You're on an Airplane

by Parker Posey

  Then your palms are placed directly in front of your feet as you fold into a sandwich bend (a completed bow to the sun).

  If your palms don’t hit the ground, don’t worry, it’s not a competition; be calm about it. You see your limit and acknowledge it, and get over it.

  On the next count of four, look up to “see” the “horizon,” and then bow your head down on the next count of four, forehead on your shins again. Another bow to the sun.

  The first big move comes next: your feet step or jump behind you to a push-up position, or Chaturanga, or “chat to Rhonda.” You somewhat float down to the floor, for just a millisecond, landing with your torso an inch off the floor, your arms and toes holding you up. You scoop up to a back bend, with a long inhale, and then you’re positioned facing up, like a seal.

  On the count of four, the breath of your nose comes shooting out again, like water from a whale’s spout, and then you push your butt into the air and make a triangle above the earth: you settle into Adho Mukha Svanasana, or Downward-Facing Dog. I met a standard poodle named Jackie O at the Chateau Marmont who did this posture on command.

  In this posture, breathe four long breaths again. If you were going to practice with Pattabhi Jois, the father of Mysore, you’d spend months practicing only the Sun Salutation.

  The next move is the first big sweep with your foot. It begins with the right foot. With your left foot planted at a solid quarter turn, swoosh your right foot back (the sound of a wave), then swing it forward, and plant your foot in front of you in a forward-facing lunge. Your arms come up, tight to the head, palms in prayer— the pointed arrow of a bow, reaching up to the sky. This is Virabhadrasana, or Warrior One. Sure, come through.

  The sound of the foot swooshing “like the sound of an ocean wave” was an Andreas touch, from his own teacher. I like it. The body can be fluid: all that’s inside us moves around like water.

  You hold Warrior One for four oceanic, Star Wars ujjayi breaths. Then slide out to Warrior Two for another set of ujjayi breaths.

  Okay, I’m going to sit back down. At this point, it may not sound like it, but you’re already sweating. This whole time you’ve been “cleaning the garbage on the beach,” as Andreas would say. The voices that chatter with those awful scenarios and the voice of judgment, like stale, hard gum—spit it out, with the other garbage on the beach. The waves come and wash that gum away, along with those faded Budweiser cans and strips of dirty plastic beach crud. Then look at the horizon. Look at the view. Oh, ugh, the garbage on the beach has come back again: my shit, my work, my stress, the beach is a mess, this world is a mess—clean this garbage on the beach!

  And then you get calm again, centered. A nice wind, while in Warrior Two, has come to blow the garbage away, allowing inner peace. Leaves blow by not indigenous to this tropical climate—c’est la vie, auf wiedersehen. Tschüss!

  * * *

  –

  One day, during my moontime, Andreas led me through a private yin class and guided meditation. In yin class, you hold postures that are mainly on the floor but you still get sore.

  He’d brought over some yoga blocks and blankets and an eye pillow. I sat cross-legged in meditation pose, on the yoga block, so I wouldn’t hunch. I closed my eyes. “I want you to picture yourself as a five-year-old sitting in a chair. You are looking at yourself in this chair. When the child moves, it’s a thought coming up. You ask the child to sit in the chair.” My five-year-old self was monkey-brained, examining the chair, walking around it—curious, distracted, laughing, crying. This played on a loop, quickly, in my mind’s eye. I found myself telling the child to sit in the chair over and over again, holding her little hand, walking her to the chair, gently gesturing for her to sit and be still.

  Before I knew it, the hour and a half had flown by, so there was peace found. When I opened my eyes, I saw Andreas looking at me as if in a daydream. His teacher position had dropped. “I’d like to follow you for a day,” he said, “to see what it would be like to be you, with your dog, and to be free.”

