These Are a Few of My Favorite Things

These Are a Few of My Favorite Things: A MiniMemoir

Foreword: I saw Camilla for the first time in a decade at Rachel’s Creperie in Lancaster. She looked beautiful, as always, vivacious and glowing with her pixie cut grey hair and her purple glasses and purple scarf and purple handbag. She had warned me that we’d only have 24 hours together because she had to head back to Upstate New York for another round of chemo. I was surprised, because I thought the lack of updates over the past few months had meant she was in remission - that no news was good news.

“You look too fabulous to be getting chemo this week!” I said after I hugged her, laugh-crying at the joy of seeing a face I loved so deeply after so many years.

“Well, I’m not anymore...” she answered quietly. “It’s not working.

I’m going into hospice care as soon as I get home.” And I burst out crying, in the middle of the café, for this glorious, vital woman who had been given a death sentence.

The wonderful thing about Camilla, though, is that she’s irrepressible. Over the next 24 hours (minus the eight or nine we slept) we cycled back and forth between despair and disbelief that she had two to six months to live, and cackling laughter at the many hilarious death jokes we came up with. Turns out gallows humor is a particular skill of hers - and mine.

We went to the grocery store to pick up food for dinner (not much, her gut was feeling funny), and I teased her about deliberating over buying the more expensive probiotics when they would literally be the last ones she ever

bought. And the price difference was $2. The man standing next to us gave us a funny look.

We curled up on the couch at our Airbnb, trading stories and drinking tea, reflecting on her life and what we think happens next and what she will and won’t miss. We looked for all the terrible mundanities that it will be a relief to let go of. “I won’t miss passwords,” she said, and I exclaimed, “Passwords! You’ll never have to remember another password! I’m jealous.” (And then realized what I was jealous of.)

And, of course, we talked about her favorite things. The purpose of our 24 hours was for me to ask her questions and write down her answers for a mini-memoir - this mini-memoir. When I graduated from Franklin and Marshall in 2005, Camilla gave me Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott. In it, she wrote: “This will help you when you eventually write my biography.”

I went on to become a writer, and reread Bird by Bird at least seven or eight times - it became the cornerstone of my writing philosophy. When I heard Camilla had cancer in 2018, I felt as if I had left a life pact unfulfilled.

And so - a trip from Cape Town, South Africa to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, to reconnect with one of my favorite teachers, and friends. A long list of questions that resulted in the pages you’re about to read: a collection of memories from a life well-lived. Our time together was intense, and beautiful, and heartbreaking. The echoes of those 24 hours will resonate with me long after Camilla is gone.

When our time was up, she drove me to the train station, and we sat in her

car eating cream of broccoli soup and trying to say all the things you say to someone you love and who you want more time with (much, much more, many years more). I came up with the perfect parting line: “See you on the other side!” but then we kept chatting, reluctant to let go. Eventually, I walked into the train station, and stepped into the elevator. The doors closed and for 30 seconds I howled. I had been crying off and on since I saw Camilla, tears leaking out of my eyes as we spoke or when I made tea or thought about the finality of death and what lies ahead. But for that brief moment I let the heartache out, before I tamped it down again.

“I don’t get it, I just don’t get it,” Camilla said to me at some point in the afternoon, while she was telling me about Bruce and their lovely life together. I don’t get it either.

What I did get - and what I hope to share with you - is an inside glimpse into one of the most remarkable women I have ever met. Camilla is not fearless because she is not foolish. But she is brave and wise, and she is approaching death with a grace and strength that takes my breath away.

These are some of her memories... Just a taste. A snapshot of a few of her favorite things.

-

Bridget McNulty ***

Favorites and firsts: To the tune of ‘These are a few of my favorite things’...

Black beans and popcorn And walking to market Knitting and sewing and quilting an art bit Living with Bruce in our shackteau in spring These are a few of my favorite things Color and flowers and bright red clown noses Acting and teaching And Wicked Witch poses Mabel McClafferty doing her thing These are a few of my favorite things When my gut hurts When cancer stings When I'm feeling sad I simply remember my favorite things And then I don't feel so bad Being around kids And teaching through play Home to my nest at the end of the day Performing Therapy, giving Bones wings These are a few of my favorite things

Feelings and senses And intuition’s ear Halloween dancing in Secret Service gear Lavender Ladies around in a ring These are a few of my favorite things When my gut hurts When cancer stings When I'm feeling sad I simply remember my favorite things And then I don't feel so bad Dear friends and laughing And listening to Tom Waits Beer on the porch as the sun sets is so great Sun shining on bottles and glitzy things These are a few of my favorite things Surrounded by beauty And Sampson the cat Memories and family and home, just like that Living with Bruce in our shackteau in spring These are a few of my favorite things When my gut hurts When cancer stings When I'm feeling sad I simply remember my favorite things

And then I don't feel so bad ***

Favorite thing to do I love walking. Anywhere. It’s one of the things I miss most about Lancaster, that sense of walking with purpose - gotta get to market! When I had my car there, I would just move it from one side of the street to the other. I also really like using my hands, whether it’s knitting or sewing or quilting.

These days the walking is tricky, but one of my favorite things is lying in my nest. It was my childhood dream to have a modular sofa, so I bought one for my 60th birthday. It’s grey with bright cushions and color, I just love color.

The walls in the lounge are a very vibrant green, so I wanted the sofa to look like a stone wall in a forest glen. I like just lying in my nest and watching the light move across the walls.

Life philosophy When I follow my inner child, that’s something I can trust in.

Listening to intuition Some things in my life have been so clear to me. When I was in sixth grade, there was a science book that had a picture of molecules racing around. And there were all these dots with arrows on them, and if you put a magnet to

them they all pointed in the same direction. That’s how I feel about certain decisions I’ve taken… One was moving to New York City, one was moving to Lancaster, another was leaving Lancaster to live with Bruce - to go for love.

Otherwise I don’t think of myself as very much of a risk taker. But I have run a lot on my feelings and intuitive sense. I learned a lot through the enneagram - I’m a four, very run by feeling with a tendency to live in my imagination and in my head. That can also be a real fear thing.

First kiss It may have been in seventh or eighth grade, when we were living in Essex, Massachusetts. My friend Cathy had a party in her barn area, and there were four girls and four boys. And her parents were there for a little bit and then they got up and left. And we played Spin the Bottle. And I made out so much that night.

First job I was a babysitter - I babysat a lot. Then my first job was at the Manchester Bath and Tennis Club, not like a yacht club or anything, it was a very downhome kind of club. I worked with my friend Deborah at the snack bar. That was the summer of 1969: I was a junior in high school. We watched the moon landing on a little tiny TV and Woodstock happened that year too. I didn’t go, I was working.

Chanting at the moon “Ojala, ojal, oja, oj, o!” Say that three times to the moon. And then you get the guy! I forget where I got that superstition, but I remembered the words for years… You know where I might have gotten it? Seventeen magazine. In high school, my friend Ann and I would raid my parents’ liquor cupboard (we’d drink Tisky, Grisky, Oranjisky - which was pretty much just whisky and different flavoured juice) and then march down towards the community hall chanting it to get us some.

Favorite book I was asked which book I would take if I did the show Desert Island Discs.

And I think it would be 100 years (or 1000 years?) of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez , which is really wonderful. Also The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster, it’s a kids book. It was one of those magical magical books when I was a kid. I think I read it when I was six or seven, it was more mature than that but I was a big reader. Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell was also wonderful. I’m not a big reader anymore. With the chemo I couldn’t concentrate for long, so all I read was poetry.

Favorite movie I have a couple of them. One is Magnolia, think of the people that were in there - Tom Cruise was the best I’ve ever seen him. The Unbearable Lightness of Being with Daniel Day-Lewis. That was a great book too. And then, The Sixth Sense: “I see dead people.” I love that movie, it scares the fuck out of me. I think it’s the mystery of it…

Favorite treat Mine is a margarita.

Theme song “Everybody dance now! Everybody eat lasagna now! Everybody cross the street now! Everybody order what you like now!” An intern of ours started it and we took it over. But if I was ever put on the spot to sing, I would try to sing The Heart of Saturday Night by Tom Waits.

Home My home has always been my playground. I never thought about it being any different to anyone else’s, I just like to be surrounded by beauty. I love sitting in my home and watching the sun come in a certain way and shine through the things in the windows and make the most amazing colors. It’s all about the colors.

I love where we live in Cayutaville, I love the privacy of it and the seclusion.

What sold me on it was when we turned into the lane: I knew it was ours. It’s just out of a storybook. Bruce and I call it our little shackteau. But boy did I miss being in a city! For the longest time, I spoke of Lancaster as a town on the verge of being a city. But jeez I missed the cityness of it. I also loved that my birthday (May 2nd) was always full blossom spring in Lancaster.

First childhood memory I don’t think it’s my first, but a really important memory for me was my fifth birthday. I’d had a birthday party and I’d gotten a box full of lollipops that went up and down. My Mom was taking off my shoes and I said to her, “Now that I’m five, I’ll know how to tie my shoes.” As if the act of turning a different number magically imbued me with skills I didn’t have the day before.

I do have one other childhood story. My mother was an art teacher at elementary school, my father was an architect and would commute to Boston.

My Mom and my siblings and I would often pick him up at the train station there was Billy, my older brother; then me; my sister Carolyn, who’s 18 months younger; and my baby brother, Alan, who’s five years younger than me. I think we were living in Beverly, Massachusetts at the time - we moved from Beverly to Essex to Hamilton, because the schools were better, but they were all pretty close to each other.

Anyway, one day we picked up my Dad and as he sped off from the parking lot, I guess I was leaning against the door and I fell out. I sat there, stunned, and before the car had come to a stop, both doors opened and my parents leapt out to get me. I can still see that picture: both doors opening and my parents leaping out. And that’s when I knew they loved me.

Hammond Castle My grandmother (my father’s mother) had a sister named Irene (Irene Fenton). My Aunty Wee - that’s what we called her, because Irene was too

hard for me to say as a child - was a pretty extraordinary woman. In all the mess of growing up, she was one adult I knew loved me. I consider her the goddess on my shoulder.

My grandmother and Irene were both brilliant women, and Irene married and then divorced, which was unheard of in those days. She remarried this brilliant man (John Hays Hammond, Jr - Uncle Jack). He was a scientist and inventor - he invented radio control. And he was so handsome. He built a castle, ostensibly for her, in Gloucester, Massachusetts. It’s an actual European castle, and a National Historic Landmark. We would visit every Sunday afternoon to visit Aunty Wee and play Giant Steps in the hall.

One of us would sit on the throne and the others would be way at the other end of the hall. The king would say, “You may advance four twirly whirls!” (or whatever) and if you didn’t say, “May I?” you’d be sent all the way back.

You had to figure out what a twirly whirl was, and how to do it. After we played Giant Steps, we’d drink Cambric tea (this very weak, highly milked tea with sugar) and eat almond cookies with an almond in the middle. And then we’d be released.

The castle was really something, it had secret passageways and a rainforest room where he could make it rain, and a pool room with an optical illusion at the bottom of the pool. It turns out he was probably gay. I don’t think there was a betrayal - she probably knew, is my guess. They entertained a lot, like Katherine Hepburn was there and all these movie stars. I remember thinking, “Whaaat? Whaat?” when they told me the stories.

He was a millionaire and she was an astrologist and an artist. She was never

demanding or telling us to shut up, she gave us handmade presents and she just wanted to hear everything we had to say. My Aunty Wee is part of a cadre of what I call my ‘Lavender Ladies’, who are like guardian angels.

They appeared to me when I had breast cancer and when I had the lung tap.

They’re my ancestors. I know my Aunty Wee is one of them, and my old friend Cathy who was my childhood friend and died of breast cancer when she was 42, and I don’t know who else. My ancestor women.

Food You know it’s funny ‘cause food has been so difficult lately - it hasn’t tasted good since the chemo… I’d say my favorite food is popcorn. It’s always been popcorn. You can put tons of stuff on it: a lot of butter, Brewer’s Yeast, salt, spices. I like to make it at home with Bruce.

I suppose my favorite meal might be our homemade pizza, which is very, very good. We get this rectangle of artisanal pizza shell from Wegmans. Then we load it up: nice olive oil, lots of garlic, mushrooms and peppers and onions and really good olives and hot peppers and pepperoni and artichoke hearts, if we have them. And mozzarella, obviously. We have this great stoneware thing that we put inside the fire and we grill the pizza on that. It’s very, very good.

One of my favorite things ever is the Moosewood black bean salad.

Black Bean and Quinoa Salad Ingredients

⅓ cup quinoa 1 cup water 1 teaspoon olive oil 4 teaspoons fresh lime juice, or more to taste ¼ teaspoon ground cumin ¼ teaspoon ground coriander 1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh cilantro 2 tablespoons minced scallions 1½ cups cooked black beans (15-ounce can, drained) 2 cups diced tomatoes 1 cup diced bell peppers (red, green, yellow, or a mixture) 2 teaspoons minced fresh green chiles salt and ground black pepper to taste lemon or lime wedges Instructions Rinse the quinoa well in a sieve under cool running water.

In a saucepan, bring the water to a boil, add the quinoa, cover, and simmer on low heat, until all of the water is absorbed and the quinoa is tender, about 10 to 15 minutes.

Allow to cool for 15 minutes.

In a large bowl, combine the oil, lime juice, cumin, coriander, cilantro, and scallions.

Stir in the beans, tomatoes, bell peppers, and chiles.

Add the cooled quinoa, and salt and pepper to taste, and combine thoroughly.

