Regaining Vision: What Was Lost, Now Found

I had a cataract operation this week. No big deal, right? People get cataracts, they get them removed, they get a lens put in. Life goes on. It happens thousands of times every day throughout the world. My cataract was a very large one and was growing rapidly in my right eye. No one knew what was causing this sudden growth; they only knew it needed to be gotten rid of.

I hesitated month after month. I had the money, the insurance covered a lot of the operation, it was not an issue like it is for so many folks in the world who end up going blind. I am a white (sort of) middle class college over educated woman who at this moment in time has a roof over her head and opportunities and time afforded to few. I am privileged.  So why the hesitation to do what everyone in my social class does without, um, blinking an eye? 

Back in the late 60's when I was a kid, I can remember the precise moment I lost my clear vision. I experienced a sharp pain on the right side of my head, looked up at the elementary school stage and wham, everything was a blur. I knew something awful had just happened to me but like so much about my gut wrenching childhood, I went into denial. For a year I pretended I could see perfectly well until a sharp math teacher who'd been watching me for months squinting at the chalkboard called my mother and demanded she get me glasses. My mother was perplexed. "Why hadn't you told me?" she kept asking. "Your sister has glasses. It's nothing to be afraid of."

From that point on my geekiness was a done deal. Unlike my older sister who looked beautiful even if she were wearing a gorilla mask, I looked like the person wearing the coke bottle glasses, the big nose and the mustache mask - I now had all three for real and I was heading into adolescence. Life was going to be horrendous, I assumed. And indeed it was.

But I adjusted, learned to live with and at times revel in my misery and make out of it something unique. I wrote stories, made paintings, created a newspaper and put on plays. I became an artist of sorts. And thus I survived. Until two years ago when a lot of stuff hit the fan and I found out that if I had the cataract removed, I would be able to see once again and most likely pretty well.

On Tuesday this past week everything changed. The cataract was removed quickly and relatively painlessly and I didn't die. Except in a sense I did. Yesterday my eyesight was measured, my brilliant eye surgeon Dr. World Famous Maloney looked at me, said , "You have 20-20 vision. You look great." Huh? And then it occurred to me that maybe I should be paying attention to what he had just said. I looked up from where I was sitting, glanced around the room, stopped squinting, and everything was the sharpest and clearest it had been in 40 something years. No, it was actually sharper and clearer than the world has ever looked. Ever.

Wow.  Now I was looking at everything very closely. The tweedy colors in the jacket I was wearing. The streetlight at the corner of Wilshire and Westwood. The elderly woman crossing the street with her blue white hair and her soft brown leather jacket. The individual emerald green leaves of the tree at the corner of the street I turned down. My bright red Prius. The day old beard of the parking lot attendant with his harried and worried eyes motioning me to back out ever so slowly. All was a sudden LSD high of mind-shattering explosive color and light spontaneously spackled across a landscape that was only two days before a dull, grey, blurred image.

I could see.

And what that meant to someone whose filter has been muted, blurred and stifled for decades is life changing on some psychic level I can not yet comprehend. Everything that was old is new again. 

Maybe this is religion after all. Maybe this is god.

Men of Conviction, Compassion, Courage and Creativity

In my ongoing journey exploring "The Dating Life Over Fifty", I cover a lot of territory. At first I looked outward at what men want in women and often came up with the dismal answer (dismal for me any way): someone younger than me. Not always true but certainly far too often it is. In my more introspective moments, I explore loneliness and despair, subjects I am certain I'll return to as I meet the never ending challenges of growing old. At times I discuss gardening and growing things from nothing, tending to small creatures, creating community, supporting friends however I can and the boundless joy all that brings me. And then of course there is my love of dogs, one in particular at the moment who fills a void rarely filled by humans. (Yes, I am odd that way.) 

Throughout this process of uncovering what it really takes to have a deeply satisfying life, I try to maintain a critical acumen about men in order to understand the ones I admire and the ones I reject. What's the difference between the few and the rest of the pack? Why do some men rise above and others swim in the shallows? It's certainly not about material things. While I don't like hanging out with men  (or women for that matter) who are always sucking from the tit of another because they are not capable of standing on their own two feet, I also am unimpressed by what car you drive, what designer clothes you wear, where you live or what celebrities you hang with. I just don't care. 

