Shouting into the Wind Saying my piece in a windy world.

I had a lot planned today.  Laundry to do, check to deposit, dishes in the dishwasher to unload, new ones to shove in, my fancy new wine glasses to meticulously hand wash because I refuse to put them in the dishwasher, and of course, there is the writing — the ‘work on my pilot rewrite’ writing or the ‘rework the first act of new pilot’ writing or even the ‘hash out an outline for this feature spec’ writing… but I’ve put it all aside right at this moment, because right now, there is nothing I want to do more than talk to you about something.

It’s something I’ve put off a very long time, in part, because I fear that talking about it may not make any difference, and could in fact make things worse.  It’s been on my mind all morning, because it is every morning. And every afternoon. And every night.  Since I’m not male, you probably surmise I’m not thinking about sex all the time, so you can stand down from worrying if this is an X-rated post.

I want to talk to you about the Dark Cloud.

The dark cloud has been with me as long as I can remember.  I refer to it as the ‘dark cloud’ because of a specific poem I wrote when I was a kid, all imagery of scary darkness and frightening forests and anger and pain.  The dark cloud loomed over all of that other stuff, as it does in my real life.  The dark cloud has descended upon me so often in my life and when it does its effects are devastating — relationships destroyed, personal health and happiness abandoned, apathy and hopelessness conquering all else.

My “dark cloud” is clinical depression.

I was diagnosed officially in 2000, but it has been with me all my life.  There’s no abuse, no divorce, no tragedy that I can point to that has impacted my ability to be happy as an adult.  All I have to look to is myself and this constant feeling of inadequacy, of failure and ennui.  I had been functioning with it for many years, but it wasn’t until I headed down a very dark spiral in 2000 that a friend of mine finally alerted me to the fact I needed to get professional help.

“I can’t help you with this anymore.  I think you need to find someone who can.”

Those were the words that set me down the path of getting help and learning that admitting I needed help wasn’t itself a failure — it was a first step toward happiness.  So, I called up the “behavioral health” (I love that euphemism) coverage provider for my then-job in Orlando and got a referral and an appointment to be assessed.  It didn’t take much for them to figure out I was clinically depressed.  From there I was assigned a therapist and not long after I was prescribed medication.

For the first time in my life, I felt like I had control.

Over the next ten years, I would go through fits and starts of mental health.  Most of the time, I’d be functioning incredibly well, and handling depression became easier.  There was a brief time after my initial move to Los Angeles in 2003 that I had to deal with finding a new therapist and getting a new prescription, but I didn’t let my mental health progress lapse for more than two or three months.  Even after I was laid off from my job in 2009 I had built up enough coping mechanisms and good mental health practices that I still looked to the huge question mark of my future with optimism — being laid off was an opportunity to pursue my true dreams!  For the year following my lay off I certainly saw my therapist more (which really, this was probably my 8th or 9th therapist. There’s always been a revolving door there, but that’s the nature of things) and handled my new situation pretty well.  Even when relationships fell apart I weathered the storm with little damage.

Then my COBRA coverage ended.  My supply of anti-depressants dried up.  For awhile I was actually happy to get off my medication;  I eased myself off by ratcheting down the dose from the supply I had available once I no longer had any refills remaining.  It felt liberating — I had been chained to a drug every day of my life for 10 years — why wouldn’t I want to try to break free of that?  I had also read extensively about the school of thought that drugs weren’t really the answer for everyone.  I had always hoped that the drugs would be a temporary arrangement anyway, so moving myself off of them seemed like a good arrangement.

The trouble with having depression is that it is a sneaky bastard of a condition (I refuse to call it a ‘disease’) — very often I don’t recognize the signs that I am in a downward spiral until I’m circling the drain, about to fall in.  I’ll go days and weeks saying ‘I’m fine’ when I am very clearly not fine.  In fact, I sometimes even used this system to my advantage.  I figured as long as nobody noticed I wasn’t fine, then there was nothing really to worry about.  I never actually start worrying until I hear this from someone who is very close to me (family member, inner circle friend):

“Hey, are you okay? I mean, really okay?”