Refrigerate until ready to serve.

Garnish with lemon or lime wedges.

Moosewood

The story of Bruce Ah, Bruce…

Our story started in Hamilton, Massachusetts. We were at high school together, he wasn’t my high school sweetheart, but I had a crush on him the whole time. We spent high school together, but alongside each other sophomore year was when we had our most contact. The trouble was that he was a jock and then a dope-smoking jock, and I was in the arts crowd, so we didn’t overlap much.

I remember this one time I was at a sleepover with a friend of mine, and these three guys came over, and Bruce and I were paired up. And it was one of those things where we sat on the bank of this brook and we were both so inept - we didn’t kiss or anything, but I remember laughing a lot. We danced together at the school dance one time. And for years I could remember the feel of his wool jacket from that dance… But then we parted ways and I didn’t like the crowd he hung out with, it was all these snotty-assed girls.

Girls would hang around him because they could talk to him.

We lost touch completely after high school, for 20 years. It wasn’t until our 20th high school reunion in 1990 that we met again. My friend who was on the committee, Paula, called me and said she had found Bruce Fearon - she knew that I would really like to know. He and Jimmy Moffett came, I think they both wore Hawaiian shirts, and we just started talking. And we talked and talked and talked and talked. The friend I’d gone with, Ann, was really pissed at me because she felt like I’d ditched her.

The attraction with Bruce was really strong at our 20th school reunion. We ate lobster before our 30th. We went to our 40th married.

After our 20th reunion, we just kept up communication - he was married, I was going through one relationship after another, it wasn’t romantic but it was… something. We visited back and forth and talked on the phone. His whole family came to see my show, Emily Sticksenstones. He was living in upstate New York at the time.

In the later 90s, after I had started Co-Motion, he was going through a bad time with his marriage and we would talk on the phone a lot. I was living with Joanne and she broke it off with me and all of a sudden I had my house to myself again. I remember Bruce came by and visited. That night before we went to bed, we hugged. It was electric. I didn’t expect to have that response... But nothing happened.

We were still talking on the phone a lot, and I was touring with the Fulton theater Company and we’d just done The Vagina Monologues. And Bruce was saying, “You should come up and visit.” And I was thinking, “I’d really like to, but it’s been a long time.” So my friend Yolanda - who was doing The Vagina Monologues with me - said to me: “when you imagine your vagina, what do you think of?” I thought about it for a while and I said, “You know what it is, it feels like a dusty old shed.” She said to me, “it’s not like you don’t know him and know what his story is.”

So I thought, I’ll take my dusty old shed up there. It was June 27th, it must have been 2002 or 2003.

Our wedding We got married on August 14th 2010, in our yard. We had a huge roast pig put on a spit, and a friend of ours came over at 4 o’clock in the morning to start it up. Bruce has hysterical stories of sticking a pole up this pig while I was getting ready. Lots of people helped with the flowers, and a lot of the flowers came from my garden.

The most important part of our wedding, which people still remember, was the red noses. Before the wedding, Bruce was a little worried because our friends are so varied: we had all these farmer people who were coming, and these tattooed artist people, and we didn’t know how everyone would get on.

“We’re all just bozos on the bus!” he said one day. “Maybe we should wear red noses…” I reassured him that it was going to be okay, but the more I thought about it, the more I thought: “yes!”

So we did. We had a basket of red noses and we passed them around before the wedding. Everyone was sitting on the porch, and I had a pile of girlfriends blowing bubbles and everyone was wearing red noses. I was wearing one too, hell yeah! I knew I didn’t want to wear white, so I went roaming around and into this shop downtown. I said, “I’m getting married and I don’t know what to wear.” We came up with this beautiful blue skirt and a little strappy tank top and I went to the department store and got some great earrings and cheesy diamanté sandals - you know the type. We got a silk Hawaiian shirt for Bruce, pretty close to the same blue. It was lovely.

My little demented mother was there, she’d lost a tooth the day before and

put on a red nose like everyone. She was living in an assisted living place nearby, and the lady who drove her home said my mother knew she was going to forget about the wedding, so she talked about it the whole way home…

Our friend George Sapio married us. He’s a playwright in town, and he did a really great job. He came and talked to us and wrote a kind of a little homily.

We didn’t want to say anything except “I do”.

Camilla and Bruce’s Homily Today they have invited us to witness their marriage; in this gathering there are friends from childhood, friends from their work, friends from theater, friends from every part of their lives. And, as they told me, people they just pulled right off the street.

Today is not only a wedding, but a party; not just a celebration of Camilla and Bruce, but a celebration of life, loved ones, the sunny day, the great food, and, as Kurt Vonnegut phrased it, a karass, a group of people linked in a cosmically significant manner. In the manner of such a gathering, Camilla and Bruce decided to bring everyone from whatever disparate groups not just here today, but even closer together.

You've all been given red noses. No, we weren't kidding. If you would all please put them on now...? Clown noses may look silly, but that's the point.

They reduce us to human beings... silly humans, but also humans without pretensions, and put us all on the same open and honest level. If Camilla and

Bruce were twenty years old, this would no doubt be a more traditional, romantically inclined event. But they don't want that... they don't want pomp or circumstance. They want a party, a true and happy celebration. It's about being comfortable with each other, being able to see someone whom you may not know, but who now shares something with you. Go ahead, look at the people next to you... all of a sudden you share something... you look alike... you are all bozos on this bus. You are truly now a part of this karass.

Now let's welcome our friends Camilla and Bruce!

Marriage is a commitment to live - to the best that two people can find and bring out in each other. It offers opportunities for sharing and growth no other human relationship can equal, a physical and emotional joining that is promised for a lifetime.

Within the circle of its love, marriage encompasses all of life's most important relationships. A wife and a husband are each other's best friend, confidant, lover, teacher, listener, and critic. There may come times when one partner is heartbroken or ailing, and the love of the other serves to provide comfort, hope, and a firmament for the other to stand upon.

Marriage deepens and enriches every facet of life. Happiness approaches exultation; memories are fresher; commitment is stronger; anger may be felt more strongly, but in love it passes away more quickly.

Marriage understands and forgives the mistakes life is unable to avoid. It encourages and nurtures new life, new experiences, and new ways of expressing love through the

seasons of life.

When two people pledge to love and care for each other in marriage, they create a spirit unique to themselves, which binds them closer than any spoken or written words. Marriage is a promise, a potential, made in the hearts of two people who love, which takes a lifetime to fulfill.

A few days ago I sent an email to Bruce asking about something for the ceremony. Bruce responded, and at the bottom he wrote, “I often forget how lucky I am, then I come home and see Camilla."

Camilla and Bruce have known each other for 43 years, having met in high school in Hamilton, Massachusetts. After graduation their paths diverged, they went their own ways, living life, discovering the world and themselves, and then found each other again at their 20th high school reunion. This time they stayed closer in touch and they took their friendship to higher levels.

When we met to discuss this ceremony, they told me about each other and what drew them ever closer. There were many things they said. “She makes me laugh,” Bruce said. “You might not believe it, but he can dance!” Camilla said right after.

After 43 years, Camilla and Bruce have arrived here in this place and here at this time.

43 years... what a long, strange trip it's been!

George Sapio

Secret Service Halloween

I remember our first Halloween together in Cayutaville. We’d just lived in our house a month and Pete Rush asked me to this big Halloween party in their barn. Hillary Clinton had recently come to do a talk, and I was fascinated by the Secret Service: these clean cut men with curly wires snaking out of their ears. So Bruce and I went to the Goodwill and got suits and really clunky shoes, and he got a cowboy hat and we both had wires and walkie talkies. Those were left over from when we were driving all my things up from Lancaster. We had different vehicles so we needed walkie talkies - it was 2003, before cell phones. Can you imagine?

We didn’t know a soul at that party, so we stayed in character the whole time.

Bruce took it all on, he became that character. I remember Pete asked him if he could help with the trash, and Bruce immediately buzzed his walkie talkie: “Trash detail!” he said and went to take out the trash.

We didn’t know anybody so we danced madly. They’d put up a maze with sheets in the top of the barn and we just danced and danced and danced. It was one of my favoritest times with him. It was a wonderful party.

Acting Lancaster was just an amazing place for me. It’s funny how I ended up there I was living in New York City when I decided I would get serious about theater. I was working as a waitress and I signed up for a class with the Big Apple Circus. But right at that time, I got a call from Conrad Bishop and Elizabeth Fuller. When I was a student at the University of Delaware (not for long - I left after about two years), I’d done some babysitting for them while they were doing a show. I thought acting looked so fun.

Anyway, they remembered me and called to say they were expanding their company, The Independent Eye. They had moved to Lancaster, of all places, to be close to their travelling gigs. I said sure, I don’t know, I really love NYC but a funny trail of events got me to audition and they invited me to join the company right away. Their big dream was to do MacBeth with four actors and Baroque puppets with life-size heads. So we did.

The Independent Eye had a space in Lancaster and we spent many happy years performing there. When they left it - they were moving to Philadelphia - I thought, “holy crap, this is my creative home!” I bumped into my friend Terri and she was having the same idea. And we joined forces and had the best marriage ever doing Co-Motion for 13 years. We were very ambitious in the beginning and almost killed ourselves. And then the space got too big for us and so we did our performances at the Fulton. And then whatever Terri was going through, she announced that she had to get out. I thought I could do it on my own and I knew I couldn’t and I was just so exhausted. So then I had to shut down Co-Motion, and it was horrible. Really what I should have done was give it to someone else and take a sabbatical. My play Performing Therapy is all about that. A one-woman group therapy comedy about loss.

My solo shows When I had been in the Ithaca area long enough, I saw a ‘create a solo show’ class. And I thought, “well, I could probably teach that, but I’ll take it anyway." Mostly because I needed the social contact. Kira Lallas had had a solo show that came out of her trip to South Africa, and she told us to come in with a dream. I had two dreams and at the last minute I chose number two

- it was a dream about my mother. Kira took us through this long process. We each had a partner and we would witness each other’s telling of the story physically. Then we performed for each other - there were about 10 or 12 of us. And I really loved how Kira talked about our performances, so intelligent and heartfelt and observant. At the end of the class I said to her, “shit, I’m going to have to write a play about my mother, aren’t I?” And she said, “Yeah.”

So I decided that I was going to do a show, and it was based on: here I am, an actress, and I haven’t been able to get work in my craft but I’ve done a lot of therapy, so I’m going to combine the two modalities and have a group therapy session. We sold it as ‘a sideways safari through loss, displacement, dementia, depression and the surprise healing nature of upstate New York.’ I really wanted to perform in a storefront, but I couldn’t get one so I ended up in a men’s lodge - inside this wood-panelled room, a little rundown, it was perfect.

I started off saying that we were all going to do group therapy together, and would then get hauled off into my own story - leaving Lancaster and heading off into bum fuck who knows where and bringing my little demented mother with me. My mother and I had been at loggerheads my whole life, but when my father died I felt adamant I had to have her with me in New York.

I spoke about Co-Motion and the loss of Co-Motion, bringing my Mom to the area and how she couldn’t remember anything and I could remember everything but couldn’t even ask her why she did the things she did. And how it felt like our part of New York was all ‘something ago’: Cayutaville had been a bustling place with its own post office and now? It was all in the past.

So I did movement therapy, but of course nobody stood up so I said, “It’s fine, it’s fine, we’ll do it in our seats.” It would all just go to hell, all the therapies. I did primal scream, art therapy with balloons that I couldn’t tie, so I had to say, “how about this? It’s a steering wheel! It’s a really big nose!”

I started off on my own, but then I didn’t have anyone to bounce it off, so I asked Kira if she would be interested in doing it with me, and she was. I got a grant for it. Bones is being written with Kira too. I just storytell and she scribes it, and we pare it down from there. She’s the first person I met in upstate New York that I could hysterically laugh with.

Teaching When I first moved to Cayutaville, I did a lot of walking. Where we first lived, it was a tiny little house, which was highly romantic and wonderful.

And Bruce would go off to work and I’d walk all day - I’d just walk. One day, I walked downtown and saw that there was a little theater called the Kitchen theater and on the wall was a picture of a student I’d had in Lancaster when he was 15! Pete Rush. He was working for the Hangar theater as their arts in education person, and he said he could use more teachers in his program. I would still be working there if I didn’t have to dump it all. It was in the Ithaca City School District and we would go into a school and create a play with the kids on a subject in the curriculum.

Fractions, core values, math, reading, overcoming self-talk, we did it all. We spent 20 hours in the classroom, 10 to write the play, and a song would be written with a musician. I taught in many schools there. I just love being around kids - fourth grade is such a great age.

I also taught three or four semesters at Franklin & Marshall, when I was still in Lancaster. I really preferred Acting 101 - they had me do an Acting 3, but I really liked teaching the class where it was a mix of kids who thought they were going to be actors and kids who thought the class was going to be easy.

I remember this one frat boy had to do an audition piece, and he chose an excerpt from Jack Kerouac, and it just amazed him that he could perform this.

I loved that. But I hated grading.

Favorite role I think my favorite role of all was the Wicked Witch in The Wizard of Oz at the Fulton. They shot me out of the floor. Literally. There was a hole in the floor, it would come down, I would have to go stand on it and make sure my broom was upright and then I would explode in a cloud of green smoke. I got to throw fire, too! I think there was something up my sleeve?

