After my heroic student from Portland, Oregon got  a drive thru the Bronx with me at the wheel, speed narrating the 60's and 70's, the fires, the gangs, the empty lots, the new "SoBro", race, ethnic enclaves, NAY-ba-huhds, from the West Bronx to Orchard Beach, from Soundview to City Island, horses and green paths, boats, and a pilgrimage up and down Zerega Ave where he wanted to walk, and get his picture taken with the street sign.…   he recited some text from "Danny and the Deep Blue Sea" - he didn't understand why Danny expressed the sentiment of -- to get home, I know I'm gonna get in 20 fights along the way -- the feeling of having to battle everything in life.  This was harder than a Bronx Phonix lesson.  This was years of metabolizing attitudes.  This was growing up with Bronx rough housing fighting abuse the world bashing against you.  This felt impossible to explain or translate or transmit to this open Oregon soul at home in the world, in the woods, in his body.  I grew up always ready for a fight.  Even looking in the mirror, I say "What!  Whaddyoulookin at?"  This may be hardest to explain to white people of the middle classes who ascribe to conciliation and 'non-violent communication.'  This is alien to my Bronx Italian upbringing.  I fight.  I am loud.  I yell.  I shake it out.  I take lessons from my dog; let the anger rise up and down my spine, then shake it off.  Bark and shake.  Regather myself.  Walk it off.  I was brought up by a PTSD father who was paranoid.  I was taught to not smile at strangers in the street, to not say hello, to not leave myself vulnerable to outsiders, strangers, even 'family.'  Family could be the worst offenders.  Fights were daily.  I grew up in a culture of violence.  I was trained from the earliest age that the world is hostile, that people say "hello" when they want something.  This upbringing is a lot to transmit to a young loving actor.  In a session anyway.  I guess that's the director's job.  It might be fun for me to try to do that.  To teach Bronx Phonix and Bronx Attitude.  We fight over nothing.  Nothing at all.  Most fights, it is impossible to remember how it started or why or how it escalated, how everyone ended up getting involved and blowing up.  The fight is already in the rooms we live in.  All it takes is two or more of us to enter the room and the fight inhabits us.  And outside the house, as early as little kids, if someone, anyone looked at us, we'd yell, "Take a picture it lasts longer!"  In other words, don't look at me.  I am writing this to you, reader, as if all this is a foreign concept, as if you didn't grow up like me, and don't have a context for it.  I am the daughter of a traumatized Marine and his battered wife.  Violence and the values of war were imbued in me, as was the concept of 'enemy' and 'sacrifice' and 'duty.'   I think that's enough for now.  Meditate on a five year old Bronx girl, yelling across the street, "Take a picture - it lasts longer!"  And try to understand what that constant hostility is like...