A moment of sonic bliss for Rubi

Last night I found out that earlier this week one of my high school friends collapsed at a SF park and was fully brain damaged. Her parents took her off life support.

There are no right things to say in moments like these but I've felt guilty for doing and feeling the opposite of what Robyn represented: free, happy, spirited, a lover of life. Aside from work, I've been inert. Not a thread of creativity. Losing a friend can temporarily disconnect that line.
For now I'm remembering Robyn as the unapolegetically outspoken girl and woman that she became. Never one to mince words, or conform to any Fairfield County Stepfordness, Robyn and I had crazy homes and a need to express it. We played field hockey together - she was a little powerhouse. My first concert, the Indigo Girls at The Palace in Portchester, was with Robyn and thus began our lifelong love affair with singer songwriters, lyrics that ache, songs that move the earth beneath you... Robyn was a year younger than me so I went to NYU - the following year she went to Northwestern. I remember calling her on a road trip I took my junior year and we tried, tried to get together but it seemed like she was lost in her world.

Through the years we've kept in touch here - there. I knew what she was up to, and that she was happy, and writing about music, and I'm not sure how far she got, but was writing an autobiography about her crazy 20s. Last week she emailed me to say how sorry she was for not being in touch but that she thinks of me OFTEN and she'll be in LA on the 23rd. I pulled the sheets out to be washed in case she wanted or needed to stay here. And then I found out she was no longer here.
Robyn would want to be remembered for the strong independent fireball that she was. She wouldn't care for my sappy tears so I'm just writing and remembering.

Kiss the sky for me, Rubi. Love you always.

RAINN - connect the drops

I'm giving a little shout out to Director of all things important and relevant *here* (yes on our watch, Mr. Clooney) Miss Kate Hull from RAINN who in just a few days covered more ground hitting up every media outlet in LA than an A-lister promoting their "Oscar written all over it" performance of the year. In a good way.
I had never met Kate, and finding out that she would be in town just a day before I returned from CT made me rethink my departure date. But then I wouldn't have been in the room for the sonogram and would have missed all that amazingness. In the end, Kate stayed on through the weekend so I got the chance to meet the woman who sends all good speaking things my way and who knew she would be so darn adorable? She's the kind of friend you give a spare set of keys to (eek, no pun intended), who gets lots of flowers on their birthday, and who shares my love of Mark Ruffalo, Scott Speedman, Netflix obssessions and black labs.
I know- is there a point to this post other than loving Kate and RAINN? Well to tie it in a bow, I was just thinking about this little community we have here that's always better than I ever expected. It makes my job that much easier, that much more dire, that much more sane. Oh yeah - and just another reminder that we are fun people. We tend to love life, and that's what makes it so very necessary to protect it. On our soil.
Have you read about RAINN's online hotline ? Did you know that you can literally go to the site and chat with a trained professional online? These things are not easy, and RAINN just made it that much more accessible and easier for a survivor to get the help and information they need. I certainly didn't know. Rape doesn't come with a handbook but these programs that we so desperately need to support help millions of people a year. Please read up, volunteer, donate money - it's happened to someone you love. This much we know is true for everyone.

what a card

remember when hand writing thank you, birthday and holiday cards was the norm? remember really needing stamps? these days we shoot off an e-card to our entire address book and poof! holiday cards are done. I've done it. Does it feel the same as receiving a card in the mail? Not for me.

when was the last time you received a card in the mail? Not a Facebook poke, hug or MySpace "Thanks for the add", but a hold in your hands envelope delivered by your mailman (omitting weddings and wedding thank-you's)? Today I received a yellow envelope that felt like a card and I thought, hmm, maybe St. Patty's Day? There was a 'girls night sticker" on the back so next guess was an invite-how sweet. Nope.
Here's what it was:

"I just want you to know how amazing you are. I think you are such a beautiful person inside and out...You deserve to be happy and healthy. And also, any company would be lucky to have you on their team" Love, XXXX Ps Let's get together soon!"

Who does this stuff anymore? Apparently my gorgeous friend who I met through Junior League, who works like a maniac and is always smiling .

I've been inspired to send a "just because card" to someone. I hope you have too!

Giving Birth To Yourself

photo from http://www.orangebeautiful.blogspot.com/

Last Thanksgiving, I was hanging out in San Diego with families in their wet suits frying turkies on charcoal grills on the beach. I once read a "tip" in Real Simple or some such magazine to send cards out for holidays other than the winter ones. So I sent a bunch of Thanksgiving cards, as the holiday that year with spending Thanksgiving morning at The San Diego Zoo (?) seemed fitting.
I received an email reply from an acquaintance of mine who had become a friend via email. She said "Happy Thankgiving" and in other news, she had just been assaulted by someone she knew. I stood there in disbelief, and then in further disbelief that I was so suprised. Did I think that because my situation has been "settled" in a court of law that no one else in my life would ever be assaulted? I guess I kind of did. I guess I thought that if I kept telling my story, volunteering, giving myself to others that those others were protected. Not so.
I wish I could tell you all the details of how lovely and talented this person is, and how quickly I loved her heart. It colors everything she makes. Just recently she filled me in on what she had to do to get her life back and have some semblance of normalcy. I am so proud of the decisions that she made, and as difficult and as challenging as they must have been, she's pushing through the black.
Some days I get emails from strangers and they shake me to the core. And then there's a Thanksgiving when I open email from a friend and I feel like there is the world that we talk about about and pretent to live in, and then the world where our bodies are taken from us and there's no sign of it stopping any time soon.
With no support from our society, we are rebuilding our homes over and over again and under every layer of paint is another yellow wallpaper . If you know/remember how that story goes, in 1892 the story was rejected by several editors, one of whom supposedly claimed that "the story made him feel "miserable", and therefore did not want society to be subjected to similar feelings." That could have been written today.