The first one-woman show I ever did was the Cabaret de Camille. Conrad Bishop wrote it for me when I was with The Independent Eye, it was based on my improvisations. I didn’t love the show, but I loved one of the characters: Mabel McClafferty. People always thought she was a bag lady, but she wasn’t a bag lady - she just said what she wanted. Everyone wanted her. I would get asked to council dinners, they would invite Mabel to introduce people, I used her for a cancer fundraiser. That character was a mouthpiece: I could improvise with her and use her to say whatever I wanted.

First (and second) marriage

First came Gaby. I was going to Israel with The Independent Eye, to do their piece at a social action conference or something. But somebody who worked for us, Johanna, said she would hook me up with her family. Her father and Gaby’s father were Poles during the war, and then Gaby’s father moved to Israel and then to America. So I went to stay with them, and met his mom, who was wonderful. And then the next day I walked out into their garden and there stood this hunk, not only that but he was in a uniform, with an Uzi. And there I stood, this hippie chick, and I was smitten, and he was smitten, and we were smitten. I don’t know how old I was - 27?

I left about two weeks later, and I thought that was it. When I got home, he would call me and we would talk a lot (he was working for the telephone company as an operator). He said he was going to come to the States and I didn’t know how I felt about that. He stayed with me for a while and then I told him it was too much, too soon. So he went for a trip to California, and then I missed him and called and said come back. So he did.

We got an apartment together, in Lancaster, and the only way to keep him in the country was to get married. But nobody knew and that became a problem as we went along. He would ask, “how can you be a liberated woman and think like this?” Like I shouldn’t want to be publicly married. That’s when I started my first affair, with Steven Patterson. I finally said to Gaby, “we’re going to divorce.” And he paid for it and we divorced.

Steven and I were together three years because his wife wouldn’t give him a divorce, but finally the divorce came through by default and so he said, “let’s get married!” and I said, “yay, let’s get married!” And then I got on the phone with a friend and just cried.

But I couldn’t admit it to myself. Everybody loved Steven and my parents liked him a whole lot, they really liked him. On our wedding day, I cried through the whole ceremony. I knew in my heart of hearts that it was all wrong. I think too that I could mutate, I could become what other people wanted so easily. These men would say, “I love you” to me all the time and I would think, “I don’t know... You don’t know the real me.” I didn’t know the real me.

Then I fell in love with this woman called Mary Haverstick. For me, it wasn’t the what but the who, I was just as attracted to women as to men. This would have been 80s into the 90s. I feel like I missed my thirties because I was going through hell. I was in heavy duty therapy throughout that time, and I wasn’t comfortable and I wasn’t sure what the fuck was going on. I was having a problem with my own rage. My therapist said to me, “watch out, your rage might surface.” Mary and I had a messy, horrible break-up. We were in NYC and I just walked away from her and disappeared… in NYC. She was renting my theater space when I discovered that she’d made a movie, Shades of Black, and the two girls in it looked exactly like us. When people saw it they called to say it wasn’t that good. I never saw it.

After Steven and I split up, we didn’t get divorced for nine years. One day, he called me and said, “Can we talk?” so we took a walk and he said, “I think we need to have that divorce now.” He married his secretary who had been in love with him for years. He lived a straight life after that and it wasn’t for me.

After that there was Jim and then there was Bobby who ended up committing suicide after his son died in a car crash. I went back to Bobby when his son

died, the poor boy was only sixteen years old. Bobby committed suicide five years to the day after his son died. And then there was Randy and then there was Captain Mike, a ship’s captain. And then I learnt I had herpes. It was devastating! I relied on my sex life. If I couldn’t go to sleep I’d chalk up all the people I’d been with…

And then somewhere around there I guess Joanne came along, who I’d known for quite a while. She was stage manager extraordinaire, she had an amazing organisational brain. And that was another relationship, I’m not really sure why. I was back from a two-week stint in Europe - I’d gone to do a Dorothy Louise play in Ireland and hung out there. I’d bought my house, and I thought, “what am I going to do now?” And she had been pursuing me for quite a while… What’s the joke? How do you know lesbians are on their second date? By the moving van outside. We were together for a long time but towards the end we weren’t really having sex - she became quite jealous and doubted my lesbianism. We split up on a friendly level, it was a long time ago. Funnily enough, she always felt uncomfortable around me and Bruce. We would see him every year at the GrassRoots Festival of Music and Dance.

Family The rage thing is interesting, because when I was growing up, we were told that anger is wrong and you’re hurting somebody if you get angry. “Don’t come out of your room until you can smile!” was the rule. I had this dream that I had to lock myself in a closet and my mother was outside. My therapist said to me, “Of course you did. Otherwise you would’ve killed her.” I realised that was true, emotionally.

I remember when we were little kids, playing on the floor and my parents had some huge fight. My Mom ran out the house, slammed the door and squealed off down the driveway. And my Dad didn’t say anything. And we just looked at the floor and carried on drawing.

When I left college to join a theater group, my father couldn’t address it directly until much later. He was so tense, and he married the most emotional woman ever, but he didn’t know how to deal with emotions.

After I separated from Steven and moved out of the house, my Mom kept calling and calling and calling. “Please call! Please call!” was the only message she left, but I didn’t want to speak to her because I knew how disappointed she was about our separation. It turned out my Dad had had a heart attack and she hadn’t told whoever answered the phone because she didn’t want me to over-react.

When my Dad died, I was on the watch and the house was full of people sleeping. I felt like I had to go wake everybody up and get them to come down, so I missed the magic moment. But then when everybody was in the room, I remember being on the ceiling looking down, and I saw them all around his body. I don’t know in all of that where I really was, but I was looking down. I felt like that was such a gift.

By the end of his life, my father had had a reckoning with his life. And he would try and apologize. And some of it was sad: he wanted to hug me and I just couldn’t. When I learned the word enigma, that’s when I knew what my Dad was. And the movie Howards End, that was my Dad. Aloof and

restrained. What he believed he ought to be. He lived a life of not being the person he wanted to be. He said much later in his life that what he really would have liked was to be a ship builder. But he was very poor growing up, and his Uncle Jack put him through college, so there was all that pressure to achieve.

His mother, my grandmother, went mad. She was a brilliant woman and she went over to Europe during the war, driving a jeep in France. She wanted to be a journalist, that’s what she wanted to do and be. At the end of the war, all that came to an end. She ended up marrying this guy, my grandfather, who was a wonderful man but I don’t think they had that much in common. And after having the two kids, she had to be a mother and she went nuts. She wouldn’t wash her body or hair for days, she was horribly depressed. My Dad overcompensated by being Mr. Charming and never bringing anyone home.

Same with my mother’s mother. She could have been an artist or magazine designer but she got married to this highfalutin Harvard lawyer. She was a debutante and she was plagued with depression.

I was also plagued with depression in high school - I had a nervous breakdown. I remember the feeling: I was beginning to leave my body. My Mom once said to me, “I like that girl, she’s so reserved.” That was sophomore year, so I decided I would be reserved, and stopped crying. Junior year or beginning of my senior year, I was reading books like I Never Promised You a Rose Garden or articles in Seventeen about nervous breakdowns. I would have this fantasy that I was in a bubble and could talk to anyone and be happy, but then the bubble would break. I felt like I was teetering on the edge of the abyss, I could feel the wind whistling, and then I started to cry and it was the only real thing. So then I was just crying and

crying and crying all the time. They took me to the nurse’s office, I just wanted to go home and I couldn’t go home because there was nobody there, so the secretary would talk and talk and talk until I calmed down.

I remember it was winter and the trees were black and the branches were sharp against the sky. I was at home alone and put on some classical music and started to knit, and the music was too much, too emotional. And I think something bad would have happened, but then the phone rang and it was the reverend and he said, “I can see you now.” The reverend was the first person to talk to in those days. It was more than he could deal with, so he set up an emergency appointment with a therapist. All the way to this appointment, I brushed my hair and brushed it and brushed it. And I sat with this man and he fired questions at me, and I was like, “yes, no, I don’t know.” Then he said, “I think you’re on the verge of a nervous breakdown.” It was such a relief that somebody was finally speaking the truth. He gave me some drugs that made me feel kind of numb and then I started therapy pretty heavily. When I lost Co-Motion I went to an actual psychiatrist. Medication took the sting out of it: it put me in a place where I could at least cope.

I feel like I was filled with self-doubt for so long. I remember once going on a walk around town with my sister Carolyn. And I thought my pants were a little short, so before we left I said to her, “Carolyn, do I look all right? Does this look all right?” We went on this long four-mile walk around town and saw so many people, and when we got home, Carolyn announced, “Camilla’s socks should have a party so her pants and shoes can meet.”

When my mother died, my sister and I sang to her from Hansel and Gretel.

And I think we thought, “oh my God, she’s going.” I got up to shut the door,

for some privacy, and she died while I was walking back, and I was so pissed. The nurse came later and opened the window so her spirit could leave.

I left the room to go to the bathroom and when I opened the door into the stairwell, it was vibrating with her spirit. She said to me, “I can be better with you now.”

Life’s desire I’m a highly anxious person, I run on high anxiety. I think that’s why people drink or do drugs, to try and get in that space of abandonment. I was never that into drugs. I tried coke once but it didn’t do anything for me. I liked rubbing coke on my gums. I tried mescaline, which is the most psychotropic thing I’ve ever done. We went to a Derby Day party and I was drinking mint juleps and eventually puked and it was bright green.

A few years ago I went to Omega, a retreat centre in upstate New York. A shaman was there who offered soul retrieval. She said that at times of trauma, parts of your soul are left behind and her job is to reintegrate them, like a stone in the river until it dissolves. She brought back a baby, a child with a blue magic cape, a 13-year-old girl locked in a closet and a set of twins. It’s funny, because when I was a child I used to draw the ShaSha twins all the time - they were struggling, and one of them had to tie the other one to the chair. The baby was the hardest to speak to because she was non-verbal. I remember being out in the F&M fields trying to reconnect to these lost parts of myself.

I never felt I’d gone far enough. My real life’s desire would be total abandonment. You can get close to that when you’re dancing... It’s funny

about my sex life, because even though I was promiscuous, I never felt like I really reached true abandonment. The best performances approach abandonment - they’re like surfing, because you’re riding a wave, in ‘control’, but not really because you abandon yourself to the moment.

My perfect day I don’t have a specific perfect day in mind, but there are elements I’d want: ● Sun ●

The beach might be part of it

●

Laughing about something

●

I do like to drive - not super long-distance stuff, but a beautiful drive.

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Being able to taste my food, everything is clouded with this stuff

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Doing something with my hands

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Being able to walk

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A nice dinner at a familiar place

●

I wish I could drink again, I do like to be in a bar. There’s all these brew pubs and wine country around the lakes near Ithaca. To go and watch the sun set and drink beer on the porch in summertime is pretty great.

I’m not going to miss ●

The news - how horrible people are

●

Paying bills

●

Taxes, all those kind of things

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Passwords

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My phone

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Going to the dentist

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A sense of obligation: “woulda coulda shoulda”

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Figuring out what to eat

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Seeing how the world is changing from greenery to cement and

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parking lots Watching television and the inanity of commercials

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Physical pain stuff, I guess

●

I won’t miss people lighting up the night - outdoor lights and motion

●

sensors Inconsiderate people

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People taking up space

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Memorising lines

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Guilt

●

It’s things on the outside of me that bug the fuck out of me

I am going to miss ●

Bruce

●

My cat, Sampson

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The sun coming in sideways through the window

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The way the sun hits this glitzy sequin pillow and scatters reflections

●

all across the room My blue bottles - I have a lot of blue bottles. They don’t have to be antique or anything, I just love blue bottles. I’ll pick them out of the trash sometimes - I’d buy wine if it was in a blue bottle. I have one that’s really tall and slender, I love it.

●

My friends. But some of these things you have forever.

Last thoughts I’ve been thinking about what I want to do in my last days, and there isn’t much. I wondered if that was because of the cancer, but my doctor said one of the symptoms is that you start losing interest. Somebody said to me, “you can do whatever you want! You don’t have to hang out with people, you don’t have to suffer fools!” But I’ve always suffered fools, why would that be the big change?

The hardest thing is to say to people who want to be friends with me, who have this urgency to be part of the end, that I actually need space. It almost feels a little smothering. I feel like there should be a list of what people should and shouldn’t do when someone is dying:

What to do (and what not to do) when a friend is dying ●

● ●

●

Don’t ask: “what can I do?” Just do, don’t ask. Don’t ask the person who is sick, especially, because it puts the pressure on them.

Take out the trash.

Bring food but don’t ask what they eat - just bring something safe (no red meat, no rich sauces).

Do a load of laundry.

●

Vacuum.

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Clean the toilets. Even if you just throw in alka seltzer tablets, that’s fine.

●

If you’re trying to think of a gift, bring something that is immediately

●

physically comforting (a soft blanket, a wonderful-smelling soap) or something beautiful (flowers, color).

If you’re visiting with a friend who is dying, stay no longer than an

●

hour. Without them having to say anything.

Better yet, send an email or a letter - then they can choose when they

●

have the strength to respond. Tell them all your stories and let them soak it up in their own time. That’s the most generous thing to do, because you’re not asking for any energy in return.

Give them the space to choose to do with their time as much - or as little - as they want. ***

Performing Therapy

By Kira Lallas and Camilla Schade Version: February 23, 2009 WELCOME Welcome everyone, I hope you’re comfortable.

My name is Camilla and I will be your “therapist”. You’ve come for group therapy. And you wouldn’t be here unless you were depressed. I think that’s safe to say.

I’m depressed too – not right now, I will be later, I mean I’m very glad to see you.

