When Does A Pearl Become A Pearl? Getting the Nacre of It.

Do you believe in the confluence of ideas? Moments in your personal universe where you are dazzled by an aurora borealis of images and ideas and moments of self reflection that can take your breath away? I’ve had such a week this week.

I began my third Gabrielle Zevin book this week, Margarettown. I’m in listening mode these days, so Audible is my platform of choice and as such, I have only my time in the car to “read.” At the risk of seeming like a complete fan girl, I’ll just say that Zevin’s voice is repeatedly unique – both books I’ve read prior to this one have been completely different in style, world of play (sorry that’s my theatrical lens on the environment and style of her voice). Reading (or listening) to her books is a savoring process. The construction of story and character and variety of narrators is deft and different in each book. Just when you think you’ve got the narrator firmly in your understanding, she’ll do something that pulls the rug out from beneath you. It’s exhilarating and delightful and I’ll be forever grateful to my colleagues Kim and Sara for giving me the first titles to start down the road. I will say this third book has been more taxing because I’ve taken an aversion to the voice of the person reading the book. Apologies but there had to have been someone else who could read this book without the smug, oily, lilting characteristics of his voice. That aside, Zevin is such a compelling storyteller that I’m powering through and happy to say the reader is “disappearing” a little.

What isn’t disappearing is the engaging characters in the book. I’ve been trying to think about how to write about this week’s confluence of ideas without ‘spoiling’ the artistic events/expressions that have slapped me in the face saying “WAKE UP!” The scene that grabbed me today on my way back from another beautiful walk with my brother Don at the Hollywood reservoir was the character of Maggie musing at the pearl in a ring “When does a pearl become a pearl?” The subsequent discussion with N, the narrator about how within each pearl there are countless vestigial pearls awoke my writing spark.

Ironically, cosmically comically, this morning my friend Susan shared this fetching photo of her dog coming up from his resting spot to ask for breakfast. To which Bob replied with this image. How much do I love these friends? We “get” each other.

Vestigial human beings. We are all pearls. We are the product of that crusting nacre over the grit of our lives. We are so many different layers beautifully built up over the hardships and moments of dirt in our lives. We are ultimately so many people – when we make the effort to reflect back on all the different phases of our lives, which I invite you to do, examining what it is at each phase that defines who you have become.

It’s a shock to be a 60+ woman. There’s no way to have known that as that toothy fourth grader, I would reach a moment in my life where I am on the one hand, powerful in my career and someone who people listen to while being simultaneously invisible in a way that was completely unimaginable when I was twenty-five and felt that all that I was was way too visible. I’m imagining that getting the nacre of it would seem to be appropriate to describe our life experiences.

This morning I put on a tank top for the first time this summer, and it was appropriate for our walk, where at 6:00AM, it was 68 degrees. Don and I picked up the trash today, our bags filling as we circled the reservoir. Most days I’ve been carrying my little pink 2lb. weights and trying to exercise my upper arms, fighting the gravity of the flesh. As we crossed over the dam, today, I held up my arms and made a reference I could only have made to my brother, about how we made fun of our 6th grade English teacher, Mrs. Barron, for her jiggly arms when she wrote on the blackboard. “Kids are mean,” I said. But really the joke’s on us, because at no point would a twelve-year-old be able to imagine that life would play such a cruel joke at sixty by evoking the irony of our youthful cruelty by physical embodiment of it. That realization made me laugh as I jiggled.

Last night I attended a preview of Stew, by Zora Howard, at the Pasadena Playhouse. The production was gorgeous, designed by so many of my colleagues and former students from USC: Scenic Design by Tanya Orellana, Lighting Design by Elizabeth Harper and Yajayra Franco (a ’23 graduate of our BFA Design program), Costume Design by Samantha Jones, Stage Managed by Nikki Hyde, also an alum of our BA program.

Before the show, I stopped at the Strand restaurant across the street from the Playhouse, and had a root beer float, remembering that the last time I’d been there, I’d eaten lunch with recently departed John Iacovelli. What a good pearl John was.

As if the program chocked full of folks I love didn’t warm my already receptive heart, the play’s story was intriguing, big and messy like life, and left me with a lot to think about. A brief backstage door conversation with Nikki allowed me to remember my transition from full time freelance stage manager to academic institution. Seeing her enthusiasm about her new job in North Carolina School of the Arts and her ability to be able to fit this production into her full academic life reminded me of the energies I had in fitting as much as possible as I could into my life and career.

I won’t go too into the “dirt” that created the pearl I am – my dad recently commented that my writing was almost too confessional, too personal, too intimate. Suffice it to say there are episodes in our lives that define when another layer of iridescence is added. I’ll just share one here with apologies for revealing too much.

Back in 1994, I got it into my mind that I wanted to work at ACT. It was the early days of Carey Perloff’s tenure there as Artistic Director. My friend Veronica connected me with Carey, and arranged an interview with her to see if I might join her stage management team. Jimmie and I flew up for the day to SF, and met with Carey, who was very clear that if we did move to SF, I would be hired as a local Stage Manager. She was encouraging to Jimmie that there might be acting opportunities for him there as well, without making promises. After coming home and discussing (did we discuss? did I just say I thought this would be a good idea and move forward?) I accepted a job as ASM on Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia, which was to be the first production back in the Geary Theatre following the earthquake which had damaged the theatre.

I was, at the time, experiencing the physical symptoms of terrible endometriosis. In retrospect, as I polish my pearl, I think the entire episode was my half-witted attempt to escape my body without listening to it or addressing the physical reality I was facing. I told Jimmie I’d go on ahead to SF and he’d follow with Chris (then about eight) after I’d found an apartment and school for us. I booked an apartment in the nearby Oakwood Apartments on Geary and began rehearsals. I loved the rehearsal process, aside from the fact that I had to leave the rehearsal room so frequently to be sick. I was lonely without my family, and felt like crap all the time. Finally, I acknowledged that I was not well to the PSM and the folks at ACT arranged for me to see a doctor in SF. Within about four hours, I was in the hospital getting treatment. This coincided with a call from my dear friend David Galligan, who told me that Jimmie had been at a party and told his partner, Ray, that “he didn’t want to move to San Francisco.” And in retrospect, why would he have wanted to? With a vibrant acting career in television and film, there was going to be much less for him professionally. But he was supportive of what I wanted the trajectory of my career to be, so I suspect that many things were left unsaid.

Within a few days, I was back on my way to LA, driven there by my brother Larry. The pearly sheen of that episode was that I have never ignored my body again. I also learned that what goes unsaid is easy to ignore. And that we must listen to what is being said and what isn’t being said.

I can’t remember the context for the wise remark my brother Larry once said to me but it has stayed with me for many years. He alluded to our ancestors being in the world around us all the time – watching and empowering us. It’s been a powerful image that has stuck with me. The idea of them sitting around my living room observing all that we do, those stupid moments that make them collectively shake their heads or look to each other with amusement; or maybe quietly clapping their non corporeal limbs together when we have triumphs. He spoke about it as being an important motivator for his own ethics and hard work, but in light of this week’s aurora borealis of ideas, I think there are so many others in the room. They are our earlier selves, as well as our future selves. They are the shimmering manifestation of our vestigial pearls of our humanity.