That’s when I know I’m not pulling one over on anyone anymore.

A few months ago I discovered a lost cache of anti-depressants in my bathroom.  I debated with myself for a month whether to take them, as they were an older prescription, one I had before my medication had been switched up when it had lost efficacy.  Of course now that I wasn’t taking anything, it seemed like they might work again.  Also, now that I was paying for my own health insurance, I reasoned I could start with these, and if they helped, I could ask my doctor to write me a prescription (I can’t actually see a therapist or a psychiatrist under this health plan — the cost for that is prohibitively expensive).  So I gave them a shot.  Usually it takes about four weeks to notice any change from the medication, but I noticed improvement within 2 weeks, and that was on half the dosage I had (I scored the pills).  After about 40 days, I noticed I only had about a week or so of pills left, so I called my doctor to arrange for a prescription…

…it never got called in.

Now at this point, I should have called my doctor back, asking why, but the dark cloud has a way of causing self-defeat.  I never called her back.  My self-defeating brain told me that if it didn’t get called in, ‘it was because she couldn’t authorize the prescription, which would mean I couldn’t have it, and what’s the point of raising a fuss about something when there’s nothing that can be done about it…’

We all have self-talk.  Those moments when you have to psych yourself up to do something or when you tell yourself you can’t do something… that’s self-talk.  Mine is nonstop.  Seriously, my self-talk is a chatty Cathy, and it never shuts up.  If the medication does anything, it shuts up my negative self-talk or at least mutes it so I can function in my life.

My self-talk sounds like this: “I don’t know why you bother with this script.  You’ve been working on it for months and it isn’t getting any better.  No one loves it — you’ve not gotten a single note raving about it.  If they’re all so critical of it, it must be bad, so you should probably just quit working on it.  Besides, it’s not like you’ve written anything else that’s good.  If you had, you’d be doing so much better by now, you might even have an agent.  But then, that’s you — you can’t finish anything; you still have a book to read that you started a year ago.  Oh and don’t try to counter me by bringing up the ‘Mars’ thing — you’re just piggybacking on someone else’s talent for that project and you know it.  Your sister is a better writer than you and she’s been doing this half as long as you have.  You know what else? She’s prettier than you are.  She’s pretty and younger and more talented.  She writes with you out of pity because she feels guilty that you aren’t capable of having your own career.  She’s also more well-adjusted and has better relationships than you do because you are an introverted freak who can’t keep a relationship going.  Everyone knows you are the quiet and less talented sister — that’s why she’s so popular and you aren’t.  You hide in your room and refuse to wear makeup or go out (and let’s not even get started about how fat you are) so of course you are social kryptonite on the scale of Gollum.  You look a lot like Gollum actually.  Perhaps you should live in a dark cave, or perhaps, you shouldn’t live at all…

Yep.  That’s self-talk.  It’s horrible.  Believe me, it was effortless to write that, because most of that stuff runs through my head at some point, and it all usually ends up in the same place “perhaps you shouldn’t live at all…”

Believe me, I’m too much of a coward to ever actually kill myself (I really hate pain), but the self-talk plants this constant refrain in my head — that I’m worthless, I’m talentless, I’m ugly, I’m fat, I’m old, I’m past my prime, that everyone around me is better, that I’m kidding myself, that all I do is for naught.  There have been more nights than I can count where I have gone to bed fantasizing of never waking up again — and that’s a comforting thought that allows me to fall asleep.  THAT SHOULD NOT BE.

Why am I posting about this, publicly? And why now?

Because last night was another one of those nights — where I lulled myself to sleep by thinking about it being my last night alive — that maybe I’d just die in my sleep and the pain would be over.

Because this morning I woke up from a dream where someone said “I can’t help you anymore.  I think you should find someone who can.”

Because I decided I was done with living in pain, but dying wasn’t the answer.  I did this pain for years before my first step, and it got me nowhere.  Revisiting the pain doesn’t help anything, and it certainly doesn’t make me happy.

Because I really don’t want other people to suffer as I have suffered.  If some person reads this, who has never sought help for their depression and sees a reflection of him or herself here and decides they don’t want to live like this anymore, then it will have all been worth it.