I am actually an actress. I’ve been here in Schuyler County for four years now and haven’t gotten a lot of work in my field, so I thought I’d put together my own work by combining some of the trainings and experiences into some useful modalities that come from actor-ly things and the therapy world. We all deal with different forms of sadnesses, depressions, compulsions, griefs, loss, separations from – stuff, ourselves, and we all want resolution to issues, but you can’t do that if you’re stuck in the mud or a rut or your glass -- isn’t even half full - hasn’t got anything in it anyway – or you can’t even find the glass – You all know your personal demons and sometimes we let these things balloon, and I appreciate that you’re willing to work it out in a community – communal way.

I’m doing this work here, in this area, in Schuyler County where I’ve just lived a little while, because it itself is a bit of a depressed area.

Disclaimer: I am not a therapist.

CELEBRITY I used to be a celebrity.

I was in the newspaper.

Picture on the cover of PA Central magazine, Arts and Entertainment, The Happenings section.

I got recognized in the Giant Market – “are you Carmella? You were so funny the other night, I almost peed my pants!”

The biggest hugest endeavor I had ever undertaken was creating and running a theater company.

The theater I was working in came up for sale. It had been my creative home.

I had this strong feeling, a gut instinct, that I had to have it.

I asked my actor friend Terri to do it with me – “Will you go in on it with me?” She’s a big-eyed Italian with the biggest grin you’ve ever seen, and a trained mime. She said [mime] – no, she didn’t do that, and she was way better than that – she said “OK” and we christened our new company “CoMotion”.

But it wasn’t just artsy-fartsy. This was launching into a business.

OK, we have a board meeting this afternoon – do we have all the budget information?”

We have got to coordinate those volunteers. Phone-a-thon is coming up. The printer called and there’s a typo on the flyer. Jim says he can’t design lights for the first show. Have you seen an extension cord? It was a 24-hour small business.

It was a huge undertaking for someone with no business experience. But we were just pressing on with the energy of naïveté. So we were bewildered when things were not going well and we had to make the decision to move to a more manageable space.

I was devastated. I was losing a home. We had a sort of garage sale –long feather boas tickling the toes of the big clown shoes, etc. I remember crying into the faux velvet Twelfth Night costumes when I get a phone call – it’s my parents.

HOMELESS Where I lived growing up – which is kind of similar to my home in Schuyler – was this really magical place for me: Sleeping Beauty cat briar, white pines that made all that noise, snow so thick that when I climbed up from the bus stop in the winter, I created gypsy fairy houses in the snow with the toe of my boot.

Mom Hello, it’s your mother. My memory is so bad – did I remember to call you to tell you we’re moving?

Camilla What?

Mom Well, you know your father, when he gets an idea in his head we just do it.

Let me put him on the phone.

Camilla My Dad is now kinda round-headed and humpty-dumpty-ish.

Dad

Hello hello? Eyah, it’s gotten to be too much to take care of, and your parents are getting older, dear.

Camilla You’re just gonna leave and forget it?

Dad We found a house in Rockport with a view of the ocean.

I think it’s better for your mother – with her memory…

Camilla Turns out there was the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s, which according to my indenial-father, “isn’t proven until the autopsy” so therefore my mother is just ‘forgetful’.

I became homeless twice in one day.

MOVEMENT THERAPY Well, that can bum you out.

Time for a therapy modality – Movement Therapy.

Movement therapy is a modality that can upset old stagnant energy.

Let’s move around. No, you don’t have to do that.

I can see you all tense up…

We can do it seated. Do something NFL approved – the wave.

— OK, rotator cuff problems…

OK just arms.

Just one person -OK, start small.

OK, let’s just do fingers.

OK, let’s just breathe – breathing is a movement. Feel your ribs moving in and out. Breathing brings in new positive energy and expels old tired –

obsessions at 3am, compulsions – we’ll let it go, breathe in, breathe out.

Sometimes too hard to get out of bed, but at least you can breathe. There’s always something to do – breathing is something to do. My mother would say “when in doubt, do something.” I can’t say I’m a real “do-er”, but my mother was a big do-er. She always had us doing something – keep breathing.

MOM PROFILE My Mom was a painter, a potter, artist, art teacher. Keep breathing.

We were always supplied with paints in baby food jars. There was always paper and pencils and easels and projects.

When I was six, we would rip paper for papier-mâché to soak 24 hours, and then we would make sculptures.

We made plaster casts, things out of plasticine, she took us to the Museum of Fine Art, taught us to knit - my brother still remembers how to weave baskets from soaked willow wands.

“Oh, you kids have so much potential. More than I ever had. You are stars waiting to explode. If you just use what you have, you can become celebrities.”

Potential is huge. How can you ever achieve “potential”? It’s like the sky.

But she had issues. She was angry a lot. Must be part of her passionate nature.

In first grade, I would go home for lunch when I went to the Upton School. I did well in school, although branded “overly-sensitive” and “a day-dreamer”.

I’d call it “terrified” and “coping”. I would walk home at lunch and wonder who would she be today? It was like Jekyll and Hyde. Would I be good enough for her? Would she be angry today? Would she say: “Oh, hello, there you are! How was school this morning? Warm creamy vanilla pudding after

soup,” or would it be: “I don’t have time for picky eaters, or whiners, but I am not that kind of mother - the kind who withholds dessert - so here’s an apple [raisins?].” Gak She was in a peak of frustration at me for having done something - I was probably teasing my sister or something - and she said, “you are sneaky like a snake”.

And it stuck – I knew she had maybe told me a truth about myself and I’d have to watch out for that snake.

When I was about 10, she had this religious turn in her life and I remember being on the periphery watching her as she became friends with the minister who would come over. He was really tall and handsome and soft-spoken. He encouraged her to write poems and speak her deep feelings out loud.

They would sit out on the porch and smoke Tiparillos together [smoke in] – those cigars with a little mouthpiece holder [smoke out] - and talk theology and poetry. I can see her leaning in to him, listening and taking a drag. [smoke] I asked them, “why do you guys smoke cigars?”

And they would look at each other and he’d say, “well, we’re trying to keep away from - cigarettes.” And then they would laugh in this funny, secretive way [laugh] that wasn’t meant for me. [smoke] Looking back, I’d never seen her engaged in that way with anyone else.

And Lord knows there was a lot of tension with my Dad then.

The church thing – geez – I hated Sundays – it was this enforced family time although Dad didn’t go. I had to wait in the Parish Hall for her to drive us home until she finished the zillionth thing she volunteered for, and had to

watch her go zoom… “I’m almost ready!” zoom “I’ll be right there!” zoom “almost done!” zoom.

Or at school, “see-ya, bye, no my Mom’s coming to pick me up.” Of course she’s late, but for some reason it’s never her fault. It’s my fault school got out on time? I will never be like that.

But I am like that. Now I’m chronically late. I turned out to be a lot like her, but hate to admit that.

So we’ve done movement therapy and on to – but speaking of moving…

CO-MO STUDIO SISYPHUS When Co-Motion moved into a small studio space and had to reassess who we were without our beautiful building, and we realized that we had to do what we really loved.

We found a play that could have offended a lot of people – political, nasty, irreverent, funny, totally un-PC – but we thought, if we are going to go down we’ll go down in flames. But it didn’t – it was a huge hit, so we kept going.

Got paid, Co-Motion became an institution.

Got grant money.

I got to teach at a college – and I’m not even a college graduate.

I bought a house and a car – things going financially well for me.

But we were two artists that had launched into being a business and it felt like we were hitting our heads on our highest level of incompetency. [boulder] But we were in it together and we were going to make it.

We were like two Sisyphuses – pushing and pushing this boulder up a mountain of board meetings and publicity and marketing.

And somewhere along the line, Terri had it and left. Hey -

It was such a shock.

SHOCK / AFFIRMATIONS So everybody fan out, find an outlet, lick your finger, and - shock therapy no, no, I didn’t really mean it.

Actually it’s a good time for some affirmations – do you know what affirmations are?

If you want something, you say it as if it is truth. You don’t just say, ‘I want a cup of coffee’, you say ‘I am coffee’ - you say it like you are the affirmation and it changes neuro-pathways.

I made a poster. [poster] Use the present tense.

Make sure they’re positive.

Write them down.

Believe them - no matter what hogwash they are - believe them.

Repeat them over and over and over and over.

Do them daily, daily, daily. And then they’ll happen.

Here’s an example [taking post-its from wall] Today is the first day of the rest of your - never mind, that’s a platitude, not an affirmation.

I am my own best friend - yeah, right. Oh, no, that was very negative.

I always have enough money.

My audience outnumbers me. See, it’s working!

Here’s one: eggs, yogurt, cilantro, bananas…[crumples] You don’t have to use any of these.

We can write our own.

I have some post-its and we’re all going to scribble some down.

Make it personal to your life. Where you live. Like me – I live in Schuyler County – how can I live there better?

It could be something like: 1. Deer dents in my car remind me of the interconnection with nature.

2. I am completely tolerant of the smell of liquid manure. [again with nose held] 3. Blaze orange is the new black - no, that’s not an affirmation, that’s a statement.

4. Although almost a mile away, the high-powered light my neighbor put up shining all night into my bedroom is a helpful antidote to nighttime-stars.

5. Village plows allow me to have a new festive mailbox every year.

When I’m dead I won’t remember any of this - I’m going to write that one down.

OK, how about this - write something you’d like to get rid of and then throw it out - dust bunnies under your bed or your husband. Throw it in this coffee cup.

Whoever gets it in, gets to be affirmed; the rest of us will just be depressed.

SCHUYLER HOME When I think about it though, what is really affirming was having my own home in Schuyler County - I love it because it reminds me so much of my magical childhood home.

It’s in the woods, has spirits and fairies.

Not really very big, but I have huge trees and big night sky and the wind is

loud.

I like the privacy.

But when I moved here it was from a city and it was kind of like NASA: [Landing on Moon] You will be entering a pretty barren area out there.

Camilla: Roger that. Piece of cake. Over and out.

NASA: You may open the airlock. [opens airlock] Camilla: Roger “one small step for man, one giant step for Camilla”. Into cow poop.

It was unlike what I was used to; I left a bustling community and life and came to be really really lonely.

So I’d go walking walking walking walking - yeah, I’ll walk, walk on my county road.

Look at those hawks and geese. The colorful roadside wildflowers. The crunch of the gravel under my feet. Clouds in the sky reflecting in the big pond in the meadow with that bird. How beautiful. How - big friggin’ deal.

Maybe a car would come by - zoom - and I’d think was that a neighbor and they’d zoom by and no one would wave - who are these people who live in these houses?

I did meet one neighbor on my walk - Daryl. I saw him bending over with his butt crack exposed over his camo pants.

DARYL Daryl

You the neighbor? My house is the trailer over there with the roof crumpled in - I did that with the backhoe myself; it’s fine, you just can’t go in that way.

We were going to do a new roof, but we put the tarp up and that was enough.

It didn’t damage my gun cabinet at least. I have a lot of guns. 16 or 25.

I have a bow too so I can do all the seasons.

Whoa! Oh, look at that deer - ha, ha, ha - fooled ya! - Ha ha ha.

You know that’s not a real deer back there - fooled you, didn’t I? It’s a target.

Used to look more like a deer but my cousin Larry shot its ass off - that’s why it looks like that.

He has an ATV and 5 kids and we’re going to have a track and it gets pretty dusty so don’t put your laundry out on those days.

And if you’ve heard our dog - he’s chained up; we don’t let him out of the pen too often because he could bite.

Come to think of it, though, he’s only bit once and that was a Jehovah’s Witness or a Democrat - or a new neighbor! Ha! Oh, well, I gotta get back to work - I’m just out here to duct tape the mailbox - see you later.

WEGMANS So I took to driving to Ithaca where I was a member of a club.

I’m a card carrying member of the Wegmans Shoppers Club.

Maybe I can meet some other club members with this, have some spirited conversation with someone.

Do you know where the Thai food is?

Oh back that way? Just missed it.

Wow, that was a lively one. [arm pump] I’d stand in the checkout line and I’d think, “maybe the cashier might just be my next new best friend.”

WEGMANS Hi – Sharon I know this is the 10 item line and I have 40 items– I was grouping… I thought you wouldn’t mind.

I’ll take those black floppy recyclable bag things because I’m trying to cut down my use of plastic bags Because they fly across the yard [sound with motion], suck into the white pines and I read that birds eat them and go blehhhh [motions with sound].

I’d like to be more ecological so I can fit in around here - yep, you guessed it - I’m new! You can tell - I’m wearing lipstick.

There’s a lot of information I don’t have yet, like where do you find a good gynecologist when you need one, like right now - actually, it was more like yesterday that I could have used one. The other health professional I really need is a veterinarian. No, not for the same problem. I don’t have any animals, but I’d love to get a cat - that’s why I got that 40 lb. bag of Friskies.

I mean cats are independent and snotty, minimal shedding - what’s not to love? The bigger, the furrier, the better – those love monsters! [kiss].

Are you a cat person? Oh, no, me too - did I say cat? I meant dog. Oh, no no no – dog person. Just like you. Yeah, the dog I get will like those Friskies.

Boy, we are so alike, you must be a Taurus too?

Oh, no, Methodist?

Oh, no, that’s fine - Namaste.

Amen.

Oh, you are almost done - let me swipe my card. Camilla vanilla - that’s why I got those vanilla wafers. I don’t even like them, but it rhymes.

Whoa, you are done! You are so fast!

I must have forgotten something, so I’ll probably be back tomorrow.

Bye! I really missed having girlfriends. [to audience] Afterwards – we could meet up??

CO-MO LOSS / WICKED WITCH I missed Terri – we were a sisterhood.