So what does float my boat? What rocks my world?  Let me put it this way. A man without passion for something (besides me or his narcissistic tendencies)  is like a rudderless dingy. A sailboat sans sails. An engine with no fuel. He's a man of no interest to me or probably anyone else. 

It is passion, commitment, involvement in something larger than oneself that shouts, "Life is a gift, babe. So let's ride this wave together for as long as there is a wave to ride." Wow.

Now that's an irresistible man. And that leads me to my discovering within myself a need to set forth a series of Huffington articles about men of conviction, compassion, courage and creativity. These characteristics to varying degrees are in all the men I have chosen to write about. This does not mean I agree with everything they say, everything they espouse, everything they themselves feel passionate about. It means, however, that within each of these men exists a seed of integrity they have chosen to nurture in everyday choices they make. Are they always successful? Probably not. Who is? But their moral compass is clearly lodged inside of them. When confronted with whether or not to take the high road or the self serving road, they tend to choose the high road more times than not. 

I wondered for a long time why I felt such a strong passion for men like this. I think it is perhaps because I see the potential inside them more clearly than a lot of other folks can. The vision I have was honed inside of me during a 30 year observation of my poor, dear and now deceased father. He tried his entire life to walk a higher path than he was capable of after becoming tragically and seriously brain damaged during a vicious attack by an angry and petty co worker over nothing more than a pile of dirt. 

So there you have my Achilles heel, one that has been taken advantage of more times than I care to admit. But one that at this stage in life can spot the diamond in the rough, the good and decent man, the person who is not a player but merely is human in the best sense of what that means. And what does that mean?

My Huffington Posts.  These are guys with a clear moral compass that gets them up in the morning, pushes them out in the world, forces them to make a difference regardless if they are 40, 50, 60 or 70. They are men who do not give up no matter what life throws at them. Repeat. They do not give up. And that means they don't give up on their significant others either. They stick around emotionally, psychically and physically. They are present and available as much as they can be. They are men of conviction, compassion, courage and creativity. Enough said.

Here they are thus far...many more on the horizon...
Jim Beaver, actor and writer
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joanna-perryfolino/interview-with-jim-beaver_b_4751476.html

John Steppling, playwright and screenwriter
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joanna-perryfolino/man-of-conviction_b_4886456.html

Silvester Henderson, Professor and Gospel Impresario
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joanna-perryfolino/love-and-equity-the-geniu_b_6155334.html



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The Relentless Sun and The Need for Clouds

People who grow up in Southern California and those who migrate here tout the sunshine as its greatest enticement. Okay. I understand that the sun is god. And I honestly believe that it may be the only true god that exists for humans - all the others simply concoctions and projections of our own egos and desire for immortality. 

The sun is ever present, it nurtures life and if it should ever disappear, so would we. That defines god for me. But like any decent god it is unrelenting. It beats down upon our existence and when it is present day after day with no clouds to cover it, no rain to shield us from it, no eclipses to make us think for a moment that it may have gone forever, it becomes, well, just too much. It becomes oppressive.

The sun is unrelenting in Southern California. And other places as well. Places like Florida. And parts of Arizona. You know the states we often read about for abusing immigrants or Blacks. So I wonder if an unrelenting sun, like an unrelenting god, does not contribute to isolationism, solipsism, narcissism and selfishness masked by cheery platitudes handed out like free samples at Costco. 

Something about Southern California in particular troubles me. It always has. I've lived here off and on for years. And I almost always end up escaping back to Northern California and occasional side trips to Massachusetts where I grew up and where there is snow and clouds and rain.  

I think a lot about rain now, its purifying life enhancing qualities and how lacking in rain Southern California is and how that fact, made worse by current trends in climate change, will eventually do this part of the world in. The fires are coming. I sense that. All this will one day be dust and grime. Perhaps it already is when you scrape off the surface.

I like cool weather, warm weather, sunshine. Clouds. But what I love the most, what brings hope into my heart, is waking up before dawn and wondering what today will be like. What darkness will I be dealing with. What cloud cover will protect me from skin cancer. What rain will wash away the world for a day or two while I nestle down into my bed and type away on my computer or scratch away on my yellow legal pads. What novel will I tackle. What meal will I concoct on the stove to sit and simmer all day long. What red wine will I crack open tonight. If I know with almost 100 percent certainty that it will be sunny, that there will be no clouds, no hint of ozone, no wind, no movement...then I feel somehow out of synch with life itself. Because there is limited life in such an environment, isn't there? At least not life conducive to the purported Southern California "lifestyle" touted in all the advertisements.

