Oops I did it again…

In my most recent post, I quickly sent it because I was rushing off to bed and didn’t realize I had copied my rough draft into the post instead of the final. I quickly changed it in the morning but it was recently brought to my attention by my English professor mother and grammar nazi accountability partner, Cliff, that the changes didn’t reflect in the initial emails sent to my subscribers.

So this is my confession of a writer’s Cardinal sins and deepest apologies to those who know how to read. Considering the blogging learning curve, I’m sure this isn’t the last time… But I sure as hell hope it is.

Ayu Ani Nishnih, Baby (Navajo Part 1)

2014

Believe it or not, I was once in medical school to be a clinical speech pathologist. However, two years into the program, I’d maxed out my college loans. That’s what happens when one ambitiously pursues two degrees in the ever-popular, ever-profitable field of opera only to end up resenting it for making life even more unstable and psychologically unsettled than the previous military childhood. A wanderlust sans lust.

Med school was my way of refusing to teach once I had gotten out of opera. They say, “those who can’t do, teach.” I could still do. I just didn’t want to anymore. It made me miserable.

Of course I shouldn’t fail to mention that this also took place around the same time I went through a life-altering end to a relationship – the reason I’d moved to this strange planet called Utah to begin with. Life happens in threes: a career cut short, a prestigious degree cut short, and a sad affair cut short.

I fled to live with my best friend to find my footing. He lived in a town called Saratoga Springs. Having picked up running, I’d run through this strange town where I’d pass half a dozen Mormon churches in a 2 mile radius and get heckled by teenagers on bikes dressed in black… more than slightly making me feel I was living on the set of The Children of the Corn.

Aside from running, I began finally writing my book and exploring my career options with a number of professionals and mentors to make sure that I wouldn’t be fluttering about until I found the right one. I was no longer young and I didn’t have the luxury of time. The previous year had reinforced the power and finiteness of time. I refused to waste time, my passion, or my heart ever again. I got my life back in threes.

All of these things led to some very big changes. I’d lost a lot of weight (again), decided to go into Human Resources, and I got a seasonal internship at the Deer Valley Ski Resort. For those outside the world of skiing, this place is the top ranked ski resort in the country when it comes to luxury mountain resorts. Driving the office Cadillac, dining on food flown in from exotic locations, and spotting top celebrities were regular occurrences.

I went into this experience excited at the prospect of such an illustrious notch on my belt. A few weeks into the experience, my bryanisms (as my friends so delicately put it) kicked in and changed all of that. Someone from the events team came to my office looking for some help to fill in for some last minute volunteers to fill in for a presentation by staff that had canceled at the last minute. Eager and green to the company, I was the first to volunteer.

I was moved quickly to a room where older ladies dressed me in a famous Deer Valley green ski instructor uniform, polka-dotted scarf, crazy-looking winter hat, fat mittens two sizes too big, and giant ski goggles. The uniform was so small I felt my belly out like green mush being squeezed from a play-doh factory. It was still summer so it felt a bit…off. I was instructed to go out with a few of the other ski instructors to give a presentation on how to ski, giving some pointers and what not.

“But I don’t know how to ski,” I whined.

A sweet older lady comforted me in vain, “Everyone knows basically how to ski. Just follow the lead of the others and roll with it.”

I followed the other overly-dressed instructors into the meeting room. I froze in confusion. The room was packed with Native Americans. A woman was speaking in Navajo to the crowd as we were coming out. The only word I could understand was “ski.” Did these people even ski? They were on walkers and canes and live in the desert of New Mexico.

We were then introduced in English as a group of instructors who were going to teach them the basics of skiing. One taught the basics of acceleration and deceleration by using the terms “French fries” and “pizza slice” for the positions to hold your skis while going down the mountain. The next person taught how to turn sharply back and forth, followed by someone teaching how to use the ski lift. By the time they came to me, I was a total loss for words. Everything that I could at least fake was already taken. (The 100 year old Navajo woman who spoke no English in a wheel chair now knew how to do moguls, spring and ski backwards, and do a flip off of a cliff. She now knew more than I. Good for her… damn it.)

Fending for myself, I did what only I could think to do, resort to my theater improve skills. I demonstrated to the crowd of elderly bored people how to, well, fall. I fell to the floor like an old Pentecostal lady being physically filled with the spirit. A heard gasping as I began to reminisce about my fall down a Breckenridge slope in middle school where I crashed myself in order to avoid a double black diamond cliff – which led me to fake an injury so that I could ride the lift down (because I was too scared to ski anymore) and ultimately ended in an ER where they x-rayed me and were afraid I’d swallowed my cross necklace when actually it had just broken off and was under my body that had been duct taped to a red rescue sled. They didn’t find it until they had unwrapped me to begin exploring options for surgery.

