Letters from Lisa

It was a fair question. The lady at the Seattle airport was wide-eyed as she asked. People in the Pacific Northwest can’t imagine surviving a temperature of 119 degrees Fahrenheit. I wanted to invent a fictional reason for this trip, because I was going to tear up when I said it, and then this random lady was going to feel bad, and because I have way too many feelings, I was going to feel bad for making her feel bad.

A quick note here to the men, if you are even still reading this: please, for the love of all that is holy — don’t be weird about this. Don’t roll your eyes or check out at the mention of “women’s issues.” We have been sitting through commercials for your boner pills for decades, and we’re cool with it. Gen X is going through menopause, and we are not going quietly. Broadly speaking, our generation has always been fiercely self-reliant, cynical, and angsty.

Since moving to my Canadian homeland late last year, I’ve not spent much time in the US, but I’m venturing back to teach at one of my favourite places on earth - Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health. I went to Kripalu for the first time in 2016. I walked into the grand hall in an absolute panic, picked up a gigantic purple binder, and joined my classmates for a month of yoga teacher training.

…you’ll have the most random memories about your friend and how the last time you saw her, she tried to organize the twisted straps of your overalls, and you told her to stop because they never stayed smooth, but she kept straightening and yelling, “YOU’RE TWISTED!” and she thought that was hilarious because it was. When you’re grieving, you will be in shock for a while, and you will eat half your body weight in sugar and watch four hours of Below Deck Med.

At the paper museum in Switzerland. Wondering if maybe I should write only with a quill. There was a time when I wanted to be a potter. And a quilter. And I took a fencing class. I knit washcloths. I got my SCUBA licence. I bought watercolour markers that dried out before I used them. I sewed a coat. I had more beads and charms than could be strung together over a single lifetime. I did kickboxing and karate and Krav Maga. But one thing that has stuck with me longer than anything else, is writing.

I actually got texts from a couple of friends who had never heard this story. Some were in all caps. I wrote about this in my first book, but I figured I might as well tell this story here. (No, I don’t require my friends to read my books. That would be weird.) The following is an excerpt from You Look Like That Girl — it has been edited for length and clarity and because when you re-read a piece you wrote a decade ago, you can’t help yourself and must fix some things.

From the age of four to twenty-two, my days were filled with auditions for commercials, television shows, and movies. I worked a lot, and in order to work a lot, actors must go on tons of auditions for roles we don’t get. The audition process involved showing up at a casting office, signing in on a piece of paper with my name, and FULL SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER (can you imagine?) and then sitting in a folding chair in a hallway lined with the competition.

“It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly, child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly.” ~ Aldous Huxley Olive and I write early in the mornings. The muse can find us better if we share a chair (Is this a letter? Post? Article? Essay? Let’s be honest here — I’m blog…

Luckily, the internet can answer that question for me. (That was sarcasm.) The List made a video about my life. For a moment, I had to double-check to see if I had died in some Beetlejuice-type situation because it really felt like a post-mortem retrospective.

One of the many thrilling things about living in the Pacific Northwest of Canada is that we have hummingbirds, year-round. This delights me and seems to fly in the face of the enduring myth that Canada is a frozen wasteland. These beautiful, delicate birds thrive here in our wonderfully mild climate. I tell everyone about the hummingbirds, although few people care nearly as much as I do.