Where the time goes Every little change is gonna be all right BY CAITLIN SHETTERLY

My life is inundated with the bittersweet pangs of change. My mother has often reminded me that the only sure thing in life is, indeed, change. And one would think I might get used to it, especially with my career built as it is on freelance writing and theater. But I’m not. As I wound up three weeks of shows playing the inchoate Gabby, a woman ignored and then betrayed by her husband until she finally roars out her rage and leaves him, I felt the sadness of her departure from within me, and then the dissolution of the "marriage" I had on stage as the sets came down and the costumes were returned to Portland Stage Company.

Memorial Day weekend proved legendary and wildly reminiscent of life in the city that never sleeps when my friend Mitch flew out from Los Angeles to see my show. So began three nights of late-night post-show carousing with the cast and friends, culminating in a Saturday night in one cast member’s car, parked across the street from Una (after a few too many Manhattans) with the Doors playing, the windows up, and Jim Morrison’s voice becoming our own as we lip-synced to our own private audience of each other. Our stage relationships had officially blended into our real life and became indelibly confused.

Later, after hitting the 7/11 on Congress Street and stocking up on Red Baron frozen pizza and Ruffles potato chips, Mitch and I made our way back to my apartment and noshed on junk while watching DVDs of Columbia student films on his computer set up on one of my filing boxes.

I had entered, Being John Malkovich–style, into this weird sub-world of play-becomes-my-life-becomes-my-world, which seems somehow outside the true hemisphere of the life I’m living in Portland, Maine. The next day, after two breakfasts — one early and then one at around 1 at Mims on Commercial street — and about a gallon of coffee each, we made our way with the Sunday Times over to the Western Prom and promptly fell asleep in the late afternoon sun. Somehow, as we decided we were hungry yet again, and picked up to leave, I lost my cell phone in the grass. As I combed through all my stuff in the car, then at home, then back through the grass again, Mitch offered slightly bemusedly while kicking his heels up on my couch, "well, maybe your life needed a little spring cleaning to get rid of all those assholes you’ve been dating and purge their numbers from your life." Although I told him to shut up, I admit a moment of "How nice would that be?" crossed my mind.

When I lived in NYC I wanted to write what I imagined I would call "The Unbearable Kindness of Strangers." It’d outline all those times when I’d be walking down Sixth Avenue carrying a heavy bag after a long and emotionally trying day — or standing in line at Gristedes with a carton of soy milk and two bananas waiting for an old lady with 89 coupons and 93 items to check over her bill — when someone would turn to me just when I was pretty sure I might completely lose it, and give me a smile and say something like "you’ve got beautiful hair," or "keep your chin up, sugar, nothing’s that bad." The skies would part and my whole day and — for the moment at least — my whole life would feel changed, lightened . . . or something . . . by this total stranger.

Those moments seem rare in Portland — maybe because there are fewer people crammed up against each other — but up on the Prom there was this woman sitting in her car watching the sunset who got out of her car both times as I frantically kicked every blade of grass anywhere near where our deer-like bodies had squashed imprints. Both times she looked with me, consoled me, and kept my mind from going totally berserk by just being a calm presence in my frazzled midst.

As the sun finally tumbled down toward the ocean, I went home and gathered up Mitch and my chutzpah and we went out to Norm’s for steak salads and wine. Then, in a moment of inspiration, Mitch, Aliya, and I threw caution to the wind and wound up at the Big Easy (or as my friends John and Paula call it "The Big Sleazy") dancing to the Awesome playing ’80s covers until 2 a.m.

On Monday, when Mitch left, the skies parted once again with a few last rays of sun before another week of rain, and I took my cat out on her leash to bask in the sun in the back yard. Erika spent the day packing to move to Kennebunk and I pored over the Sunday paper looking for an apartment that might be a little kinder to my wallet once it’s 20 below again. Someone told me that there would come a day when I’d wake up and think, "Holy shit, I’ve been in Portland for five years," and I’d wonder where the time went.

Late that night, a man called me from my cell phone. He had found it while he was out running. As I drove over to his brick house on West Street, I looked inside the yellow orange squares of light that shone out of stately West End homes and into the darkness and I wondered if all this change would keep me up all night, or if, instead, I might just tell myself that time goes and the only sure thing is that it’s gonna be all right. Besides, as evidenced by the press posthumously lauding Ronald Reagan as an American hero, some things never change.

Email stories, thoughts, ideas, and apartment leads to Caitlin Shetterly at bramhallsquare@yahoo.com