And that is why Southern California, particularly Hollywood, exists at all. To create the facsimile of life on sound stages. In studios. In coffee shops where thousands of screenwriters sit and sip, as they type away their notions of what life looks like. Somewhere. Out there. In a real world. 

I can think of no other reason a desert that receives water pumped into it has such an other worldly feeling all the time.  And why so many people, basically decent people, native Southern Californians in particular, have this same unreal, other worldly quality about them. So many Stepford people smiling, asking you how you are as they look over your shoulder to that other person, the one who may be a celebrity, who can maybe help them get a break. So they too will have that perceived life that never quite exists except on a sound stage. 

It is no surprise that a cult like Scientology would be so powerful in Southern California. It feeds the need for meaning in life in a place where there is essentially no life at all without water being pumped in 24/7 from someplace else.  Scientology feeds the illusion that you are in control and if you can just climb those steps up to that next level, you will be safe. The rain will never reach you, will it? It is the perfect religion for a place with a relentless sun that demands of its people a relentless pursuit. 

No surprise the man who concocted it was a cynical genius. He may as well have been Louis B. Mayer. In The Master, a thinly veiled treatise on Hubbard, Philip Seymour Hoffman, nails the ego, the will, the narcissism. Hoffman and Hubbard, now both dead and buried and eventually forgotten. Don't kid yourself. We will ALL be forgotten. That's the price of standing too long in the sun.

Such is god that it devours everything exactly at the same moment it is feeding you. It is an unrelenting entity that breeds and then kills. There is in humans a need for cold, rain, snow, clouds. Wind. There is a need to feel discomfort in the bones, chilling us, causing us struggle. Anyone who tells you differently is selling you something.

I am reminded of a scene in a Woody Allen film when a character dons an  elaborate helmet and goggles, climbs into his car and says to Allen's character with total certainty when asked why...

"Keeps out the alpha rays, Max. You don't get old."

But you do get old. In fact, without cloud cover, the sun is speeding up your demise. I can't help but feel a lot more human, sometimes more alive, when I'm in my other home in Northern California. 

It must be the rain. Right?

Insomnia and The State of Oblivion

It is 2:54 AM and I awake from a sound sleep, listening to...nothing. There is no sound of dark creatures prowling in the night around and under this small cottage. It's odd because for the last year and a half I had grown used to if not particularly happy about the foragers out there in the garden: the mice, the squirrels, the possums and yes, the rats.  Eating, munching, ripping apart, staying alive. The rats ate the most vociferously and shamelessly, destroying the kale, the chard and the budding tomato plants each night, long past midnight and into the early morning hours. 

I'd grown used to the sunrise ritual of rushing out each daybreak to see their destruction, swearing that they'd cost me far too much in time, energy, money and woe is me, hope. Hope that this time I had defeated them when in fact, I hadn't. There over by the air conditioning unit and near the water heater were their rat droppings. Their poop, their dark streaks against the concrete, their invisible rat prints, marking territory, making their nests in the palm tree in the house next door and burrowing underground to the tunnel system, intricate and complex as the intelligence that had created it. Their efforts in the backyard each night to simply survive had, in fact, astounded me to the point of respect. I had not only grown used to them but I had learned to honor their lives. It was the uncomfortable relationship between human and non human energy surviving in a shared space. In some odd way, after months of their nightly visitations, they had brought me comfort and unease in the same breath. They reminded me of all the relationships I have had. Comfort and unease in the same breath.

Now it is 3:09 AM and I am no more on the verge of sleep, (despite sipping my sleepy time Celestial Seasons herbal concoction) than I was at 2:54 AM. I am in fact heartbroken once again over all the failures of the last year. Friendships that went bust. Poor financial investments. Failed expectations of success on some interpersonal planet I have never inhabited and most likely never will. I tell myself each day when the sun comes up that this year will be different, that this year will see the culmination, the personal fulfillment of, the connection to another human being in a way that is filled with passion and joy and the heart-spinning breathtaking moment of the fall into bliss. I have to keep telling myself this or I will die of despair as so many do who have no shelter, no family, no food on the plate, no will any longer to live. I don't want to fall into that but I know I can. I know we all can. Conjure up the right mixture of ingredients and despair is a dish served on porcelain so thin we can see right through it to what lies beneath.