This is the scariest thing I’ve ever written on my blog.  It’s more terrifying than when I wrote about career success or failure, or putting my creative work on display.  It’s scary because THIS IS ME.  This is who I am, this is what I live with.  Every day.  For the last two years I’ve let the dark cloud rule my life, and I’m not letting that happen anymore.  Today I’m taking back control.

I will probably never get the dark cloud out of my life, but I can certainly push it far enough away it doesn’t interfere with my ability to live my life.  I also figure that most of my friends already suspected I was a ‘brooding artist’ type — but I don’t want to be the artist who suffers for their art and then dies for it.  Also, brooding is really not fun.  I miss my friends.  I miss you.  I miss living my life and never regretting it, even when I make mistakes or take wrong turns.

I don’t ask for people to walk on eggshells or treat me as a fragile porcelain doll.  I know my true friends will just nod their heads and tell me to get on with it already with a virtual slap on the ass to get back in the game.  They won’t tell me to stop whining or mock me for my admission — they’ll just quietly support.  That’s all I want.  You don’t need to post an ‘atta girl’ in my comments here — I’m not looking for that.  I don’t need that.  What I do need, is for people to be more conscious that someone they know may be in this kind of pain and needs help.  The last thing people suffering depression want to do is admit they need help.

I’ve asked for help once, so I know I can do it again.  I called my doctor today and asked for that refill…hours later, I got the call back.  The prescription is being called in now.

It’s a step I was ready to take and now that I have, I am going to work hard not to move back to where I’ve been the last few months.

Thanks for listening.

Posted under Uncategorized

Welcome to Year Nine.

It’s been on my mind a lot lately — I moved to Los Angeles 9 years ago. I have been at this, the trying to break into Hollywood, becoming a paid writer (consistently paid writer) for NINE YEARS. In a lot of ways, it feels like the pressure is really on now. Why,  you ask?

Because I gave myself 10 years to make this happen.

Ten years — that’s what most people say it took to have success. The ten year overnight success, is a very common story.  Anything less than 10 years feels like you are half-assing it, not being realistic about your goal, but ten years, that feels like a lifetime, SO much time.

And yet, here I am, facing down year nine…and it doesn’t feel like it’s been that long.

And there’s all the time I’ve spent meeting people, figuring out “the system,” and then figuring out the system is broken, and then figuring out that the system doesn’t really matter, and then learning the craft, writing my early, horrible scripts which I look back on and laugh, but recognize that they were essential to my learning… but I’m still writing horrible scripts.  And there are people who are whizzing past me on the Hollywood Freeway, getting agents, getting managers, getting deals.

I’m always happy for them. Always. And then I go drown myself in my own truths.

I still don’t have a portfolio. I have nothing to show for this 9 years.

People ask why I don’t have a manager by now, or why I don’t have an agent, and that’s pretty much the reason. “I’ve got nothing to show them.”

When I did an assessment of last year, it felt like I had accomplished a lot — I got a job assisting a writer — a REAL Hollywood writer!  I finished writing a new pilot, and then, I wrote a new spec.

And now I’m rewriting the pilot.  The spec will soon be unusable for the competitions and fellowship/program entries. I’m writing a new pilot, which will go through the rewrite process, eventually. I’m writing a feature spec, which will also go through the rewrite machine…

It’s a never ending process.  Welcome to the reality — “making it” in this business is non-stop work.  Once you climb one hill, all you will really see is the next hill, and the one after that, and the one after that… in biblical terms, this is good — you should want to see the hills.  If you see a valley — well, they don’t call it the “Valley of Death” for nothing.

I’ve noticed a lot of my fellow screenwriting bloggers, the ones who started recording their journeys around the same time I did, have come back to their blogs, feeling like they have something new to say.  I count myself among them.  I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to consistently blog again, but lately, I’ve felt a lot more like I did when I started this blog; I feel like I have something to say.

Still ‘shouting.’ Still very windy.

Posted under randomness

…or a new blog post from me! Happy Holidays to all!

