Wednesday November 24, 2021
For as long as I can remember, travel of any kind has always caused me an unusually high level of anxiety. I fret over what to pack. Make lists. Worry that my lists are incomplete. And when it comes time to move from one environment to the next, my body kicks into overdrive and I start moving faster than anyone interested in not bumping into things should ever move.
So, as I prepare to head out of my apartment, I'm a sweaty zig-zagging mess. Typically I lock the front door three or four times before I'm satisfied that I've not forgotten anything essential. And this is not related to my age. When I was 17 our senior Drama class took a trip to Stratford-Upon-Avon and London to immerse ourselves in 10 plays in 7 days. I forgot my passport and had to shuttle from JFK to my childhood home in CT, missing our flight and meeting up with the group a day late.
In an airport or a train station, I'm like a chipmunk checking and re-checking my ticket, water bottle, snacks, bathroom breaks, blah blah blah. And when the All Aboard announcement comes, watch out because I might just mow you down.
A friend of mine once suggested that my extreme freak-out around every transition from here to there can be traced to my mother's Holocaust experience which imprinted on her a simple equation: Packing up and moving = life-threatening danger. I find this theory of the case occasionally persuasive but usually it strikes me as just a little too obvious.
So, it might seem odd then that I've decided to spend the Thanksgiving holiday this year on the road.
It might. But then, isolation is a bitter pill and this pandemic has been hard to swallow. My friend Drew recently observed that I seem to have adjusted quite well to life online alone in my apartment. The apparent evidence of this might be Hear Me Out Monologues, Some1Speaking, Wednesday Gathering, and all the Roland Tec Teaching workshops I'm offering these days. But the truth is, I created all these online means of connecting with a community of artists in order not to completely lose my mind. It's been (and continues to be) an investment in my own sanity and well-being.
Because, you see, while I do enjoy my alone time, I'm also an extremely social person. I am thrilled and delighted by friends and colleagues and sometimes by strangers. My default is: curiosity and compassion. I want to understand people and almost love nothing more than that moment when what comes flying out of a good friend's mouth completely takes me by surprise.
So I'm sucking it up and getting over my natural tendency to fret in order to get in Mom's Volvo and head North in search of people whose company I desperately crave.
I'll be heading to Boston, Cambridge, Somerville, Lexington, Brookline and Roslindale. Then continuing on up to Nashua and Keene, NH, over to Brattleboro and Putney, VT then down to North Adams and Northampton, MA, through Kent, CT and back down to Fairfield County. I do have some people I really love in that odd corner where CT and RI meet but I may not be able to work that geography in this time. And my friends in Maine will just have to wait til January to see me.
I'll be recording my impressions along the way. Some written. Some video. I hope you'll drop in and comment when you find something unexpected or noteworthy.
Happy Thanksgiving Everyone. Please take care of yourselves. And as I'm always quick to suggest:
Keep your masks close and your friends at arm's length.