The Joy of Uber Driving

by Yamini Redewill

  During this time of heightened metaphysical activity and interest, I once again had an out-of-body experience which was very brief but notable. I was taking a nap, and just before drifting off, I lifted above my body and passed by a mirror showing no image of me and reached the ceiling, then fell back into my body. What was striking was that it felt perfectly natural and normal.

  After two years, I sold most of my ceramic jewelry and decided to go into something entirely different. I created a pet crystal, like a pet rock, which became a point-of-purchase product sold nationwide. It was called the Moonwater crystal, a small crystal perched inside a clear plastic ring box with a little velvet pouch and a booklet explaining its purpose and how to care for it. I made up a mythical history of the Moonwater crystal from ancient times for added interest. It was highlighted as the gift idea of the month in the National Gift Magazine. This fit well into the crystal craze of the eighties. (A TV production company that produced the show Touched by an Angel later hijacked the name Moonwater.) I enjoyed a season of success, but soon my short attention span and overactive creative brain drew me into another adventure.

  With 1988 being the year of the Harmonic Convergence, I was struck with a brilliant idea to create a New Age art festival alongside the three well-established art festivals in Laguna Beach. There was a building for sale nestled between the Sawdust Festival and The Art Affair across from the Festival of Arts and Pageant of the Masters. I happened to know the owner of the building and talked him into letting me use it for the two festival months of summer. I had never undertaken such a big project, but for some reason I wasn’t the least bit afraid of failure. I had a vision and I went for it.

  Many of the sannyasins I knew in Laguna jumped on board to help remodel the building. Coming from having created a whole city in Oregon, I guess they thought this would be a piece of cake, which in many respects it was (a big, fluffy pink cake). We had an architect who drew up a thematic plan for the outside face of the building, which included a six-foot-wide scrim around the top of the building with spray-painted night sky and stars, and a crystal-like STARFAIR in giant letters. The dull yellow building would become peachy pink, with five-pointed stars painted like stained glass in our windows.

  Not aware of Laguna’s right-leaning politics, I had no fear presenting this to the planning commission. Sometimes it pays not to know. I found out later this never would have come to fruition had it not been for one member on the board who hailed this as “whimsical” and convinced the rest of the board to allow it to exist for that summer only. The local newspaper got wind of this and photographed me in front of the original building, looking at plans, and put it on the front page the following week. No one had thought to create another art festival besides the three that had been in existence for several decades.

  While the building was being renovated, I put out a call for exhibitors. We ended up with twenty-seven exhibitors of everything from books and crystals to custom-painted T-shirts, painters, sculptors, a chocolatier, an aura photographer, a virtual light-and-sound show in a headset, and an existential experience of sitting inside a completely mirrored space that made a million of you into infinity. We financed our event through booth fees ranging from five hundred to one thousand dollars each. Most of my exhibitors and team members were women, because I felt they deserved the opportunities and exposure this would give them.

  We built a stage for our entertainers with a painted crystal rocket to the moon as a backdrop, with the saying “Inner Space —The Last Frontier” also created by our spray-paint artist. The final touches were potted trees inside and outside and silver sparkle dust on the floor. Mother gave me a gift of ten thousand dollars to help cover the cost. Most of our labor was free or dirt cheap, except for the spray-paint artist and the drug-addicted architect. He kept demanding more and more money to support his addiction to ecstasy and nearly broke us. We didn’t make money on this. We charged only one-dollar admission, and the $2,500 we made from that still had us in the red.

  Our little peachy pink building caused quite a stir, and the large five-pointed stars (pentagrams)* in each window drew the attention of a born-again Christian activist who thumped his Bible outside and warned of damnation if anyone entered our building.

  *In the past, the pentagram was commonly seen as a symbol for good and for protection against evil. Today, the pentagram—especially an upside-down pentagram—is the most commonly used symbol of Wicca. The pentagram or the pentacle in Wicca stands for fire, water, earth, air, and spirit.