Now the rats have left this yard. The landlord took care of that. He came here one day with a whole team, ripped out my garden, told me I could no longer keep vegetables any where near the house because my garden, my beautiful tenderly cared for garden of healthy green things attracted vermin, is how he put it. The pest control people set traps under the house, poured buckets of water and bleach everywhere to get rid of rat scent and either killed them or drove them away. They are no longer wanted here, this home I had unknowingly created for them in my zeal to create a home for myself. I miss hearing them running, climbing, scratching in the walls and under the house. That unease they caused in me, that sense of connectedness to things that are homeless, hungry, determined, alone...all gone now. And I am left with sleeplessness. I am safe from the rats, the landlord said triumphantly. For now. As long as I don't plant any more green things. 

It's now 3:25 AM.  I take another sip of tea. I listen for even the tiniest scratching somewhere, the breath of something besides me and the dog. There is nothing. My heart breaks on some infinitesimal level to know how easily the intricate pattern of lives can be so unceremoniously swept away with traps and a bucket of water and bleach.

Jim Beaver: A Man of Character...they do exist! A Series of Interviews of Men I Admire

I met Jim Beaver a few years back because we were both members of Theatre West in Los Angeles. I'd written a play called The Silence of Bees and was about to make a short film out of the prologue. I needed a guy to play a troubled writer. Jim had the chops for the role and I knew he would enjoy working with my company, Into the Fire Productions, because there were some cool professionals involved in my first short film. 

At the time Jim was finishing up playing a series regular on the brilliant HBO series Deadwood. I was excited as hell. I loved that damn series. All good.  So I sent him the script, he said yes and we were off. 

Cut to a few years later. Now Jim is a regular on the TV series Supernatural and he's branching out. He's in a lot of TV shows, making his own short films. And then he gets cast in Guillermo del Toro's new film, Crimson Peak, in production now in Toronto. 

So I decided to interview him before he became a film star even though I know that after he does, he will remain accessible. Because Jim is well...Jim.

I think the interview is very thoughtful, intelligent and in depth, due mostly to Jim's responses to my questions. I like to think of this as the first in a series of "interviews of honorable men".  

It is up on Huffington Post at this link:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joanna-perryfolino/interview-with-jim-beaver_b_4751476.html

It has received about 700 hits in 2 days. I attribute this to Jim's popularity and successful stints on a variety of TV shows. But more than that, perhaps, because he is a compassionate and generous man with a strong intellect. I personally like Jim because he has such respect for the written word, something all too rare these days.

So on Valentine's Day, my hat is off to Mr. Beaver and those men like him who are responsible, fair and kind. But still with a bit of the rogue about them.

My next interview will be with the brilliant playwright John Steppling, a man with an enormous intellect and a passionate sense of justice. A controversial thinker.  http://john-steppling.com/

It really doesn't get better than this. How lucky am I?

Gravitating Towards Healing

Things have been getting better even though they have become much worse on some fronts. But something feels better to me now, a calmness has set in I didn't have 2 or 3 years back. An acceptance of whatever life has in store for me. I don't feel like I need to prove myself to anyone. I am getting more and more comfortable in my own skin. I think this is called healing the whole person or something. What difference does language make here?

I seem to enjoy regular every day encounters a lot more than I used to. I also have less tolerance for drama queens. And kings. Men and women so deeply damaged everything is a crisis every minute of the day, every conflict met with gnashing of teeth and pulling of hair. Every scenario an end of the world one. But even for them I have tolerance and compassion. Just at a good distance.

I recently spent five days with someone so deeply damaged that every word coming out of her mouth felt like a bullet aimed to kill. It was a huge challenge for me because I had no choice but to put up with her. I was trapped in a no win situation that would only worsen for me if I did not find a way to get through it. I did.  I survived. I am a survivor. Of this I have little doubt.

I am back online looking at men's profiles. There are not too many that interest me. I need someone with a high level of intelligence, someone who is worldly, someone who is sexually experienced, someone who has his own bank account. In other words I need an adult. You can tell a lot of these men on dating sites are still little boys wanting a mom to help them grow up. There's nothing sexy about these men to me. Nothing luring me into a new life with a guy who will pull me down, not lift me up. I mean why waste my time?

