tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-67058979654086344462024-03-08T11:11:29.327-08:00On Location: A MemoirMy husband's work occasionally takes him to distant locations; I follow him around the world and create my own adventures. This is a memoir of explored sites both physical and emotional. (New to this site? I recommend <a href="http://onlocationamemoir.blogspot.com/2011/03/glossary.html">starting at the beginning</a>.)Mel Ryanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11010321179422448635noreply@blogger.comBlogger159125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6705897965408634446.post-18794529893334685982014-03-13T06:00:00.000-07:002014-03-13T06:00:02.935-07:00CALIFORNIA, CENTRAL COAST: December, 2009 (Part 6)<p>That night we ate linguine in orange sauce and hamburgers and drank red wine in a cozy Cambrian restaurant. People wore shiny paper hats to celebrate. Large groups filled other tables. Their laughter free and loud rang over us. Us, in our bubble.
<p>We carried our bottle of wine back to the motel, where I slipped into pajamas and a scarf. We took plastic cups and in the dark cut through a forest of cypress pines to the sea. A full white moon shone down on curls of ocean foam. The night air, crisp and cool, rang with the sound of waves crashing off the rocks below us.
<p>We settled on a bench and filled our cups with wine.
<p>Here's to 2010, William said, raising his cup.
<p>To whatever it brings, to whatever happens and to being together when it does, I answered.
<p>We smushed our cups together.
<p>I leaned on the rough wood railing and peered across a sea both deep black and lit by the light of the moon. I wanted the dignity of getting married and was receiving so much more. Because of William I had seen cities far across this ocean. Because of him I could spend time in an elementary school yukking it up with kids and the Bard. Because of him I could write books.
<p>William will tell you he has a "because of Mel" list but that's his to say. Of course I know the list but that's all I'm sayin'.
<p>We know people will always watch movies and read books — perhaps not in theaters and perhaps not on paper, but the audience is out there. We dream of that audience and we share those dreams out loud to each other. Because of William my dreams don't sound so farfetched and ridiculous.
<p>As I looked out on New Year's Eve of 2009, I pictured a small boat out a sea. A boat formerly with a single occupant, but now with two people. Two people using oars to cut over those waves and row forward, ever forward.
<p><center>♦</center>
<p><center><b>POSTSCRIPT</b></center>
<p>Since 2009 William has cut fourteen projects.
In August 2014 Mel's book <i>TEACHING WILL: What Shakespeare and 10 Kids Gave Me That Hollywood Couldn't</i> will be published by Familius.
Mel Ryanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11010321179422448635noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6705897965408634446.post-62437649768162694142014-03-06T06:00:00.000-08:002014-03-06T06:00:00.101-08:00CALIFORNIA, CENTRAL COAST: December, 2009 (Part 5)<p>For two nights we stayed in a one-room cottage at a bed & breakfast inn. We picked up a rotisserie chicken, salad and wine from a local grocer. A storm broke and rain pattered our roof. As we sat on our bed and ate I was reminded of our bed-top picnics at the Excelsior Hotel in Rome. Another winter, so long ago now. A winter when I waited to be married. A winter when I didn't know what to do with my life.
<p>We slept 12 hours a night in the silence of our redwood grove. In the morning I opened my eyes and straight above us, through a skylight window, I gazed up the trunk of a redwood tree that appeared to be miles high. We were sleeping at the base of one of nature's best.
<p>We continued south along the coast to Monterey and into the small town of Pacific Grove and a 19th-century inn. Our room's walls were covered in flowery paper, a claw-foot tub sat in the bathroom and the bed stood proudly with four posts. Corny, but sweet nonetheless.
<p>We walked to the Monterey Aquarium and ate lunches in a hippy-dippy restaurant right out of the seventies, with its mint tea and hummus. We took long walks along the coastline and studied the cottages of Pacific Grove. These houses sported historic placards bearing women's names. This, I later learned, was because their fishermen husbands of yesteryear couldn't be trusted to come home safely from sea and the women needed to hold those deeds or find themselves on the street.
<p>From Pacific Grove we traveled further south along the Pacific Coast Highway, with its dramatic views and sheer drops to a crashing sea. I drove and William clicked his shutter out the window. We stopped to watch sea lions and otters playing in the ocean. Wind whipped across our faces and the sun shone bright. We snacked on pretzels and sandwiches and by late afternoon we were north of San Simeon, viewing hundreds of elephant seals sleeping, fighting and nursing their babies along the beach.
<p>On Moonstone Beach in Cambria we checked into a sixties-era motel with sloped high ceilings and a fireplace in our room. The following morning we were up early for a tour of the Hearst Castle. William clicked off a lot of shots and I looked far off across green fields and a blue ocean in the distance. The air was warm and clear. It was December 31st.
Mel Ryanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11010321179422448635noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6705897965408634446.post-62566096233376040922014-02-27T06:00:00.000-08:002014-02-27T06:00:10.164-08:00CALIFORNIA, CENTRAL COAST: December, 2009 (Part 4)<p>William had learned to trust my travel plans. Look, if you're not going to marry an ideas guy, at least marry a go-along-with-the-ideas guy.
<p>I pored over guides and checked out spots online. I put together a ten-day trip that would turn into a marriage of travel and vacation. We would be on the move, as I defined travel, but so would we be still and quiet in places worthy of contemplation and relaxation.
<p>We spent two days over Christmas with William's brother, wife and three small children. It was gift-filled, food-filled, laughter-filled and screaming overloaded kids filled. On that high-pitched note we drove off to explore our state and our state.
<p>We traveled along curvy highways with deep forests on either side of us and stopped in a National park to hike in a redwood forest. William's parents had given him a fancy digital camera for Christmas and as he clicked away at squirrels and trees I walked ahead into the deep silence and piney air of the timberland. We passed occasional fellow hikers but mostly we were alone.
<p>What would the new decade bring? I wondered and walked the pine-needled ground. What was important? I looked over my shoulder at William and saw a man, content. The dismay of the New Orleans job had waned. Our summer had been spectacular together, in our house, with our pets and writing. Peace, purpose and creativity in balance.
<p>The camera immediately transformed William into a man observing. This was new. In the past if I squealed when spotting an unusual cornice on a rooftop, William would roll his eyes. Now he was studying and appreciating.
<p>You know, we better super-enjoy this time, I called to him.
<p>Why?
<p>Because you will work again. You'll be super-busy and we'll wish for days like this.
<p>You think so?
<p>I know so.
Mel Ryanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11010321179422448635noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6705897965408634446.post-2747819012413320992014-02-20T06:00:00.000-08:002014-02-20T06:00:06.811-08:00CALIFORNIA, CENTRAL COAST: December, 2009 (Part 3)<p>Every year since we first visited Hawaii in 2005, William and I had managed to fit in return trips to the islands. We tried out the Big Island, Maui, and Kauai again. <i>Vacation</i> had become a regular word in our lexicon...until 2009, when we had to change, a little. William couldn't find work for ten months and we had to cut back.
<p>We hunkered down in our house. We ate in most nights. Restaurant meals were a treat. I didn't buy new clothes, which wasn't a big loss since I don't like shopping and I spend most of my time in blue jeans or pajamas anyway. We watched television, played Scrabble and I wrote.
<p>William went to a few Dodger games and I went to the movies. Some days we worried that it would be always thus and how could we possibly maintain? The economic picture worldwide continued in a bleak fashion. At school, the Shakespeare Club children exhibited their own signs of stress by lashing out, or showing sadness and depression. At home, their parents and caretakers were juggling the possibilities of homes and jobs lost.
