I had a visit today from an old friend of mine, Libby Spears. In the mid-nineties we lived in adjoining apartments in San Francisco with about six other people. We shared a large deck in the back that was the staging ground for many parties, early morning coffees and more then a few meltdowns.
Our apartments at 18th Street and Castro Street, were right above a Spinelli Coffee and a bookstore in a section of the city called The Castro.
(Libby and Me, San Francisco, 1996)
If you know San Francisco at all, you know that if you were to walk out our front gates, you could encounter just about anything (I mean a-ny-thing) there. And though the techno music that blared out of every store and bar used to keep us up at night and you couldn’t ever find a parking space on the weekends, we loved living there.
Few things about Libby:
She is from the South and always greets you with her signature, slow “Heeeey.”
She would tie notes on to my dog’s collar, one that read “flower power” with at big sunflower and one that read something like, “I want Libby to be my Mommy.” I remember Madison happily running in the back door to deliver the latest message.
She was the first one to take me to a strange and wonderful place called “Target” in Daly City.
We lost touch when she moved to the friendship black hole that is New York City. (Once friends move there, rarely ever hear from them again)
Luckily for me, I have had the same email address since the very beginning of (internet) time and she contacted me a couple months ago. She now lives in LA, but her travel schedule had kept her away until today.
Oh, Libby has been busy in the last 10 years, she is the founder and director of Playground Project.(**please take a look at her site but wait until the kiddos aren’t standing over your shoulder waiting to play Disney Playhouse. It contains some pretty weighty language and subject matter.)
She is in the process of completing a documentary film of the same name that exposes the United States Child Sex Trade (Trailer).
Though we hadn’t seen each other in about 10 years, it was business as usual, littl’ gossip, littl’ wise-crackery, littl’ talking about our parents and a whole lot of laughing.
While we were talking, we discovered we had a common love of David Sedaris. So I downloaded one of my favorite Fresh Air episodes with Mr. Sedaris for her to listen to on her long ride back, through the hazing afternoon, to LA.
(Available on iTunes for the outrages price of $3.95, but most are worth it)
In Sedaris’ discussion with Fresh Air’s Terry Gross, he talks about while living in his house in France, he became completly fascinated with the legions of spiders that lived there too. It just started out innocently, he watched a spider catch a fly in his web and then devour it. He then started to catch flies for the spiders and feed them himself. The study of spiders has became a full-blown passion for him.
Sedaris sums up his newfound “obsession,” like this; it is heartening to know things like that are out there for all of us. None of us know what OUR “spiders” is going to be. That we can “embrace things we don’t even see are coming.” It sounds, “Corny,” he adds “but it almost gives you a reason to carry on.” Our passion or purpose could be waiting for us tomorrow, just around the corner, and our whole lives could change. It is a really beautiful thing about life. I love this idea. He expresses it so well (as always.)
I really admire Libby for the sacrifice and hard work she has put into this project. I hope when it is completed it gets the attention it deserves.
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