Fear Not for Their Faces

This is the thing about me, tonight, at least. There will be other things about me tomorrow. There were other things about me yesterday. But the thing about me, tonight, I realized as I was cutting, strutting my way through a San Miguel night, alone, sipping the sky, sporting a bottle of wine and a sneer, is that I am tired of being afraid. Who told us life is about fear? Who said:

This is the way you will live. You will be afraid. Of loss. Of love. Of hate. Of pain. Of joy. Of spiders. Of snakes. Of mice. Of elephants. Of tall buildings. Of caves. Of cities. Of country sides. Of germs. Of cleaning agents. Of laughter. Of tears. Of celibacy. Of sex. Of poverty. Of wealth. Of failure. Of success. Of marriage. Of divorce. Of heaven. Of hell. Of God. Of Satan. Of life. Of death. You will be afraid of everything, and when you are done being afraid, you will die. Who made that rule anyway?

Tonight, I have to brag, I rocked a stage surrounded on all sides by three hundred year old stone walls. The audience was small, but they were there, and I loved them, and I rocked them. I would be modest, but why? Why are we afraid to celebrate our successes? Come on! Live a little! Cry when you fail! Sing when you succeed! High kick and go all Singin’-in-the-Rain on the world’s ass. Be true. Be you. That blue thing in the middle of your belly that whispers your truth. Be that, and don’t apologize. My blue thing whispers I rocked the stage. Well, it shrieks that, actually, and does jazz hands. My blue thing tosses its hair and high fives God and throws back three shots of tequila to toast my success.

Because this is about more than acting. It is about life. It is about choosing to live without fear. In any given situation, you always have two choices. Fear or courage. And the spoils go to the strong. (So do the bruises, but hey, who cares about a little soul contusion now and again? Your soul is more resilient than you know. It looks like silk, but if you dig deeper, it is made of cast iron.)

Tonight, when the moment came for me to be afraid, to be afraid that the audience wouldn’t get it, or they would think I was fat, or my director would yell, or I would forget my lines, I decided not to be afraid. I said, “I am tired of being afraid.” So I pulled out all the stops, and I let my soul loose on that stage, and frankly, I made those three hundred year old stone walls stand up a little taller and take notice. They’ve lived so long, seen so much, but I think, tonight, they saw me and thought, now this we’ve never seen.

All the while, I heard inside my head the voice of my beautiful co-actress, Nancy. Nancy who toured with Henry Fonda and played Jeff Bridge’s wife and produced the inaugural production of a Pulitzer Prize winning play, Nancy who traveled the world over and loved and lost and loved and won, Nancy whose strength astounds me—that Nancy. Her voice echoed inside my head saying, “You’ve got it, kid. You are one of the best actresses I’ve worked with. All you need to learn is that you know what to do. Now do it.”

She was right. I knew what to do, and I did it. And I walked home with the beautiful, lively Nancy, back to our gorgeously tiled San Miguel casa. And it occurred to us at ten o’clock at night, lounging on those old world leather sofas in our bare feet and PJ’s, that we needed some wine. I volunteered to fetch it, and dressed again, and walked out the wooden door to wander the San Miguel streets, strut them, more like, thinking I should be afraid. I should be afraid of that catcalling man and that barking dog and that looming darkness. But I am not. And I refuse to be. I am tired of being afraid.

All the shops were closed, save one, but my wandering, crimson tipped toes found it, and I returned triumphant, with a bottle of bad red wine, and we drank it down like it was the nectar of the gods. Because it was.

All of this is the nectar of the gods. Do you see that lilac bush pushing heaven out into the air, making the sky smell like honey? That is a miracle. Let it be what it is, for you, for just one second. Smell it. Taste it. Touch it. Let your blue thing get to know the miracles. (I am fully aware that sounds like a sexual innuendo. So be it. Maybe it should. Sex is the only thing that we let ourselves feel anymore on this planet, so if that makes you feel something, go with it. Although even saying we feel sex is probably an exaggeration. Do we really let ourselves feel when we shut down our hearts and make our skin cold, when we forget to breathe as we thrust forward, toward that six second high, then walk away sweating and clammy and cold and alone?)

We are just too determined to be afraid to notice the miracles taking place every second of every day. If we notice the miracles, they will evaporate, right? Of course they will. And other miracles will flow into the gaps and fill the emptiness. Trust. Don’t fear. Live your life in fear, and you will waste it. And a mind may be a terrible thing to waste, but wasting a life is a catastrophe of epic proportions. Waste milk. Waste money. Waste most things. But, for God’s sake, do not waste your life. Cowardice is the devil’s oldest and best weapon. The ugliest forces in this world have spent centuries, millennia, weaving lies into the tapestry of our lives. Give those lying forces the finger. That’s what your fingers are for, you know. Among other things.

Use your fingers. Strip fear from your heart, the way a painter strips old paint from the walls. Take away the yellowed gray and replace it with vibrant red. Who cares if they don’t love you? Who cares what they dare say? The worst that can happen is you die. And you will. Until then, walk in the sun, barefoot, and hold your head high. When the universe gives you cause to speak, do it. When the time comes for you to say your line, “The incredible shrinking mother fucker,” imagine the back of that one man who told you to be afraid. Imagine that back disappearing into the night, and say that line. Scream it. Grow big while you say it. Grow big while the bully grows small. “The incredible shrinking mother fucker.” Let those words echo off three hundred year old stone walls.

Know who you are. Know the depth and breadth of your soul. Honor it, and say your lines like you mean them. Do everything like you mean it. Because, truth be told: You do. Everything you say, dream, do, is life or death, you know. With every action, every word, you are writing your story in indelible ink. Do you want your story to be: She played it safe, and she looked back, lying in a sanitized hospital bed, wrinkled and bored and unloved, and her last words were, “I wish I would have.” And she died anyway. You wont’ get out of this thing alive. Make it count. Make it mean something. When you go down, go down in flames, screaming a kiss to the sky.

And fuck all if they hate you for it. The world is full of fat, balding crows. So what? Let them do their cawing and their stinking. Hawks are hard to come by. But you, you with those shining eyes and wandering toes and glistening wings, you are a hawk. You do the thing you were born for. You soar. As a book once said, “Fear not for their faces.”

You.

Soar.

This, my child, is the thing beautiful you were born to do.