the bookstore that I would even BE in Chicago in two months. And meeting him almost immediately upon arrival.) I believe the books I bought were Nancy Lemann’s Lives of the Saints and Jeanette Winterson’s Sexing the Cherry. Maybe Joy Williams’ State of Grace? That might have come earlier.

The fog was thick and dramatic, but the sun blazed down like a spotlight on Alcatraz. We were dropped off a half hour later, and the sidewalk was rain-wet, and the air was chilly. Rachel was there to pick us up. We then proceeded to start our ‘vacation’, which was really about being totally present every moment. She showed us around her gorgeous house, and she and I immediately began discussing our bodies and dealing with our bodies and taking care of them. We have known each other since we were mid-20s. There is nothing like the comfort of continuity, and things changing but also not changing. Bruce is great: they are a relaxing couple. Real partners. We went out to dinner and then went to see Frankenstein!

It was an old movie palace, with art deco details, a huge curving staircase, murals and engravings on the wall and ceilings. I was still so IN the Frankenstein experience – I’m slowly coming out of it. It felt so good to share this thing with other people, to involve others in what has been a fairly solitary journey. After sleeping like rocks, we woke up, packed up the car, and set off for Dillon Beach. The landscape changed dramatically at one point (and I was disoriented, I had no idea where we were). We were driving through farmlands, cows, sheep, but with thick fog rolling in too. The ocean had to be close. Eventually the fog was so thick there was limited visibility and suddenly we drove up a little curved drive and Rachel said, “We’re here.”

We got out of the car into a whole other world.

The fog was a wall of white. The air was filled with the roar – yes – the ROAR of the ocean far below us. We could not see the ocean (and we would not see it for two straight days). The white wall was impenetrable. (Like the white wall in Mark Helprin’s Winter’s Tale.) You could smell the Pacific Ocean. It roared and thrashed and yet was totally invisible. The wind was intense. There were trees frozen in misshapen ways, contouring themselves with the wind. We could see these trees, ghost-like, through the thick fog. We were just all stunned into silence at the spectacle, the spectacle we could not see.

Over the course of the rest of the day, everyone else arrived. In giggling caravans. Fucking pleasure. I need more of it!

The house was magnificent, perched on a cliff, overlooking the nothingness of white, the air filled with crashing and roaring: all the pictures I took during our first days there featured my friends sitting in the main room, with a white wall of fog outside the windows.

Eventually the fog cleared: we woke up one morning and it was clear, the spectacular vistas suddenly visible, like magic. The crash and roar of the ocean a constant symphony. The coastline: dazzling. With rocks jutting up and waves crashing around them. The melting vivid sunrise, with a long thick wall of fog rolling in … the sunset pouring into the sky – so different from an East Coast sunset.

The space was extraordinary, with one side of the house facing the abyss, and a little deck stretching around that side. In the back of the house was a hot tub. And a disco ball. No home is complete without a disco ball. There were many bedrooms, of course, and we paired up. I was rooming with Jackie. We giggled and reminisced about the our old “sleepovers” we had back in Chicago, before we’d wake up early and go run a 5k. Probably hungover, but when did that stop us?

The main space was totally open but so big that there were little areas set apart, so you were all in the same space but you could also be alone. I of course woke up at like 5 a.m. even though I was on vacation because my internal alarm clock just goes like that. It was still dark, and I took my book into the main room, made some coffee, and lay on the massive couch reading. I didn’t even notice that Mitchell was also up, lying on a couch on the other side of the room. We marveled later at how … in the space of the Hearth … everything was okay. Having alone time is not asocial even if you are in the room with a bunch of people. You forget. What it’s like to be in a room where there is no judgment, only support.

We picked an angel card at the start of the Hearth. It was an interesting one.

I have a long tortured relationship with Angel Cards – which, my God, I have been writing here a long time – I wrote about – again, in 2004. 2004, MY GOD. Despite my love/hate relationship with Angel Cards, I never got rid of my little pack. And sometimes, yeah, I pull one. I had a moment with an Angel Card, as a matter of fact, in my last move, to this place. But that’s a story for another day.

We pulled Responsibility, which seemed just right for this gathering of friends/theatre colleagues, and nurturing a sense of responsibility to each other, to the work each of us are doing, and how can we create a more intentional space to be there for each other, to express the responsibility we feel, towards ourselves, yes, but also towards each other and towards our larger communities. We talked a LOT about these things. We had group discussions on different topics, or one of us would share something going on with us, which would launch this immensely helpful (ultimately) discussion, the jumping-off place from one person into another. Responsibility.

We started our day with breakfast, and then we would gather in the main room. Rachel would lead us through a meditation and then Derek would start us off with … not “games”, but exercises he’s been developing at his work (artistic and otherwise) around the concept of “care”. He’s been doing this work in prisons too. Intense. It’s been so long since I’ve been in a creative group setting like this. Writing is so solitary. I spent 20, 25 years or whatever in acting processes and classes and rehearsals, where relaxation exercises and connection exercises were a part of my every day world. It felt so GOOD to be back there!