  * * *

  –

  Not long after returning from Berlin, I’d come home from a baby shower for a college friend, and I was feeling sad and blue. At the shower, I’d seen an acquaintance, a woman around my age, a writer, and she’d seen me in something. Anyway, she blurted out, about the other actress in the film she saw, “Why does she wear a wig when it makes her look old?” She quickly covered her mouth, embarrassed, and said, “That was an awful thing to say.” I shrugged and made it alright despite spiraling into thinking about all the talk that goes on behind my back. “She probably just likes the wig, and, you know, doesn’t want to sit in the makeup chair every morning and be fussed over. Someone pulling your hair at six in the morning for an hour, sometimes for months at a time . . . it’s not that fun.” Then I decided to be more direct or honest, and told her how I remembered seeing Susan Sarandon talking about aging on television, how after the age of forty, women are just ignored. She ended that conversation and said, “Well, you were great in that movie,” and I said thank you.

  * * *

  –

  The snowy night in the city had me feeling like a lone figure in a snow globe and when I got home that night I couldn’t wait to cry. The suffering produced some garbage on the beach: I want to hide forever, New York is competitive and harsh and it’s not the same anymore; everyone wants something; everyone has to be so smart, interesting, or fascinating. Why do some conversations feel like I’ve given blood? The wind was dramatic and then settled and then I saw an IV tube and went to the ocean to rinse it. Oh, look, there are Andreas’s black warm-up pants and his wrist sweatbands. I went online to find a local yoga class.

  There was one at Jivamukti, with a teacher I didn’t know. I took a fun class at a workshop there once and on the last day, the teacher had us close our eyes and find the tops of our mats with our feet and then stand on tippy-toe, and click our heels three times and say, in unison, “There’s no place like om, there’s no place like om, there’s no place like om . . .” I joined in for half a second and then just looked around to see if anyone else thought it was too silly or was too cool to do it and exchanged a few looks.

  I started at the top of my mat, in Mountain Pose, Samasthiti. Then I started my four breaths on the count of four: earth, wind, fire (father, son, and the Holy Ghost), and water.

  I put my hands to prayer at heart center: “home.”

  Then came the Sun Salutation, arms up to the sky, “the sun always comes up,” my hands reaching out over the space. Then down on the count of four, bowing down, “the sun goes down.” I put my head on my shins, jumped back, Chaturanga; swooping up, my back bent like a wave, “the water rushes out.” I looked up and my emotions, like a wave, splashed out into the air. Good-bye. I pulled back into Downward Dog and receded from them as I breathed it out.

  Next came four long Darth Vader breaths, “I am your father,” and on the count of four, the first big sweep into Warrior One. I brushed my right foot against the mat, making the sound of the ocean like Andreas taught me.

  Well, the yoga teacher was standing directly behind me and his legs were open in a standing V and during that oceanic brush, the arch of my foot, the shape of a curved wave, briefly cupped his package, and I thought, “Sea anemone.” I fell to the floor, grabbing my belly and laughing so hard—rocking with laughter.

  I looked around to share the moment but no one did, or they pretended not to. I was in the back of class so I knew people saw it because they’d have been looking through their legs when it happened. The yoga crowd can be a tough house. I said something to the teacher like “Never in my life,” and he said, “Well, there’s a first time for everything,” which made me laugh even harder. “A first time for everything”? Like “Laughagainasana”? There is no place like om.

  18

  Imavegan

  Places hold a certain karma when yo
u visit them and I like to think it’s written in the stars. Neosporin is good to stick up your nose when you’re flying because it prevents germs, but no matter what precautions I take, when I spend time in LA, I can almost guarantee that I will throw up while I’m out there, whether it’s a bug in a salad or some germs on a doorknob. The place has weird karma for me. The stories are always funny later, of course, and if you’re with someone with a sense of humor, they’re laughing even before you get sick. Like when I was dating Harper Simon and teetered in front of a yellow Lamborghini outside the Roosevelt Hotel and he joked about throwing up on the car. I knew the minute I ate the Roosevelt’s delicious hot rolls that some dirty bug had got me. But the tables turned on Harper when I jammed a wax earplug too far into my ear and he spent a good half hour digging for it with a pair of tweezers. It’s such a small world that I bet you know someone who has seen me get sick in LA.