I’m working up a post on my year in review and a few other odds and ends (you have no idea how many draft posts I have stashed away), so I hope you’ll come by. I promise to Tweet, Post on FB, etc when the new blog post goes up, so hopefully you won’t miss it…

unless you want to. But that’s up to you.

Posted under Uncategorized

The first two writing program deadlines are today.  I finished my ABC and Warner Bros. applications yesterday, and now must turn focus to finishing pilot rewrites, so some kick-ass manager will want to take me on.

I wish I had more to talk about.  It’s definitely a transition phase right now.

I hope your June is not gloomy.  Maybe I’ll have more to say about this later.  Probably.

(ignore this)

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Posted under Uncategorized

The last three featured characters in the pilot of #Follow:

Eric Dunphy –

Eric is more than just best friend and business partner to Connor. He’s an artist, a dreamer. Where Connor provides the business sense, Eric is the idea generator. Though he’s had no formal training or schooling, he is extremely intuitive and talented when it comes to creating new software, and channels the rest of his imagination into his painting and sculpture work. Eric has long pined for Bree, but she has always been unavailable and even a little distant at times. He’s never really liked Doug very much — he thought their group was better without him, but since everyone else seems to like having him around, he tolerates him.

Bree Sanders –

Bree fancies herself a party girl with limits. She’s put her ‘crazy’ days behind her, but she still loves to drink and have fun with her friends. Lately she’s been feeling like something is missing in her life, but she really can’t imagine what it is. After all, she has a great job – she’s written a couple of chick-lit books and spends a lot of time on the lecture circuit. A boyfriend would be a distraction, but that doesn’t keep her from going out and having a good time (or an occasional hookup).

Doug Litwiller –

Doug met this circle of friends more recently. He loved their adventurous spirit and enthusiasm for traveling together and having fun. He’s only been around for a couple of years, and if you were to ask him how he met the group, he’d probably tell you that he feels like he’s always known them. In truth, no one else really remembers when he started hanging out with them either…

Posted under writing

While it is probable that my time constraints on writing the script were evident in the finished product, they were made tighter by the fact that I really didn’t feel I could write the 7 page script without first throwing down a lot of backstory and character bios. The actors did a lot to inform their characters, and so these bios are definitely missing some aspects which they brought to the finished product.

Still, I thought someone might be interested in knowing more about the 7 characters of #Follow…

Matt McGreevy — Also known in our script as, “The running man,” Matt is at the end of his rope. He’s been in hiding and on the run for the last year or two and is no stranger to drug use. It’s understandable why he’s such a mess; after all, he’s responsible for keeping his friends safe. The secrets he holds are worth a fortune, and put the lives of Connor, Josh, Abby, Bree and Eric at great risk. The pressure of always being on the move, staying one step ahead of his pursuers was taking a toll, and inevitably he found himself on the top of a tall building, contemplating hiding his friends secrets permanently. Trouble is, they are less safe with him dead, so when he saw the reminder on his phone for Connor’s birthday, it pulled him back from the brink and sent him running…he knew what they’d be up to at Connor’s party, and he had to at least try to stop them before they started asking too many questions…and one question in particular.

Connor — If there’s a center to the group, it is Connor. Lifelong friends with Eric, Connor has been the magnet which drew the rest of this group of friends together. Connor and Eric started a software company, which has been moderately successful, though neither of them have thus far been successful in their personal lives. For some time Connor has found that his close friendship with Abby has led him to feel something more for her, but he was never able to pull the trigger and ask her on a date. There’s something that gnaws at Connor — he doesn’t sleep well, and though he seems pretty easy going and friendly, he has a compulsive need to understand everything, which proves difficult when he pulls a question that no one can answer.

Josh Worthington — Josh met Connor and Eric at a conference, where they soon found they all shared a love of travel and adventure. He practices intellectual property law, so the fact he can work with his friends a huge plus. Josh is ambitious and goes after what he wants. When he decided he wanted Abby, he pursued her, where Connor held back. He takes his relationship with Abby very seriously, and feels a little threatened by the easy friendship she shares with Connor. His constant pursuit of excellence and having a ‘perfect’ life causes him some dramatic mood swings at times. Over the last few months, his moods have taken a decidedly darker turn, and he has had a more difficult time connecting with his friends and the woman he loves. Josh has been in touch with Matt a couple of times over the last few years, but does not know the truth about April 2nd or the secrets Matt is keeping to protect them all.

