You're on an Airplane

by Parker Posey

  29

  Wait Till Spring

  It had been at least a year since I’d been on the mat, but I got back to my yoga practice in Vancouver, before my shooting began for Lost in Space. I had six weeks off before Dr. Smith entered the series full-on, so I would live there until I started shooting and stay all the way through July. The Robinson family would be on a glacier built on a soundstage, with fake snow particles blown from industrial fans the size of a breakfast table—“snow” the size of oatmeal going up their noses. They would be moving in space suits made of car upholstery material, which inhibited normal movement of any kind, especially the lifting of arms. I would be taking in Vancouver, and the rain, wearing everyday clothing.

  * * *

  –

  I’d love a hot cookie and you can refer to me as one, too, if you’d like. My dad has a picture that he keeps in his wallet that he likes to pull out, of his “pride and joy” on one side and his “kids” on the other. It’s the old pun of the laundry detergent and the dish soap on one side and the “kids” which are two goats on the other. I gave him a card that says “stop talking” that’s typeset lowercase on a sturdy white business card. I’ll give you one, once we land.

  * * *

  –

  It was record-breaking rain in January 2017, the most they’d seen in sixty years. The locals talk about the rain and the weather like it’s their culture. I loved that. They apologized about the rain whenever I introduced myself as being from out of town. I’d say, “I love it.” When the snow came, they apologized about that, too—when it wasn’t even cold enough to stick. I’d mentioned the winter in New York when it got so cold that I’d wrap my scarf around my neck, including my face, so I looked like a Muppet.

  “Wait till spring,” they said. It made me smile because it felt so small-town, like you’re sitting on the front porch with Granny. I’m in a rocking chair, shelling peas, shucking corn, talking about the weather and how handsome that Justin Trudeau is. I ate it all up. Justin Trudeau had his coffee at the same place I had mine; it was a place called the Brixton. It felt like The Commitments, the high-spirited movie from the nineties that took place in an Irish pub where they’d sing out of nowhere. There was a competition where they could win a trip somewhere? It was directed by Alan Parker, who did Fame and Bugsy Malone—both classics.

  Anyway, I could see the Brixton from my room on the eighteenth floor of BlueSky Properties Chinatown. There was an assisted-living facility for drug addicts smack in the middle of the Brixton’s sister bar, called the London Pub, which was right on the corner.

  The first yoga class I took was on Hastings Street, which reminded me of Chelsea in the early nineties, during the crack epidemic. There was a homeless man in the Chelsea days who liked my corner who I’d give change to and chat with. He was good-natured despite living on the edge. He told me he recognized me from As the World Turns and I didn’t know how that was possible. He was homeless. Did he watch it on a television set in a storefront window? I asked him, but he wouldn’t give me a straight answer. It positively mystified me.

  When I didn’t see him anymore, I thought of him as Clarence Odbody, the in-between-worlds angel who appeared when Jimmy Stewart wanted to commit suicide in It’s a Wonderful Life. “Strange, isn’t it? Each man’s life touches so many other lives, and when he isn’t around he leaves an awful hole, doesn’t he?” That movie couldn’t be made today, because Clarence would’ve just told Jimmy Stewart, “There’s medication for what you’re going through, George Bailey.”

  On Hastings, there were even more addicts living on the sidewalks, because drugs aren’t really illegal in Canada. There are the dispensaries where they can get methadone to wean themselves off the hard stuff with the light stuff. Now there is Fentanyl, which can get you off all of the stuff and into nowhere. There are the marijuana places to get pot that doesn’t get you high but takes the pain away. It isn’t unusual to see needles strewn on the streets or to look down alleyways and think of Night of the Living Dead as people drift-walk to make their deals, their bodies jumping out of their skin, causing them to shake what they were kicking with a spurt of energy like an overcome fan at a rock show where the bass solo has become overbearing and painful and you have to dance like Billy Squier to get comfortable.

  I thought of the strange music one man must’ve been hearing in his brain when I saw him humping a garbage can and playing drums on it at the same time. And I saw many skinny bodies looking close to death itself. There was a blond woman in pigtails, with the particular style of a talisman, fringing on the edge, and receiving the guidance of the gods. She was probably around my age, and dressed in rainbow colors that were mismatched. She pointed at me, laughing like she knew me, and I smiled back at her as we were both crossing the street. When she passed me she said, “Hey, crazy lady! It’s good to see you came out!” Right on, me too! The way the community existed in harmony made me think of bees returning to a strange and self-destructive honeycomb—their system was working and they didn’t have to confuse it further with prison. They didn’t have to be locked up. It just felt more humane over there, like they give people a chance even if everyone else is paying for it. One life to live, you know? We’re really not here that long.