  I was needlepointing on a flight to LA once and chatted with a flight attendant who also needlepointed, and then ten years later, maybe more, I met her again on a sidewalk in the desolate outskirts of Salt Lake City, where loads of flight attendants live. She was taking a walk around the neighborhood, and we met after a physical therapy appointment for my wrist. She recognized me and smiled, saying, “The needlepointer.”

  The mountain was so close in proximity—in Manhattan, it would have been as far as the distance between the Village and Midtown— it was majestic. She lived in an apartment complex built in the fifties, by a tiny dentist’s office where a large smiley-face sign on the front lawn jutted up to the sky. We chatted about the small world and she recommended a vegetarian place that I never made it to.

  I tried being a vegetarian—so many cool people are—but I guess I come from too many ranch hands. I don’t eat meat all that much, and make a lot of soups and salads, but too much food talk starves a good conversation. Kale isn’t as popular as it used to be and I don’t know why that is.

  I don’t go out to LA as much as you’d think but I do for meetings every few years. During one trip in the aughts, I would hear, “I don’t really eat,” just minutes after being introduced to someone. It started to seem like a surname for beautiful, young actresses. It’s different today, isn’t it? Back then, that was the jargon. Women are starved, the culture is starved, and minimum wage is starved. Maybe all the food talk has to do with the amount of shit sandwiches everyone in the biz has to eat. You know what a shit sandwich is, right? When you have to eat the bad news (the shit) but it’s made with the best bread and cheese available. Sometimes it’s served to you with so much crap that you don’t even know you’re eating it. “They love you” is probably my favorite baloney made of crap that I’ve eaten, because it’s said a lot and sounds so good.

  “Imavegan” started to sound like a surname, too, and I’d be smart to start practicing my vegetables. I started to do this thing, by substituting the word “kale” for “care,” as in “I don’t kale where we eat. I kale too much, is my problem.”

  * * *

  –

  I also started doing this thing when I drove around, that is completely obnoxious or funny, depending on who you are and how you feel: I’d roll down my window, get a person’s attention on the sidewalk or crossing the street, and call out, “Excuse me! Are you a vegan?!” Or I got the attention of someone in a car at a stop sign and said casually (but a little too loud), “I AM A VEGAN.” This was more fun in the passenger seat, when I’d get to hang out of the car. It was good clean fun—unlike veganism, which is hard work.

  I get this from my parents—doing silly, unexpected stuff. One time we went on a trip and my mom wanted to stop at a mall for a shopping fix, so we went into a store called Spencer’s and bought some plastic masks. My dad wore a Nixon one, I remember, and my mom was a pig. They’d put them on as they drove, and we’d see who they could freak out, laughing until we made ourselves tired. It wasn’t cool anymore to drink in the car, so that’s how they replaced their fun. Not really, they still drank in the car, but in moderation.

  I really did try to live out in Los Angeles, for a few months anyway, but I’d read too much Dominick Dunne and books about Manson, which made LA not a friendly place. Being a New Yorker by this point, I wanted to see more interaction with people on the sidewalks and would think, “Where did everyone go? What happened to everybody?” When someone asks to go on a hike, which happens a lot out there, I get suspicious and a little scared. When they say “take a hike,” I walk away.

  On a recent visit, I’d just landed and was waiting for my friend Craig to get back from therapy. He lived in one of the 1930s Beachwood Canyon apartment buildings that housed actors back in the day, and I sat on the grass in front of his building, in the sun, with Gracie. You could see the Hollywood sign when you drove up that street. I recognized a neighbor of his walking his dog (we’d met on the sidewalk on a previous visit), and we chilled out, having that New York-vs.-LA conversation.

  Eventually, one of us noticed that some man had his car parked up the driveway outside the building’s garage. He was sitting in his SUV, and it looked like he was staring at us hatefully, like a murderer or a Quentin Tarantino character. It was so intense that we both denied that he was staring at us, and we looked behind to see if he had to be looking past us at something that had possibly angered him, giving him that sour look. But there wasn’t anyone there. He was looking at us.

