Carrie Me Away

She didn’t tell me she was leaving.

I thought our pact was, as long as I was here, she was here. That’s what we decided. Not personally, but unspoken.

Maybe more things should be spoken. More funny things should be spoken, most everything else it’s okay to remain unspoken.

Who is going to guard us against unwanted and unloveable words? Who is out there doing that without her heart beating?

Me?

But I’m so small. She was doing it on a large international level. She was tiny in body but large in voice. That princess thing was her way into us as a culture of little girls. We believed in her because, well, she was the only girl out there being a badass. And then later she started writing funny stuff.

I read all of it. I went into her movie, in Sherman Oaks, and took a mini tape recorder and recorded the dialogue. So I could play it back and listen to it. Because her voice was my soundtrack. Her way of talking, her writing – apart from Neil Simon, it was Carrie Fisher. She had that voice, that was me.

She defined me as a girl, with her movie princess. Then she defined me as a writer, my girl leader. How to write. I had other leaders, Murray Mednick. Radicals. Other funny women comedians who had a voice, Janeane Garofalo. Glenn Caron. But Carrie Fisher had the life not unsimilar to my own. Bigger than mine, but similar. She had a famous mother, grown up in Hollywood. I had a famous father, growing up in Hollywood. Her dad left, my dad left. She was close to her mom, found humor in chaos. Same. Sadness and confusion in life. Same.

But she wrote all these things – maybe not perfect writing, but funny writing. And she put it out there.

When my little daughter came in to the bathroom this morning where I was cleaning the toilet and said Princess Leia died, I felt that same horrible sadness like when we were coming in from the beach that August, on the porch, and hearing that Robin Williams died.

The funny ones can’t go before us. We need the funny ones.

I thought maybe I should keep writing. What would Carrie say. Don’t stop NOW, she’d say. You’re not even anywhere. You’re just at the BEGINNING. I already FINISHED, even though I wasn’t really finished, I was just going home for Christmas, it’s just my HEART machine, the muscle part, IT was finished. It had had enough, it just said, I have powered you long enough. I have motored you and I can’t do it anymore. She would find it very funny that she died on an airplane. Not even on the ground. In mid air. In really the only place no one can help you. Sitting in a row. With her dog.
She had quite a run. She got to be herself. Totally herself, and even a few other people. She was not a good actress. She was probably a good friend, and a decent mother, and a good daughter. She was a funny writer.

I can put myself out there. I have to be Dirk, and Will, and Carrie now.

Really, with every piece of yourself you put out there, you never know when you are finished. You are finished with every little piece, because we don’t reach the end. We’re still just going along until something ends us.

If you’re still there, use it. Use it all. Do it well. Give everything, the best you can. You don’t really get anywhere, in the end. Not really. It’s not like she was winning the race. But maybe someone else will hear you, and feel comfort. Is that what it is? To be a writer. Writing has always been just a way to work things out, to say things so they aren’t bothering me inside. To make myself laugh, to entertain myself because I like my voice. I listen to it, it has interesting things to say, it’s open and funny and loud and brokenish. Lost. But the kind of lost where you know where you end. You know your power there. It’s all the other people, I don’t know the power there with that. Maybe that’s the next step then.

Wouldn’t she say well you can TRY IT. Try earnestly, and with humor. You’re still here.

Be your own crippled, funny, tragic self. Be honest as you can. Love your dog. Where’s the breath. Reach out and be mindful.