  Thankfully, that only increased the curiosity, and the people poured in. We had live musicians or canned music playing constantly, and the best ones we put on a speaker outside to entice customers. We had a modern dance troupe called Dim Sum who cleverly mimicked passersby by walking behind them and exaggerating their movements to Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.”

  Thinking back, there were so many wonderful people who ended up donating their time and expertise for the completion of this project when we ran out of money. One such person was the lighting technician. I gave him one of my framed watercolor paintings for his birthday, for which he was humbly grateful. Two other people, my entertainment planner and my publicist, did amazing jobs for the little amount I paid them. We ended up on the whole front page of the L.A. Times’ Sunday Calendar section, with a wonderful review. The best review, however, came from my mother, who showed up with two of her best friends and gave me a smile and a warm hug as a solid endorsement.

  On the last night of the festival, after doing the bookwork and cleaning up the whole place by myself, I went home at midnight and let out a primal scream for eight full minutes at the top of my lungs while everyone was asleep. This, after keeping it together for two solid months of twelve-hour days seven days a week, not including months of preparation and haggling with team members, vendors, and exhibitors. Decorum be damned!

  In preparing for the second act and the future of Starfair, one of my exhibitors, a bookstore owner, offered to partner with me for the following year. I welcomed her business expertise and connections, and she was a dear friend. We gathered a new team together from her business contacts and started planning for a new location on Canyon Road in Laguna. What happened next was reminiscent of my experience at CBS when several people under me began conspiring to undermine me and get me fired. It seemed I hadn’t changed anything.

  It started with the team voting to change the name from Starfair Visionary Arts Expo to something benign and forgettable. It didn’t seem to matter that I had already succeeded in establishing Starfair as the fourth festival in Laguna Beach. The plans I drew up and designed for the new look were criticized and thrown out. Every idea I offered was countered with their more favorable ones. Finally, my dear friend, the store owner, came to me and asked me to resign in favor of her and her husband taking over, since Starfair had lost money under my leadership and was sure to be more successful under theirs.

  What they didn’t realize was that they surgically removed the heart of the project and replaced it with a flat, one-dimensional rendition based on perceived profits. It was summarily rejected by the City of Laguna Beach, and Starfair Visionary Arts Expo was archived into the Laguna Beach history book (if such a book exists).

  Several months later, my dear friend, the storeowner, asked me out to lunch and apologized for everything over pasta and wine. I accepted her apology, and we’ve remained friends to this day.

  SHE WORKS HARD FOR THE MONEY

  The Art of Housecleaning

  PING! I headed to Tiburon Tavern in midtown Tiburon and picked up a Mexican gentleman who was very congenial and just a little bit too jovial. Turns out he had just gotten the news that his dad in Mexico City had been diagnosed with liver cancer, and he’d had a little too much to drink to drown his sorrows. Almost everything he said was followed with a jolly “hahaha” and a couple of snorts—his style of laughing. He volunteered the information about his father, who, he said, was such a cool guy beca
use he “graciously” told him the news in a very matter-of-fact way. “You would love my dad if you met him (hahaha, snort, snort). You know what we did? We prayed together over the phone. My father is a pastor, but you know what? I’ve never prayed with him before. This was the very first time (hahaha, snort, snort)!”

  Pretty soon he got me laughing along with him, even though it seemed entirely inappropriate. Then he proudly mentioned that his grandfather was a Mason of 33 degrees, which is very high level. And then he said, “Everybody wonders what happened to ME (hahaha, snort, snort).”

  I said, “Oh, you shouldn’t demean yourself.”

  He said, “Oh no, I love myself, really. I love myself (hahaha, snort, snort)! You know what? I’m a server. Like Jesus, I serve people and I love my job.”