  We made up excuses: his car’s stalled, he’s having trouble seeing . . . We chatted a little and looked again. Maybe his window was tinted so dark that he was squinting to see through it? We chatted some more. Wait, he was wearing sunglasses. If his windows were too dark to see through, he would have taken off his sunglasses. After almost ten minutes, I got up to ask this man if he was okay. When I approached his car, he asked me if I was a homeless person.

  I was polite and easygoing. “No, no, I’m not. I have a home in New York, in fact. I just landed in LA, but my friend Craig lives here, right there, in that apartment.” I pointed, all casual and cool.

  “Well, you look like a homeless person,” he said.

  “Oh, well, thank you,” I said, “but I’m not. Is it my Indian sari on the grass? Because it’s a beautiful scarf.” I smiled back at it and looked at him again. “I’m just sitting on the grass, you know?”

  “You can’t sit on the grass. Who said you could sit there?” he asked.

  “I dunno, the good Lord? I thought we were all allowed to sit on the grass.”

  “Well, you can’t just sit on the grass like a homeless person,” he said. “I’m calling the cops.”

  He didn’t, but that would’ve been a better story. That kind of thing has never happened to me in New York. I got stopped and pulled over (in the nineties), swarmed actually, by six or seven cop cars in West Hollywood on Santa Monica Boulevard. The cops thought I’d stolen my rental car but I hadn’t. I was wearing a vintage red patent leather vinyl trench coat and on the way to the theater. It was the only time I’ve sat in the back of a cop car. It was pretty awkward for everyone involved. I’d miss the interaction between people on the sidewalks if I lived in LA. You don’t see as many people strolling: lovers throwing their heads back and with their arms around each other, or someone smiling because it’s spring or the sun’s come out. I tripped in my clogs on the pavement in the Village and a few people came to help me get up. When friends from the South come to visit, they’re surprised how nice New Yorkers are.

  If I tripped in LA . . .

  I remember turning over in a hammock once with my friend Jason at some Hollywood party, I think it was Charlie Sheen’s, and falling splat onto the grass. We cracked up laughing, and people looked at us mortified. Anywhere else, say, in a backyard in Louisiana, people would laugh along, thinking, “This is a fun party! You guys look like a lot of fun!” But LA is not a good place to fall. I think this was when Jason started saying “Good luck with your project” instead of “good-bye” w
hen we left places.

  After a couple of months in LA, I returned home to New York and went to some party where I was introduced to someone who said, “I’m sure you don’t remember but we’ve met before,” which I get all the time. And I feel bad that I don’t remember the person’s name and I usually say, “I’m sorry, I don’t remember,” or “Yeah, at this point I’ve met everyone,” or “We’re all connected!,” or “It’s a Small World isn’t just a ride at Disney World!”

  I don’t like this feeling of being put on the spot with the “You probably don’t remember me” opener, because it’s assumptive and can be tinged with a condescending attitude. I like to close that up real quick with, “You’re probably right, because you know why?” And then they’ll say, “Why?” and I’ll say, “Because every moment is new, like now, and now is the only moment that exists,” which is the truth. I get all shut down and cosmically defensive and guilty.

  But this time I said, “No, I don’t remember if we’ve met before, but we can meet now. What is your name and where did we meet? I’m sorry I don’t remember you—my life’s had a lot of traffic and has cast a wide net.”

  And he said, “You asked me if I was a vegan as I was crossing the street in LA.”

  19

  Moving

  Moving is emotional. Did you know the root of the word “emotion” means “to move out”? The move out of my last apartment came at middle age, and introduced the Perimenopausal Puppet Troupe forming inside me. Their laughter and tears, elation and exhaustion, manifesting in a shallow puddle of sweat on my chest in the middle of the night was exciting and made me nervous. I am alive and in this body. Great job, everybody—now let’s clean those sweaty costumes and you can all go home.