Abigail (Abby) Newman — Abby became friends with Connor and Eric after they first started their company, and she was hired as their head of marketing. They all bonded very quickly, and before long were taking trips together and sharing adventures. Abby has a particularly strong bond with Connor, and she has always had an easy friendship with him, much to Josh’s dismay. Abby at one time hoped that Connor would ask her out, but Josh’s pursuit of her affection made her fall in love with him. Still, it’s a challenge to deal with Josh at times — his mood swings cause a great deal of tension in their relationship, and he refuses to seek out a therapist or a psychiatrist to deal with the issue. Abby is incredibly intuitive and is far more intelligent than her marketing background would necessarily indicate.

Bios for Bree, Eric and Doug still to come!

Posted under writing

One of the requirements for the Celebrate the Web 4 Festival was to submit a one-sheet explanation/overview of the overall series. So, just for fun, here is what I submitted — and I’ll be posting character bios (which were not required and not submitted) later today.
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#Follow is an episodic thriller/mystery series about a group of friends who discover that their memories of the past may not be accurate reflections of reality. Inspired by the quote from William Gibson, “Time moves in one direction, memory in another,” the series seeks to answer two interrelated questions: “As time passes, do our memories define us, or, can we escape the trappings of our past to become something else?” How much do our collective memories determine what we are and what happens to us when those memories are altered?

Eric, Josh, Abby, Bree and Doug have gathered to celebrate Connor’s birthday. While quizzing each other on events from their past, Connor puzzles over a strange question – “What happened on 4/2?” No one seems to know what significance the date holds or who even wrote the question. As they search for the meaning of this elusive date, they are interrupted by the unexpected arrival of their old friend Matt, who they haven’t seen in five years. Matt has pulled himself back from the edge (literally) to help his friends. He races to warn them that they aren’t safe; they all need to run.

Now the friends must try to understand the truth about their past, and why it puts their lives in jeopardy. They soon discover that their collective memories are suspect and may not represent their true history together. Further, someone else knows about their mysterious past and wants to erase all trace of it, even if it means killing them all to accomplish the task. Who are they running from? Why are they in danger? What important event happened on April 2nd and why don’t they remember it? Quickly the friends find themselves on the run, with an urgent need to find the answers to these and other questions as they try to stay alive.

Like popular epic television series such as “Lost” and “The Walking Dead,” “#Follow” is a thrilling story about a group of people who must band together to make peace with their past and work to build a future by staying alive.

Posted under writing

Today I finished the marathon that was the Celebrate the Web 4 Webseries Pilot Competition.  The challenge was to write/shoot/finish a webseries pilot in 7 days.

I expect to blog a lot about my experiences, as there were a lot of ‘firsts’ for me this week.

For better or worse, I no longer rest on the laurels of my teen opus “Stegron” which I shot for Jules when she was in high school — she was doing a school report on B-movies of the fifties, so we made one to accompany her paper.

She got an A, which, for a schlocky B-movie made me quite proud.

But what I did this week… far beyond anything I’ve done before.  I don’t mean necessarily quality but just the amount of work, the decision making, the responsibility…it was a lot.  And it was hard.  And sometimes I thought I was insanely stupid for trying to do this.

But somehow, I made it through the week, completed a project, and actually wouldn’t mind doing it again (but, not in a race like this — I’d like to have more than 5 hours to write my script).

There are lots of people to thank, lots of stories to share.  For now, I’ll just leave you with this.  Ladies and gentlemen, my little baby… #FOLLOW.

You can watch the other 12 pilots here and if you feel like voting for us, that would be nifty.

Thanks.  Now I’m gonna go sleep.

Posted under writing

I’ve got two today! First, I wrote a review of the new “Criminal Minds” spinoff that will insure I never get hired by anyone involved with that show. It’s at Seat42F, of course.