I'm bright red!

Happy New Year, everyone!

Love, Technology and Happy Holiday Annoucements

Yesterday I found this in my inbox. Rosie and I lived a children's sized shoe box on the Upper East Side. She, a filmmaker, and me, at the time, being displaced from the music industry and a bit of a wanderer, we ate cereal for dinner and worked very random jobs together. Graveyard shift jobs. She has the best laugh, and an even better smile. I adore her so I couldn't help the water works when I opened this .avi extension:



Congrats, lady jane!

xo,
Marnie

Things to be thankful for: green kitchens, chalkboards, pirate sticks and joyful hearts

David and Liz: intrigued?

David writing a pirate poem

by the pond with swans and ducks

For the holidays, David and I headed back East to drop in to my sister's Saturday Night Fever and brave Penn Station at the very same time that Manhattan let out early for the holidays. Bags fully packed with stuffing, no free hands, we had much to give, and much to be thankful for. At the end of the road (track) was East Hampton, and the house we were to spend Thankgiving with Liz and all in the family. It was a rustic colonial just a few miles from town-Walbaum's, Breezin' Up, Scoop, JCrew by the Sea, and a ton of other quaint retail stores I know and love that did not call my name. I was too busy having fun--either laughing and gasping for air, or doing the thousand yard stare. Both were acceptable, nothing was expected. I was grateful, touched, and so very happy to spend the holidays exactly where we were meant to be.

There were moments where I watched two co-survivors bond over our situations, and how it affected them both. There were moments where all I wanted to do was collect leaves and take photographs. There were late nights and brisk early mornings warmed by the sounds of the cutest angel pirate artist soccer girl on this planet. There was no internet, no phone calls--we put our obligations aside and did what every family should do more of--not just on holidays, but ordinary days--we spent time with each other. We talked, laughed, ate, drank, played in the leaves, never needing to think, "What do we do next?"

I guess I don't really have words for this time. I've always called the trial the fifth season. So in celebration of all that is joyous--like warm boots, sweaters, holga cameras, red wine, washable magic markers, pirate sticks and golden leaves --- I'll just say that this year, the season to be merry began when I was giving thanks for all the love and support from David, and Liz and co. for the longest list of things for me to be thankful for.

making it your anniversary

liz has discussed how one deals with/celebrates/dissociates from the anniversary of a sexual assault. On Liz's survivor anniversary, I ate a YumYum doughnut. Some may think that's odd, random, unnecessary or all of the above (and then some). A doughnut has special significance to me from someone I loved and is no longer in my world. I've never eaten a YumYum doughnut (their purple signs are all over LA) but I ate it because I wanted to do something fun, a not-so guilty pleasure, something sweet to recognize the day as not the day it happened, but in celebration of all she has become, not because of it, but simply by being her, by taking a much harder path that paves the way for countless survivors.
Tomorrow is my anniversary. Sometimes I block it out and replace it with November 17th. One day EMDR may tell me why I remember it to be the day before. The first year, I got my first real expensive haircut. Not a $300 trim, but more than I would normally pay. Then I walked around the East Village and with each step, I was making my signature in the pavement. That was my home, I wanted to make it remembered that I was there first. What I did with my day may seem trivial, and many would ask why I would place any significance on it, for if I thought about it less, I could forget about it, yes? Oh, for shame. Memories do not work that way. November 18, 1996 may have a few pieces cut out like a snowflake, but every single one of those missing pieces makes it home in the darker spaces in my head. They visit me all the time. In pieces. I don't to see the entire picture all the time; it's not pretty.
This year I am taking some inspiration from my favorite four year old girl, Ava , who's love of life and infectous joy for all things beautiful truly amazes me (and for that, and a million other reasons she is also all about what is beautiful), and going out to breakfast for some chocolate chip pancakes at Jack and Jill's , taking in a movie at The Grove where the fake snow will be fallin', making my holiday cards, and playing with my art supplies. I used to make these pretty neat photo transfers; I promised myself once I moved I would get back in my art bin. And so I will. Because there's so much I can say, for once, without speaking a word, and there is so much healing in a black paper mate felt tip pen that bleeds green, purple and blue. Like a bruise. A lovely bruise that knows how to heal itself.

where greenwich and christopher split

I am working on a work deadline and my thoughts drifted to Kristin. Even though it's only been a few months since we've spoken, we are light years apart-again. She got married in September; I wish I had been there. I will always be the reminder. It's a sad person to be. I love her like the sky and the moon, and yet when I hug her I feel like I will burn a hole right through her.
If you want to know what will bring me to tears faster than a funeral, it's a rapist stealing everything I knew and loved: stealing family from me. I just had that burn inside my face when you are about to cry. We desperately need some rain out West; I have plenty of it in this heavy head.
Here we are above in our grown up work headshots-so similar yet so very far apart.
And why did I think of her while working on a deadline? I didn't realize I was listening to Fiona Apple's Tidal. It was playing in my ears when I was attacked. The disc dropped out of the player and rolled along the wooden floor. That's where her wave crashed.