<p>Steering these kids into a comedy lightened the emotional load somewhat but I worried about them as much as I considered the future for us at home.
<p>Even then we realized we were among the lucky few with food on the table and a roof overhead. As autumn approached and winter set in we decided to find an alternative to Hawaii.
<p>Let's explore our own state, I suggested.
<p>Where?
<p>I don't know...maybe up the coast. Have you ever been in a redwood forest or to Carmel or San Simeon, for example?
<p>Maybe when I was a kid...I don't remember.
<p>People come from Germany to see our coastline. Let's go.
Mel Ryanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11010321179422448635noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6705897965408634446.post-23706601690556669862014-02-13T06:00:00.000-08:002014-02-13T06:00:06.714-08:00CALIFORNIA, CENTRAL COAST: December, 2009 (Part 2)<p>And Susan laid out her idea that I should start a blog about the Shakespeare Club in order to build an audience. She said, I think we submitted the book to publishers too soon and in the wrong climate. This story is not a Bush-era book; it's more an Obama-era book.
<p>I blinked and blinked again. We were into year two of not selling this story and yet she wasn't dumping me? I listened to Susan, full of optimism, chat about publishing reinventing itself and people continuing to read in even greater numbers and where my book would fit into the bigger scheme.
<p>Outside the restaurant, crowds bustled up and down Ninth Avenue. The sun shone on this day in June. Taxis honked and look, a dancer off to class and maybe a singer off to rehearsal and soon I would be off to start a blog.
<p>William helped me set it up. I chose Elizabethan wallpaper for the site and started to write. I selected accompanying pictures and William took case of editing and layout. We went to yoga classes together. For a couple with few surface interests in common, we leaned on each other like two sheets of plywood forming a roof.
<p>I knew enough about the realities of a career in writing to know there isn't much money in having a book published. There could be, down the line, if it was a success and if you have an agent who has a passion for ancillary rights, but simply writing a book and having the luck to get it published ain't going to make you rich.
<p>I never became an actor to get rich, and I succeeded. I was on a similar path with my writing career. I wrote because I had to, as I had acted, because there was little choice. The craving to communicate simply exists and the need is for audience.
<p>From the first week that my blog was published I had audience. One, two, three and then a thousand hits. I'd been writing screenplays and television scripts for years with no audience and then writing books with no audience and now, out there in the universe, strangers were reading the stories of my willing little kids into the world of William Shakespeare.
<p>That summer I also noticed something:
<p>When I wrote, the prickly itchy heat on my neck stopped.
Mel Ryanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11010321179422448635noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6705897965408634446.post-20263614325165821102014-02-06T06:00:00.000-08:002014-02-06T06:00:10.062-08:00CALIFORNIA, CENTRAL COAST: December, 2009 (Part 1)<p>In May of 2009, the Shakespeare Club performed "Twelfth Night." William pitched in by making CDs of music and sound effects for the show, grabbing lunches, and, most importantly, taking me out for an obligatory margarita or three after a long day of performances.
<p><i>I'm so proud of you, Mel</i>, he said as we clinked our fancy glasses together.
<p>In June I attended my fourth year of the writers' conference and my second annual lunch with my agent in New York City. As I walked through Manhattan on my way to the restaurant, I prepared myself for a breakup. One could hardly blame her for writing me off. I imagined she might say something like, <i>I miscalled this one and because of the way publishing is these days, your book is simply not right for any shelf or any market, anywhere</i>.
<p>And I would be sanguine, professional and walk away gracefully. Hell, it's not like I hadn't had tons of practice with rejection in my acting career...except that...I was hoping my writing would make up for those busted acting dreams, that I would find an audience again and—
<p>I opened the restaurant door to face my agent.
<p>There she sat, elegant and calm, as usual. If she was about to wield an axe she certainly looked cool about it.
<p>Let's talk about a plan, Susan started.
<p>A plan? I gulped.
<p>Where was she going with this? I was ready, my shield was shiny and my lines were rehearsed. A plan?
Mel Ryanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11010321179422448635noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6705897965408634446.post-24592137744891131942014-01-30T06:00:00.000-08:002014-01-30T06:00:04.546-08:00NEW ORLEANS: April, 2009 (Part 13)<p>At the end of my afternoon in Algiers Point, I blithely took the ferry back to Canal Street, innocent of the story I would later learn. I settled in for a final dinner of oysters on the half shell and a glass of Chardonnay. This was my last night in the city.
<p>The next day, I flew home haunted by the week I'd spent in New Orleans, a magical conundrum of history, decadence, music, food, culture, ethnicity and politics. A metropolis of writers, artists and culinary geniuses offering more sensory indulgence per square foot than almost anywhere I'd ever traveled. And yet....
<p>Will the destroyed neighborhoods be rebuilt? Will its citizens come home?
<p>Some believe New Orleans' time is up. They wish the city would entirely rot in its current location and relocate inland to what they think is safer, higher and newer land.
<p>But ask a chef or a trumpeter, a poet or an architect, and they'll likely shout a resounding "nay" to the notion of abandoning the Crescent City. I unabashedly side with those voices. For me, New Orleans is a city where all things are possible — including rebirth.
<p><center>***</center>
<p>Once back home in Los Angeles, I drove to my in-laws' in order to retrieve our pets, to deliver thank-you gifts and to have a necessary conversation.
<p>When William told his parents how his latest job had ended, there was a pause and his father voiced an idea.
<p>Maybe it's time to find another career, he said.
<p>It was a short conversation. William was already devastated by the course of events and this was the last suggestion he needed.
<p>I need to tell you both something, I started, as I sat with my father- and mother-in-law and our cups of tea at the kitchen table. Your son is gifted. It's a rare thing to make a living doing what he does.There will be no career changing. He needs our support.
<p>They listened. I give them lots of credit for that.
<p>I know you're concerned about security but let's face it, we're all watching the news and seeing employees pour out of Manhattan skyscrapers carrying cardboard boxes with their personal belongings. I'm not certain, in these troubled times, if security exists anywhere.
<p>Well, people will always want to see movies, his mother offered.
<p>That's true, I agreed.
<p>His dad nodded and sipped his tea.
<p>William and I are in the arts, I continued. The upside of that choice is that we're always prepared for unemployment. It's not pleasant but neither is it a terrible shock when it happens.
<p>I didn't get into my angst at being into year two of my book not selling. I figured they could only stomach so much truth at one time and I was feeling like a pretty big loser when it came to what I could only loosely call my writing career.
<p>It's a terrible business, show business, his mom said and shook her head.
<p>She was getting the picture. The whole picture.
<p>I stuffed Stinky and Scrabble into the car, gave a final thank you and drove off to start a new chapter with William. A period we would call unemployment or, as it was now whimsically called in the press, <i>funemployment</i>.
Mel Ryanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11010321179422448635noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6705897965408634446.post-66966350432068642812014-01-23T06:00:00.000-08:002014-01-23T06:00:09.372-08:00NEW ORLEANS: April, 2009 (Part 12)<p>It was on the airport shuttle the next day that I overheard a tourist conversing about his visit to Algiers Point and something about "gun-toting locals shooting people up."
<p>Good grief, I thought. My Algiers Point?