My second act of public suicide is this: I have for some unknown (and likely non-existent) reason signed up to participate in the Celebrate the Web 4 Festival.

I must now assemble a team of questionable sanity to join me in this endeavor the week of March 3rd.  If you are feeling suicidal yourself and want to join me, drop me a line at the usual places (Twitter, Facebook, Email)

More to come on that nonsense next week.  This week, I’m writing like a demon. And about demons.  It’s a whole demon thing.

Posted under reviews, writing

Here’s a bit of the short story I’ve written, which I am adapting into a webseries.  I hope to shoot in 2 or 3 months.

Prepare to hear more about this in the near future.

A lot more.

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Love Sucks

By Shawna Benson

It’s so hard to meet people these days.  Everyone is so disconnected now, keeping touch over the modern equivalent to tin cans and string.  It gets even worse when you live in the city, like I do.  It’s nearly impossible to meet quality men in the city.  I know some people meet their future spouse at work, but I deal with lawyers enough all day; the last thing I want to do is be married to one.

Don’t get me wrong, I love being a lawyer.  Sometimes I even get to help people.  In those moments, you feel useful, and honestly, there isn’t a better feeling in the world than when you are contributing something, rather than taking.

People are always taking in our society.  I try to give back, but this is why I don’t believe in karma or the law of attraction or any of that new age nonsense.  It seems to me that if there really were a great big karmic ledger somewhere, I’d be more than overdue to have someone special in my life.  I hardly think Scooter counts.  Scooter is a great dog, but I need more than a furry companion to take for walks.

I need a man.

I know what you’re thinking.  That’s not very progressive of me.  Admitting to “needing a man” must set back feminism at least 30 years, right?  Well, Gloria Steinem, I’m not a fish and a man is not a bicycle.  I have needs, you know.

Look at this guy – he’s got to be kidding with his stinky-ass cologne and the obscene globs of gel in his hair.  I’m not saying I’m the best catch, but if this is as good as it gets in here tonight, I am definitely going home alone.

Definitely.  Okay, maybe not.  I’d like to think I can just go home, throw on my sloppiest pajamas and curl up on the couch with a book, but inevitably something takes hold of me as I sit and ponder the dearth of gentlemen in the world.  I start the evening looking for a life partner, a mate.  Gradually, once the terrain is surveyed, I’m happy to settle for someone to talk to, just for the evening.  By the end of the night, I’m eyeing the guy by the jukebox who reeks of Wild Turkey and Polo.

It’s not easy to acknowledge who you are and what you need to make yourself whole.  Let me tell you, I went to a therapist for months before I learned the truth.  I had been wrestling with this question of why I couldn’t keep a relationship going, why the man I was with always seemed to just…shrivel up and die.  My therapist suggested that my extreme use of language to describe my situation was a sign of job stress.  That was the last time I saw the therapist.

I did finally learn what the problem was, but it wasn’t a therapist who helped me understand.

It was a gypsy.

I was at the farmer’s market, trying to decide between the asparagus and the Brussels sprouts for dinner, when this woman sidled up next to me and started looking at the peppers.  She leaned across me to pick up some gorgeous habaneros when I heard her mutter, “You don’t have to be alone, you know.”

It was like she had reached into my brain and pulled out the thought I was having.  As I stood there, asparagus in one hand and sprouts in the other I was having one of the great revelatory thoughts of my life.  I wasn’t just weighing a produce decision in my mind, but I was contemplating a much bigger conundrum: why can’t I keep a man around?  And it was then the thought popped into my head: I am going to die alone.

But there she was.  I hadn’t even noticed her, so narcissistic was I, wrapped up in my own little drama.  And as soon as she said it, I knew she was right.

“Excuse me?” I asked her, because how could I say anything else.  This woman, a short, round innocent little thing – like she stepped out of some kid’s storybook of what a kindly older woman should be – she smiled at me.  Instead of answering, she paid the man for her peppers and handed me a card.  Naturally I had to read it: Svenja Kamengorski.  Gypsy.

Gypsy?  I may have even said it aloud, but she wasn’t around any longer to hear it – she was gone.