I was shaken from my memory with a room filled with laughter. Standing up to find these older people laughing so hard they had tears in their eyes, I looked around perplexed. One of the event managers signaled for me to keep going. They were loving it.

“There are only three things I know about skiing,” I said, “The first one is how to crash gracefully.” A Navajo lady with a beautiful smile came up and stood next to me and began interpreting for me in Navajo. I didn’t realize most of them couldn’t understand me. No wonder they looked so dazed with the previous real ski instructors.

“And this is how you get up,” I continued. I sat on the floor and was handed a pair of ski poles and pushed myself up off the floor awkwardly like drunken Bambi. The pole tips couldn’t stick to the hardwood floors so they slipped and left me to free fall ass first back the Bambi way I came up. They laughed hysterically.

I hopped up and said short of breath, “so when you’ve fallen and you’ve said, ‘screw this,’ you walk back up the mountain and ride the lift back down.” I then demonstrate how to hike sideways up the mountain with skis on as the translator followed my lead.

After I stopped my awkward demonstration, and they stopped laughing so loud, I continued. “The second thing I know for sure about skiing is that skiing is meant to make you look cool.” Totally faking it, I began to strut across the stage. Confidence fueled by their laughter, I started to dance harder and harder until I was ultimately twerking across the stage in skis with my poles bouncing above my head.

One particular older lady on the front row was laughing so hard that her wig was falling off her head and half hanging off of her face. I jumped down and grabbed her by her hands and pulled her to the front and made her twerk in skis with me. The room roared.

I hushed them. “Now the third thing is very very important and takes great skill and concentration.” I pause to look around the room. I don’t remember the last time I had such devoted attention. “Skiing is very important and vital for winter…” pausing for dramatic, silent affect, “flirting.” They looked on with confusion but anticipation at whatever the translator had just said. I think she was also confused.

I began walking across the stage primping like Bill Cosby’s dancing. I stopped half way across the stage, looked over my shoulder, pulled my ski goggles down below my eyes like something out of that 1980’s Tom Cruise movie and said the only thing I know in Navajo (which I’d learned when trying to learn Navajo in Milwaukee while writing a Native American children’s choir song, “Ayu ani nishnih, baby.” (I love you baby.) They all whooped in laugher and applause.

I finally see one of the few men in the audience actually laugh (they were quite reserved and dignified). I pull him up with me, dress him in my costume, and make him do what I just did. We strutted across the stage, side by side, stop half way across and look over the ski goggles and say, “Ayu Ani nishnih, baby.”

The crowd jumps to their feet applauding and laughing. I see what time it is. “Sorry everyone! I have to get back to work!” And I run off the stage.

By the end of the day, I was known to everyone by my new unofficial Native American name: Twerks with Skis.

[Stay tuned for the second part of this adventure that led me to the Navajo Nation itself.]

Happy Bacon Day!

2015

Seriously, who thought this Hallmark™ Holiday would be…well, THIS? I mean, come on! It is named after a Christian martyr some 1600 years ago. But in all due credit, it originated from a pagan Roman holiday called Lupercalia. I don’t know about you, but that sounds like an STD to me. Not very romantic in either case.

Valentine’s Day a few years ago, I was alone. Very alone. Freshly separated from a long relationship type of alone. Those generally are the worst times for most people. However, I had been feeling that way every day for a long time up to that point. Everyone who has ever changed their life for the better gets to a point where they’ve had enough of themselves and decide to do something about it.

I had been nibbling away for years at the thought of finally writing my memoir that my friends and family had been urging me for years to do. That morning, I went for a run and came back to my friend Cliff’s house where I was living post break-up and wrote the first chapter of my book. It changed everything. And this never would have happened had I not been alone. And now, amazingly, and definitely unplanned or unsought-out after everything I’d been through, I am in love…

I know…Blech…Pitooey. Not that ooey-gooey Valentiney temporary warm fuzzy hormonal pubescent garbage.

Before you go thinking I’m a horrible cynical person, hear me out. I’ve had all of those before. And none of them live up to what I have now. What started out as dimples and flirting ended in play fights in front of friends and family and grounding the hyperallergenic cats like spoiled teenagers. That first year of irrational jealousies and wondering if they were going to be “unfaithful like the others” eventually morphed those painful scars into more…well…ticklish ones.