<p>Not <i>Historic Algiers</i>, a neighborhood of porch swings and fish frys, with its quaint small-town charm and orange-and-blue Gulf station right out of an old movie...a place where you can step back in time. Back home, I did some research and did a little more than shiver at what I found.
<p>Algiers Point missed the destructive flooding that eighty percent of New Orleans endured after Katrina. Algiers Point suffered some wind and rain damage but for the most part survived unscathed. However, as the storm took hold and the levees gave way, the citizens of Algiers Point became aware of the mayhem across the Mississippi and battened down their hatches. What if mobs came here? What if those people raced down Canal Street, hopped on a ferry and came to our high, dry land and wanted our stuff? What if?
<p>Algiers Point is a predominately white enclave. A predominately black population lives in the further reaches of Algiers. On September 1, 2005, three days after Katrina made landfall, a group of white townspeople formed a militia. They gathered shotguns, assault rifles, ammunition and formed a vigilante gang. It is so easy to step back in time in <i>Historic Algiers</i>.
<p>In an article for <i>The Nation</i> titled "Katrina's Hidden Race War," journalist A.C. Thompson interviewed victims, witnesses and perpetrators of events that took place in Algiers Point.
<p>According to Thompson, the renegades closed off streets using downed trees and pieces of lumber. They created makeshift motion detectors using aluminum cans and glass bottles to alert them to the thieves and marauders that would surely descend.
<p>As one local put it, "On one side of Opelousas [Avenue] it's 'hood, on the other side it's suburbs. The two sides are totally opposite, like muddy and clean."
<p>Another said, "I'm telling you, it was forty, fifty people at a time getting off these boats...hoodlums from the Lower Ninth Ward and that part of the city. I'm not a prejudiced individual, but you just know the outlaws who are up to no good. You can see it in their eyes."
<p>On this evening, three young African-American men left their battered home in Algiers and walked toward the ferry terminal in hopes of getting to the other side and onto a bus. The National Guard had designated the Algiers Point ferry landing an official evacuation site.
<p>Donnell Herrington didn't make the boat with his two friends because his body was filled with metallic buckshot. At least seven pellets were lodged in his neck and others in his legs, arms and back.
<p>In an interview about that night, Vinnie Pervel, President of the Algiers Point Association, said, "We would yell, 'We're going to count to three and if you don't identify yourself, we're going to start shooting.'"
<p>In a separate interview, Pervel said, "I'm not a racist. I'm a classist. I want to live around people who want the same things as me."
<p>Who shot Donnell Harrington? We don't know. To date, police have investigated neither this event nor the shootings of ten other people in Algiers Point during that time period. Mr. Harrington did not die, but others did. Three and a half years after the event, no charges and no arrests had been made.
<p>I found an online video about the shootings. A Danish team of filmmakers also interviewed the hunters. One fellow faces the camera and jubilantly declares, "It was great! It was like pheasant season in South Dakota. If it moved, you shot it."
Mel Ryanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11010321179422448635noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6705897965408634446.post-80923452733483135372014-01-16T06:00:00.000-08:002014-01-16T06:00:02.702-08:00NEW ORLEANS: April, 2009 (Part 11)<p>I had read of a ferry leaving every fifteen minutes from the base of Canal Street. Its destination: Algiers Point, a New Orleans neighborhood on the other side of the Mississippi.
<p>Because it was described as yet another zone devoid of tourists, Algiers Point interested me. And since the ride was free, and since I like ferries almost as much as trains, this venture had my name written all over it.
<p>I boarded the boat and took in panoramic views of the city. The engines gunned and we were off for the six-minute ride. To my right I noticed the steeple of the St. Louis Cathedral in Jackson Square. Church-builders believed a steeple must mark the highest point of a town because man should never rise above God. To my left I saw the skyscrapers of the Central Business District and noted: They forgot.
<p>Upon landing, I climbed the elevated grassy levee surrounding Algiers Point and studied a harbor busy with industry. On the dirt pathway along the top of the levee, a girl jogged by and a man walked two dogs. They both expressed greetings. In fact, almost everyone I passed in New Orleans would nod and say "Hello" or "How ya doin'?" or "Nice to see ya" as if we were long-time acquaintances.
<p>Very friendly bunch, I thought. Very friendly, indeed. I could live here.
<p>Guideposts in Algiers Point informed me that I was in <i>Historic Algiers</i> and as I walked around the village I sensed that I was stepping back in time. On a corner, a 1930s-era gas station with a bright orange Gulf sign and blue trim, one pump and two picnic tables. Quaint and adorable, it looked like a movie set.
<p>The streets were quiet but for a slight breeze riffling through branches and the chirping of birds. Porch swings. Baby toys scattered inside fenced yards. Sweet.
<p>A large white banner advertised a Knights of Columbus Fish Fry and Crawfish Boil. Fun and so neighborly.
<p>Two huge billboards heralded tours of Blaine Kern's Mardi Gras World, where "Every Day is Mardi Gras!" Poking around warehouses of parade floats sounded super-fun, but when I got there I found the entrance bolted shut. A piece of paper with a handwritten scrawl curled in the wind. I flattened the notice with my hand and read that Mardi Gras World had moved to the Convention Center.
<p>Wow, a whole world moved across the river to the Convention Center. Hope they have more food and water than the Katrina evacuees received, which is to say: none.
<p>Disappointed, I moved on from Mardi Gras World and found myself face-to-face with a bronze plaque. "Algiers, established in 1719....Originally called the 'King's Plantation,' it was first used as the location for...a holding area for the newly arrived African slaves." A bucolic countryside where chained men and women were cleaned up before being sold at auction in the French Quarter.
<p>Though the sun shone, I shivered, and read on.
<p>Algiers Point became a hub of shipbuilding, dry docks and rail yards. Kevin Herridge, President of the Algiers Historical Society, and Vinnie Pervel, President of the Algiers Point Association, have their names engraved on the sign along with this claim: <i>The charm and architecture of old Algiers is New Orleans' "hidden jewel."</i>
<p>Mmmm-hmmm.
Mel Ryanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11010321179422448635noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6705897965408634446.post-86176389320126764822014-01-09T06:00:00.000-08:002014-01-09T06:00:02.067-08:00NEW ORLEANS: April, 2009 (Part 10)<p>I stood on the scruffy edge of railway tracks and let the cars of the New Orleans Public Belt Railroad send a rumble through my body. I like the greasy smell of trains. I like that the engineer waved to me from the red cabin of his car and I waved back. I would like to rock asleep in a berth closed in by pleated curtains, and in the morning watch golden flatlands speed by outside the window. To eat a meal in a dining car at a table set with crisp linens, and to see the water swaying in my goblet.
<p>I would like all of that, but today I could only pretend, because today I'd step over these tracks and make my way toward the Warehouse District, up Magazine Street, into the Garden District, back through the quiet end of the Quarter, across Esplanade Ridge and into Faubourg Marigny <i>(Faw-berg Mari-knee)</i>. And then I'd board a ferry and cross the muddy Mississippi to Algiers Point <i>(Pernt)</i>.
<p>The stroll would take me five hours, send me through eons of history and rumble me deeper than those train cars, but I didn't know any of that as I ventured forth only to be sideswiped by the grumble of my stomach.
<p>On Magazine Street, an area known for antiques, art, quirky restaurants and boutiques, I found Surrey's Cafe and Juice Bar: small, hippy-dippy and crowded with locals. Great, I'd managed to duck the tourist crowd. I neither wished to wait 15 minutes for a table nor did I need one. I was happy to sit at the three-seat bar, where I ordered a cup of chicory coffee, a fluffy baked biscuit, grits with a hint of garlic, two poached eggs and sliced tomatoes. The healthiest meal I'd eaten in days.
