Never Walked In High Heels

“Why does Paulina say that?” I asked the absolutely terrified looking actor. “What did she have to lose here and why is she so open to Leontes?” No answer. The ever-present rain was hitting the outside of the rehearsal room making us all want to curl up and take a nap rather than focus. “Ok, let me ask you this: Can the situation get any worse?” The actor stopped for a moment and then shook her head. “No, I don’t believe it can. I think at this point, she –” “She?” I questioned. “Ok, I feel like the world is ending so I may as well speak my mind and go down in flames. There’s nothing to lose, even as a woman in a royal court.” “Good. Why?” There is utter silence and I can tell that my actor has been frozen in the headlights. I can’t get anything out of her in this state. She now feels inhibited. “Ok. Let’s back up. What do Leontes’ actions imply for the court?” No response. “Remember when we were talking a few days back about the divine right of kings? Now that he’s made such an error, and everyone knows it, what does that imply?” There was silence for a moment and then the smallest voice answers me. It’s a moment that no matter how often it happens, it shocks me. A woman who is substantially older than myself has made a discovery. She can let her guard down as a Royal Shakespeare Company actor, to have the humility to learn and the openness to accept. This is what I love about my job. We, as a collective, have the ability to put ideas into other people’s heads and bounce them around until we create something. And of course, the most terrifying of all questions to answer is, “Why?” 

It takes many sculptors to form the mind of a woman. Her parents, yes, they are integral in rooting her and making her feel secure, knowing that there is always a home to return to if she needs it. Ideally, men teach her from a young age to value herself so that she refuses anything that is not going to be beneficial to her. The women in her life teach her the deep strength that can only come from a woman, the kind that can melt steel. But sometimes individuals go beyond that, refining the woman in ever-increasing complexity. 

The greatest education I’ve ever received did not happen in a classroom. True, he was my high school history teacher for three out of my four years, but the lessons extended long after the bell rang. It would be easy to say he saw past my disability, or he saw my potential before I did, or any number of other clichés well-meaning individuals come up with when describing their favorite teacher. And, to be cliché myself, I must say that all of these fall desperately short from the truth. The education that he gave me is visible in the young woman I eventually became. Not a day goes by where I don’t use the skills he taught me within those four years at Stevenson High School. There were other teachers, true, who had a remarkable influence on my life, and Stevenson was indeed a place full of them. But his continual questioning of my own ideas and interpretations served to make me uncomfortable. And out of that discomfort came a more rigorous mind that was unafraid of being challenged and confronted.

It wasn’t until I moved to Britain that I realized that my teacher gave me the confidence to think freely. I remember one spring morning when he challenged me to no longer look at the Cliff’s Notes in order to understand what I should be thinking about while reading Kafka’s Metamorphosis. If I wanted to dwell on the quandaries of existentialism, that was fine, but if I wanted to take a more romantic reading of the work, and look at it in a way no one had ever thought of before, that was all the better. Like in theatre, it’s not about finding the correct interpretation of the play, its what the play can say in communication with the current zeitgeist that is important. During an age where we were taught to read for meaning, he took it one step further and asked us to read in order to have a conversation with the author. No two conversations between the author and the particular student would be alike. But if it was well thought out, well criticized, and well defended (and above all able to withstand his continuous question of “why?”) it was worthy of approval.

My teacher also gave me what every teenage girl needs: the poise to present an argument succinctly. During my freshman year I was appalled at how often he taught us that we didn’t need to have this argument or that point because it was redundant. We were not allowed to tap dance around the answer in class, taking up time when we didn’t need it to draw our own conclusions. For me, I learned that a few simple well-chosen words from an otherwise quiet person can be more powerful than pages and pages of drivel. I am reminded of this every day in my “day job” as I sit through meetings for the London Underground, listening to the bureaucracy of government officials. I think that says it all. And it is because of this skill that I have the confidence to go into the Transport for London office and ask men much older than me to justify their policies on disability and access. 