I went home that afternoon (having decided to cook kale instead of asparagus or sprouts) and sat at my kitchen table, staring at the card.  Why did she give me her card?  Why does a gypsy even have a business card?

So of course, I googled her.  I mean, she has a business card, she obviously is hip to the modern age!  Sure enough, I found her website, but it was for an at home floral business.  I almost gave up right there, until I noticed a little icon at the bottom of the page.  I looked again at the business card, and noticed it this time – the same design – an ornate lettering inside a circle.  To anyone on the site, it’d just look like a logo, but I had a hunch…I clicked on the icon, and sure enough, I got this page that just had her address.  I will say she was nice enough to link a google map on there, so I could get directions.  I’m not sure I’d have found her if not for that map, because she lived out in the middle of fucking nowhere.

I’d heard about this town where psychics, aura readers, and gypsies lived.  It was like a giant circus sideshow, but with a grocery store.  I had done a little research before I went there, trying to find out what kind of town this gypsy woman had chosen as her home.  I was almost tempted to try out some of the other “offerings” in the town; would the aura reader tell me why I was always so hungry to have a man, or should I go to the tarot card reader?  In the end, I chose to see the woman who had chosen me.  What I learned about Svenja was that she kept a low profile in that town – she had no storefront with voodoo witchcraft or mysterious trinkets.  She was supposedly a reincarnation of a more notable gypsy from one of those Eastern European countries you can’t really pronounce…the old world.  The one mention of her I did find indicated that she was a specialist in helping people find their true selves, who it is they are and what they need to fulfill their destinies.  That was exactly what I needed.

I drove up to the town on a Saturday.  I hadn’t told anyone where I was going, because I knew what people would say.  After all, I’m a lawyer, an intellectual, and the idea of someone like me going to see someone like Svenja… it wouldn’t make sense to them.  They’d think I’d gone round the bend and send me back to the idiot therapist who thought all of my problems were related to stress.

It was actually a really nice drive.  One of the things I realized was that I don’t get out of the city nearly enough.  I’ve never considered myself to be a “hippie,” but being out away from cities and traffic and noise was great.  I remember that one of the guys I dated last year was a total outdoorsy-type.  He’d go hiking and camping and fishing…he wanted me to come with him once, so I did.

That didn’t go so well.  Suffice to say, I never saw him again after that weekend.

I pulled into the tiny town with only a gas station and a Moose Lodge to its name and drove down the dirt roads to a little ramshackle house.  I swear this house was at the end of the world.  The road just kept going and going for miles and every time I thought I had gone too far and missed it, a little sign with her name on it would pop up, pointing further down the road.  She wasn’t kidding about the floral business.  After miles of dusty, rocky road, I pulled up to a house that appeared to reside in the Garden of Eden.  I have no idea how she got those trees, flowers and grass to not just live on the rocky outcropping, but actually thrive there.  That was proof enough that there was something otherworldly going on.

I knocked on her door.  From somewhere inside this cottage was some music from the 1920’s or 30’s.  I wasn’t surprised when I saw an actual Victrola playing the record.  The door opened and… well, first, let me just preface this by saying that Svenja is a really nice lady.  I didn’t know what to expect when I got there, and she couldn’t have been more cordial and accommodating.  But when she first opened that door, I thought, ‘my God, this woman is going to kill me and hide my body.’  I mean, honestly, the idea wasn’t that farfetched.  Svenja looked very normal, like someone I might find living down the street.  Granted her street and mine are very different, but you get the idea.  What made my blood run cold were her eyes.  They were black, like tiny onyx stones drilling into my skull, assessing me.  Her pupils were so dark and large I almost couldn’t see the whites of her corneas around them.  Of course, it was dark in that house, so that’s probably why her pupils were so dilated.

She nodded to me, as if I was exactly who she was expecting and ushered me inside her house.  Immediately I smelled exotic spices and herbs.  When I asked if she made potions, she noted it was her turn to make goulash for a potluck dinner.

I guess even paranormals have potlucks.

{To Be Continued…}

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Posted under randomness, writing