  In the same neighborhood, there was a brand-new yoga studio called Stretch. It was a huge industrial space that had been remodeled in the same modern and recycled style that I’d seen in Berlin. The front room was huge, with lots of light, and I was greeted by a nervous greyhound when I entered. It belonged to the owner, a Frenchwoman named Emmanuelle who had her hair wrapped in a scarf, in “gleaner” fashion. She was sitting on a bench and warming her back by the fireplace. It wasn’t a real fireplace but an assemble-yourself modern design, made of cardboard logs with self-contained battery-powered lightbulbs placed underneath for a glow. She was breastfeeding her baby as I sat down and introduced myself and then signed up for class.

  I’d taken another class at a donation-only place where you pay however much you want. It’s called Yoga to the People and they have a studio in New York—you can go when we land. It’s great because it’s so varied experience-wise, and it’s crowded to the point of becoming private. The teacher asked the students to share something they were grateful for and several said that spring was coming soon. This was January. When the long-haired blond fellow in front of me said that he, too, was grateful for the upcoming spring, I scooted up my mat and asked him why I kept hearing this, that it was January and it was supposed to be cold. He shook his long blond mane. “Well, I live on a boat off one of the islands and this weather’s not good for sleeping,” he said. “When spring comes, you’ll see. This place is different in the spring.”

  * * *

  –

  Stretch had a teacher named Risto, who became my favorite. He teaches a “rocket” class, which is a “self-made series” that he’d learned from one of his teachers. It speeds you through some key poses of the Ashtanga practice to get you stronger for, say, handstands in the middle of the room, straight up, like a rocket. He describes the series as a shortcut but it’s cool, it’s copacetic. Risto is short for Christopher, someone pointed out.

  He smiled big when I saw him at first, recognizing me from my work, which I mistook for flirting. He’s very handsome and over six feet tall and covered in tattoos. He’d been in showbiz, as a creature actor and stunt worker, but he left all that to do something more meaningful and less of a grind. He got tired of the fifteen-hour days dressed as a predator or snake-man character, and ripping all that stuff off his face and body once the day was done.

  It was easy to go to his class; he was inspiring. He took the “Vancouver people are outdoorsy” vibe to a whole other level—he skied and snowboarded, and when I noticed he was limping, he mentioned an impending hip surgery that wasn’t his first. When I asked what happened, he laughed and shrugged. “You know . . . flying into trees . . .”

  I liked t
he difference of these men, a type I imagined to be specific to the Pacific Northwest—active in the manly way I’d mostly only seen on TV: Keanu Reeves, Evel Knievel, Michael Phelps, Liam Neeson, Björn Borg. I like thinking about what creates that force, that speed, that grace, and that authenticity. In a good man, it’s just fantastic.

  I’m thinking now of Manly from Little House on the Prairie. He was twice the size of Laura, or “Half Pint.” Manly’s full name was Almanzo, which was a strange name for a prairie man in the middle of nowhere, so everyone called him Manny. Laura mistook his name for “Manly” and he said she was the only one who could call him that. Manly wore mainly khakis and linen button-downs and donned a dusty beige pioneer hat, which was the fashion then in prairie times. He’d enter scenes mopping his brow with a hand towel, from the sweat of chopping wood, or he’d be yodeling, having finished his carpentry work.

  * * *

  –

  In Lost in Space, we had our very own creature actor, Brian Steele, who played our robot. I had met him during Blade: Trinity when he played the Beast. I’d conversed and snacked with the devil, you could say, and he was really a nice guy underneath all that rubber and plastic and horns and glue. I’d found myself drawn to him and listening to his stories, which involved so much physical prowess that I was humbled. I think he’s ridden his bicycle around the world.

  He still had that same force and energy now. At his first reading as the robot, he showed up in costume looking all fierce and I held my iPhone to his body, asking to check my email. He took it almost as a slight to his character but he was good humored about it. Brian smiles most of the time, with the satisfaction of endurance that makes athletes high. He sported a short Mohawk that swooped on the top of his head, like the top of a soft-serve ice-cream cone. His voice naturally boomed without being overbearing.