I guess one may ask why I would ever listen to it again. Remembering the way things were is important to me: not just for the loss but for all that I had in my imperfectly gorgeous 22 year old world. I listen to it because I own this memory; it does not own me. I listen because I make choices. It is not my choice to have these memories; it is my choice to own them.

Most of all I listen because it reminds me of Kristin in her bellbottom pants and platform shoes. She was always a celebration: full of color, kindness and biting wit. We were branches of a strong, wise tree. We were both women's studies minors, she took self defense classes. We had things under control.
Don't ever live your life in fear, but don't think it can't happen to you.

how it really happens

The survivor community is very connected to each other; or maybe I just got really lucky in that area. at some point, we cross each others paths; some become friends, others become family. many times we talk about the pieces of our lives that have been changed in positive ways, like invaluable gifts along a heavy road we walk upon. It's as essential and as pure as water and in my mind, it is absolutely meant to be.

A few days before I flew to NYC for the trial (if you are not familiar, read here), David fell asleep watching TV and awoke to a Dateline story. The next morning on my desk was a sticky note that read "Dateline. Liz. UVA. 'The Letter'. 21 Years Later. Stars." I looked up Liz's web site and thought, "What a strong woman. What an amazing family." I read her story. At some point you'd think you've heard all the stories; it never happens. Liz's story was unfolding 21 years later just as mine had, only it had been 10 years for me. Liz looked like someone I knew. I searched on her contact page trying to figure out where she was from; she was someone I wanted to meet. She was strong, magnetic and determined. I packed the piece of Liz that David gave me in my suitcase and went off to the trial.

A few weeks after I returned from over a month in NYC (trial + sentencing), I received an email from a friend of mine who wanted to put me in touch with another survivor; she thought we might be able to support each other: me, having gone through a trial, and her, having gone through media chutes and ladders. That woman was Liz. In October we met in person, and the rest is our history. We are from the same hometown, we work in the same industry, and now she is very much a part of my heart.

Liz has had more than her share of media attention and if I am ever able to debunk any myth that tries to label her, I will do so. She has received such scrunity for, well, doing what every mother and father taught us to do before we could spell our own names: call for help. After all, a crime committed and crimes DO NOT diminish in severity with time. Are we clear on that point? Because there are many people who aren't getting that it is not the survivor who's under the microscope; it's the person who committed the crime.

In speaking to high school students, I've been asked if I would ever forgive the man who raped me. I have the engagement on tape and can hear a long breath drawn in as I considered the question. My heart told me "no"; as this person is beyond rehabilitation. As sad as it may be, while I don't stew in anger, it's simply not the way I feel. I have peace in knowing that I have done my part in assuring that he never harms another person. As the judge said, "Since you have shown no remorse, I do not feel your sentence should have any either."

Survivors get a lot of "Couldn't you just have?" or "Well that chapter is over"; people who want to believe that if it had been them, they could have prevented it. These are dangerous thoughts with a false sense of protection. You see it every time you watch a news reporter interview someone who's survived trauma. While it is everyone's responsibility to be cautious, it is never about what I did do/didn't do; it's what they did. That seems like such a simple concept. It is our society's responsibility to be honest about our current situation. What kind of steps do we take, as men and women, to treat each other with respect? It starts young, and personally I think the key is education and active participation. Awareness is good, but light years away from prevention.

It's a tangent, but if I may circle back to Liz, she set a precedent that it is never to late to trust in our legal system, it is never to late to report a crime (in her case, again) If you were ever looking for that open door, she opened it for you. So bless her for that, and all that she gives survivors.

What you also may not know is that Liz is funny as hell, so if I'm needing a laugh, I'll probably go here. Lucky me; I can call her too.

an ecuadorian firecracker in san francisco

Vero and Agata, 2006

We've all had those nights where we just want to go home and stare at the ceiling. Ok, I have nights where I plan lots of fun me things to do and end up painting five toenails and falling asleep in my clothes. Many years ago I was cozy in my east village apartment when my childhood friend, Joe, asked me to dinner with his friend Veronica and her fiancee, Jeremy. I almost said "no"; 300 square feet all to myself!

I hated the dinner, and I wasn't crazy about the fiancee, but Veronica was a keeper. Her passport is a sight to behold--she was born in Quito, and has lived in Chicago (where she met her husband at O'Hare Airport) Dresden, Verona , (insert more stamps here) and now San Francisco with her husband and little love bug, Agata.

She is many many things to me, but I write this because her artwork is quite lovely.

I wish the site showcased her work better, but I love her bio.

Welcome back to the US, Vero!!