<p>In the Garden District I wandered through an above-ground cemetery. The gray and white stones are a familiar landscape in this city. On the disaster tour we heard ghoulish stories of the powerful flood dislodging some 1,200 tombs and sending them far from their peaceful settings. Some bodies remained encased in their concrete vaults and then traveled up to 33 miles, landing in trees or swamps. Some caskets cranked open and the remains, no longer at rest, were sent on a long swim. Officials then had the task of gathering and identifying the newly dead, the newly-buried dead and the historic dead. Nice job.
<p>The Garden District was first settled by Americans arriving in New Orleans after the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. The grand mansions of the Garden District have a distinctly different architecture from the green, pink and yellow Creole cottages of the Quarter. The homes of the Garden District rise over wide verandas, where dogs slumber in the shade of camellia and magnolia trees.
<p>In contrast, French Quarter balconies framed in wrought iron sit high above the narrow streets, providing an outdoor space perfect for watching Mardi Gras parades.
<p>I ambled up and down the quiet streets of the Garden District. The homes, a mix of gingerbread Victorians, Greek revivals, Italianate and pretty shotgun cottages, are predominately painted white. They were constructed when white paint was invented. The metaphor is not lost on me.
<p>This is New Orleans, where all things are possible and those things vary ward to ward, parish to parish, and people to people.
Mel Ryanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11010321179422448635noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6705897965408634446.post-9480980581586981362014-01-02T06:00:00.000-08:002014-01-02T06:00:00.771-08:00NEW ORLEANS: April, 2009 (Part 9)<p>Halfway through the Katrina disaster tour the bus pulled into Audubon Park for a rest stop. I joined my fellow tourists wandering into a concession area for hot dogs and ice cream. I pondered the menu and decided I wasn't all that hungry after witnessing some gruesome sights. Seeing wrecked homes and hearing the stories of wrecked lives was more than a little unsettling. I stepped outside into spring air and my cell phone rang.
<p>I've been fired.
<p>What? What do you mean?
<p>They got an Oscar-winner to replace me.
<p>What? How can they do this?
<p>The producer said it wasn't personal because I hadn't done any work yet. He just couldn't turn down a big name when the opportunity presented itself.
<p>The unspoken inkling had revealed itself. The breeze we felt was windy.
<p><i>How will this affect us?</i>
<p>We were in April of 2009, in Year Two of a worldwide recession that showed no signs of abating. In this climate, showbiz also floundered. We had read regular accounts of film and TV crews sitting on their couches worrying how to pay mortgage or rent and health insurance. California was especially hard hit by thousands of home foreclosures, runaway production and a failed banking system.
<p>Standing in a New Orleans park that afternoon and hearing my husband's depressed voice dispersed my logical thinking. I only wanted to be with him, hug him and reassure him. My other half was hurting and I was far away.
<p>I lumbered back up the steps of the bus and knew that, as tragedies go, ours was small compared to the homes and lives lost outside my grimy bus window...but lost is lost.
<p>I had one more day in New Orleans before I'd be on a plane and back home with my husband.
Mel Ryanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11010321179422448635noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6705897965408634446.post-9828881716789874182013-12-26T06:00:00.000-08:002013-12-26T06:00:08.378-08:00NEW ORLEANS: April, 2009 (Part 8)<p>Former Senator Larry Craig, he of a certain bathroom stall incident at the Minneapolis airport, was one American disinclined to rebuild New Orleans.
<p>"Louisiana and New Orleans are the most corrupt governments in our country and they always have been," Craig was quoted as saying in the McCall (Idaho) <i>Star-News</i>. "A rookie cop on the ground in New Orleans, they pay him or her $17,000 starting pay and then wink and say you better make the rest of it on the street."
<p>"I'm not humorous when I suggest we should turn it back to what it was, a wetland," Craig told the <i>Lewiston Tribune</i> (Idaho), saying that some areas of the Gulf, including New Orleans' flooded Ninth Ward, should be abandoned.
<p>As they say in the South: <i>Mmmm-hmmm</i>.
<p>Was it not time to spend the FEMA money and repair the wetlands, the infrastructure and the living spaces of this city? Are we not: Linked.
<p>Two men arrived at the finish line of the Ironman competition with a string of rope joining them hip-to-hip. They rode bikes, swam in Lake Pontchartrain <i>(Ponch-a-train)</i> and ran through the city for seventy miles: Linked.
<p>After Katrina, in St. Bernard's Parish, people waited days for help in ungodly temperatures. They sat on rooftops under a blue, cloudless sky and in heat so intense it burned their mouths to breathe. In some locations the water rose up to twenty feet. Panicked deer hopped from rooftop to rooftop, snakes and stingrays swam by and wild Russian boars searched for dry land. The first help some folks received was from Canada. A Vancouver-based search-and-rescue team arrived to serve. The neighborhood is now known as "Little Canada": Linked.
<p>I had jumbling thoughts in my head as I raced along a sidewalk and passed an older black man sitting on a doorway stoop, sipping from a can of beer in a brown paper sack.
<p>Smile! he shouted to me.
<p>Shocked, I did exactly that. I smiled big and laughed out loud.
<p>That's what I'm talkin' 'bout, he quipped. And we were: Linked.
Mel Ryanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11010321179422448635noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6705897965408634446.post-22244141745808482532013-12-19T06:00:00.000-08:002013-12-19T06:00:04.445-08:00NEW ORLEANS: April, 2009 (Part 7)<p>Funny how fast it can happen, when it happens: Change.
<p>Sunday was killer hot but by Monday I was bundled up in two sweaters, a jacket and a scarf. Forget the Panama hat; it would have blown away. The temperature had plummeted twenty degrees to a daytime high of 62 degrees and a nighttime of 40.
<p>One evening I took the St. Charles streetcar to Tulane <i>(TOO-lane)</i> University to see Joan Didion read from her work. I like Didion. I'm a fan of her sharp, concise writing.
<p>After a long-winded intro by an English professor, Joan Didion entered center-stage through a set of heavy, dusty, old-fashioned curtains. The audience welcomed her with a standing ovation worthy of the petite rock star of the literary world she is. Didion ignored the applause and got right to the task at hand. She read from <i>The Year of Magical Thinking</i>, a memoir of the year following the sudden death of her husband at their dinner table.
<p>She read of the fire she built in the living room that evening, of the Scotch she poured for him and the salad she tossed. She paused in her reading and then continued to relate their brief conversation and how she noticed John's hand raised in the air as his head slumped forward, and how she thought he was making a joke she didn't like. It was moving to hear the writing from her lips and in a voice that sounded both strong and exhausted.
<p>She confirmed that as the book sat stacked in warehouses waiting for delivery, her 39-year-old daughter, Quintana, also died.
<p>Walking the neighborhoods of New Orleans, listening to Joan Didion read and taking a disaster tour had me wondering how or if we are linked to each other.
<p>I was struck by the irony of Vanessa Redgrave, having recently lost her own daughter, set to perform the play version of this work at St. John's Cathedral in New York in October of 2009. I thought of how courageous and compelled these women were to put their sorrow into their art, perhaps because there was nothing else to be done. And now, tragically, they had become: Linked.
