100 Paths To Happiness

Stolen Moments

2007-11-08T18:16:00.000-07:00

The lake was deserted on that late autumn day, with no one around for miles. Stark and desolate, sunbleached barren branches rising through the water, weak afternoon sunlight, a single bird picking at weeds along the shoreline, and not a soul except the two of them. He pulled his truck as close to the water as possible so that when they looked through the windshield it appeared they were floating, pointing towards the sharp rocky outcroppings in the distance.

He kissed her, again and again and again, opening her heart like the wide expanse of water before them. Peeled off clothes, foggy windows, yearning, satisfaction and love.

Afterwards they lay tangled, hot and breathless watching the glare of the sunset on the surrounding mountains through the steamy windows. She rested her head on his bare chest, listening -- howling wind, water lapping against the rocky shore, all drowned out by the pounding of his heart. Life.

Yoga

2007-11-02T22:52:00.001-07:00

Stretch, twist, hold. Untwist, hold. Push, further, breathe into it, push further on the exhale, hold.

By the end of the hour, I am exhaltant. It sounds like torture, but it’s the closest to nirvana I’ve experienced outside of sex. Yoga is much, much more than a physical exercise; it’s a spiritual release.

Most of us live with little spiritual momentum, and most of those who do, do so within a rigid, judgmental structure. Yoga is a small part of a bigger way of life, one that connects us to the earth, to each other, to Divinity, and back to ourselves.

Because here’s the thing: you’re the one that saves your soul, in the end. That line about how you could be a serial killer, but if you say you love Jesus you’ll be saved bullshit is just that, because if you wait until you’re dead to be saved, you’ll be dead your whole life.

All this bending and stretching leads to enlightenment. Who knew going to the gym could save your soul?

Wood Fires

2007-11-01T20:29:00.000-07:00

Fall is a season of crackling: the crackling of dry leaves beneath our feet, the crackling cooking noises of hot breakfasts returning after a summer of fresh fruit and toast, and my favorite, the crackling sound of a wood fire.

I live in Phoenix, Arizona, where we don’t have a very long season of fire-worthy weather -- or, I should say, purposeful-not-burning-down-houses-or-forest fire-worthy weather. (The latter lasts for the hottest four months of the year.) Since we have a short window of opportunity, we take every advantage.

We have a stainless steel fire bowl in our backyard that gets ample use starting right about now. Nights are spent sitting around our mini bonfire with a bottle of wine and a warm sweater -- always one that can be thrown in the washer that night, because it will smell of smoke the next day. The cat casts a wary eye towards the flames and stays far away, knowing that fluffy + sparks = no fun. We watch the flames and embers float towards a sky full of stars and enjoy each other’s company.

A carefully chosen selection of songs is piped out from the living room, usually something martini lounge-ish. Or songs we’ve learned of from the alien ambient station on iTunes radio, just loud enough so as not to cover the sound of the crackling fire. When a bottle or two of wine has been finished, we retire. That’s the nice thing about being a freelancer -- you can help finish off a bottle or two without worrying about staying awake and alert at the office the next day!

We have a gas fireplace in the living room, and we use it often in the cooler months, but it’s not the same as being outdoors with that wild wood fire. As long as I don’t have to carry any wood, that is.

Postsecret

2007-08-12T21:08:00.000-07:00

At the very end of the movie American Beauty, Kevin Spacey's character says, "...it's hard to stay mad, when there's so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I'm seeing it all at once, and it's too much, my heart fills up like a balloon that's about to burst... And then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it, and then it flows through me like rain and I can't feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life."

That's how reading Postsecret makes me feel.

If you're not familiar with Postsecret, here's the rundown: This man started a blog and suggested to the public that if we had anything we'd like to get off our chests, we could write those things on a postcard anonymously and mail them to him. He in turn would post them in his blog, respecting our anonymity.