There were tears and laughter. We did theatre games, and listening exercises. We did an exercise about curiosity. We talked long and we talked deep. We broke off into groups. We even had homework once! I felt so grateful to be there with such wonderful people. So many memories, including gathering on Zoom wearing funny hats to cheer up and support Mitchell, who was the first one of us to get Covid. Terrifying: he got it in late March 2020. So we have history but this was something new: it was intentional. It was impossible, in this space, to take it for granted.

They were long days, with three “sessions” per day, but the feeling of all of us in one space, alert to one another, phones far away. It took me maybe a day to get in sync with the experience, to let go of the distractions, of the overwhelming sense I’ve had for two years now that I have so much to do. Here there was no room for that.

And then, George came back into the room after taking a phone call. There was a dazed expression on his face. He said, in his flat dry tone, which is always such a CRACK-UP, “Sooo … I just heard that … apparently I’m a Grammy nominee?” Question mark at the end, connoting the sheer unbelievability of what life can provide. As you can imagine, we all flipped the fuck OUT. (He was nominated under Best Opera Recording, for the new opera based on George’s extremely successful stage play Grounded. Well, the composer was nominated, but come on, George was the librettist, and the whole thing came from his brain. Grounded, a first-person monologue by a character who’s an Air Force pilot “grounded” because warfare is about drones now … it’s a masterpiece, and it traveled the world. Literally. George has been writing plays since he was a teenager probably. I was in a number of his plays in Chicago. We all were. Grounded, though, really struck a nerve in our war-torn world. I wrote about the premiere productions I saw at the Public Theatre, with Anne Hathaway in the role. Not coincidentally, I went to see the show with many of the people at the Hearth.

So here we were. Ten years after that night at the Public. Grounded was turned into an opera. And now George has a Grammy. And he got the news WITH US, surrounded by us! We were all just jumping around and screaming.

The next morning, we secretly “made” a coffee cup for him.

Our final full day there, we had our sessions in the morning and then drove down to Dillon Beach. As an Eastern Seaboard girl, all I can say is you would never mistake the Pacific for the Atlantic. It’s just different. The waves are different. They are longer. From our perch on the cliff, we could see the long long breakers rolling in.

The sound is different, the mountainous coastline gives the ocean a different character. Even the light is different. The beach was crowded, with dogs and people. Some of us went swimming. It was freezing. We took a long walk, and reveled in the cool air, the sun, the ocean sound. The light was silvery, with foam and mist in the air, creating interesting silhouettes when looking into the sun.

These are SUCH good friends. I also felt the healing of being with people whose lives might not look like mine, but we are all the same-ish age, and dealing with the same things. It was healing to be with peers. To talk about things without fear of judgment, or having to EXPLAIN what it means to be where we are at in our life’s journey. It was hard to leave. Especially since I knew I was coming back to a MOUND of very pressing deadline-driven work. November is the busiest time of year for me, as a film critic, a writer, a person, my various jobs, everything comes to a head in November. But we set up “systems” in place to be “responsible” for one another, “accountability” ideas, and also the promise of more. We don’t want this to be the only Hearth. We co-created something so beautiful. And also, lest we forget, there was SO MUCH LAUGHTER. It felt like I had been away for two weeks.

I returned and launched myself back into the whirlwind. The day I came back, I joined a Facebook Live with host Jen Johans, talking about Frankenstein and my book!

The end of November was the five-year anniversary of Pat’s death, which seems unreal. Surreal. It feels like yesterday it feels like ten years ago. We live in the aftermath. We gathered together, as we do every year, down at the fishing pier to the parking lot of a seafood restaurant with lifelong meaning to basically all of us, but mostly Pat. Normally we just meet there as a family. This time, though, we invited everybody. Everything’s closed down there, of course. It’s winter. I live in a seasonal-based fishing state. But Pat came from generations of fishermen. He was a world-class oyster shucker – definitely a skill not everyone has – shucking at parties all over the country.

So we gathered together outside in the parking lot, setting up coffee and food on the picnic tables, everyone bundled up against the cold, watching the fishing boats going by. We took turns talking about Pat, and it was very moving. We miss him so much.

On the roof next door, facing the water, is a “sculpture” of lobster pots, some of them with names on them, or initials, from fishermen who have passed. Pat’s initials are up there now.

Allison came up for Thanksgiving and we stayed in a little cute house down by the ocean. She has a dog so she can’t really stay with me. I can’t do that to Frankie. It was an adorable house on a nice patch of land. And best of all, it had a record player, complete with …

… a very cool record collection.

Reading
The Chronology of Water, by Lidia Yuknavitch. A re-read in preparation for reviewing the film, which … blew my mind.
Still making my way through Emily Dickinson’s complete poems. I’ll be at this for years.
Coming close to the end of Adriatic: A Concert of Civilizations at the End of the Modern Age, by Robert Kaplan. He has a new one out. I can’t wait!