But damn it, if she was going to leave the company, go ahead, I’ll take it on.

This is all mine.

I have a responsibility to my community, I can do this – this is who I am.

And in that first flush of ownership to prove all this I wrote, produced, directed, and performed, a show all myself. It was a therapy of sorts, it was about loss.

And when that show closed, I got a job for the big theater in town, doing the role of the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz. It was so wonderful to not be responsible for everything - and it was so cathartic to be mean and rotten and nasty and torture little dogs and lust after ruby slippers hahahahaha and then die a damp death night after night after night. What a world, what a world, what a world.

But when a play closes, you have to say goodbye to that character who inhabited you, there’s a leave-taking. And I was thinking about that when I was outside near the theater, watching the smoke escape and fly away from the chimney, thinking, “there goes my witch, goodbye!”

Then I thought of Co-Motion – and how it was going up in smoke.

It turned out I couldn’t do it myself.

I didn’t realize how exhausted I was from all the years.

Co-Motion was downsized and downsized and downsized. When I had a dream about a black eel-like snake devouring a baby, I realized there was nothing left and the company was dead.

Terri could just leave and forget it.

I was going to be haunted by my failure.

ART THERAPY WITH BALLOONS But I still believe in Art - that play I wrote had a lot to do with the redemption through art; art has the ability to heal, so we should have some art, do some art together, some Art Therapy. We are all artists. [turn paper] I think in a real Schuyler County kind of way we could do it with balloons I’ve noticed a lot of balloons on mailboxes in this area from when someone had a party sometime. Whoa Celebration! Turn left. But then there are all these leftover post-party ribbony shards from some time ago. Kind of depressing.

So we can create balloon animals. [turn paper] It’s very therapeutic because you’re making new shapes out of old shapes.

You can twist it and turn it and you We probably have some pros in the audience.

Already you feel like you can’t lose with balloon animals - it could be a snake. Or it could be a steering wheel cover for the carpal tunnel. It’s comfy.

It could be a pointer. Hey, point point point. You could sneak it out [shirt] – ahh! Or up your sleeve and shake somebody’s hand and really freak someone out. If you didn’t have a lot in your purse you could put it in to take up some space. “I’m an important purse person.” It could be a lot of things, has a lot of potential.

But don’t worry about “potential” - it’s OK to just make a snake.

It’s OK to do the kind of art that you want to do.

CLICK CLICK I used to like doing small illustrations.

My mother used to say, “why don’t you work big? Get some color in there?” [put balloon away] I just stopped drawing.

She had some ‘artistic standards’ - I’m not sure where balloon animals would fit But of course that all went to hell when she got the Alzheimer’s.

I had been here a year when I had to visit my parents more and more as my Dad was having health problems.

Mom Oh, it’s good to have you here.

We’re going to have spaghetti tonight – is that alright?

Click click click…

Camilla We always had spaghetti.

Click click click…

Camilla Mom, the stove is on.

Mom

I know that – I know what I’m doing.

Click click click click…

Camilla Mom, what about the Click click….

Mom I know what I’m doing.

Click click click Camilla Mom! [turns off stove] Dad – what is going on?

Dad Oh, you know your mother, we don’t want to upset the ambience.

Camilla OK, I’ll just get something together I’d open the refrigerator and there were no lids on the 5000 moldy growing skanky things in there Dad, don’t you think it’s time to do something?

Dad Oh, can’t upset your mother - don’t want to say anything to upset your mother.

Camilla So we’d have salads with Palmolive soap vinaigrette.

Or one day the police called because some stranger bachelor guy down the street came home and found all his dishes were done. And he comes upon an old lady perusing a magazine in the living room. “Oh I wondered where you were! Do you like spaghetti?”

And every night it was the same thing.

Mom Addy, have you seen my purse? I can’t find my purse.

Dad Did you look where you last had it?

Mom Of course I did.

Dad And where was that?

Mom I know. I don’t lose things.

Camilla What are you going to do?

Dad, shouldn’t you be looking for a place you might move to Dad Oh, no, everything is fine, just fine.

Camilla But it wasn’t fine. And even worse - he wasn’t fine. Dad was having a series of little strokes.

And finally we got the call that he had reached for a cookie in the cookie jar, cracked a joke to the caretaker and fainted.

All my siblings came in for the death watch.

My Mom couldn’t understand that he was dying. “Oh him,” she’d pat his morphined head. “He’s always napping. Anyone for spaghetti?”

But she did seem to know when he was dead. When they took his body out, she just kissed him and kissed him and kissed him.

We had to make some rushed decisions about what to do with my Mom. What are we going to do with Mom? She can’t stay here. She’s determined

not to leave, it would be totally disorienting for her to leave. She’d never want to leave this house. Should we hire someone to be here with her?

She wanders in to our conversation.

Mom I think it’s time for me to go live in a nursing home or whatever is next. I don’t want to be here without Daddy. I’m ready to go. I’m too tired to stay here.

Camilla So we took that gift…

Where should she go?

Brother Well, I don’t think I have space for her…

Sister She could come to Illinois with me and we could go to church together.

Camilla And I was thinking no, no, no - I had this gut instinct like when I decided to do the theater company and I just knew this was mine to do. Here’s this woman who had made me crazy - but I knew that I was the daughter to take care of this mother.

I zoomed right back to New York and started looking for places Hi, I’m Camilla, I’m looking for a place for my mother?

Lady Oh, please come in. We have so many nice things and activities. Isn’t that right, Agnes?

Agnes Run! Run like the wind!

Camilla

There was another one.

Ed I want to get out of here and get out of here now - are you the taxi?

Camilla And then there’s always the Ethel What they don’t tell ya is everyone here is demented and old.

Then I finally found a place with the fewest plastic flowers and not so brightly lit, more like a hotel.

She was identified early on as a ‘walker’ - not like she needed a walker, but like she walked, wandered.

The last straw there was when they saw her walking up the hill across the highway towards the college. My first thought was she was going for higher ed.

The obese aide said, “I told her not to cross the road. I said, Mary, don’t cross the road. And still she crossed the street. We had to chase after her.” “Mary!

Mary!”

They’d do a relay - “I’ll take over, Sandy - Mary, Mary.”

And here’s the 83-year-old woman walking, walking, walking, “Oh, I’m fine, I’m fine. If I don’t get my walk in, I won’t sleep.”

So she got kicked out of there fast and is now in a locked facility. And I buy her plastic flowers that she waters regularly.

Her not having her own home took away a lot of that which annoyed me she’s out of context.

As she puts it, “Ever since Daddy died, I’m completely independently

dependent.”

I really began to enjoy her.

PRIMAL SCREAM THERAPY [Beat. Remember task] Before that she made me just want to scream.

Which brings us to some Primal Screaming.

Let that baby in you - that inner child that was bruised and shushed, Unite with primal man and release the vocal cords and Oh, wait - I think someone might be living upstairs.

Um, maybe we should just hum.

A primal hum, a primal mumble. Very musical.

Music Therapy. Maybe we could hum a song - there’s this one I heard on the radio. [indistinct]- You come in on the chorus. I can’t always hit the high note, but we must have some sopranos in here - you, sir?

No? [silent] We’re pretty much failing on that one.

But I’m getting used to failure - wait, I’ll make that an affirmation: Failure is an opportunity for people to not expect anything from you anymore.

CO-MO RECOUP When I failed with Co-Motion, I didn’t wait for them to not expect anything from me anymore - I just stayed away from everyone. And basically went into a hermitage.

Except for the occasional, “Oh my - where have you been? I haven’t peed my pants for a long time. But we’ve been going to that other theater - they’re just

as good.” [understated F-you gesture] But after a while, I began slowly chugging away to get back to some involvement with the world - I worked freelance, in schools I got a great gig in a children’s play [rocking] In that kids’ play I would start lying in a hammock - had to lie there for about 20 minutes before I emerged as Robinson Crusoe - and I had to be there perfectly still.

And when I was lying there, I’d think about all kinds of things, and it felt like something was brewing, like something deep inside me just wanted to know that I could go through a big change before I got too old to make a big change [stop rocking].

I had just gone through a monumental birthday, so when the show closed, I said, “OK, I’m going to go, leave all that’s familiar and move on to my next big adventure, and if it doesn’t work out, I’ll go on from there.”

Something had to break, burst open.

I came up here for a music festival and thought OK - Finger Lakes, waterfalls, OK. I ditched the old town.

RESOLUTION That was four years ago and it’s been 10 years since Co-Motion died - and I’m still struggling with that.

It took me all that time to accept it was even some kind of traumatic loss for me.

And to realize: OK, so I made a change - which wasn’t anything like I dreamed of in the

hammock.

I came to a place that is swamp and hill and farmland I learned that before The Depression, the sneeze of a ‘hamlet’ I live in was once a lively and peopled place that had two stores and a post office and a Grange Hall. It’s not there anymore.

Officially, we are a ‘depressed’ county. Farmland but not a lot of farming.

Land has been divided and divided. Trailers and prefabs put up. People commute to work - Elmira, Ithaca.

There’s so much sadness in the loss of life.

All the ‘used to be’s.

Like me. I “used to be a celebrity”.

I thought when I moved here I wouldn’t be depressed anymore. Instead, I just found the right envelope.

And my Mom - she’s a ‘used to be’. The lively, angry, passionate Mom has been absorbed by Alzheimer’s.

There was stuff that was lost that I didn’t even know was there.

How was it I didn’t know stuff about my mother and it was right in front of me?

How did I not realize she wasn’t a huggy person at all?

Why didn’t I notice that before?

It dawns on me years later - Hey, she was ‘in love’ with the minister.

She would say things like she was a terrible cook - I just believed her.

Of course she wasn’t a terrible cook.

I learned to love artichokes and fondue and Swedish meatballs.

When she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, I thought, “well how about that, she’s just going to get off scot free. I get to remember her fits of anger,

‘sneaky like a snake’, reading my diary, how she would take things so personally, how you couldn’t get mad at her because she would take it on and then you’d have to comfort my mother and wait a minute - what about me?”

I once had a dream of black crows in the distance and one broke away flying towards me. I saw it had an open, screaming face, and I recognized it as my mother’s and she was coming to peck my eyes out.

Now she’s just a little fragile bird.

It’s funny; she doesn’t do art anymore. And she doesn’t miss it. This woman who used to be up all night waiting for the kiln. Now she says Mom Oh, I’d need the right paints and brushes and it’s just a lot of hard work.

Camilla But she now loves music. She bursts into tunes I didn’t even know she knew.

We’re walking and she says, “What is this ocean?”

Camilla Cayuga Lake.

Mom “Oh. [singing] High above Cayuga’s waters…”

Camilla She starts singing Showboat, “tote that barge, lift that bale…” keeps rhythm to Johnny Cash, “Ring of Fire”. All I knew is we listened to Beethoven when I grew up - where does she get this?

Her version of Alzheimer’s is Mom

My memory is like my brain - kaput.

Camilla I take her to the doctor.

Mom Now you have to take care of me!

Camilla Well, you took care of me.

Mom It’s different - mothers are more difficult than infants because they’re elderly and have no brains and catch any virus that’s flying around.

Camilla She’s really thin and yet vainly conscious of gaining and losing weight. Is that where I got that?

Ma, it’s ok to gain some weight. It’s winter. Women sometimes do.

Mom Oh, well, women. All their fat goes to their stomach - unless they have good brassieres.

Camilla We have this same conversation - Anything new? What’s new? And I go, “blah blah blah.”

And nothing’s new with her - or everything’s new.

So there’s a purity to our relationship now.

But I look at her and don’t recognize her as my mother. That moment when she can’t quite remember me or place me - I can see that in her when it’s happening and I know that moment too because I can’t quite place her either.

I still try to grasp hold of that Mom I knew, that part of my identity, but I can’t quite reach it - literally can’t quite picture her, the memories are

silhouettes.

I see a woman on the train platform waving goodbye as I go back to college.

There’s her hair? - But I can’t see her face.

In seventh grade I came home early one day and surprised my Mom. She talked to me with her hand over her lip, trying to cover mustache cream she had put on, so ashamed of it. I remember thinking how weird she was behaving and I can see the mustache cream, sense her anxiety, but there’s no face.

When she would take us to the Museum of Fine Arts and she’d talk so animatedly about a painting, and I can see the painting, but she is hiding in my periphery, I can’t get her voice.

But the past of my life doesn’t have much to do with what goes on between us now; all that history between us - it just happened - doesn’t have anything to do with Mary and Camilla at this moment. And Co-Motion just ‘happened’. I’m not going to do anything about it. It’s never going to be resolved. I just have to let it go. I don’t live there anymore.

Lying in bed one morning, the mist is rising and my two fat yellow sunflowers at the edge of the lawn are contrasting the gray when suddenly the real sun slams onto the hill and there is blue sky and autumn reds and grey mist and over the sunflowers this short but very wide three prismatic strips rainbow develops right over the sunflowers and I gasp and then - I jump out of bed. Camera camera! Drawer! Come on snap! No! Battery dead.

Battery battery! Wait wait! Snap flash no flash snap, but it’s faded out - and I’m standing there naked and stupid in front of a picture window with a digital camera.

Why was I trying so hard to have it? Save it save it when it would have been so much better to just experience it and let it go.

The spring comes here and my basement is going to flood.

Connecticut Hill will still try to wash us away into the swamp.

The land will just evolve.

And trees will blow over.

And it will grow saplings where the old entry to the barn used to be, Everything composting.

That dead wounded deer I saw last year – the skull is still there but the rest has been eaten and absorbed and used.

