Only Time (remix-a-lot)

This time last year I'd just finished sweating bullets inside rented dirt bike gear, completing a week long camp with fellow badass women on a meager 12 hours total of seat time. "Girl, you got the biggest balls ever," Paula still recounts. Facts.

The summer light in British Columbia lingered until nearly 9PM and with 6AM alarms, the days were long and sleep minimal. Somewhere during that first day of riding, my brain decided Enya was the answer. I have no idea why. It always seems to know before I do. That night I found a remix of "Only Time," hit repeat and let it calm my fishtailing-on-rocky-inclines nervous system enough to fall asleep in my top bunk. Spotify recently started recommending a whole new batch of remixes.

Apparently I'm ahead of the curve.

My assistant tennis coach in college used to say: "Molly gets traumatized by music," which always made me half-laugh while silently wondering why it always landed like a knock on my personality. Now I see it more clearly. The language misstep. It wasn't trauma. It was feeling.

Isn't that why we love music? Certain artists and songs? Why we quote them, tattoo them? There are songs that have marked moments of my life in ways nothing else can. Like Our Lady Peace's "Innocent." The line "every calorie is a war" and the ones that followed got me through my senior year of high school because if I couldn't control my dad dying, I sure as hell could control the food going into my body and how much exercise would offset it.

And, every time I hear Moby's "Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad" I remember driving in my '91 Suzuki Sidekick, windows rolled down, wondering what life would be like in the future. When the trailer for Black Hawk Down came out, the song was used and I cried. Not just about my dad, but all the stuff you haven't worked out when you're 17.

Sometimes I still watch it, just to remember.

Feeling deeply is where it's at, period. Sure, it's highly uncomfortable at times but as I keep going on a new path this year, with fewer fucks to give and a new discernment of where I place my energy, I realize it's what makes me good at what I do. It's how I know when a moment deserves silence instead of narration. It's why I care so much about getting things right. It's what helps shape the stories I tell with a camera and it's there later, in a Premiere timeline, when the right piece of music quietly finds its place.

"I think the receipts for love is grief" - Scott Galloway

This June was hard.

After a Memorial Day pop over to Texas to ride dirt bikes and back roads with Paula and a few other pals, I came home to find things had taken an unexpected turn with the cats. Despite healing from a random abscess caught a day after I got back, Roger took an abrupt turn five days later, and I had to let him go.

I think I'm pretty tapped out on being in charge of others' lives.

Roger left in the evening and a few hours later I flew to LA. I met my pal and colleague Danielle at the airport hotel, fixed my hair, washed a stain out of my shirt, memorized a pitch in between brunch with a funder, took a Waymo (yes I said "look Ma, no hands!") and connected with super interesting, engaging people at the Hollywood Climate Summit. Later, we pitched live onstage in front of an audience and judging panel including folks behind films like Cowspiracy and The Game Changers and...Billie Eilish's mom. (Her name is Maggie and she'd prefer you know her that way 🙃).

A few friends asked if I was nervous, but it turns out grief has a strange way of recalibrating your sense of fear. We got our full ask for a research grant and a little extra from someone in the audience. It was a great experience. A very, very weird 48 hours.

We're gonna make a film about the return of wolves to Northern California, and to quote our pitch: "the wolf is not the story, the wolf is the lens." I'll share more as the research unfolds, but it feels good to be building something that's already beginning to find its footing.

Then I came home. Disorienting, to say the least.

Roger was his own man - gentle, observant and a slow burn when it came to letting anyone too close. He was brought to a local vet clinic I worked at by a good Samaritan and kept limited sight in one eye despite a very bad URI. I'd let him out after hours while I cleaned the treatment rooms and eventually scribbled "Roger Federer Condit" on his kennel tag. A week later, he came home with me.

It took nearly a decade before he ventured onto the bed or began requesting scritches on the 'rug of safety' in the living room. He was adjacent, but very present. I think that's what makes his absence so much more palpable. I've lost many cats over the years, but there is a marked difference in the energy now that it's just me and my tuxedo kid, Louie.

"It's me and you," I told him.
"Me and Lou."

The lives that stay in my heart have songs and artists attached to them.

My dad? CCR and Jim Croce.
Harry, my orange gangster of a cat from West Philly? "Forever Young" by Rod Stewart.

Rog's song? Layup's "Right Next To You".

One day, I know I'll smile but for now, it's on a playlist that helps me feel.

In the midst of all this, the ARK filming returned to a location of the largest impound this year: 99 dogs, 3 cats, a Patagonian mara and 153 birds (chickens, roosters, turkeys, ducks, geese and a few guinea fowl). I can't divulge too much about it just yet, but what I can say is, the case sits at the very crux of hoarding's complexities.

The phone calls.
The waiting.
The first visit.
The paperwork.
The sheriff's department.
The warrant.
The notes.
The driving.
The conversations at the gate.
The evidence.
The second visit.
The third visit.

Ultimately, this case changed something in me. It changed how I think about this work, and why I want to put it in front of as many people as possible. Hoarding isn't someone else's problem. It's a community issue. That’s why I’m making this film.

Much of the last decade plus has been consumed with multiple cats and figuring out what the hell I'm doing and where I'm going. I've carried a lot.

Now, I finally see and feel the movement.
It's close.
I'm homesick for a place I haven't reached yet.

So my pack is correct, but damn it is heavy.
I carry Lou.
I carry the ARK.
I carry this writing.
I carry hope.

Only time can be the measure of healing and how stories unfold.

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