This idea has literally become a lifesaver for many. The blog, and the books spawned from it, have raised money for the National Suicide Prevention Hotline, enough to keep it "in business", so to speak. It makes people see that they are not alone, that no matter how dark and ugly their own secret is, someone else out there shares it. And they are set free.

I've been reading Postsecret for several years now, and each week it serves as a reminder of the fraily of the human condition, the realities that tie us together, for better or worse, and how beautiful life can be if you just let go.

Craigslist

2007-03-30T23:12:00.000-07:00

There is nothing, absolutely nothing, that you can't find on Craigslist. Couch? Vespa? Wedding gown? Lead singer for your garage band? Trombone lessons? Casual sex? Balenciaga knockoffs? A new roommate? A $1.5 million house? A new job in marketing? All on Craigslist. Never actually bought anything from there, but many bored hours have been spent perusing the awesome listings, people sharing little bits of their lives, shedding light on the varied and highly entertaining society in which we live.

For example:

1. Fun-loving midget
Fun neighborhood bar, celebrating 14th bi-annual anniversary. Looking for a little person who knows how to entertain a crowd and is not offended by being called a midget. Our event is happening April 30th and we would like a fun-loving midget to get in on the action between 6p and 11p.

2. Dirty Scummy Clown
Fun neighborhood bar, celebrating 14th bi-annual anniversary. Looking for a dirty, balloon making clown. We don't need you to juggle or be nice to people, but you do need to be funny and not a rude-cock-sucker. Also a plus: if you can make balloon vaginas. Our event is happening April 30th and we would like our dirty clown between 6p and 11p.

Midgets and balloon vaginas, people. I MUST FIND THIS BAR.

Old People Holding Hands

2006-11-14T14:25:00.000-07:00

Have you seen that diamond commercial showing couples walking in the park? There’s an old couple and a younger couple. The old couple is taking their time, having a leisurely stroll, holding hands. The younger couple is rushing along in the cold, arms crossed at their chests, ignoring each other. They separate to pass the older couple, one on either side, and when they do, they look back and see how their walk really should be going. They reach out and hold hands, seeing how it could be for them in 30 or so years if they try.

I think the moral of the story is that if you buy your wife diamonds for 30 years, she’ll still hold your hand when even the Viagra doesn’t help anymore.

Old people holding hands gets me every time. All we hear about relationship-wise is divorce, divorce, divorce -- Britney and Kevin, Reese and Ryan, Jessica and Nick, all of the supposed fairy tales falling apart. Old people holding hands means it doesn’t always happen that way.

And of course it doesn’t mean it was a fairy tale for them, either, but they made it. I recently had the pleasure of meeting the grandparents of my significant other, who are in their 80’s and have been married since time immemorial. We went for a day trip around town and stopped at a little river with a walking trail. The two of them walked slowly and carefully ahead of us, hand in hand. I commented on how sweet it looked to Significant Other’s mum, who relayed that someone once told them the very same thing in the grocery store and it turned out that they had gotten into a bitter argument earlier that day, but Grandfather was having difficulty walking because of a bad knee, so Grandmother was only holding him to help him stay upright.

They seemed to have gotten over it by that day at the river. We caught them smooching later.

Halloween

2006-10-31T13:40:00.000-07:00

I love Halloween. I love freckle-faced mini witches and baby ghosts that can barely walk. I love pumpkin spice lattes and peace signs carved into jack o’ lanterns and the thin veil between the living and the dead on Samhain. I love candy corn and individual peanut butter cups. I love seeing grown men dressed like they have a mental condition for the sake of winning a bar tab.

I had no idea how many kids live in my neighborhood until last Halloween, because I never see any of these children playing outside. This leads me to believe that they are all sitting on their butts playing video games all weekend, and thus candy is the last thing they should be eating, but whatever. It’s Halloween and they aren’t my kids.