The most important gift he gave me was an unquenchable thirst for truth. It is rare to find in a teacher a combination of such high academic standards and even higher personal standards. From years of his lectures, I learned that the true goal of education is not to get ahead in the world or to climb the corporate ladder. A lifelong student wishes to learn so that she can understand and appreciate all corners of the earth to her fullest potential. Learning is an act of worship to whatever cosmos of her own choosing as the act seeks to discover the complexities of this universe. A teacher like that knows that poetry connects with biology which cannot be separated from math with directly influences history. The question of “why” is one that is unending in education. If something is true it can withstand such natural interrogation be it onstage or in the classroom. After four years of studying with my teacher, I too wanted to become a midwife for ideas and found theatre a place where I could do it.

The actors leave and I bid goodnight to the director while gathering my things. He comments on the work we did on Paulina and encourages me in the process. I am flattered as I head to the Underground station. “You’ll make a good Paulina someday. She has all the strength of a woman who loves the truth but still wishes to change the world. Should be an easy role for you play.” He reminds me to get an application in for the National Theatre Young Directors Conference before we go down our respective subway tunnels. On the escalator I think of my teacher and all he invested in me as a scholar and a mentor. To him, a life full of learning and adventure was never far off for me. And though he did not know the details, he always assured me it would be with opportunities that many young people never thought of. I love being a young woman who has the confidence to be living in a foreign county and discussing ideas unabashedly. I smile as I think that because he asked me ‘why’ so often, I look at my life, my future, and my dreams and think ‘why not?’

 When life gets really tough, I threaten to become a lawyer. As a kid I was groomed for law school and up until about age twenty, it seemed to be the most logical thing in the world for me to do. Being a lawyer was safe. Being a lawyer meant I could turn a profit. Being a lawyer means following a pre paved path. Being an actor equates with none of these. 

“What makes you think you could get work in law? You get no guarantees kid,” my friend told me after a failed audition. At this point I had simply declared that I would quit, go home, and head straight for the LSAT exam. Why be an artist when you can be a lawyer?

And in a way, he was right. Who was I to presume that I would have anymore luck getting employed with a JD? But in a way he was equally wrong. There are some things in life which are guarantees. And though they seem pessimistic, knowing that these are truths and binding close to them can provide infinite strength. 

If you are being effective, you will be opposed. Humans hate change about as much as we hate being told we’re wrong. If you have a vision for how the world ought to be and you are actively moving towards that goal, expect turbulence. Even if you’re right, people will do everything they can to stop you. They wouldn’t bother if you weren’t a threat.     

People at any economic level can prove it be shallow and elitist. There are a good many folks who will claim to be morally superior because they have a humble income or ‘don’t get hung up on material things.’ The fact is they have just as many character flaws as anyone else. One of those flaws may even be pride. 

At the point of a gun, everything changes. The second someone uses force on you, to jeopardize your rights, that same person has broken the social contract and therefore has given up his rights. These days it seems counter intuitive, but like physics, in life every action will have an equal and opposite reaction.

Guilt is an insidious tether.  The Devil is often called ‘the great accuser.’ Guilt can paralyze us more than any other deficit. People will try everything possible to clamp the lead boot of guilt upon you. Don’t let them.

No matter who you are, your family is weird. Stop trying to have the ideal suburban family. It doesn’t exist. If your family is functional… you are blessed. 

There are sheep in wolves clothing. Sometimes the people who are the fiercest bureaucrats only just have the tiniest amount of control. They turn everything into a power struggle and a fight. Don’t waste your energy worrying about them. Know that for people like this, there’s always a way to go over their heads.    

You will never find a person out there who can give a good explanation why we need Daylight Savings Time. What?… Just try to find one.

All of my knowledge about cooking comes from one woman. Because of her, there are  about seven men who will  make their wives very happy. I am the link in between.  