<p>The shrimpers of the Louisiana coast are known as able-bodied, independent people born of families long tied to fishing. The sea is what they know and they know it well. Today, in the swampland and bayous, white shrimp boats languished half-sunk and rotten, scattered like abandoned toys. I saw these boat carcasses from the window of a tour bus. I was on the Hurricane Katrina Tour. A journey that would take us through the neighborhoods of Lakeview, Gentilly, New Orleans East, St. Bernard's Parish and the Ninth Ward. We'd see breached levees. We'd drive by devastated homes, public schools, shopping malls and restaurants. We'd see neighborhoods that had become virtual ghost towns.
<p>The coastal wetlands are eroding at a rate of 16,000 to 20,000 acres every year. These same marshes provide natural protection from the damage of storm surges.
<p>New Orleans' industries have a combined domestic economic impact of $140 billion every year. We eat the shrimp and oysters, our cars run on the oil, and we use the steel, rubber and coffee that arrive through New Orleans' ports. Nearly $4 billion of FEMA aid designated to help the region sat, unspent, three and a half years after Katrina.
Mel Ryanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11010321179422448635noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6705897965408634446.post-34505787826768586412013-12-12T06:00:00.000-08:002013-12-12T06:00:03.510-08:00NEW ORLEANS: April, 2009 (Part 6)<p>I didn't want to hang tight to the French Quarter and its tourist crowds. It was, of course, a positive advancement to have conventions, weddings and spring breakers returning to the city but these people tended to spend their time in this one location and I needed to get out. I carried a small notebook and wrote of the images I saw:
<p>• A roster of names attached to the outer wall of an Episcopal church. Murder victims. The list specified: SHOT, STABBED, BEATEN.
<p>• On the cement stoop of an apartment building a skinny pock-faced young woman with straggly red hair nodded, eyes shut, as if her veins had recently been fed. Standing over her, a skinny black man punched at intercom buttons. He held a leash attached to a small, caramel-colored puppy so desperate, maybe for food and water, that when it struggled to climb the top step, it crumpled in a heap.
<p>• Middle-class neighborhoods where children rode bikes, parents went to work and lawns were mowed on Saturday afternoons were now filled with empty houses that had been waiting three and a half years and counting for insurance companies to pay up. In 2005, when Katrina and Rita swept through, these same companies raked in record-setting profits of $48 billion; in 2006, $68 billion.
<p>• In the Ninth Ward an utter wreck of a house sat high on cement blocks, the result of initial work done by a contractor. The house was owned by a man who gave everything he had to the contractor. Said contractor left the project and disappeared with the money.
<p>• Junked FEMA trailers filled with formaldehyde, a colorless gas known to cause burning eyes, wheezing, nosebleeds, and cancer.
<p>• Many people in New Orleans will tell you the Katrina flooding was not a "natural disaster," but the failed work of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Levee walls had been planted 17 feet deep when they should have been 72 feet deep. The walls collapsed like dominoes and the water came in. In some places it took four minutes to rise from ground to roof level. The number of bodies found was tabulated close to two thousand — but not all the bodies had been found.
<p>• After weeks of draining, the houses were filled with rats and snakes. And then the mold. If you wanted to buy a house in Lakeview, or New Orleans East, or Gentilly, you had to be prepared to wear a Hazmat suit.
<p>• Governor Bobby Jindal had decided to relocate adolescent mental health facilities to a new location forty miles away, across Lake Pontchartrain. Most of the patients' parents didn't have cars to visit their children and there was no public transportation to the facilities. The Governor saved the State of Louisiana $9 million in the move.
<p>The other side of lovely.
Mel Ryanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11010321179422448635noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6705897965408634446.post-74563384870275402132013-12-05T06:00:00.000-08:002013-12-05T06:00:03.539-08:00NEW ORLEANS: April, 2009 (Part 5)<p>Back in the Quarter, on a street called Pirate Alley, I wandered into William Faulkner's former house, now a bookstore, and bought a copy of Michael Ondaatje's <i>Coming Through Slaughter</i>. The novel, set in early 20th-century New Orleans, tells the story of a jazz musician and a photographer. I bought the book for three reasons: first, to read a novel set in New Orleans; second, to support an independent bookstore; and third, how could I resist? This was a former home of William Faulkner.
<p>By two o'clock I was hungry again and, back at the Food Festival, I gobbled up a piece of fried catfish and a scoop of potato salad. This had me parched and sent me into Ye Old Absinthe Bar, where I quaffed a mug of amber ale as quickly as one might a glass of water. Back at the hotel by three o'clock, I had a shower and...oh yes...slipped like a love note into my pure white envelope of a bed and drifted off with thoughts of dinner.
<p>When I awoke I called William back in L.A.
<p>You okay?
<p>Sure.
<p>What are you eating?
<p>Trader Joe's frozen dinners.
<p>Okay.
<p>You?
<p>I'm great. I mean, eating my way around the city and writing.
<p>In New Orleans I took to sending emails home to friends as I'd not done since our Hong Kong trip. It was in this writing that I started to consider another book. The writing my teacher Eunice Scarfe liked to call "the story behind the story." Maybe there was something there since I wasn't entirely certain how to repair the novel that I'd finished then shoved to a corner deep in my computer.
Mel Ryanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11010321179422448635noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6705897965408634446.post-66562773307820899252013-11-28T06:00:00.000-08:002013-11-28T06:00:11.576-08:00NEW ORLEANS: April, 2009 (Part 4)<p>My excursion included viewing six mansions built in the 19th century. The owners had coordinated with the local historical society to open them to those of us willing to buy a $22 ticket. Five of the homes had been converted into condos, which meant walking directly into bedrooms that had previously been parlors.
<p>After World War II, with housing at a premium, subdividing estates dawned on many as an obvious solution. Despite their high ceilings, these living spaces felt closed-in, dark and cramped. Over-decorated in ornate Napoleonic-era furniture, chandeliers and then — all of a sudden — an entirely misplaced bed in the living room. It disoriented me.
<p>The exteriors of these enticed me, but once inside I wanted to run. There was something sad and make-do about the grandiose reduced to stuffed quarters.
<p>There were three docents assigned to each house. Apparently members of some sort of antebellum cult dressed in off-the-shoulder hoop dresses, these Southern belles were a mix of the old and the young. All moist, pale and brimming with knowledge of their assigned manse, they welcomed those of us on the tours with beaming smiles and extra long vowels.
<p>I admired one house beautifully renovated in shades of pastel green and peach, with period, yet not ostentatious, furniture. Behind the manor, a two-story former stable had been converted into a guesthouse. I could live there.
<p>On my way back to the hotel my curiosity was further rewarded when I walked into three Realtors' open houses. These joints weren't cheap, with close-to-New York City prices. A one-bedroom condo in a converted house, with a tiny kitchen, a loft, a living room barely big enough for a sofa and television, and a small outdoor patio: $1.4 million.
<p>Mind you, because Katrina flooding was not a problem in the French Quarter and Garden District, these buildings remained structurally sound. Wind, rain and the occasional tornado wreaked havoc, but these neighborhoods didn't sustain the water damage 80 percent of the city suffered.
<p>However, the prospect of exorbitant insurance rates (if one could even receive coverage) coupled with a high mortgage struck me as a daunting proposition for anyone seeking a home in New Orleans. And then there are those ladies named Betsy, Katrina and Rita ready to sweep through a fragile, ill-repaired levee system and deteriorated wetlands. Real-estate investment in this city presents a challenge.
