Walking Through the Moon Door

When the panic sets in, you have to stop, be a person, remember that you are not the only one in the room...I know, now, that asking for help is a strength.

My Plan A was to be a university professor with tenure. In California, when you teach at a university, you don’t wear elbow patches; you wear jeans and blazers. My father, whom I only met briefly, wore those patches, smoked a pipe. For real? I thought. I wanted to become one of those West Coast-type jeans-and-blazer professors. That was Plan A. But it didn’t happen. Maybe in the future. But I have never taught at USC or any of the UCs, outside of extension classes.

We recently published an author who teaches at a public university in California and makes $310,000 a year. I thought, That could be me. My family would be living well. I would have a nice house/kayak/dog/car, take vacations like la-di-da. I always feel like when you have more money, it’s easy to lean into saying smart things because you don’t have panic in your throat, and that’s a good thing. I can picture myself with a well-compensated teaching job, waxing eloquent.

Instead, I’m on Plan B.

Plan B is publishing. Making a choice to jump headfirst into instability, risk, and recklessness. People keep asking me what I’ll do if saving Red Hen doesn’t work, as if there is a Plan C. I think, Come on, these plans don’t run to Z. There’s just Plan A and Plan B.

I’ve thought about it, sure. I could live in Sri Lanka or Vietnam on five hundred a month, but that is not the plan and wouldn’t fulfill me. Failure is not in our future.

I have come to the conclusion that it’s also healthy to say, I can’t make it without help. Every single person who has stepped up to say I am here to help you, we are finding a way to honor their names. We want to remember who got us through this crisis. We want to remember that we have friends. That we are not alone.

When the panic sets in, you have to stop, be a person, remember that you are not the only one in the room. My friend, whom I love so much and who has carried me over so many rivers, just lost her mom. I wish I could fly to her; I wish I could hold her and tell her it’s going to be okay.

While you are in your particular turmoil, someone else has theirs. We are all in the river.

When I was at the Farm, we had bees, and once I was stung all over my face and hands. I’m allergic to bee stings, although being stung thirty or forty times was pretty bad anyway. I couldn’t see. My eyes were swollen. My friend led me home from the orchard. “Don’t trip,” she kept saying. I walked. I did not know if I would ever see again.

But three days later, when the swelling came down, I did.

After the bee stings,

I lived.

I was kicked by a horse.

I lived.

I fell out of the back of a truck.

I lived.

After a while, I jumped out of trucks.

I was walking across a log bridge that had a fifty-foot drop into a river below. My eighty-pound backpack swung out and caught a wire, and I lost my balance and almost fell into the river below. I managed to straddle the log. I saw my life running before my eyes, like a micro movie. Very micro. I was thirteen. My life was short. Not much had happened.

I lived.

Sometimes, I fell. Sometimes, I jumped.

In the turmoil of the present, I wonder: How did I get here? Well, I didn’t fall out of the back of a truck. I jumped.

I lived.

I cannot carry Red Hen and live a life of passion unless Red Hen becomes sustainable, and I am asking for help. I know, now, that asking for help is a strength.

At the cult, at night, I stared up at the stars and the moon and imagined walking through the moon door, saying, Here I am; I made it; I did it myself. When you go through the moon door, you’re supposed to ask for help. If you can’t do that, maybe there is no moon and no door.

The life of the imagination requires time in the garden; I need my own time there. I want to take another moment to thank everyone who has met us in the ring. I think it’s easy to say I’ll wait, I might support them if they survive. But I’m so in love with all of you who jumped into the arena without a second thought. Because we will survive.

In Plan B, I find my strength to weather the river. When people say to me, you sound good, I think, well, I’m playing myself one of my favorite songs every day, so I’m sure I’m on top of my game.

We love books. We love the literary arts. We are ready to keep making culture. We are asking for help because what we are doing is so substantial that it requires a fellowship, a covenant, to gather together under the moon door and say, Los Angeles deserves a publishing house like Red Hen. The Red Hen of the future will be stronger, more streamlined, sell more books, be more nimble. We have the spark; you are builders of the cathedral of the mind and of the soul. Thank you for being our community.