  As I drove on the 101, we passed a long line of stalled cars leading to the Richmond Bridge off-ramp, and he blurted out, laughing, “Those guys are losers (hahaha, snort, snort)!” I agreed and made an L sign with my two fingers on my forehead, and he loved it, saying, “Hey, you’re a cool gal. I’m going to roll down my window and flip them (hahaha, snort, snort)!”

  I said, “Oh, please don’t do that!”

  “OK, I won’t . . . LOSERS!” he yelled through a closed window. We both cracked up. (Hahaha, snort, snort.)

  Soon we got close to his destination, and a pretty blond in shorts and a halter-top was walking on the sidewalk. He rolled down his window and was about to . . . when I said, “Oh no, no, no, don’t do that!”

  He burst out laughing, saying, “I only wanted to rest my arm on the window ledge. You are so funny (hahaha, snort, snort)!” When he opened the door to leave, he turned to me with a high five and said, “Thanks for the ride, señorita.”

  The following year, 1989, I got a job working as a receptionist at an acupuncturist’s office for a while. One of her clients, who owned a housecleaning business, decided she wanted to sell it for $150. Seeing an opportunity consistent with my experience at the ranch, I seized upon it immediately. I couldn’t believe my luck, since $150 was less than two days’ work. After several weeks of work, I bought a new used Toyota Corolla, which worked perfectly as a vehicle for cleaning supplies and equipment. I cleaned two houses a day, which amounted to ten clients and five hundred dollars cash a week. That was the most I had made since my days at CBS and Warner Bros. I named my business The Art of Cleaning. I can hear my teenage self screaming bloody murder: “What, me, a house cleaner? No friggin’ way!” My teenager was OK when it was for a higher cause. What she didn’t realize was this was part of that higher cause . . . to expand my awareness and know and love myself more fully.

  My career as a housecleaner lasted five years. I took pride in leaving each house in beautiful condition and imagined the pleasure it would give the owners when they returned. I joined a couple of network clubs to promote my business. My mother was amazed that I had been transformed from a sloppy, untidy, narcissistic, and irresponsible artist to a professional house cleaner. Always the epitome of a fastidious housewife, she was so pleased she decided to reward me with a down payment on my own condo in 1992. (My mother was independently wealthy, with multiple stocks in AT&T because of my grandfather’s position at Bell Telephone in Canada for many years.)

  During this time, I took watercolor classes at Saddleback College and began doing watercolor portraits and fine art pieces for community art shows. I’ve always had a talent for rendering good likenesses, first with pencils and ink, then pastels, then acrylics, and finally watercolor. I used one network club for my cleaning business and the other for portraits. When I was eight years old, I drew a picture of President Eisenhower, and Mrs. Cox, my third-grade teacher, was so excited about it she mailed it to him. This also points to my interest in politics at a young age. Earlier, I wrote a love letter to General MacArthur when he came home from the war and had a ticker tape parade in his honor in Manhattan. I believed my father when he said MacArthur was a hero. At that young age I even believed him when he said Democrat was a dirty word. A few years later that belief would be recalibrated.

  Working as a housecleaner allowed me to develop an appreciation for other housecleaners and to transcend any judgments I had for lower-income workers.

  YOU’VE GOT A FRIEND

  One Dies, One Is Born, and Two New BFFs

  I moved into my new condo in 1992 with my good friend Joy as a housemate. We enjoyed combining our decorating talents and resources to create a beautiful space for both of us. We had many social gatherings there and shared self-improvement activities, such as relationship workshops and our daily practice of Qi Gong. She was an ordained minister and a business coach and a good friend who was always championing my artistic endeavors. At this time, my mother moved into a fancy retirement home in Yorba Linda, and I made sure to visit her every week. She gave me a shoulder to cry on when things weren’t going well in my life. She was the mother I had always wanted as a child. I felt her love and genuine concern, and I also saw that she needed the same encouragement, as she was lonely and living an empty existence apart from family and friends. We filled each other’s void at that time.