The land knows and hides memory stashes of Indian arrowheads, but it doesn’t care that it knows, doesn’t care about remembering.

That rectangle of daffodils in the woods is all that’s left of someone’s ‘potential’.

But the land keeps plodding on and turning over.

It doesn’t care about us and our Big Depressions or little depressions.

You can almost hear it at night, chewing up the past.

My Mom gets it.

I asked her once when I was in the throes of depression and morosity.

Why aren’t you depressed?

Lost your husband, Kids are scattered.

Got osteoporosis and cataracts.

Old friends are far off and can’t visit or they’re dying.

Aren’t you sad? Aren’t you…

Mom

Depressed?

Camilla Yeah, how can you be so cheerful?

Mom Well, what’s there not to be cheerful about?

Maybe I can let go like her, like the Land of Schuyler County and be turned over new every moment.

Not because it is good or right, but just because it’s natural, it’s how it goes.

THERAPY GOODBYE I have one more thing for us to try.

It’s Mary’s therapy or Schuyler’s Therapy Take your balloon and we’ll fill it full of 3am obsessions.

Will the plow take my mailbox?

Co-Motion visiting me in my dreams.

People I’ve lost.

My Dad. Will I get that job?

The person I’m supposed to be.

That thing I said.

Things I’ll never find.

All the things I forgot.

We can pretend we’ve all got snake Tiparillos Just breathe in [inhale], breathe out And let out the smoke [exhale].

And watch it [inhale]

And let it go [exhale].

END ***

Bones

By Kira Lallas and Camilla Schade Version: April 27, 2019 Attention, attention! We are beginning. I am beginning.

That means no cell phones - it’s not just because of the calls coming in that will interrupt everything, but because we will all be riddled with death rays if you keep them on - have you heard of that? If not, I’ll send you the link to read all about it… anyway, there is exit to the left, all that.

Thank you for listening, thank you for your attention. I need your attention.

Because I have a confession. I am the most fascinating subject I have come across. Yup. Just part of my narcissistic nature.

In my examination of that - of me - there was a time I used to go to a lot of retreats at the Omega institute - that kind of groovy camp for adults where I could invest time and attention on just moi; I had some really profound experiences there.

Omega always has a resident singer/songwriter, special cook, resident yoga teacher, and this time when I go, there is a resident shaman. Shaman - I was thinking of an ancient man from the jungle who calls upon the spirits, like a “medicine man” from TV. Instead this 30-year-old was introduced - she reminded me of Bonnie Raitt, red-headed and a great sense of humor. She looked way more normal than you might think - you wouldn’t think she was a ‘shaman’ if you saw her out, more like someone you’d see shopping at TJ Maxx. She did have a great woven bag, like a carpet bag, a bag of tricks. She had bones in it - sacred items she brought out and used while she told us about what she did. And she

talked about soul retrieval. That in times of trauma, parts of the soul get scared and run away, so you walk around feeling like something is missing.

Her job is to find those soul parts and re-integrate them. When she said about those parts missing, I said that's me! So I immediately made an appointment.

I meet her privately in the back of a funny room - it was like a broom closet in the back, didn’t feel nice enough for a sacred process. She’s smoking weed. She reiterates what she said before and then we lay down, she lays down next to me, hip to hip. She then goes into a trance-like state. I too do that and kind of blank out. But one part stays so clearly with me.

She is talking and there is music, a kind of regular drumming maybe, and some kind of sagey smell and we just start to go up.

I imagine myself heading skyward, going up and up and kind of spinning, spinning through clouds and blue sky and then as I get higher, my clothes start to fall away, then my skin, then tissue and muscles fall away, and I’m getting down to the bone. And I start to think this is scary - I might be going into an area I can't handle… And I apply that thought, and put the brakes on.

And then I lose the intention.

So she stops and I report on how terrifying it was, how I had to stop because I got frightened because everything was falling away and I thought there'd be nothing left!

To her it was obvious, she was matter of fact - yeah, if you’re going heavenward, your body can't go, so it will all fall away.

That really struck me and I was regretful that I had stopped myself.

I think about this all the time.

Something’s odd.

It’s November and I had a cold since October. Trouble breathing. Can’t catch my breath.

I also feel like a barrel - a whiskey barrel on sticks.

And I say to my husband, “we’ve got to eat earlier in the evening, I just blow right up after eating, feel so bloated.”

Then I think I need to work out, do more crunches and twisty things.

There is a problem with my body.

Something odd.

Meanwhile, I have a persistent cold and cough. Finally go to the doctor. She says I have bronchitis. Gives me an antibiotic.

Good, will take care of it. Lung problem, gym problem.

But bronchitis is not going away. At night, I lay down and have a highpitched bark like an animal. My husband says it’s weird sounding.

We decide to get out of town for Thanksgiving, go to Toronto.

When we’re there, it feels like a slow aquarium, like slow motion.

Toronto is fine, but I can’t really enjoy myself, I just want to stay in the hotel and watch TV. I’m having some trouble walking around.

I wander around feeling like I’m behind a person wandering around.

We see skeletons in a dinosaur exhibit.

We move through the bones, all dark brown, so huge. Some are flying above.

A graveyard of antiquity.

Everything so beautifully preserved.

We have a big beer afterwards. I think, “too bad I can’t enjoy this how I normally do.”

Becoming inside myself, looking out.

We decide I must have pneumonia. And I can handle that.

We go home Sunday, go to Schuyler Medical on Monday. Can’t get regular doctor so go to walk-in. A PA gets me.

“A cough? Where’s the cough? Do you have phlegm? Do you have pain? Is it worse at night? Have you been out of the country in the last 30 days?”

Yeah, Canada…

She looks at me, listens to lungs and, “We’re going to have to order an xray.”

So I go to the other side, get an x-ray. I wait there for hours. They can’t find the x-ray, so finally she just gives me a pile of antibiotics and has me go to the drugstore to have another prescription filled.

So I’m in the drugstore and she calls, tells the store to “keep her there, don’t let her go” - they must have found the x-ray, or they found out I’ve been to Canada…

But I don’t hear more. I fill up on prescriptions, and then I’m released. I’m good to go.

Get home and get a call from Cayuga Medical. They tell me to come to pulmonology.

Sure, OK great, I’ll go. Feel like a celebrity, on a “hospital tour”.

So next day, I go, the x-ray had finally come through and Cayuga Med has it.

I get a nice lung doctor. She orders another x-ray. They like their own imaging…

It comes back immediately.

She tells me: “You have liquid that’s in the lining of the lung. You’re going to need to have it removed. Pleural effusion. A lung tap tomorrow. A very

common procedure. It’s done all the time.”

That night, I get a call from a friend. She never calls. She says she had to call, she is thinking of me so much and wonders if I’m okay, she is concerned.” I tell her I’ve been sick but am okay. I hang up and the thought comes: “Fuck.

I have cancer.”

I go back to the lung doctor the next day to have her stick a five-inch needle in my back to remove the liquid. This is going to be tough, but so am I. Day surgery. They weigh me - I’m usually 115, but I’m way up there, 121.

There are two of the nicest nurses.

Doctor has an ultrasound person to locate exactly where to go - has she done this before? I’m sure it will be fine. They put in a numb-er shot and it hurts like fuck. I bear through the pain, this will help them figure out what’s going on. I am being the person who is brave.

They put the next needle in.

It’s quiet.

It’s tense.

It hurts. It fucking hurts.

I can’t move, I have a huge needle in my back, am staying very still. Am holding the nurses’ hands and they are talking to me.

And then over my left shoulder comes, hovering, purpley, blue, lavender The Women. The Guardians come. 10 years ago I had breast cancer and these same ephemeral women came and visited me then - they float in now, and are just out of reach…

Finally, liquid gets extracted. They show me first vial and it’s cloudy, brown.

Looks like home brew IPA. She puts it all in ziplock bags, fills two huge bags. 1600 ml of liquid they pull

from my lungs. Almost a half-gallon. For some reason, I ask if this will be tested for cancer and doctor says, “of course”.

I am relieved when they are done and the needle gets out and ‘I’m done.’

I feel brave.

But I do not ever want to do this again.

I insist on being weighed - I’ve lost 6 lbs., am back to 115.

Feel like kind of a new woman.

Except for now I have a dry cough and am exhausted.

[Drink] All this amidst working, as an artist in the schools and also in rehearsal for The Snow Queen - the story of a little girl who has to go through all these tests of her mettle to resist ‘the freeze.’

I have the lung tap and then am back at rehearsal.

A week later, I go back for my follow-up appointment at pulmonology.

I do the whole thing with insurance cards and medicare, medication list, take my weight… 115.

I sit alone, waiting, and then the doctor comes in, she takes hold of both my hands and says, “Indeed, the liquid was tested and there are cancer cells.”

I have cancer.

I have cancer.

So on some level, there’s this relief, someone is finally telling me what’s going on.

Thank God, someone is finally telling me what’s going on. October, November, and on December 6th - my Dad’s birthday - I’m being told what’s going on.

And then, also: Oh, fuck.

And also: Who is this doctor? Pulmonologist? She says I don’t have lung cancer… I had breast cancer years ago, does she know if this is the breast cancer back?

Did it metastasize to my lung?

I find out later, no, this is a new cancer.

So there I am alone. I have cancer. I try to call my husband but can’t reach him. I feel like I’m drowning, just trying to keep my head above water. The office manager at pulmonology sits with me, is like a rock in the moving river. She’s just sitting there, holding the room.

Thank God. I reach my husband.

And then we’re on the rollercoaster. If breast, then this doctor, if this, then that, if that, then this. We spend a lot of time at the doctor’s office, on the phone, in appointments, meet the surgeon, meet the gynecologist… and I am doing what they tell me, am being a good patient.

We do tests and talk treatment, and I wonder, having been through radiation for the breast cancer before, sometimes there’s some wiggle room, I wonder how bad could this be, so I ask if they think I can do the Snow Queen this month and someone says OK, so I go back into rehearsal. I can still perform, I can do this.

We do the opening - I make it!

On stage, I’m the consummate performer But inside, it feels like I’m grasping, I just can’t enjoy.

Can I do this?

Am back in the aquarium.

But just had lung tap…

Saturday, two shows.

On stage I feel “airy”.

Like high altitude, I can’t breathe feeling.

Saturday matinee on stage I’m grand, I’m doing it, am fine.

Later, off stage, I back into a wall and can’t contact myself. Feel a fall over feeling.

I get to my dressing room and I’m crying. Can’t get my shit together.

Someone gets my husband and everyone makes me go to the ER. They send for x-ray and CAT scan. Wait for hours…

The liquid is back.

Liquid is in the lung lining and not only that there are blood clots.

I’m a mess and they admit me; it’s almost midnight now and they call a porter.

This lady comes in with a raspy smoky voice, smells like an ashtray. She’s here to wheel me to my room.

She tells me on the way how she’s retiring, “and they won’t know what to do without me. Have been here 27 years.” She’s the boatman on the River Styx.

I’m in this bed for two interminable nights in the hospital.

I feel like I’m just a stand-in.

Want to leave a note on the pillow: “To whom it may concern, I’m just holding the place for the occupant of this bed. Please check your records and make arrangements for my release.”

I’m performing the role of a woman in a hospital bed. Where’s my union rep?

They take blood and blood and we wait and do tests and we wait. And finally they release me and I crash into the world of treatment.

The oncologist knows it’s reproductive.

He starts me on chemo right away.

Before long, I’m filling up again. I think about going back to the ER but don’t. And the lung liquid goes away, as the chemo begins to work.

[Drink] With treatment underway, I am so anxious - I’m anxious usually, all the time really, but now with treatment it is all the worse - so I am trying to find ways to work with this treatment, to make it more effective and so I go on a search.

When I had breast cancer years ago, a friend gave me a CD of a meditation, which was helpful. You know - it’s one of those guided imagery narrations.

They tell you ways to breathe, to relax, and they use prompts to arouse images from within you that will be your guide through something. So I go to the internet and find Belleruth Naparstek and get a meditation CD on chemo and surgery. It says she will help you turn the chemicals of chemo into a golden fountain of healing waters.

Mind over matter.

I don’t want chemo to happen to me, but want to be part of it. Want something that could help me get to a state of mind to accept this poison into my veins I’m agreeing to replace my blood with chemicals…

Like Sci-fi. They bleed out your toe and make you an alien.

I had surgery and radiation for breast cancer years before and that is gone; I did it! And now I need help with this new realm of chemotherapy. I can do this!

Belleruth Naparstek - she has this slight accent, I can’t place it. Something soothing, low.

She looks in pictures online the way I imagine her - white hair. Not too hippie. Super friendly, open face. A Glenda of Oz. First thing she instructs is to breathe, focus on your breathing, allow this, allow that. She says to pick a happy place - in your mind. ‘Sit’ or ‘lie’ in a place you feel safe.

I have a hard time with that - I imagine in the woods and hunters suddenly appear, how about a grassy meadow - snakes!

Someone with my anxiety level has a hard time finding a safe spot.

Breathe, focus on your breathing, allow this, allow that. Back up the CD, start again.

Sensory - what you see, taste, smell, touch, of your safe spot.

And I pick the beach.

It’s open, I can see everything, so nothing can attack me too fast.

My husband and I go to beaches in North Carolina: Ocracoke.

It’s a vacation spot in the elements.

Sun, sand, surf, rain, thunder.

Just attending to animal needs, the basics. Body fun. Hedonistic. Sexual.

The abandon is there.

My ocean safe spot could be lots of spots, but it’s Ocracoke.