Adults on Halloween are even better. Not the ones taking their kids trick-or-treating - you know they’d rather be with the other grown ups, the ones attending their own costume parties, the ones winning those bar tabs. I think you can tell a lot about a person by whom they choose to be on Halloween. For example, the people who dress up like incredibly scary clowns of death. WTF? How is that fun or enjoyable for anyone? It isn’t, and that’s the point. People who dress up like incredibly scary clowns of death revel in making others uncomfortable. Avoid them.

Then there is the ubiquitous gypsy/priest/homeless guy/recent dead celebrity/insert-other-cliché-here costume. This is for people who are out of either time or imagination. Booooooooooring. Avoid them, too.

What you want to do is find the people with the funny, unique and interesting costumes. Like the guy dressed as Lt. Dangles from Reno 911. The fat Richard Simmons. The Mormon missionary (just make sure it’s a costume).

Now I know you are dying to see my costume so you can judge exactly how smarty, amusing and clever I am. Bless you for that. Guess what I am?

Okay, it was a great excuse to prance around a bar in little more than my underwear and a skanky blonde wig.

What was that I was saying about procrastination?

2006-09-20T14:12:00.000-07:00

Wow, April? Really?

Sorry about that.

I've been really, really busy doing stuff like, oh, graduating from college (finally!), going on trips to such fabulous vacation destinations as Michigan, New York, San Diego and northern Arizona, lots of photoshoots, entertaining the psuedo-in-laws and starting some new, exciting projects with one of my favorite clients.

But I am still here! And I still have lots of things that make me happy! And I still want to share them with you! Updates will begin again this week. Thanks for sticking around!

Public Service Announcement

2006-04-18T14:14:00.000-07:00

We interrupt this blog of happiness for the following announcement:

There are no kinky stories and/or pictures of feet, toenails, red toenails, or any type of foot/toe combination, painted or otherwise, on this blog. I am sorry to disappoint whoever y'all are in Oklahoma and Kansas and even Philadelphia (I am shocked by you) who have reached this site in search of such forbidden delights.

Sorry.

Carry on.

Procrastination

2006-04-03T14:52:00.000-07:00

Most people think of procrastination as a negative. It is synonymous with laziness, carelessness, sloth. It is viewed as something to be overcome, a bad habit to break, a thorn in the side of productivity. There are entire counseling centers devoted to the subject.

I personally love it.

I get some of my best work done while I am procrastinating. If I am not in the mood to write a paper for school, I might write an entry for the entertainment news column instead. Laundry? Bah! There is grocery shopping to be done! (I love grocery shopping; it is a sick addiction. Maybe that’s another entry.) Clean the kitchen? Actually, there is a piece of classic literature I have been meaning to sink into, and what better time than now to further my understanding of classic prose? It’s necessary as a professional writer, you know.

One day I redecorated my entire bedroom, including painting 4 original pieces of artwork myself, while putting off balancing my checkbook. The irony, of course, is that this involved spending money from that very checking account.

The best procrastination is the kind that gets you to do something you previously procrastinated about. For example, yesterday instead of writing a thesis on sales management strategies, I pulled out all of my old clothes I had set aside and finally photographed them so I could list them on eBay. I had put off that project for about 6 months. It was completed because I didn’t feel like doing something else.

That paper will not write itself, though, so tonight I will have to dig into it. After I tan. And check my email. And make dinner. And look for writing gigs on Craig’s List. And Anderson Cooper 360 is on straight through to 9:00…

Tulips

2006-03-14T23:36:00.000-07:00

Some of the favorite moments of my childhood were spent with my grandparents in my mother’s childhood home on Long Island. In the mornings I would wake up early with my grandmother and she and I would sit at her kitchen table, which was always covered with one of those felt-backed plastic-y tablecloths, the kind that are easy to wipe off. She would drink coffee with powdered creamer and I would devour either the sugary cereals that Grandpa would buy for the grandkids’ visits – the kind my mother would not keep in the house – or English muffins with lots of butter and jam, and a cup of tea. We would do crossword puzzles together. She would do the New York Times puzzle in pen, which was rather ballsy of her. I would attempt the Newsday puzzle. We would sit there for a couple of hours, and through the kitchen window in the spring and early summer I would gaze out at the patch of tulips in the front yard while pondering what could possibly be an eight-letter word for “A place for diplomacy.” (It’s “the Hague,” in case you’re wondering, and that really bugged me because obviously it is two words.)