<p>And yet, as I walked down narrow brick streets and looked up at bougainvillea-strewn balconies, my mind played with the idea of living in such a romantic, dramatic, decadent and delicious world. One could paint, write and compose great works of art submerged in the heady, steamy magic of New Orleans.
Mel Ryanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11010321179422448635noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6705897965408634446.post-30191252795160046962013-11-21T06:00:00.000-08:002013-11-21T06:00:02.567-08:00NEW ORLEANS: April, 2009 (Part 3)<p>William shot me a smile and I returned it. We knew we were saying <i>darling, adorable</i>...and glad we don't have 'em. William's brother and his wife had a girl and a boy. Eventually they'd have a third and spending time with them at the beach or on Christmas morning was certainly "a good time had by all," but we never regretted our choice.
<p>After dinner, William and I stepped home, tipsy and sated, to spend our last night together. William's bosses decided he should return to Los Angeles and I wanted to stay a full week. I'd barely started to click off items on my "must-eat" list and there were still many neighborhoods to explore.
<p>The next morning my own pirate sailed away I gave myself a mission: I would seek solace in cheesy grits and biscuits before taking a house tour of the mansions on the Esplanade <i>(Espla-naid)</i>.
<p>I walked out of the hotel at eleven the next morning and wandered into the Quarter. Along Royal <i>(Rerl)</i> Street I discovered a Food Festival. It was like the city was waiting for me to arrive. White tented booths ran down the center of the street. Folks purchased beer, wine and Bloody Marys along with gumbo, fried turkey legs and pralines <i>(praw-leens)</i>.
<p>I bought a bowl of spicy jambalaya <i>(jom-ba-lye)</i>, sat on the steps of the police station and listened to authentic jazz undulating from the end of a busker's trumpet. New Orleans languished as her real self on this day. The sun beat down at 84 degrees and the humidity was a damp 98 percent. I caught a glimpse of myself in a Napoleonic mirror and saw that I'd slipped from a feminine glow directly into sweating like an oinker. Bad.
<p>I needed help and went to the French Market, where I found a Panama hat. The only good thing in the French Market, by the way. It's mostly a cheesy collection of T-shirts and voodoo dolls. In front of Cafe du Monde, where William and I had previously enjoyed cafe au laits and hot, powdery beignets, a crowd had amassed to cheer competitors as they crossed the finish line of New Orleans' Ironman race.
<p>After seventy miles of biking, swimming and running, extremely lean men and a few women stumbled soaking wet into the arms of volunteers. Many looked delirious and needed to be carried away. It was a bit sickening to witness and could put one right off athleticism, especially after a bowl of jambalaya. I clapped my hands for the runners and moved on toward the direction of the house tour.
Mel Ryanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11010321179422448635noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6705897965408634446.post-60395977956289558742013-11-14T06:00:00.000-08:002013-11-14T06:00:03.059-08:00NEW ORLEANS: April, 2009 (Part 2)<p>Together William and I took a three-hour jaunt through the French Quarter, then up the Esplanade and into Mid-City, where we landed at Liuzza's by the Track, near the New Orleans Fair Grounds and racetrack. More diner than restaurant, it was purported to have some of the best po' boys in the city, and we arrived hungry. William ordered the shrimp po' boy, a French loaf stuffed with three dozen of the tender babies dripping in a spicy butter sauce. I bit into my oyster <i>(erster)</i> po' boy. Juicy, fat oysters had been deep-fried to a golden crunch and wrapped in lettuce, tomatoes and a fluffy French loaf. At the end of our long walk, it was back to the hotel for showers and the delicious sensation of slipping into cool, white sheets under snowy duvets for an afternoon nap in keeping with a Southern tradition. We slumbered satisfied after the tasty meal and pleased to be in a new world where his per diem took care of such lunches and our hotel room.
<p>Later we shared dinner at Muriel's in the Jackson Square area of the Quarter. Housed in a former mansion, the restaurant is apparently haunted. In a secret corner, under a staircase, we discovered a table set for two with goblets of red wine and bread; for the ghosts, they said. Another pirate parade traipsed past our window as William sipped a Sidecar and we dined on crawfish crepes, soft-shelled crab, Louisiana shrimp, and oysters. The pirates threw beads to the crowd and shouted ho ho ho and stuff about rum.
<p>William and I glanced over our shoulders as the Muriel's maitre d' seated a couple and their toddler at a table directly behind us. I could feel my face tighten into a sour, pursed mask. Why on earth do people think it is a-okay to bring young children anywhere, anytime? Why?
<p>A waiter delivered water to the parents and to the child a bundle of crayons. Oh for God's sake, our elegant evening looked like Sesame Street. I sucked in air and then gulped my wine, fortunately not at the same time. We turned our frosty attention to the appetizers before us and the pirates outside our window.
<p>Near the end of our meal, in the ladies' room, I ran into the mother and her tot. I politely looked down and the child held her clasped hands up to me. She wound her pink fingers around and around, proudly showing how she'd washed them. I slipped to my knees and stared into her bright blue eyes, wide under a frothy halo of gossamer hair.
<p>Did you wash your hands all by yourself? I asked, and she giggled.
<p>She stuck her foot out to show me a white sandal with a large flower on top. Her tiny toes barely peeked out the end of the shoe.
<p>Are these your new shoes?
<p>Like a miniature dancer, she switched feet and pointed the other toward me. We both took a moment to study her sandal.
<p>You have <i>two</i> new shoes? That's fantastic.
<p>She swept her hands down the front of her cotton dress and I thought: <i>Southern belles are surely born</i>.
<p>Oh, I hope she didn't disturb your dinner. This is her first time in a grown-up restaurant. The mother's voice came from far away. It had a tinny distance.
<p>How old is she? I whispered. And what's her name? Caught in the spell of the little girl's eyes, I couldn't look up at the mother.
<p>This is Annabelle. She's nineteen months. The child and I were in a private bubble.
<p>Annabelle, I softly repeated, and again she giggled. Your shoes are perfect and your dress is lovely, Annabelle.
<p>With that she wrapped her small hand tight around my index finger and tugged. Annabelle led me out of the bathroom, down the dark hallway and back into the dining room. With my knees bent and my body tipped halfway over, I looked like Quasimodo and yet was fine with that. It’s the kind of sacrifice one makes when one has so instantly fallen in love.
<p>William laughed out loud when he saw us walking toward him and in a flash, he too was enchanted by Annabelle, whose name could as easily have been Scarlett, or Blanche, or Maggie, or Daisy.
<p>The sun set over Jackson Square and sleepy Annabelle lifted tiny fingers in farewell over her daddy's shoulder as her baby blues closed.
<p>The restaurant window reflected a couple rosy in candlelight. We stirred frothy cappuccinos and shared sweet crème brulee. We'd been sprinkled with magic by one of Louisiana's best. At a mere 30 inches high Annabelle was the real deal.
Mel Ryanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11010321179422448635noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6705897965408634446.post-76834591362998954022013-11-07T06:00:00.000-08:002013-11-07T06:00:08.988-08:00NEW ORLEANS: April, 2009 (Part 1)<p>In the spring of 2009 William flew to New Orleans to start a job. This was three and half years after the Katrina disaster. I hadn't visited the Crescent City in many years and was saddened by horrible images of the city on television.
<p>William's departure fell during spring break for The Shakespeare Club, so I was free to follow. We were in Louisiana Luck.