My love makes me laugh at it all; the ridiculousness…the drama that I never knew I was in control of the entire time. I never knew that arguing, spending a lot of time alone, cleaning, and being forced to shop together when I absolutely hate it would actually end up being very romantic things.

You know why? Each and every time it ends with laughter. The best love, I have come to realize, is the one that two people create for and with each other. And the grandest love is when they keep each other from taking themselves too seriously.

It all began on our very first Valentine’s Day. I was adamantly instructed to do absolutely nothing for Valentine’s Day. It was a bit jolting but I eventually realized that I actually agreed with the sentiment. However, it was only 4 months officially into our relationship and I was still on cloud 9. So of course I had to get something to show my affection. Anything.

So I went grocery shopping. Everyone knows I hate shopping so this was a true sacrifice on my part. I showed up to the apartment and plopped a large package of raw bacon onto the table.

“What’s this?” I was asked.

“Bacon.”

“What’s it for?”

I had to think on my toes. “Happy Bacon Day.”

You see, we both love bacon. However, we’d made a commitment as a couple to create a healthy cooking home on a budget. Bacon is not the healthiest and wasn’t the cheapest on the budget I had during that first year. This was my way of creating the official day where we are allowed to eat and buy bacon without ever feeling guilty about it. With how cheesy we get (and how punny like my father we get), we’d both say something along the lines of “every other day is Valentine’s Day.”

You see, Valentine’s Day love is what we make of it. And we made our love for bacon about our unique love for each other. Every year since, Valentine’s Bacon Day has been full of love and roses bacon. And we’ve been the better and happier for it.

So this year, I challenge all of you. If you have someone you love like I do (or are romantically inclined to obsess about someone who has no idea), for the love of all things bacon, please do something different!

Don’t go to the grocery store and grab from that pile of heart-shaped cardboard boxes filled with cheap chocolates or shiny heart-shaped balloons. Find that something surprising between you and that other person. Maybe it’s paper towels. Maybe it’s light bulbs… perhaps peanut butter. If all else fails, borrow my idea and buy some bacon! And not that turkey stuff! I’m talking about the squealing and snorting kind here.

Love is more important than the word that expresses it. So why just use it? Show it. Show that you think about them, not just feel for them. It all starts with a thought and ends with something that you could laugh about and call yours every year for the rest of your life. Moments like that make a love last. Shakespeare understood this when he wrote in Romeo and Juliet, “A [bacon] by any other name would smell as sweet.”

This Valentine’s Bacon Day, even if you don’t see life through rose bacon colored glasses or your life feels like the war of the roses bacon filled with guns n’ roses bacon, take two minutes from your justifiably cynical day and stop and smell the roses bacon. You never know, maybe you’ll end up lying in a bed of roses bacon feeling like everything’s coming up roses bacon.

But don’t forget, being alone on this day is one of the best times, like every day, to love yourself. So get a little corny, laugh with someone, or at least yourself. Maybe you’ll snuggle up with someone, or a pet, or your glass of wine… and watch the movie Citizen Kane…laughing to yourself every time that famous word is said…leading to that final dying word: “rosebaconbud.”

---

Treat your love or yourself right with this amazing recipe of sweet n’ savory bacon roses from Farmer John:

INGREDIENTS

• 1 Package of FARMER JOHN® Mild Jalapeño Premium Bacon
• 8 oz. dark melting chocolate
• Pistachios- chopped finely
• Parchment paper
• 2 mini muffin baking tins
• Long toothpicks

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

2. Roll raw bacon slices tightly, secure by inserting two long toothpicks and place in muffin tin, balancing the ends of the long toothpicks on the tin so that the roses don’t touch the bottom of the pan.

3. Bake the roses for 25-35 minutes and allow cooling.

4. Melt the chocolate in a microwave-safe bowl in 10-second increments until chocolate is melted.

5. Dip roses carefully in melted chocolate, sprinkle chopped nuts onto the chocolate covered part of the rose before the chocolate hardens, and set down on parchment paper to cool.

6. When the chocolate has hardened the roses are ready to serve.

Hojotoho!

2007

After completely ignoring the advice of agents and directors in Germany, I returned to the United States to pursue a Master’s Degree in Opera. I had bought the traditional American belief that a degree is a guarantee to a career and a graduate degree is guaranteed an even better one. Not so true. For many reasons, it was a career changer… and not for the better.