So here I am in my imaginary Ocracoke. In the meditation CD, she talks about a golden fountain, to work with the chemicals to help it do what you need.

I listen to the soothing low voice of Belleruth, following her instruction in my safe spot in Ocracoke.

The sky is huge.

And there is a breakwater there - wait - where did that come from? This is my imagined spot, aren’t I in control here?

OK, accept, Camilla, accept. Breathe, focus on your breathing, allow this, allow that. Just be in the sand. Ignore the breakwater. [back up CD] Warm, important to feel warm.

I have stuff with me, this really cute beach bag, snacks. But I don’t need anything, just need to lay down.

OK. And then at a point I’m seeing myself in the sand. Like I’m apart from myself, like an observation And I can’t remember totally, but I see me haul my skinny ass out of the sand, but it’s all the skinnier because I’m actually a skeleton.

I’ve lost my flesh. Am all bones.

Don’t know what Bella is saying at this point.

I’m a skeleton on the beach!

I’m not with Bella anymore, I’ve lost control of this, I’m just a skeleton on the beach.

And I start to think this is scary - I might be going into an area I can't

handle… And I apply that thought, and put the brakes on.

So much for the CD. I tell my husband I became the skeleton and he said that sounds scary.

But I don’t want to be scared. So I’m going to do what I’ve learned to do with a bad dream, and ask it to help me instead of scare me. To reverse the image’s power.

So I’m going to take what’s terrifying and ask it to help me.

Breathe, focus on your breathing, allow this, allow that. I re-enter with Belleruth and go back to Ocracoke… [back up CD] So now there’s two of us on the shore – me and the skeleton.

But the skeleton is me.

Bag of bones, looks like me during treatment - wispy hair, bleached out.

And the skeleton starts to crack jokes - “so a dyslexic walks into a bra” - and I think this skeleton is a better version of myself.

I don’t know what we talk about, but the skeleton isn’t so scary.

Bizarre to look at but - she’s funny!

She has a very dry sense of humor, sounds like a comedian. Not brassy. New Yorker.

Wisecracking skeleton.

SANDY SKELETON OK, you come to the beach, become a skeleton, what do you expect? Expect Frankenstein? I’m gonna suck your blood? I don’t need your blood, I’m just laying here getting a tan.

It’s gorgeous, that sky!

CAMILLA I’m relaxing into it.

If you listen, the waves, it’s very soothing. A balm for the soul.

It’s warm. It has everything a skeleton would want.

SANDY SKELETON It’s sandy out here, sand gets in your bathing suit, except it doesn’t because I’m not wearing one. If you go swimming, your bones could float away. But sand flies - no bother. We’ll just be in the sun and disintegrate, and someone will come up and see a slight impression of a body.

But they won’t think that, they’ll think someone had a fire and burned a stick.

Not gonna tell you to be scared or not be scared, not gonna tell you how to feel about it. You can feel however you want. Or you can just lie here and have a lemonade.

I understand what you’re going to go through. You’re in a pickle, with the cancer eating you. That’s rough! I’m done with that. I’m picked clean.

CAMILLA OK. I’m on the sand, got my buddy, catching the rays, Bella’s talking, I can move forward with the CD, can get on with the golden fountain.

Except There’s still that breakwater.

It obstructs my view - the breakwater is this big mass of boulders. And I do not like it there.

I went out on a breakwater a long time ago and lost my sunglasses. They fell

off my face into that dark abyss below. The rocks were slippery.

I’m not going out there. Moot point.

It’s scary. Don’t feel like doing it.

[Drink] But I don’t want to be scared.

I look to my skeleton.

Would my skeleton go out there? Sure! And she does. She goes out there dancing. She has nothing to lose. She’s fine out there - she’s already been there, and back. My dancing skeleton comes in and out of the fog, showing me how she does it.

SKELETON This is not about a golden fountain.

This is about dying, baby.

About drying up.

About you ain’t going to get through this alive.

CAMILLA Wait a second! What did she say? What happened, what does this have to do with chemo? Oh, jeez, I’ve done this wrong too… I’ll start again. No, wait, I’ll just get to the end. I begin to hear Bella’s voice again and she is saying, “See the golden fountain at your feet and allow it to enter your veins…” and I do. The CD ends. I tell myself I’m going to have to try that CD again some time.

But I don’t.

Treatment is rough.

Following a treatment I am sick.

A heavy flu without a fever it feels like.

Terrible taste in my mouth.

Terrible fatigue not helped by sleep.

Just laying down a lot.

In the middle of dinner - bam - gotta go lie down, just hits me.

As time goes by, I am able to venture outside, take an occasional walk to the end of the driveway and back up. Then head down the road a little farther, things like that.

And finally I can drive on my own again.

I’m driving home from an appointment and suddenly there’s a huge bird that springs up from somewhere and starts flying in front of my car. And I realize it’s a vulture - it’s got that red bald head, the wingspan - it is flying five feet in front of my moving vehicle for most of the way down the road and then finally swings off. And I’m struck with this harbinger of death guiding me.

Am I following it? Is it running from me? It is a powerful bird. I put the brakes on.

I tell myself when I get home I’ll look it up in my animal symbol book. But I don’t.

I do love to drive. Driving gives me such a sense of freedom - I am moving and independent. A lot of my life happens in the car.

My mother, who died of Alzheimer’s - I used to drive her around all the time.

Since she died, her place - for me - is in the passenger seat in the car.

I used to pick her up from Longview or later from Claire Bridge and just take

a drive to get out, to lunch, appointments.

She would compliment me - “you’re such a good driver!”

I drove her around to the plantations at Cornell and she would say, “oh, how wonderful you are at directions. You must really know your way.” And actually I was totally lost.

And years ago I had a dream I was driving a car with my mother, but everything was falling off, the doors and hood and I’m trying to hold on to the steering wheel to hold it together, and my mother is saying, “Oh, isn’t that something, the way the light hits the field out there.” She’s not disturbed by the catastrophe at all while I white knuckle it to hold the car together.

Now when I drive she’s still in the passenger seat. And I can just imagine what she might say as I drive around to my own appointment.

“Oh, isn’t that something.”

Or read out loud a bumper sticker, “Baby on Board. Awww.”

When I had breast cancer, she’d say, “I’m sorry,” and I’d get this immense sympathy and motherly love for 10 minutes. And repeat it the next day.

My imaginary Mom in that seat is just keeping me company. If I have to come to a screeching halt at a stop sign, she says, “that was a close one”.

Sometimes my arm goes out to hold her in.

Now in the car, I also start to feel like my rear view mirror is blocked. I look and there’s nothing there. But there is a sense of something blocking one of the car visuals. I keep looking in my rear view mirror, feeling like there is a shadow, something else present besides me and my imaginary Mom in the car.

In my outer world, I’m pursuing treatment like a good patient.

But I have this kind of inner world I don’t tell anyone about. There is no talk of prognosis in the doctor’s office, but I just feel it close, like it’s sitting next to me all the time.

[Drink] I do my walks, and by spring I walk far enough to see the scarecrow my neighbor Daniel put up.

I can’t tell what he’s made of… A pumpkin head that's rotten? He’s got a plaid shirt and a hat and sits on a pallet, has been propped up. Daniel has formed a peace sign with its little twiggy fingers. You know there’s just a stick underneath, and yet it catches you unawares.

Looks more and more decayed every time I go by.

It doesn’t move, has no virility.

That motionlessness of it.

There to ward off predators, birds, a protector; protector by scare.

This scarecrow’s been on the job a while - his faded shirt - but he’s also eternal, he just keeps standing there…

Scares the fuck out of me every time.

I go by. “I’m not going to look at the scarecrow today…”

These days I think if I look at him, I’ll invite him in.

He knows it’s me.

And after that first vulture flies with me while I’m driving, they seem to be everywhere - hanging out on roofs, trees, being frightened off a dead deer or road kill.

I relent and finally look them up in my animal symbol book, for their mythological and spiritual value. The vulture sacrificed its head feathers to save the world - all the animals are trying to keep the sun from colliding with

the earth and burning it up, and after the other animals fail, he uses his head to butt the sun away losing all his head feathers. He’s a protector, keeping other animals from diseases they could get from eating dead things. And he transforms flesh - he turns these dead things into something useful by eating and processing them.

Vultures are not malicious - actually they can’t kill, they don’t even have the right anatomy to kill. They have to wait for carrion.

They aren't afraid of death, but are looking for it. They are between worlds.

At night, I lie awake in bed, can’t sleep. All the people and animals I know who have died, it’s sometimes like they are really here, like a visitation or something.

My Aunty Wee. She was tiny. And old.

Died when I was five or six.

Her long silvery hair pulled back in a bun.

Was a cultured hostess to dignitaries of her time who visited her home which was an actual castle her husband built.

She was an artist, loved color, texture, could sew, do astrology, paint.

She got frail with diabetes, had to be in a chair, sitting, in bed, then she died.

In the world of adults, I knew she was an adult who loved me. I trusted her.

Then there’s my childhood friend Cathy. More like sister twins than ‘friends’.

Cassiopia.

Capella.

Our constellation names.

Best friends third to eighth grade - that coming-of-age time.

She had the first make-out party.

Got armpit hair at the same time.

We lived together later, but I hated her boyfriend - made a rift, lost touch.

She got breast cancer at 40.

I went to see her and she was bald. That freaked me out.

Some time later I got a call she died. Felt horrible for not being in touch more.

She forgave me. Her dead self doesn’t care that I wasn’t in touch.

My grandmothers, grandfathers, great-aunts and second cousins who died.

Some I don’t know who they are, but they are my bloodline. They’re in the room with me now.

They show up with my Lavender Ladies.

There was a man I met when his teenage son Ian took a theater class with me.

Bobby was a woodworker. He had dark hair and a beard and piercing blue eyes.

Ian was driving and fishtailed into a telephone pole and died.

Bobby made his coffin.

Bobby drank a lot after that.

His grief got worse and worse Five years to the day of Ian’s death, Bobby hung himself.

At night sometimes I can’t sleep.

Bobby comes to mind. His death. His hanging. The deep sorrow.

I wonder: did he find Ian? Is he feeling better now? Why does he haunt me?

When he comes, he needs reassurance.

That he’s okay and loved, that I’ve got him. And I do.

There’s David Brumbach, a painter - his was the first dead body I ever saw.

Was like a doll of himself - an almost accurate version, but with David suspiciously absent.

And then there’s my Mom. She comes to me a lot, especially in my car, my Fit. It’ll fit anything.

She sits in the passenger seat, and I recognize that the shadow in the backseat that’s been in my rearview mirror is the Grim Reaper.

Faceless. He has that scythe - cuts you down, kneeeingching.

He’s not rigid - he glides, doesn’t walk.

He’s a comic duo in the car with my Mom: “Haaaaaaaaaashing!”

“Oh, just ignore him.”

He just sits there, a big silent thing.

She forgets he’s there too.

Of course she’s dead, so…

“Oh, you again.”

She doesn’t like him. He annoys her: “You’re breathing awfully hard back there.”

Is Death really like the Grim Reaper? Hanging in his hoodie until it’s time for the scythe: “Haaaaaaaaaashing.”

Or more like my Mom; “are you coming?”

Is Death a leathered rock star? A Keith Richards type.

With the trappings of life, but there’s a decay.

Playing the guitar and then his arm flings out of his sleeve. “Aw, Bloody Hell.”

Or is he like that actor Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men? He has no emotion, no expression. Out in broad daylight.

He has a game of chance - pick a number and if you’re wrong, boom. You get it.

Is Death really scary, like that? Or is it more like Glenda the Good Witch?

Cotton candy-ish, fluffy and embracing. In a pink bubble?

In The Wizard of Oz, she knew what Dorothy needed. Once Dorothy found it herself, then she was released back to Kansas; Uh-oh - if I learn what I’m supposed to learn, will my time on this earth be up?

On the other hand maybe I won’t know it’s coming, maybe death will be more like a snake I heard of a snake exploding out of a woman’s shower tile, Falling out of a ceiling into a man’s lap.

Could come from anywhere, sneak up on me before I have the chance to be brave with it.

So all these images of death are haunting me everywhere, but I’m still in and out of treatment, going in for bloodwork and diagnostics.

There are lots of possible factors to getting a reproductive cancer - that I never had children, I never nursed, whatever hormonal effect those would have had on my body I didn’t get.

And maybe I couldn’t have had any children - never had a close call, even in my wildly promiscuous life… so I don’t even know if it were possible.

I look for a ‘cancer story’ like some people have.

Not Louise L. Hay - that author/guru who provides a psychological emotional reason our body is expressing illness.

No. I was doing well, had great hair - why?

Maybe vanity? I had such great hair, I have to lose it all with cancer?

No. Maybe the world is sick, so I’m taking some of it on? I’m some absorbent sponge of the world’s woes and I join the legions of those heading towards the cliff.

No. Or on the other side of it, the fault is mine - if I could somehow do x, y, z I can ‘win’ the cancer ‘battle’, and if I don’t, I’ve failed. Some kind of terrible Game of Thrones.

No. I have to refute that part of me that feels at fault. I just have cancer.

I have to have a hysterectomy - wasn’t fraught about my womanhood, just thought I’d get some extra room in my ‘closet’, thought I’d get a flat stomach.

They take out my uterus, my ovaries, everything, even the omentum comes out - that is what was holding in my organs, so much for the flat stomach…

They took out a swollen node in my armpit. Just fluid. But the fluid has cancer cells. Cancer cells are floating all through me.

The good news is there are no masses, the chemo got rid of any visible cancer. Just a fibroid.

