a beat

In the play writing world, a beat means a pause. Falling to the discretion of a director or an actor's presence "in the moment", the beat elongates or contracts strategically or offhandedly. Regardless of its length, it exists to buttress the words which precede and succeed it. It serves as an underscore or a bellwether. Always made of nothing, it gives as much weight as any carefully placed syllable.

It's been more than two years since I've written a post for Lemon Days. After I moved to New York City, it felt as though I had outgrown this blog. The finality of leaving LA and the graduating to hard, dirty surfaces worn smooth by seasons and hurried New Yorkers transferred to the online world. I abandoned Lemon Days even though it lived exactly as close as before: on the same Blogger Dashboard, just inches down from Kate Ruminates, not 3 hundred millionths of the distance between here and the Big Apple.

When I returned, I was so busy with my new job that I barely wrote in Kate Ruminates, the blog I started as a public journal documenting my experiences and meals in Manhattan. Kate Ruminates will stay my, dare I say it, "food blog" (I just cringed) and Lemon Days will resume its place as my stage for thoughts on what happens between meals which is what my friend James Queen calls life.

Life. The existing. The birthing, screaming, rejoicing, heated, cooled, fading and enduring time we have. We make the most or the least of it and we think about it constantly, on a grand but mostly granular scale. Where did I put my credit card bill? What's that noise in bathroom? I like these new apriums they're selling at the market.

Of those who make the most of life, my friend Nina is a member. Nina was one of those girls who you wanted to be in college. Nina was and is beautiful. Nina was and is artistic and creative. Nina loved and loves to cook for her friends. Nina lived and lives in the moment like a good actor (which she was) or a good yogi (which I'm sure she could be one day). She danced a lot and dances occasionally. Nina was chased and courted and is now a trophy wife in the most flattering meaning of the term. She is the blue ribbon. When I met Nina, she was the girl whom boys didn't actually know, but of whom they spoke in sighing, dreamy, hypothetical terms. Nina was a medical student and is now a pediatrician.

A few weeks ago, I visited her and spent an afternoon in Orange County. Apart from her wedding, I hadn't seen her since before I left. There had been a physical pause of almost two years in our friendship which ended with our catching up over somen noodles and soft-shell crab salad.

While showing me one of the rooms in her new house, I noticed her stethoscope jutting out of her purse. I put it around my neck, a worn bracelet of colorful plastic stars dangling from the Y-joint. The bracelet was given to her by a patient and she uses it to distract other patients while she tries to decipher their ailments. She reads confirmations in rashes and hears clues in breaths, much to the relief and chagrin of anxious parents.

I inserted the earpieces in my ears. In futzing with the diaphragm, I accidentally hit it with my fingernail and heard a loud, stereoscopic thwack. With no hushed conversations in adjacent rooms on which to eavesdrop, I guided the cold, flat, amplifier to my chest. It was confusing at first, staticky with the crackle of my skin brushing the skin of the diaphragm. I listened, not knowing exactly the qualities of what I was about to hear but expecting the sound to be reassuring. Familiar perhaps.

But it wasn't. When I'd found the closest spot to my heart, through muscle fiber and bone, what I heard was strange and slow. The rhythm was steady and constant but so much lazier than I had erroneously predicted. My heart seemed foreign, a study in the pace of a saunter. When I shared my surprise with Miranda, a like-minded, armchair physician, she asked me "How often do you listen to your heart?"

It's here. Lemon Days is where I had to return to sort out the matching of expectations to realities. I listened to my heart when I forced myself out of my comfort zone. I listened again when I came back. I listened when it raced, mad for a brilliant and fractured chef. With my hand to it, I thought it would be a lively and assertive heartbeat, a metronome set to the pace of my life with its fights and flights. I listen to my heart often. It is a guide. It sometimes doesn't know better. It sometimes doesn't know a thing. But I ask it anyway, to gauge, to produce a decision, to not fail me.

There is a beat between my heartbeats. Longer than expected, healthy and forged by patience. Like the one taken between posts here. Heartbeats that I can only assume were once uneven and erratic are now languid with triumph. One beat sends life hurtling down arteries.

There is a playwright with whom I brunched on Sunday and an actor with whom I lunched on Saturday who both asked me why I don't write anymore. I know that both times, there was a pause before I answered (beat) "I want to." There is a girl I hold dear who has to take pills to keep her heart from wrecking the rest of her; she fans herself with words. My heart tells me to oblige it. I'm writing. I'm listening. Its recommendation loud, clear, and slow. Arresting.