It took me a year or two of bad dating and over partying to work through my regret. In the long run, I stayed because A) I can’t stand not finishing anything I start; and B) I’d made some of the dearest friends of my life. Nearly all of them were exclusively in my graduate voice studio at the University of Washington.

Once a week we all gathered in a large room and showcased the latest arias and roles we were working on for feedback from peers, practicing performing in front of others, and learning the teaching technique of our teacher. This master teacher was Grammy Award winning soprano Jane Eaglen. She is best known in the opera world as one of the most famous singers to ever perform and record the role of Brünnhilde in Wagner’s Ring Cycle. Simply put, she was the one in horns and a spear singing “Kill the Wabbit” (yes, that Bugs Bunny cartoon was from a real opera). The most famous part of both the opera and cartoon (of which only the latter had I fully memorized and sung), was the line “Hojotoho!” – also known as the call for “The Ride of the Valkyries.”

She asked me not to really talk about anything specific regarding her for her privacy. For political and professional reasons I have witnessed first hand, I am compelled to honor her request. I will say this though: A few of us referred to her as our beloved godmother of our diva mafia.

Posing like we’re dangerous (as we usually goofed) after one of my opening night performance. One of my dearest friends and favorite people on the planet. Grammy Award winning soprano Jane Eaglen.

There are many stories yet to come on my blog from my 17 years of singing. But this little gem of a story is a great way to kick start it. I still laugh about it and my friends and I still talk about it to this day.

During one of our weekly masterclasses, I was sitting between my two best friends Maria and Greg. Our good friend Jeremy was sitting on the front row of the mini theater. A mezzo in our class was showcasing her dirgey rendition of Henry Purcell’s “When I am Laid in Earth.” As the aria drew lower and slower, Jeremy’s head fell back and he began snoring.

With the entire room aghast, the master teacher tiptoed across the small stage. We all grew nervous as she snickered to herself as she bent over to about 2 feet away from his face. With a fully drawn, perfectly technical operatic breath, she release a resounding “Hojotoho!” The room shook from the seats to the roof. Jeremy exploded awake and fell out of his seat nearly whiplashing himself trying to pull himself together.

Everyone laughed so hard that the class had to be ended early due to constant chuckling through the rest of the melodramatic sad song that had caused the whole fiasco.

We have all gone our own way but I have carried their stories and fond memories with me since. Many of them I will share with time.

Yoto Uno

1985

During my mid-elementary school years, my father was transferred to Brooks Air Force base in San Antonio. This base was smaller than most we’d lived at, which was more like a small city. My little brother and I were bussed to an inner-city elementary school off base. The building was falling apart, there were police cars out front on the first day, and I was too young to feel that lonely.

I was escorted to my first class, back behind the building, in a worn-down trailer. This made me nervous. I’d only ever seen trailers that people lived in when we visited my parents’ hometowns in Arkansas. When I stepped into the 1^st Grade classtrailer, a very average-sized lady with a very larger-than-average rump had her back to the class, hoola-hooping her backside as she wrote on the blackboard. The class was so much calmer than my other Japanese 1st grade class I’d left mid-school year.

The teacher turned around and I instantly understood why the class was so calm. I’d moved half way across the world from a sweet little playful Japanese woman to this 6 foot, 300 pound Mexican woman with a crooked jheri curl-esque perm and a mole on her face that looked like she didn’t know a goose was trying to use her mustache as toilet paper. The vicious gap in her teeth also looked liked an inverted fang.

I squealed with a decrescendo.

The class laboriously laughed with timidity. The teacher snapped something short in Spanish, which was probably something like “cállate,” but at the time I felt it was more along the lines of “I will hide under your bed until you are asleep and my mole will come alive and squeeze you through my gap until your head is spaghetti.” (I’d always had a very active imagination.) She followed her outburst, which became routine, with counting threateningly to three in Spanish. However, it never got past “uno.” Wild rumors went around that she beat the last student who made it to “dos” with a yardstick. “Dos” was just too frightening of a thought coming from the teacher known as Señora Bruja.

I think this was the first time I’d missed someone. I missed my teacher in Japan. I started writing her dramatic love letters from cursive-ruled training paper. You know, the one where every other line was a dotted line:

Deer Miss Yoto,

I am now in San Antonyo. It is very hat and all the wite people have big teeth. The kids in my clase speek many langwages. My teacher is a wich! She is hary and has a big thing on her fase. Pleez come to Texas and teech my clase! I miss you!