I still remember those tulips, and what they heralded. The end of the long New York winter. The beginning of swimming pool season. I liked to examine them under Grandma’s kitchen window, the way when closed they would look like one flower and the next day, opened, a completely different variety. I loved their beauty in simplicity. When she passed a blizzard struck the East coast and my mother forbade me to fly home for the services. I sent tulips for Grandma and hoped she could see me remembering her window.

In high school I read Sylvia Plath for the first time and lo and behold, one of my favorite poems became her Tulips. “The tulips are too excitable, it is winter here.” Almost too vibrant to bear. The flowers, her life. The poem was written about recovering from a suicide attempt. Too much, even in simplicity.

My favorite tulip story is a much happier one than Sylvia’s. When my beautiful niece was an infant, my mother and I gave my sister a reprieve and took the baby for the night. There was a bouquet of tulips in the kitchen, and this darling baby’s face lit up like the sun when she saw them. I picked one and tickled her face with it and she gave me the biggest, most pure smile I have ever seen a person give.

Tulips remind me of women who were instrumental in molding me, as a woman and as a writer. I have never done a crossword in pencil, only pen, and can sit for hours to complete one; Grandma taught me ballsiness and patience. Plath wrote eloquently of the darkest recesses of a woman’s heart; I hope I can express myself with even a shadow of the talent she possessed, and she showed me that the chaos and darkness of the soul holds its own sort of beauty. And the woman-to-be, my lovely niece, showed me in that tulip-brushed moment that sometimes the simplicity isn’t too much, but just perfect enough for a moment of pure joy.

Bon Jovi

2006-03-05T12:35:00.000-07:00

I have a confession to make.
I love hair bands.

I’m serious.

Bon Jovi is the root of this problem. Their penultimate album Slippery When Wet was released when I was in third grade. I have a distinct memory of trying to choreograph a dance routine to Living On A Prayer in music class with several of my girlfriends. “Our movements shouldn’t match the words, we’re not dancing for deaf people you know.” Don’t make the steeple with your hands on the word “prayer”, don’t hold out your hand in front of you on the line “Take my hand, we’ll make it, I swear.” How lame would that be? Just swing your hair round a lot, there you go.

My older sister was wise to my deviant musical ways, and for my thirteenth birthday she bought us tickets to see Bon Jovi play at Giants Stadium for their New Jersey tour. Oh. My. God. I knew what this meant. This meant that this was my chance, that out of a crowd of 44,000 screaming fans Jon Bon Jovi (easily 15 years older than me, by the way) would sense my soul crying out for him and recognize himself in me, climb into the crowd and carry me away to hair band nirvana where we would live our days on a tour bus raising adorable hair band bandana-wearing babies. I prepared for weeks. The outfit was picked out, including a forbidden black mini skirt and a bolero jacket (hey, they were all the rage in 1987). In those weeks I shaved my legs for the first time. And then, catastrophe struck.

I wiped out on my bike and tore up both knees.

My mother held me and rocked me back and forth after picking the gravel out of my flesh and thoroughly disinfecting my wounds, and I’m sure she thought my tears were due to the pain I must be in. Actually, I was crying because I could not possibly wear that forbidden black mini skirt to the concert with scabby knees, and if I did not wear the forbidden black mini skirt then obviously the soul connection between JBJ and myself would be blocked.

By the time the concert came around the knees had pretty much healed, I wore the skirt, and JBJ still didn’t hear the call of my true love despite at one point being directly in front of my on the catwalk circling the stadium. A true tragedy in the life of a newly teenaged girl.