  I got a call in 1995 from my mother’s retirement home to come quick—she had been found unconscious. I fainted when I saw her in the hospital, knowing this was probably her last day. My brother and I stayed with her in the hospital room while she was unconscious and struggling to breathe. Unfortunately, she died when I was out of the room taking a dinner break, and I was not able to be with her during her glorious moment of transition. I found out later that she had been under the supervision of two different doctors who never consulted each other when prescribing her medications. Combined, they gave her fourteen different drugs for a variety of ills, and as a result, she had a massive stroke. She was eighty-four, and I think she could have lived to 103, like her mother did, if she had wanted to.

  I have carried this resentment toward allopathic medicine for a long time, blaming it for both my mother’s and father’s deaths. I refuse to take any pills other than daily natural supplements prescribed by a naturopath nutritionist and an aspirin when I absolutely need it for acute pain. At seventy-nine, I can attest to my comparatively youthful appearance and good health due to my daily workouts and my nutritional support and discipline. I’m a “foodie,” so it takes a lot of discipline to avoid sugar, wheat gluten, and dairy products—and the truth is, I am a dunce when it comes to sugar.

  As for our inheritance, mother was very generous, giving us trust funds that would provide basic living expenses for each of us for a long time. I also received some cash, part of which I invested in stocks. Unfortunately, a year later the stocks took a dive, and I panicked and took my money out.

  I could have been a millionaire now if I had let it alone. This is one of my major flaws: my indifference to money; my impatience, or need for instant gratification; and the inability to see the big picture, particularly where money is concerned. I was once accused of being a failure with money because I was a “trust fund baby” and too complacent to give money the respect it deserves. It’s pretty well known that most successful people are driven from childhood deprivation. The only deprivation I had was a lack of outward parental displays of affection.

  Joy started having a relationship with a sweet, sensitive man in our Qi Gong group who stayed overnight many times. He was desperately in love with her and was not afraid to show it. She did not share his exuberance but liked him enough to let him hang out with her occasionally. He asked her to marry him twice but, given his inability to have a steady income, was met with a stern “no” both times. Then one day she became pregnant, and he thought that now, for sure, she would capitulate. She considered it and then realized his lack of responsibility in life would make him dependent on her. However, she did want to have him in their child’s life as the father. He was heartbroken and cried openly at our next Qi Gong class when she announced her pregnancy.

  Nine months later, a brand-new love of my life came on the scene
one night at a birthing center in Pomona. At midnight, Joy’s boyfriend and I drove her, followed by a caravan of her closest friends, to Pomona. At 3 a.m. we were honored to witness the birth of her son, Michael, in a birthing pool of warm water with his father supporting Joy from behind in a seated position as she pulled the child from her body into full view of all of us. She had set up the room with candles and crystals and soft music for his delivery. He was then blessed by each one of us and beautifully by a friend who sang an Irish lullaby. It was a truly sacred moment that none of us are likely to ever forget. Her son, my godson, is now twenty-five and owns his own house in Tacoma, Washington, living with the love of his life. He is a wonderful testament to Joy’s devotion and skill in raising him. I was blessed to have been a secondary mother for the first four-and-a-half years of his life.

  One night, I attended a Spiritual Singles party on the beach, which formed a circle around a lighted candelabrum, where we sat and discussed social issues. There I connected energetically with a guy I’ll call Handy and was flattered by his flirtations, which later drew me into an intimate relationship. He was a big, sandy-haired, husky guy, gentle and sweet and very bright. It had been a while since I’d been with anyone, so I was grateful for the attention. Initially, we had a quietly passionate love affair that lasted about a year. Later, I let it lapse into a platonic relationship. I began faking orgasms with him just to keep him around (until the love of my life showed up). However, he was a great support system for my work, being a natural organizer and talented handyman. We also had a lot of common interests, particularly in spirituality, which he was becoming fully engaged in. It was fun hanging out with him in his world and reaping the benefits of being a couple wherever we went.