<p>We arrived in New Orleans too late for Mardi Gras (good) and too early for Jazz Fest (sad) but right on target for Pirate Week (spelled <i>Pyrate</i> down here).
<p>Pirates of all ages, colors and genres. Gay and straight pirates. Fat and skinny pirates. Dressed in full regalia, they stomped through the French Quarter and continued to do so for the week. Toddlers wearing eye patches and headscarves brandished swords from their strollers. The most common types of buccaneer were chubby middle-aged white men strutting in packs of three or four, gray hair springing out of their bandannas and cummerbunds stretched to the point of snapping.
<p>I was reminded of Civil War re-enactors on battlefields in Virginia. These aged pirates wore a similar braggadocio of commitment and careful planning. Their faces registered ecstasy as they waved to the crowds. Their black breeches billowed above silly striped-stockinged calves. They dressed in gem-colored brocade coats, thigh-high leather boots and great three-corner hats with wild feathers aplume. They smoked, drank and cussed like, well, pirates. Everyone was acting with a capital A.
<p>William and I wandered into the Jean Lafitte Blacksmith Shop Bar. A low-ceilinged, dark cave-like building with original blackened brick fireplaces and charred wood beams, it was the oldest building in the Quarter, dating from the 1770s. Story has it the pub was a blacksmith shop run by New Orleans' famous hero-pirate, Jean Lafitte. In reality, Monsieur Lafitte and his crew set this joint up to sell their glorious plunder to willing New Orleans buyers. Years later, the bar became a favorite drinking spot of Tennessee Williams.
Mel Ryanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11010321179422448635noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6705897965408634446.post-70717042068554666342013-10-31T06:00:00.000-07:002013-10-31T06:00:12.890-07:00MONTREAL: December, 2007 (Part 6)<p>In 2008 William returned home to Los Angeles to continue his work. I again attended the writers' conference, read an excerpt from my novel and received a favorable audience reaction.
<p>In New York City I met with my agent for a fortifying lunch. Susan was still optimistic about selling my memoir despite a stock market in freefall, rising unemployment rates and American car conglomerates on the brink of collapse. I was relieved to hear her speak both realistically and enthusiastically. It was a balm on my worries.
<p>The Shakespeare Club performed a fine rendition of "Romeo and Juliet" in the spring and I was proud of the effort on all our parts. I continued to churn out pages of my novel and sent the first two hundred pages to Susan for her consideration. I was eager for her thoughts because it was the one thing I was feeling most positive about. Maybe the novel would sell before the memoir. Maybe....
<p>I'd taken to learning as much about the publishing world as I could. I studied blogs and read books by editors. It was becoming increasingly clear that this staid and possibly archaic business of book publishing was about to kneel down and turn over like a great elephant rolling into a bath of warm mud — a morphing process similar to what we had witnessed in the worlds of music and movies. Important editors at major publishing houses were either being dropped or quitting at an alarming rate. We were about to hear of e-books, Kindles and iPads. With the economy in peril it became obvious how my professional life would be affected.
<p>William and I celebrated Barack Obama's election and at the same time wondered if we were holding hope of this one person's abilities too high. Could he save us? Maybe....
<p>After reading the beginning of my novel, Susan let me know I wrote fiction well and the writing was mesmerizing...but what would the market be for such a book? To whom could she sell it?
<p>I sank. I had zero answers. It was becoming apparent that the highbrow literary world is not too different than Hollywood or any business, for that matter. The bottom line is about what sells. I wasn't writing for the market. I didn't know how to write for the market. Yet I still wanted an audience.
<p>I stared out the window of my home office at green lawns and black crows hopping across the grass. I rubbed Scrabble's little ears and took Stinky on long walks. My neck continued to itch and it wasn't turtleneck weather. I suspected the publishing universe knew precisely what the hell was going on with my neck because neither of the dermatologists I consulted had a clue. My bathroom was filled with myriad creams and lotions that had little effect.
<p>At least William was working, which we were grateful for every day, but by autumn my manuscript had been in the marketplace for a year with only one near bite.
Mel Ryanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11010321179422448635noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6705897965408634446.post-17908762063016242062013-10-24T06:00:00.000-07:002013-10-26T12:32:26.516-07:00MONTREAL: December, 2007 (Part 5)<p>A recession had been predicted and within months Lehman Brothers would collapse. AIG and others would follow and I continued to wonder, How will this affect us?
<p>My agent had started submitting my memoir to publishers in October. By December, while I was in Montreal sucking down mussels and champagne, the rejections had started to come in. I read the letters with curiosity, not only because they were referencing my work and thus my high hopes, but also because I'd never been in this position before.
<p>My experience with acceptance and rejection had been grounded in my experience as an actor, where in one swift phone call from my agent I would know:
<p><ul>1. if there was interest, and how much<br>
2. no interest/didn't get it<br>
3. got it</ul>
<p>The responses to my book, though favorable enough to regard as good reviews, also disclosed that the material "wouldn't be a good fit with our trade market." Other phrases included "not sure how to position" and "not right for our list."
<p>I read and reread: fit, fit, fit.
<p>It seemed I'd built a shoe for the wrong size foot and the news churned inside of me like images from a bad dream. Was everything that had happened last summer an over-the-top exaltation I could never live up to? A fantasy? A delusion?
<p>William said, Don't worry, it'll sell. I know it will.
<p>I said, I have to go home now and I love you and thank you for saying that.
<p>I rubbed my neck as I said this. William wrapped his arms around me and hugged. I would be going home to Los Angeles and he would follow in two weeks.
<p>I scratched my neck. <i>Scratch, scratch.</i>
<p>You know what I miss most when we're apart? I asked.
<p>What?
<p>Laughing. You make me laugh and back home, alone, I don't laugh much.
<p>You're an easy audience, he said.
<p>Maybe yes, maybe no...anyway.
<p><i>Scratch, scratch.</i>
<p>What the hell is going on with my neck? And I stood in front of the bathroom mirror. Cripes, look at this.
<p>William came in and we both stared at my neck in the reflection. Great red welts cut across my throat as if I'd walked away from an attempted garroting in some murderous thriller.
<p>Are you allergic to the fabric in your turtlenecks?
<p>Yeah. Maybe. Allergic to turtlenecks, that's really common.
<p>On my last morning in Montreal I made breakfast for William, kissed him goodbye and packed last-minute stuff into my suitcase before the taxi came. I took a quick look at the day's news online.
<p><i>Official. Crisis. Recession.</i>
<p>How will this affect us?
Mel Ryanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11010321179422448635noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6705897965408634446.post-90196305425265136312013-10-17T06:00:00.000-07:002013-10-19T13:25:55.105-07:00MONTREAL: December, 2007 (Part 4)<p>One morning we set off to William's office so Michelle could see where he was working. He had asked us to pick up some treats for the people in his office so we stopped at a bakery, where I chose frosted cupcakes and had them boxed and tied in ribbon for easy carrying.
<p>Then we made a stop at a liquor store for a few bottles of good wine. By this point in my visit I was feeling pretty cocky with my language skills and asked the friendly store manager if he had gift bags for the bottles. He helped me out and in a magnanimous tip of my language-hat I said, <i>Merci beaucoup, Monsieur, vous êtes un bon homme</i>.
<p>He gave me gentle smile and nodded. I smiled back, picked up my bags and turned to locate Michelle, who had receded into a corner of the shop. Her shoulders were heaving. Her mittened hand covered her mouth.