But when the pathology comes back, the doctor has ‘the face’.

She reiterates all the things they didn’t find. And then tells me that they did find evidence of ovarian cancer, and it has a name: Multiple Malignant

Mullerian Tumor, or triple MT. Mullerian has to do with the cells that turn into the reproductive organs when we’re growing in the womb.

So when the hell did this start? Were those cells cancer receptive from all that time ago? Was I born with this?

I keep forgetting to ask…

Triple MT is rare.

It is rare in the uterus, but it is even more rare in the ovaries.

And it’s aggressive.

So the triple MT is a triple threat – rare, aggressive, cancer.

Even more, it’s stage four.

The doctor doesn’t say it, and no one wants to talk about what it means; all the vultures, visitations, the scarecrow already told me…

My husband and I go to the car and I lose it in the parking lot.

“I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die.”

He says, “I don’t want you to die either. I need you here.”

And we leave it at that.

But there’s that thing in the back seat.

[Drink] I look online about this cancer, but what I really want to know is the prognosis. Some doctor’s paper from India talks about two to four years. So from when does two to four years start? How long do I have?

I go back to the oncologist with that question in my mind, but I end up just asking what to expect after my current treatment is complete.

He says we’ll go on more courses of treatment, talks about intravenous chemo in the hospital for days at a time, that there could an oral course. And then he says it’s a matter of keeping the cancer at bay, keeping masses from forming. He doesn’t say it outright, but it’s obvious that the cancer is incurable. He says that with any treatment, the first consideration is quality of life, talks about hospice. When I hear that, I think of the vultures, eating the flesh that’s already dead.

I ask him about a third opinion and he is enthusiastic. We go to Boston. Dana Farber Cancer Institute. I don’t remember a whole lot about what the doctor says, except that she is cheerful, positive, encouraging. She says she likes Avastin and Doxil. She says the thing we want to do is hit the cancer with something it’s never seen before. She says No, it wouldn’t give me the side effects I was having.

And it did not, my hair continued to grow after I started.

But after three or four treatments, it was obvious it wasn’t working because the cancer markers were up - went from 400 to 2000 something.

“Haaaaaaaaaashing!”

The many procedures and medications begin to be a blur - there was the Carboplatin and Taxol. Off the Taxol for the neuropathy, and then I had a reaction to the Carboplatin so off that. Gemcitabine suppresses the white blood cells, and it keeps me from chemo a couple times because I’m neutropenic. Avastin and Doxil. Then off the Doxil… oh gosh, skipped down the road with all these chemos. Then it might not have been the platinum I reacted to, so let’s try Cisplatin and the Gemcitabine and see how that works… But three weeks of nausea. Armoring me with drugs for nausea.

The pill bottles pile… think I’ll save them all as a record of everything I’ve been through.

It doesn’t really matter - is it the cancer that will kill me? Or the treatment that’s going to take me? The cancer is secondary, what I’m really thinking about is Death.

I proceed with the choices they give me, I am the best patient I can be.

I realize I am not in treatment for cancer. I’m in a kind of ‘maintenance’ taking poison to live as long as I can, as long as I can withstand it.

And meanwhile, it feels like death is everywhere - our new black car with cream interior, a hearse; and why does everyone around me wear black?

Everything becomes the last time - the last red blood orange wolf strawberry moon I’ll ever see, when I put the Christmas decorations away I imagine someone else will bring them out next year after I’m gone, I start to purge and Marie Kondo my fabric stash so as not to leave a burden behind, I start to use things I’ve had around, saving just for the saving. And this is the last time I’ll see the cycle of tulips and daffodils that spring up and die; this time their cycle dies to me.

I tell people about my treatment, about the limited prognosis, and someone will platitudinously say, “we’re all going to die” or “think positive” dismissing the fact that I am going to die. I have to fight for my right to acknowledge what’s going on. I know what I will die of. I don’t know when will you see me in Wegmans a few years from now, and I’m still in treatment, still keeping it at bay? Maybe. But in the meantime, my life is dawning,

with the presence of death, right alongside me.

I’m thinking about death all the time. It’s in the backseat. It’s the shadow beside me. The scarecrow, the vultures - it takes all these forms, it meets me everywhere.

Maybe if I was 20, 30, 45, it would be different. But I’m not.

I’m allowed to think about death.

I’ll do all I can to keep the cancer at bay, but it won’t keep me from acknowledging the inevitable.

And it’s mine. No one will talk me out of it, can’t tell me “everyone dies”, or “think positive”. That is beside the point. The fact is: death is with me all the time. Ever since the diagnosis. Is my thinking about death my harbinger?

Whether or not it is, it is changing me.

People talk about “living an authentic life” - what the hell is that?

My husband and I talk about going away and he said, “Where do you want to go?: And I just want to go to Ocracoke, where we always go.

How plebeian.

This is a time to have brand new adventures!

The images I have of myself as an adventurous brazen…!

But I have known I am not that.

So who am I really?

I am struck with the mundane part of my personality.

And I can’t allow myself to be happy with that, that can’t possibly be ‘authentic’.

Is, then, who I am really in what I’ve done?

Have I done enough?

Well, that wonderful play I wrote, Emily Sticksenstones, didn’t see the light of day again.

I wasn’t in enough shows.

I didn’t get over my fear of auditioning.

I didn’t get that “fuck ‘em if they can’t take a joke” attitude.

Feel like I could have done so much more.

Growing up, Mom always said, “you have so much potential” - shit! That is still at work.

Always have had a hard time knowing what I want.

And I should know by now And don’t.

I didn’t keep in touch.

I didn’t read enough I don’t know what happened to reading…

I didn’t keep up with drawing Could have made real art work.

I am a little bit of a hoarder.

I have a fabric stash.

But I have a hard time using these things…

I just like having them.

I like to put things in an order, like to have things in color groups.

I love collections of things.

My blue glass.

I’m not after antiques; it could be from a vodka bottle from the trash.

[Drink] I love the rainbow colors And stupid cat videos Snarky things to say on Facebook Pie Pop music – oldies. Sweeter stuff like [sings:] “Walk Away Renee”, ones with prettier melodies.

My husband likes musicians with skill like Buddy Guy, Guy Clark. I might like it, but I like their throwaway, the one that’s not so ‘skilled’, that is sentimental.

Willie Nelson, “Just Breathe”.

I like dresses. I hardly ever wear them.

I really like to shop.

Plastic, colorful plastic.

I like the Dollar Store.

I like having a cat.

Driving by myself.

To be on my own.

I like lying in the sun.

Can’t do that anymore.

Like to ride my bike.

Can’t do that very well anymore.

I wish I could relax. [Teary] I wish I didn’t indulge the habit of feeling stressed.

Generally I’ve always felt like a portion of myself.

Self-acceptance: I can’t believe I spent so much of my life not knowing what that is.

I ran a theater company.

Used to be on boards to approve state funds for theaters.

There’d be words for certain things and I wouldn’t know what they meant.

And I’d fake it. “Yes, they should be / have a Plenary phlegmatic Fiduciary flow stray- straia-ta Council”…

One time a sculptor who was on the board opted out. She said, “This isn’t for me, I can’t pass judgement.”

I should have done that. But I wanted to live up to something.

Instead I was a faker.

Feeling like I’d be found out.

Living deceitfully.

It was lonely.

So many men told me they loved me.

In my mind, I would think, “you idiot. You don’t know who I am.” But then, neither did I. I just knew how to adapt to what they needed.

It was very confusing - to be around people that I liked, because I was different with everyone and if I were with everyone I’d be found out for being inauthentic.

It was hard to accept accolades when I knew it was something ‘I’ didn’t

really do.

Was working so hard to cover my tracks, it all held me back - with some true self-awareness and confidence, I could have written more plays, performed more, could have done all this stuff.

When I tally it up - okay, that happened. That was that girl’s life and that part is over. And where once it used to infuse me with deep regret, now that’s also part of the acceptance - the fantasy I have of who and what I ‘should have been’ is a fantasy… I think I’m accepting the reality. I’m not going to change what happened. That’s the story of Me. And what a story that is.

I accept that the sun is blasting in the windows sideways in the winter months. All the little prisms in my windows slash light across the ceiling, and I just care to be on the sofa putting colors of yarns together, listening to comedy podcasts and beautiful people talk and old musicals. And be surprised by my eclectic taste, by my own delight.

My life is about color - wearing it, seeing it, connecting it.

I just want to be around beauty.

I live in a beautiful spot.

I convalesce in that house.

That’s what I like about fabric and the harmony in the colors of those rainbow plastic plates and tumblers I saw at Walmart.

So what is this Beauty?

Beauty is the only guide we have, for going on.

Beauty is the expression of self - the expression of a spiritual connection in a physical world.

Like the Grand Tetons.

That monarch butterfly.

Recognizing the ocean, anything bigger than yourself...

Fearsome, humbling - ocean, mountains, natural disasters, butterflies.

Beauty is not there unless I recognize it.

Then there’s the impulse to capture, remember. How can I have it, save it?

Every winter feels like the most stunning winter I’ve ever seen, and then so is the next one.

Overwhelming, bittersweet - it’s passing by.

Crocheting color - wow, look at how this goes together! And then it’s over… so ephemeral.

You end up with a sweater as a bonus, but the magic is the making.

This past summer we had a stone wall built in the backyard around the patio – it’s beautiful, is a fulfillment of our dream, and it feels like I’m in a castle, my kingdom. Like Aunty Wee, who really did live in a castle. Here I am, tea water heating in the kettle, unfinished projects strewn around the house, snuggled up on our couch, loved by my husband in my nest, our lively kitty running all over, and staring out at the stone wall, content as can be.

The thing about thinking about death all the time - when you accept yourself, holy fuck, then you accept your death. Then there’s still living.

One thing about thinking about death - accepting that that’s what I’m

thinking about - now I have everywhere to go to think about it. I can stick with the Grim Reaper, the shaman, my skeleton, can retrieve Keith Richards’ arm and try to Elmer’s glue it. Can wonder if there’s anything that waits for me… it’s all fair game. I get to not be scared by it, and I get to live more richly, as I really am. I get to go where we don’t want to go.

It brings me back to parts of myself that I didn’t think of as ‘worthy’. And I get to make those decisions now. There’s this constant feeling that the disease and the treatment is paring me down - is still flying me up up up into the shaman vista. I’m constantly getting stripped down to the bone. Oh yeah, “I can be who I want to be”, “be my real self”, don’t have to suffer fools, don’t have to pick up my dirty socks if I don’t want to. I could be that. But I’m more aware that my motivation for suffering fools or picking up socks are totally different. Everything has a different reason. Some of it is ‘just the facts, Jack’ - the socks are in the way so pick them up. I could not suffer fools but I always have. Why change that now? I could make some serious changes too, to my personality, but why?

[Drink] I see these things flying.

I ask my husband – did you see that?

The what?

The bird, or something?

No. Hmm….

And my Mom. She comes and hangs around.

And I realize I didn’t know her that well.

And my Dad. I know them as well as I needed to, as a living person, as their daughter.

But not as they were, really, not their whole person.

My Dad wasn’t a great Dad either. He was there, but was an enigmatic man to me.

So there’s only so much he can do now.

Now he is with me as a presence.

My friend Cathy I told you about, I feel her close by too.

And I feel also - I didn’t know her.

I knew her - her love and her mean streak, but That time I went to see her in Essex when she was dying with cancer.

We walked up Apple Street like we used to as girls, but I couldn’t stay.

Her Mom came to make sure she was okay.

She was so protected, her Mom was helping.

My Mom - she comes as her demented self.

That’s how we understand how we were most comfortable together, so she comes back to me that way.

Nakita comes, my sweet black kitty I miss. I wonder if she’s jealous of my new orange kitten, Sampson, and she’s not.

My growing up dog Tibby was half poodle, half sheep dog.

He was the king of the neighborhood, was the head of the pack of nearby dogs, would take them on paths through our woods.

He grew old, was at that point of being sick when he got really smelly. And then he disappeared, we didn’t know where he was.

Then one night I had this dream he was running through the woods and he was so happy; he was free.

That day after the dream, we learned he’d been hit by a car, found on the side of the road.

I could take in the news that he had died because of that dream. Could feel him so happy.

When my Mom died, we stayed in the room with her body for a bit.

I went into the stairwell, just to sit.

And the stairwell was vibrating with her presence.

She was gleeful.

And she said to me: “I can be with you better now.”

When my Dad died, I was right there with him when he died.

Was trying to call everyone...

And then I was looking down on it all; like I became him looking down on everyone grieving, floating on the ceiling for a while.

Then I was back.

That was such a gift.

In some ways that’s what I look forward to.

Tibby came to let me know.

My Dad helped me know.

My Mom too Let me know it’s okay.

I can’t bear the thought of my husband being by himself.

I want him to know: It’s okay.

I’m okay.

He may not be okay for a while, but I want him to stop worrying about me.

I want him to know.

In some ways I feel prepared for this.

As much as I didn’t want to see it, that breakwater was my imagination It’s my truth, part of me has known all along, And it’s okay.

I would really like it to happen later than sooner…

Remember that skeleton on the beach? That wise-cracking better version of myself? I didn’t tell you before, but when I was looking at her, realizing this is some unearthly vision of everything I’m afraid of, she puts out her hand and I place my little skinny hand right in all those bones and it feels good. It feels fine. It feels okay.

Thank you so much for coming.

For listening and being with me.

I’m going to go now Into the other room.

You can’t come with me And I won’t be back.

Thank you.

Camilla Schade is a lifelong theater practitioner: a playwright, actor, director, teacher and so much more.