When M.K. and I first moved in together, I told her that I wanted to learn everything she knew about cooking. She was thrilled to have someone else to cook for. Menu planning began soon thereafter, and Friday trips to Borough Market became a tradition. As M.K. moved in during the month of January, little except root vegetables were in season.  We would bundle up to run past Southwark, to take refuge from the depressive London weather under the green victorian canopies, and look for cilantro and saffron. Every color imaginable was there, like a market full of flowers hidden from the grey sky. By the time M.K. was done with her Masters in the Spring, we were grabbing our baskets and visiting the market in skirts on our way home from the library. 

In between studying for finals and memorizing monologues came dinnertime, and the hour or so before that was spent preparing food.  This soon became my favorite time of day. Since I couldn’t cook, I would sit on the floor of the kitchen, crouched beside the door, and we would talk… about everything. M.K. would come up with arguments for her dissertation, and I would try to figure how to handle the intraoffice politics of my first job. While the meal cooked, I ran lines and tried to memorize recipes. We fed each other with food and conversation, making sure that both would stick to our insides. 

The following year I found myself living near a group of guys, who quickly became my loyal friends. They ranged in age from 18 to 30 and had never cooked a meal in their lives. And I needed food. So they started a rotation of cooking duties, each one cooking in my flat for a week in between our drama school classes.  On Sunday one guy moved in, not knowing how to boil a pot of water, and, by that Saturday, he could at least make chicken korma. Meanwhile, I had made a very complex and three dimensional friend.

While teaching the men how to cook, I got to know their backgrounds and families, philosophical views and failed relationships. The dinner hour would last for three or four times longer than the title dictates. There is something undeniably unique about food that brings people out of themselves and allows them to relate to each other. The fact that we all need to be fed dismantles some guard we usually hold up. The enjoyment of food, the creative act of cooking, the careful combination of considering taste and nutrition are completely life affirming in every aspect.  It forces us first to admit that we are human and weak and then admit we each have an unlimited capacity for  joy and satisfaction. We cannot help but open up when there is a good meal on the table. 

During this time of year Borough Market begins to pick up in speed. Spring means full  baskets and skirts that catch both breeze and sunlight. Greens return, and every other color in the market is vivid and electric. We have survived winter, and now there are picnics and strawberry smoothies to look forward to. M.K. is now working on an organic farm back in the U.S., and we still send recipes back and forth online. The latest one she sent will be perfect for when all the guys come over next. They love using the food processor. And although they have never met M.K., I think that if she dropped by for dinner that night, they would think they had already met her. 

It has now been five summers since I first came to London. In 2004, I was here working on an undergraduate thesis, and I swore I would never come back. By the end of those eight weeks my life had forever changed, and I was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. In many ways, it was a loss of innocence. If you ask me what happened, I can honestly say I don’t remember much. It was a nine week long black-out in my life, which happens to be recorded in my journal. Something that I never open. I remember sitting in the doctor’s office when I was diagnosed and thinking, “I’m a twenty year-old young woman in private school, and they are giving me the same diagnosis as men returning from war.”

Nine months later, I was making plans to move to London permanently. 

The sun hits the Thames so fiercely in the summer that sometimes it acts as a flashbulb trigger between here and yesterday. Oddly enough, I don’t mind. It serves as a reminder of where I’ve come from and where I’m going. And if you’re on the right path, you shouldn’t be ashamed to remember either.

I love summer in London more than any other city I’ve ever lived in. I think it’s because everyone loves summer here. There’s always that first day that you look around and notice that all of the women are wearing dresses that catch the breeze just so. You walk outside and are warmed by the sun, and it’s like winter never even existed. Months of grey skies disappear within a relatively few days of sunshine. It’s like you can breath again.  We all know the rain will return, the biting cold will seem worse next year, and that being so far up North means that the nights will swallow our days. But life is always best lived when you can be present in the moment no matter what the conditions. 

Last week I went down to the docks to see the sunlight flash on the Thames. There are a few days when I want to see it, to remind myself that London can be a harsh mistress. Other days, I know full well that living here is really hard. But on those days, the ones where the sun is shinning for the first time in weeks, and you know you have months of summer left, it makes surviving the winter worth it all.