Five Easy Steps to Metaphysical Fitness  
The last crackpot theory I wrote was my least favorite. It was all about how small victories are important, blahblahblah – really, who's going to argue with that? It was completely un-crackpotty. Now, however, two-and-a-half years later, I find it was curiously prophetic. Which statement begs the question: what happened in the intervening two and a half years? Why didn't you write any new theories? Does it have anything to do with physics? Why, yes, it does!

You'll no doubt remember from your studies in physics – and by "studies in physics" I, of course, mean my show: Five Easy Steps to Metaphysical Fitness – that a phase transition is a shift from one state of being – Ping – to another state of being – Pong. Ping, you're a liquid with a low degree of structure and a high degree of randomness; pong, you're a solid with a high degree of structure and a low degree of randomness. Ping, you're water, pong, you're ice. Now you have some idea of what I've been going through.

Over the past two or three years – although doctors think it's been going on for twelve to twenty – I developed a series of seemingly unrelated symptoms: an increasingly debilitating fatigue; a brain fog which made it difficult to think clearly or deliver a great – or even good – performance; and a sudden onset of osteo-arthritis which made it impossible for me to walk without a cane or to speed through life as was my wont. As a result, I went through a billion phase transitions. From a person who could think on her feet to a person who could barely stand on them. From a person no one could keep up with to a person everybody had to wait for. Ping, productive member of society; pong, couch potato. Ping, radiated confidence; pong, faked confidence ... which was so embarrassing that ping, lived in Los Angeles; pong, moved to a horse ranch in Point Reyes Station where no one could hold me to the standard of my former self. Okay, one of the horses did say, "Aren't her feet awfully big?" (and that was a Clydesdale); but to be fair, my shoe size had gone from a ping, seven, to a pong, ten.

Meanwhile, I couldn't tell anyone about what was going on because I didn't know. I mean, I knew I was losing my grip on things, drifting away from my moorings, but all I could think was, "I'm losing my mind." Or "Oh, I'm leaping into old age the way I've leapt into everything my whole life – without doing due diligence!" Or, God help me, both. In the end, it wasn't my mind I lost; it was my self-confidence.

Fortunately, through a serendipity too complex to go into here – but believe me, the paradigm shift from valuing the number of things you possess to valuing the strength of your connections (#4 of my 5 Easy Steps) played a very big role – I landed at UCSF, in the office of the brilliant Dr. Ken Sack. Ten minutes into the exam, he cheerfully asked, "Have your feet grown at all in the past few years?" Eureka!

It turns out my big feet – along with everything else that was wrong with me – were caused by the same pathology: acromegaly (Greek for "large extremities"). And when I say "everything else that was wrong with me," I mean "Everything." Not just the arthritis, the fatigue, the brain fog, but the intolerance of heat, the carpal tunnel, the underbite – even, I suspect, my so-called arrogance. People with acromegaly have big heads! And all of this is due to a benign tumor in the pituitary gland which makes it over-produce human growth hormone. That's right. I had too much of what Roger Clemens was paying $8000 for. Had I but known!

And yes, yes, I know what you're thinking: It's not just baseball players, it's America! A too big head ... of state? George W. Bush has aggrandized the executive branch at the expense of the legislature, the elected representatives of the body politic. Too big extremities? Red states and Blue states. A compulsion to grow beyond one's natural limits? The obesity epidemic. Forty thousand square foot houses. The economic crisis. Ask Bernanke how that worked out! Q.E.D. America has acromegaly!

But here's the good news. Acromegaly is curable. All they have to do is take out the tumor. August 31, 2007, after a five hour surgery, I woke up in the recovery room and the brain fog was gone. Ping, a wicked witch had put a spell on me; pong, the spell was lifted. Since then, my feet have shrunk one full size (if you're in Point Reyes, check out my old Jimmy Choos on a certain Clydesdale); my fatigue has abated; and while my osteo-arthritis, sadly, is just as bad, having waited the prescribed year after the brain surgery before I could have a hip replacement surgery, I have a date with an orthoapaedic surgeon in October. I'll be literally back on my feet.

Of course, as the physical therapists say, I'll have to relearn my balance. But that's what's so amazing: Step #1 of my 5 Easy Steps is all about how to develop a sense of balance. And what it, turns out, is most helpful? Those high-priced running shoes with coils and springs and air-cushions that protect the soles of your feet from surface irregularities? Nnnngg. Wrong answer. You're supposed to feel – and deal with – irregularities. In other words – in fact, in the words of my last least-favorite crackpot theory – "cushioning ourselves from life's irregularities prevents us from having the small victories that are crucial to our sense of balance!" How prophetic was that?

But it's not just Step #1, it's all the steps. Each played a role in getting me through my own personal paradigm shift. That's why I'm re-titling my show: "5 Easy Steps to Metaphysical Fitness: They Actually Work". I'll be working out the new material at the Ensemble Studio Theatre in New York from January through March of 2009. Then we – Wendy Apple (Producer/Director), Bob Balaban (Executive Producer) and I – will make it into a movie. Because now that I know they work, I want to share my 5 Easy Steps with as many people as possible. To help get America through the paradigm shift. And tomorrow the world!

Q.E.D. Ping, acromegaly, pong, megalomania, I've got my confidence back.

 
 
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