It wasn’t just Bon Jovi I loved, but they were at the top of the list. Bring on Winger and Warrant and Firehouse and Whitesnake and Motley Crue and Poison, baby. When a radio station I worked for offered me the chance to interview Kip Winger a couple of years ago, I jumped at it. And although I did not and would never have taken him up on the offer, I was secretly a little delighted that he propositioned me when we met. How metal is that?

My musical taste has evolved. I promise I listen to The Shins and the Juliana Theory and PJ Harvey. I’m listening to Paul Weller right now, I swear.

But I’ll tell you what. The amazing first date man from “French Martinis”? One night only a month into our relationship he brought me down into the bar in the basement of his house, poured me a glass of wine and said, “I want you to hear this CD”. You had better believe that the CD he put on was “Monster Ballads”, and with that, he sealed the deal.

You can’t take the metal out of the girl.

Pecan Trees

2006-02-25T22:36:00.000-07:00

When my mother and her sisters were children, my grandfather planted a tree in their backyard that he had twisted into a loop and tied so it would grow in a circle. Years later, when I was a child and would play in that same backyard, that tree became the first one I ever climbed. It was small and had grown perfectly looped, making it easy for small hands and legs to hook into.

The trees were larger at my own home, and as I grew, so did my courage to climb them. (I’m not entirely sure that my mother knew how often I did this; it is probably one of those things best realized when your child is grown and safe already.) The woods around my home were rife with climbing candidates, particularly the pines behind the house. If there were a limb low enough for me to grab, I would latch on and throw my legs up like the tree was a set of monkey bars. I would climb as high as I dared and wonder at how different the landscape looked from up there.

Different friends had their own trees, and each tree had its own purpose. One friend’s giant pine served as the perfect water balloon bombing station. Another friend’s tall oak had large, long limbs perfect to imagine as the cockpit of the space shuttle, and we took turn being commanders.

As I got older I stopped climbing, but I still enjoyed the trees for other purposes. The shade of one on a summer’s day for reading. The trunks of two to stretch a hammock between. Watching maple leaves flip to their silvery underside, signaling impending rain. Snow coating bare branches, making everything drab and gray about a New York winter sparkling and beautiful.

I now live far from those trees of my youth, in a part of the southwest where there are no pine trees to make my hands sticky with sap and no snow to collect like diamonds on branches. There is a dearth of vegetation of any kind in the desert of central Arizona, popular opinion would have you believe. There are lots of trees here, actually. All of them were brought in by professional landscapers at great expense to make this harsh desert more hospitable. The most obvious are the palm trees, but the most striking are the pecan trees.

Pecan trees are large and sprawling. Their branches spider outward, begging to be climbed by courageous children or small animals. In the spring and summer, their lush foliage provides much-needed shade in the blistering heart of the desert. In the fall and winter their black trunks and spidery limbs are starkly beautiful against the blue desert sky. These trees towering over me feel safe and strong and permanent in a way that little in a city like Phoenix does. There is an organic vegetable farm south of the city that is open to the public that has dozens of these trees lining its driveway, and I look forward to each visit for the pleasure of walking beneath them.

Do you have a favorite tree?
This one, located in a suburb of Detroit, is mine:

Red Toenails

2006-02-23T12:39:00.000-07:00

I once read a story about an elderly couple still deeply in love after many, many years of marriage. The wife had always prided herself on the fact that she kept her toes perfectly painted. She did this herself, as women of that generation generally eschew having someone go at their feet with the sharp instruments that are used in professional pedicures. The years crept up and took a toll on her flexibility. Arthritis left her unable to bend over far enough to paint her toes anymore. One day, she was sitting outside enjoying a spring day with some family members when her husband noticed that her toes weren’t painted. He asked why, and she told him. And do you know what he did? He went into the house, got her bottle of red nail polish from the medicine cabinet, and sat down and painted her toes for her.