Lov,                                                                                                                                                    

Bryan

I wrote her such letters at least a dozen times until I became distracted by my new teacher. One day during recess, I ran out of the playground boundaries for the upper-hand in a riveting round of hide ‘n go seek. I ended up running into my classtrailer thinking it was empty. I apparently ran in faster than the speed of sound because as soon as the door shut behind me, I realized that there was music playing loud enough to where my presence wasn’t detected.

“This is hell in paradise – We’re all asleep or paralyzed                                                                        

Why are we scared to verbalize – Our multicolor dreams?”  

What in the hell is this music? Baffled by the sounds of what I learned many years later to be Yoko Ono’s “Hell in Paradise,” I’d failed to noticed Señora Bruja sitting at her desk facing the black board as if very deep into thought.

“Exorcise institution – Exercise intuition                                                                                             

Mobilize transition – With inspiration for life”

The song was over and I was trapped by the sudden silence behind a desk on my knees. A mini click and whoosh had me propping myself up on the back of a chair to peak over in her direction. She lit a roach held by a clip that she had make-shifted to the end of a blackboard chalk extender, garnished with a feather.

She exhaled a long puff over her head, looped her wet curly hair with her free middle finger, and tilted her head over her shoulder ever so lightly. “Get…out…” she said eerily calm, “while you still can.”

I gasped and froze. Her long chalk extender disappeared in front of her sweaty Mexifro. She took a long drag and exhaled with a long asthmatic rasp. And then she began to speak, “U…” uh-oh “no…”

I bolted out of there so fast I left the door open and the pot smoke cycloning around her desk. She was overly nice to everyone in the class the rest of the year because she never really knew who saw her getting high in the classroom. I kept my mouth shut and considered myself a silent hero.

My senior year of high school, I found in a box of some old letters I’d written to Mrs. Yoto in Japan. On a whim, I wrote her again for fun, now 11 years later and with far better spelling this time. I sent her the letters I hadn’t sent and a picture of me from a class field trip she took our class on to the Nago Central Park. This park was famous for its old shrines, monkeys, and a giant pond with a bridge across it. I was standing on the bridge in this picture feeding a gigantic swarm of coy fish. One of them was jumping out of the water towards me and I was screaming. I sent this to her in case she forgot me. She wrote me back:

Dear Bryan,      

How could I forget you? You’re a hard one to forget. I did receive your letters and wrote back once but it was returned because you had already moved again. I’m sorry I could not move to Texas to be your teacher again. Was your teacher a real witch? I see that you survived so I suppose she was a nice witch. I’m sending you this book that I sent you those many years ago. It’s a book to teach you Japanese so that you wouldn’t be the only one in class knowing only one language. Sorry it has gotten to you late. I’m glad you have grown up well. I wish you all of the best of luck and happiness with your future. You are remembered fondly.

Sincerely,                                                                                                                                                                                  

Mrs. Yoto

Śurū

1997

Śurū. This is what they refer to as “the beginning” in Northeast India. India is where it all began for me. Life. My life. The pivotal place where I realized the power to take the reins to my destiny, my own story. However, beginnings are never where the story truly starts. And the story, like life, is never what it truly seems.

My time in india was sandwiched between growing up in a military family across three continents and a career in opera spanning two. By the time I turned 35 years old, I had moved a total of 29 times. When you have moved enough times and had enough lives to make a gypsy* jealous, you naturally have many stories ranging from the random and goofy to the fascinating and bizarre…and now I am finally sharing them.

Friends and family around the world have been encouraging me to write a book or blog to the point of threatening. As I began completing my first book, a memoire entitled “I Can’t Take Me Anywhere,” I finally realized that they probably had a point. So to all of my beloved people who encouraged me to write, this is for you. May the stories begin. If I continue to live my life as richly as I have so far, they’ll never have to end. Śēṣa.

Lounging in the jungle heat at Prem Dan (Gift of Love), Mother Theresa’s home for the dying, with fellow workers, friends from Bangladesh, and my good friend to this day, Tshering Tashi Lama, a Buddhist monk from Lhasa, TIbet.

*I will attempt to not refer to gypsies as ‘gypsies.’ It is a racial slur the Hungarians gave the homeless people of darker skin referring to them as a race of ‘wandering jews’ not righteous enough to find their ‘promised land’ after they left Egypt (from which the word ‘gypsy’ derives).  Unfortunately, many people wouldn’t understand my reference to the Romani or Pavee people. From this point on, I will be consistently try referring to the latter.