  In the Stretch studio, I cried in Risto’s class, and not because he didn’t ask me out or I’d never gotten a tattoo. I had started breathing again—that ujjayi/Star Wars breath. I started to let go of all that had been overwhelming. The past few years had been a meltdown of my Porsche. And then of everything that I couldn’t control, like the strangeness of the culture, and to quote Dave Chappelle, “When has America ever given a fuck about how anyone feels inside?” The disastrous happenings everywhere, all over the world—the weather, for instance, easily causing turmoil and taking over the peace of mind of absolutely everybody—and the guns.

  What’s the Lou Reed song where he says that people just don’t act rational, they think they’re just on TV?

  I have a Lou Reed story, but we’re landing soon.

  * * *

  –

  Many yoga classes end with a prayer: “May all beings be free from suffering.” Risto ended his class with that, as well as with “Be kind to everyone out there.” All my teachers and mothers and fathers out there (especially my actual parents) and my brothers and sisters (especially my twin)—bless them, everyone, everything. “It takes courage to live a life,” as Mildred said, and “hold on to yourself,” everybody. We never expected life to look like this and it will never look like this again. Grace is hard earned. “There aren’t enough books about loneliness,” was another thing Mildred said.

  After class, I stopped in the front room and sat by the makeshift fireplace. There were colorful pieces of stretch fabric hanging from the ceiling—maybe ten of them. I asked Emmanuelle about them—“Is this for acroyoga or Iyengar yoga?”—and she said they weren’t for either. They were for the “hammock classes,” an idea that she’d come up with, saying, “People come to lie in the hammocks and listen to live cello music.” I wondered if hammock classes were a thing in Canada. She said no, not that she knew of, so she had figured, “Why not?” How French of her, how Canadian. I went to lie down in the yellow one. The fabric was as big as a tablecloth and I stretched my body out in it and swung, sinking my weight into the yellow, which enveloped me like the sun, and I started to get excited for spring.

  How do I land? Something, come here.

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you, formerly Blue Rider Press, and its publisher, David Rosenthal, for his enthusiasm over a book by an actress that included a chapter about pottery. Sarah Hochman, my first editor, for her early and essential work and her push toward a seriousness in the writing, before she left. And to Jill J. Schwartzman, who took over as editor, for her perspective in structuring the book and support of this new foray. David Kuhn and his team at Aevitas, especially Becky Sweren, for her early editing, and Kate Mack in the art department. Jason L. Booher, the art director, for not only helping me cut cardboard but assisting with the photographer, Craig McDean, whose talent in capturing the images was a real coup. Seema Mahanian, for additional editing support, flying in for freelance editing, and Shubhani Sarkar, for freelance interior design—two smart and gifted beauties. Leana Zuniga of Electric Feathers for her brilliant clothing designs and styling and her cousin Jean-Paul Miller, for his assistance. Jess Rotter, for her illustration work, as well as being a new friend. Diego Montoya, for building the mirror-mask with me! Jeffrey Loura, whose giant sphere was handed graciously over for the Carl Sagan moment. To La Mano Pottery, especially Julie Hadley, for squeezing me into their studio to shoot. Jane Berliner, my manager at Authentic, whose support and intelligence has given me strength and confidence. Josan Giletti, for her spiritual guidance, as well as Alexander Tolken for his. Michael Marsman, my Jungian analyst friend, for his archetypal awareness and insight. Jack Ferver, who for years has inspired and supported me to produce something that is mine. And Tonya Hurley, who mothered me through the process, and Mary-Louise Parker, as sister wife. Mark Stafford, my psychoanalyst, who taught me to listen more deeply to language and instinct, and helped open the door to writing. My parents, my greatest teachers, in the most profound sense, and my twin brother, Chris, for telling me I was an artist when I didn’t know what it was. To my extended family, especially Aunt Peggy, for her amazing memory and Samantha Constant, my-cousin-as-sister, for her wisdom. Keagan Funk, for his love and support and design of the Fireball Cocktail. For my other friends, who have been a part of my stories, and to the quick acquaintances, in passing, like the ones on airplanes. The kindness of these strangers I’ve always depended on, as well as my companion on the journey, my Jiminy Cricket, Gracie, whose wig work in this book was done by paw. And last but not least, my new Lost in Space family. And, finally, Marcia Brill.

  About the Author

  Parker Posey is well known for her work with many independent filmmakers of her generation, including Richard Linklater, Hal Hartley, Zoe Cassavetes, and Rebecca Miller. Following her breakout role in the cult hit Dazed and Confused, she starred in Christopher Guest’s classic mockumentaries and appeared in such Hollywood films as You’ve Got Mail, Superman Returns, Josie and the Pussycats, Scream 3, and Blade: Trinity. Posey currently plays Dr. Smith in the Netflix remake of Lost in Space.

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