<p>I scurried over to discover her convulsed in laughter.
<p>What is your problem?
<p>Do you know what you just said?
<p>I certainly do. I told him he was a good man and he is. He helped me with these wine bags.
<p>You called him a snowman!
<p>As she said this I remembered the cardboard cutouts of <i>Bonhomme</i> hanging all over Montreal. He's a giant snowman and the mascot of the winter carnivals held in the province.
<p><i>Merde.</i>
<p>We crashed out of the store and stumbled down the snowy street nearly peeing our pants with laughter. Friendship at its best in a winter in Montreal.
<p>I missed Michelle after her five-day visit and spent my remaining days in the city working on my novel, meeting William for lunches and on his days off taking him to the city's must-sees.
<p>On a Sunday afternoon we took a bus to Schwartz's Delicatessen for world-famous smoked-meat sandwiches. We bit into tender meat slathered in yellow mustard and overflowing from slices of fresh-baked rye bread. We nodded up and down in agreement with the glowing reviews pasted up in the steamy windowpane.
<p>We window-shopped Rue St. Catherine and wandered through the Musee des Beaux-Arts. We strolled the riverfront and ate sweetbreads and fresh fish at a table covered in white linens set with candles and tucked against a wall of unfinished red brick. We slept late on his days off while fat snowflakes fell quietly outside our windows.
<p>As we shuffled in bliss through snow, content that William was working on a big project and I was working on a big book, the big world was spinning on its axis into other realities. While writing fictional paragraphs I took breaks and browsed news sites. The real estate bubble was popping, fast, and I wondered, What does this mean for us? How will this affect us?
Mel Ryanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11010321179422448635noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6705897965408634446.post-29809916172167863822013-10-10T06:00:00.000-07:002013-10-10T06:00:10.888-07:00MONTREAL: December, 2007 (Part 3)<p>The one-bedroom apartment was luxuriously furnished in dark brown leather couches and chairs. The two bathrooms featured marble and glass, the kitchen stainless-steel and shine. In the dining room a long panel of windows looked across to the offices of La Presse, a Montreal newspaper. In the mornings I could watch journalists and staff hard at work while on the street below cars swished their tires through slushy snow. After breakfast I'd walk William to his office then go off to explore the city.
<p>Michelle arrived to spend five nights with us. I'd asked the building manager if setting up a cot would be possible and <i>Oui, madam</i> was his response. However, housekeeping did not appear to be in on this plan and suddenly it was the day of Michelle's arrival and no cot was in our apartment. On my way to the train station I stopped in to see my new friend, the building manager, and he offered a better idea.
<p>When I saw the top of Michelle's head bobbing up the stairs from the train platform I jumped and she cheered. We are both fans of Montreal and to be in it together promised adventure. I flagged a taxi and got us to Old Montreal in my perfectly adequate high-school French. I had learned the language in this country. What clearly would stymie Parisians and Moroccans was a cinch for me. I rattled off directions and we successfully pulled up in front of the correct address.
<p>Once inside, I gave Michelle the quick tour of the apartment. She oohed and aahed but wondered where she would sleep.
<p>Come with me, I said.
<p>She followed me out the door and down the hall where I stopped in front of another door. I opened it with a flourish and announced: Your own apartment! The manager says he likes William so much, we could have this for you, for free!
<p>Michelle and I jumped up and down like teenagers. Montreal was reaching her French-Canadian arms out to us in a welcoming embrace and we could do naught but snuggle in tight. So began five days of museums, art galleries, bags of hot bagels, lunches and dinners with delicious wines and hours of trudging in snow.
<p>Michelle and I enjoy a shorthand when it comes to sightseeing. One of us will grab the other's arm, squeeze and stare until we both silently agree that the fold of that silk fabric, the arm of that chintz chair, the cut of that neckline, the blue of those shoes, the intricacy of that floral arrangement, the bending of that sculpture, the perfection of that berry pastry, the sadness of that old man and the glow of that child's red cheeks...was intended for us to see and share in that exact moment.
<p>Friendship at its best in a Montreal winter. We sped our way to various neighborhoods on the Metro or on city buses. We strolled through a farmer's market scented with the pine of fresh-cut Christmas trees. We studied the unmoving river, its edges frozen like a photograph. We settled in, after a long day, into a restaurant as cozy as an eighteenth-century house because, for crying out loud, it was an eighteenth-century house. A fire crackled, heavy drapes kept in the warmth and we ordered soups and steaks and roasted potatoes.
Mel Ryanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11010321179422448635noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6705897965408634446.post-65956137520429446772013-10-03T06:00:00.000-07:002013-10-03T06:00:03.234-07:00MONTREAL: December, 2007 (Part 2)<p>William settled into his apartment in <i>Vieux-Montréal</i>, the city's charming historic district that featured cobblestone streets, art galleries and restaurants near the Old Port, which overlooked the St. Lawrence River. He emailed me digital photos of the city in autumn colors.
<p>The company had given him a car but he mostly walked to avoid driving in snow. To hear William tell it, his daily walks came with more than just aerobic benefits.
<p>I love this city, he exclaimed. The women here are gorgeous and friendly and usually happy to talk in English.
<p>Good. I'm pleased you're getting a workout on the way to work.
<p>I arrived on an early December evening and not a moment too soon. In the taxi from the airport I smiled at the city lit in twinkling pre-Christmas glitter. The car slowed near Notre Dame Cathedral, the snowy square aglow with tiny blue lights spun into every bare tree branch. The luminosity created an ethereal effect.
<p>Our apartment building was around the corner from the church. The taxi pulled to a stop, I opened the door and promptly stepped into a snowdrift. I struggled to get one foot out, stuck the other one in deep and nearly toppled flat on my face as the driver placed my luggage on the sidewalk.
<p>I glanced up to see William tromping through the fluffy stuff to get to me. Two months apart was two months too long but here we were in a winter landscape, inept and bumbling and laughing.
Mel Ryanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11010321179422448635noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6705897965408634446.post-61219091166213649442013-09-26T06:00:00.000-07:002013-09-26T06:00:00.469-07:00MONTREAL: December, 2007 (Part 1)<p>Snow. Romantic, silent and cleansing. Snow. Trudging, bundling and bouillabaisse. Snow.
<p>William and I had never done snow together. Being from Canada, I grew up in it. Being from Southern California, he had not and, with the exception of some ski trips and a few winter semesters, had not spent much time in it at all.
<p>After my return from the writing conference I had started work on a novel. My confidence level as a writer was high. I wrote every day, as I believed real writers did. When William had time he sat in my office as I read him pages from the day's work.
<p>After one such session, I looked up and bit my lip.
<p>What? Thoughts?
<p>He shook his head. Where is this coming from?
<p>What do you mean?
<p>It's rich...dense. It's robust writing and I love it. A much different voice than in the memoir.
<p>I exhaled. Thanks. You know that means a lot.
<p>Can't wait to hear more.
<p>And I launched myself into a world of research and writing while William prepared to go on location to Montreal for three months. He would leave in October and I'd join him in December.
<p>Montreal held history for me. As a young actor, I'd toured with plays to the city in winter and acted in a comedy pilot one summer. Quebec is a joyously unique part of Canada. With its own Quebecois-French dialect, its culinary expertise and a zest for beautiful art, fashion and beer, it's impossible not to be proud of the province and the jewel at its heart, Montreal.
Mel Ryanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11010321179422448635noreply@blogger.com0