There are a couple of things about this story that get me. The first is obvious – the husband cares enough about his wife and her sense of pride in her appearance that he sheds his super-masculine identity for a few minutes to perform such a tender act of painting her toenails, which is a rather delicate operation. The image of his large, wrinkled, weathered hands cradling her little old lady foot sort of epitomizes long-term love to me.

The second thing that gets me about this story is that he noticed. She probably had no idea that he knew on a conscious level that her toes were always painted. Women don’t think men notice that sort of thing very much. He noticed, though. He knew it was a point of pride for her, he noticed when a detail as small as nail polish was missing, he cared enough to inquire why, and loved her enough to know that it is the details that help define a personality, even when the detail is as small and seemingly superficial as nicely-painted toenails.

For the record, mine are always painted too. Usually red, because red is for happiness, red is for love, and red is for luck. This of course means that I have happy, in love, lucky toes.

French Martinis

2006-02-22T20:24:00.000-07:00

1 1/2 oz vodka
1/4 oz Chambord® raspberry liqueur
1/4 oz fresh pineapple juice
1 twist lemon peel

I drank my first French martini at a cool, dark lounge called Merc Bar on a night when several of my friends, who were not the cool, dark lounge sorts of people, wanted to people-watch. Merc Bar was fancy. Merc Bar was expensive. Merc Bar was – gasp! – downtown. I went along under their guise of people-watching, but really I was salivating for this place. All I had heard for months from those in the know was how fabulous it was, how New York. And I too am New York. (And fabulous, I like to think.) So we would be a perfect match.

The man I was dating at the time was having a hard time financially, so it was definitely not the sort of place he would be taking me on a normal night out. His masculinity had finally broken through and after a period (quite a long period, I might add) of me paying whenever we went out if I wanted to enjoy his company at the same time, he refused to take me up on those offers anymore. But tonight was different; someone in the group must have browbeaten him enough to get him to go, so off we went.

It was marvelous. It was, in fact, cool, and it was, in fact, dark. The walls were upholstered in black leather. The music was chill ambient. The surgically-enhanced blondes were gunning for the attention of wealthy men old enough to be their fathers or, in one case, grandfather. Two men walked in together wearing their new millennium shiny club shirts, sat at a table opposite each other and didn’t speak a word for half an hour. They were too busy scoping for chicks. They left when no one threw their panties at them – too young and not rich enough, I suppose. I sipped my first French martini and watched this scene unfold in glee. This was a Saturday night and that was why the freaks were out. I knew that on a weeknight, when the gold diggers were home resting up and the people who enjoyed atmosphere were out and about, this would be the perfect place for me.

Three years passed before I had another French martini or visited Merc Bar again. I was on what has turned out to be my last first date with a man who was (and still is) captivating. It was a Monday night at the end of July. We had lingered so long over dinner that the restaurant closed around us, and Merc Bar was mere steps away. I remembered the ambiance. I remembered the French martinis. I didn’t want the night to end yet, so I suggested we stop for one or two.

Merc Bar on a Monday night is perfection, as I thought it would be. No fake boobs, no posers, no borderline-pedophiles. Just couples like us quietly chatting. We sat on a low couch with candles flickering on the table in front of us and enjoyed a French martini. We talked about our families. We enjoyed a second French martini. We talked about true love, love at first sight, soul mates. I knew what he drove without him telling me, and told him so. (He just struck me as a black truck kind of guy.) We talked and laughed and talked and laughed and we both knew, over three French martinis, that this was a very special first date. And the bar closed around us.

We finished our drinks and walked out of the bar, slowly through the tiled outdoor walkway towards the parking garage. It was drizzling, another treat in the desert on a hot July night. We sat on a bench in the rain, him slightly behind me with a leg around me, me leaning back onto his chest. We talked a bit more, then I turned my head back towards him, and he leaned forward, and before we knew it we were sharing our first kiss. A kiss in the rain tasting of raspberry.

A year and a half later, he is my first kiss of every day and my last kiss of every night. Thank you, French martinis.