I no longer care if a guy is 10, 15, 20 years younger. Age has nothing to do with whether or not I am compatible with someone. I find I am often compatible with men who are younger. They sometimes seem less damaged with less scar tissue. Sometimes. 

So that's it. It's a rainy Saturday morning. I am about to make a cup of coffee and read a book. I'm happy. Life is good. It really is. It... really... is.

A Hot Mess

If it's true that every woman gets the exact love life she asks for, what does that mean for me? And for you? I, for example, am surely a "hot mess." Temperamental, moody, a little frightened, a whole lot fearless, smart, funny, neurotic, needy at times, an isolate at others, a great listener, an obsessive talker, angry, explosive, patient, calm, giving. The list goes on and on. How would you define yourself in a free-write riff? Probably a little of this, a little of that? My guess is if you were being completely honest and fully human, you too are a hot mess.

So why, then, have I (and maybe you who are reading this) not had any serious love in my life for over two years? Is this the prayer I have made to the heavens and therefore exactly what I'm receiving? Am I at a rest stop before I make my next step into something not yet visible to me, not yet having appeared? Or is this it? Just me and my dog 'til the end? 'Til death do us part? Yikes.

And you. Maybe you're in your 50's heading towards the big 60. Maybe a guy? Maybe a once virile, sexy, beat-them-off-with-a-stick kind of guy. Perhaps on the verge of the big time? Maybe your own HBO special once? But now you look at that six-foot-two frame in the mirror of your expensive Beverly Hills condo bedroom and your gut is paunchy, your cheekbones sag, your eyes are not quite as blue, your teeth are a little yellow and you find yourself spending too much time on Facebook checking out hot 20 somethings, most likely Asian, and sneaking off late at night when you can't sleep to the massage joints in Koreatown?

Or you. Maybe a 50-something woman? A few divorces in the past. Kids about to leave the nest. Posting Photoshopped images of yourself on Twitter, raking in the compliments from "fans" who fantasize they are you (if a woman) and are having sex with you (if a man), running around in a constant frenzy of making ends meet, hoping for the big break when everyone will recognize your brilliant gift as an actor despite the fact you haven't done anything substantial in the last 30 years except promote yourself? Hmmm. Are you alone in bed at night like me? I wonder.

A friend, a good male friend, and I were chatting the other night about how we end up with what we end up with. He's a decade plus younger than I am but still and all, has lived in some ways more than I have, longer and more fully. He has yet to be married, own a home, have a long term sense of employment but his emotional flexibility is in many ways superior to mine. He's smarter and better with people than I am. But still, admittedly, messed up. Any way our conversing took place over several days and we both confessed at different moments that we are in the place we are in... single, struggling, seeking... because of the lacks in the earlier part of our lives. And the excesses in the later parts of our lives. The gaping holes, the regrets, the pain left to fester, the issues left unresolved... and here we are.

These revelations could so easily truly depress me. But they don't. Because if it is true, we get the life we not only create but believe we deserve on some deep primal level, I am filled with optimism. I deserve an abundance of love considering the crap I have gone through and put myself through. I deserve an abundance of love because in ways almost no one can see, I am beautiful beyond belief. I deserve lots of sexy, warm, cuddly nights in a big king sized bed or a teepee or in a hotel room in Venice or or or... because my life screams out for it. My soul hungers for it. My story, my life story, says, "It's the only thing that matters -- the connecting, the loving, the GIVING."

Once you realize that, I guess anything is possible. For me and for you, too. This is the trick, isn't it? Knowing that despite the heartache, the disappointments, the abuse, the betrayals, the loss, the gut wrenching, kill your spirit, break you in half emptiness that is part of being alive... that is part of being human... that getting the love you want, no, DESERVE today is all about that flip of the mind, that turning of the switch, that ever so brave STEP of proclaiming loud and clear from the rooftops, at the top of the cliff, on Mount Everest, in the rose garden that "I am worthy of love. I embrace it all. Bring it on. I am sexy, filled up, a BIG spirit. And you will love me. You are richer, wiser, smarter for loving me exactly as I am right now." 

And believing in it even when you don't....

So here's to my hot mess and yours. You really do get the life you make, the life you genuinely believe you deserve. You are exactly where you need to be. And someone loves you right there in that spot. I guarantee it. 

What's your loving and lovely life, your one and only beautiful life, what's it all about and who do you love?

Previously published on The Huffington Post at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joanna-perryfolino/a-hot-mess_b_4695778.html