Kathy's Blog

Cafe Society and the Heart Chakra

2009-07-12T14:17:00.001-07:00

Roger is hearing the music of Paris for the first time. And in our conversations, we have been trying to figure out exactly how and why France seems to be so entirely different from the US. Not only France, but the little snapshots of Europe we've been lucky enough to see this time around.

I've used this metaphor a lot over the years, that the US is a young country and got very powerful very quickly. With good reason, we have become a very strong, affluent and intimidating country. But we've grown up very quickly relative to the rest of western civilization, and the uneven growth spurt has had some unintended consequences.

In many ways, we're like the big adolescent on the playground, who likes to throw his weight around and make sure all the other kids know who's boss. It's getting better now that we're approaching diplomatic relations with a bit more humility and grace than we have in recent memory, and of course the image is gross and crude and does not take into account a lot of mitigating details. Still, every time I travel abroad, I get the same image. Bullies on the playground; adolescents; a country still so young that it has not yet gracefully learned to understand some of the bigger picture.

And this time around, I've realized something else. Countries like France are not even ON the playground. They're sitting at a cafe somewhere, sipping wine and conversing about history and politics and art and love. They understand the importance of fewer hours in the work week, gatherings of friends, the need to take care of the sick in a compassionate way, the sanity of taking time off to spend time decompressing. This is something that we haven't woven into our culture and don't even understand the need for. We are too busy being on the playground, defending our position in the world.

Roger phrased it perfectly: the societies we've been visiting live in a whole different chakra than we do in the States. We are very "third chakra" -- the yellow solar plexus chakra, seat of will and action. Driven, motivated, pushing -- all attributes of the third chakra. And the French are more "fourth chakra" at this stage of their history -- the heart chakra, seat of emotion, compassion, refinement. They have certainly had their time of living in their solar plexus. We walked through halls in Versailles dedicated to the battles of Napoleon III, the conquering of other nations, the power of the state. And they've had their moments of humility as well, with their revolutions and occupations. They've done the third chakra, and -- at this moment at least -- seem to be living more in the heart, concentrating on activities that embrace the family, the social structure, the things that provide joy.

It's an interesting concept: that civilizations can move up the chakras as they evolve. One could argue that the further east you travel, and the older the cultures are, the higher up in the chakra ladder the people ascend. But then there are places where the cultures collide, and you have the technology revolution in India, and the commercialism in China, and it all gets very interesting and the center of power changes yet again.

All the aspects that we move through have power. There is no better or worse aspect. Every chakra, every aspect of an evolution, has a unique and powerful meaning and purpose. Individually we move through our phases, and our personal change is mirrored in the cultures we create around us. As we age and mature and learn, so do our civilizations. The tides of history evolve the underlying structures of a society much like the ocean creates new shorelines.

La Musique

2009-07-12T13:42:00.000-07:00

After nearly a week in Paris, I'm starting to be able to verbalize what the magic is about this city. I think it's musicality of it: the rhythms of the people moving through the day; the accent notes of detail and decoration that adorn the buildings, the bridges, the clothing of the women; the music itself that seems to seep out of every nook and cranny, revealing itself in an Irish fiddle player in the courtyard archway of the Louvre, a brass band partying on the quai of the Seine, a clarinetist outside the Musee D'Orsey. There is music everywhere, and to be in Paris is to be caught up in a song of such complexity and beauty it nearly takes your breath away.

We were in harmony with the rhythms of the city last night as we discovered a lovely bistro near Les Halles and had a late supper of l'entrecote, frites, and red wine. Watching the people stroll by we saw lovers and tourists and friends in an endless river, moving at different paces but all seeming to follow a certain inner beat. After we ate, we stumbled into a store that was filled with open bags of spices, rice, and dried fruit, and a ceiling hung with hundreds of clay pots, an antler head on the wall, and a back room filled with painted ceramics and other wonders from the east. On a fez hanging over the cash register was a Barack Obama pin... an instant testament to the intertwining melodies of all our worlds.

Afterwards, we walked in search of a jazz club we passed on our first night in town. Finding it, we decided to risk 36 Euros to go upstairs and hear what was on the ticket. What we got was beyond our wildest hopes - a quartet led by a guy named Khalil Chahine, with an exotic, eastern, fabulous sound. They are from Egypt, but the sound was like Pat Metheny, until they added this violin in the second set that turned the thing into a journey to distant lands. We sat enthralled until they were done, then walked back to our apartment in a sweet light rain around 1 am.

Today we went to my personal mecca, Shakespeare & Company, and pushed through the piles of books and people that symbolize for me a kind of wailing wall of writing, a place where I once stayed 30 years ago this summer, with a soaring heart and certainty of my eventual place in a venerated constellation of great writers. Today we found my book nestled in the stacks, left by me with Sylvia Whitman a few years ago on my last visit. Roger found it and took some pictures of me pulling it out of the wall, and then -- much to my delight -- a young woman started talking to us and ended up buying the copy.

We sat upstairs in a room that George Whitman, the owner of the store, once inhabited and that I once helped clean as part of my obligation for staying there. Looking through the window at the Seine and the towers of Notre Dame, I realized this was as much my holy ground as Chartres was for the pilgrims seeking a glimpse of a holy relic. It seems I have lost my faith in books and my work as a writer; coming back home to S&Co today acted as a re-statement of that faith, and a humbling gratitude for the gifts that I have been given.

So, for me, the music of Paris ultimately is about the words that have been written here. The rich literary tradition, the veneration accorded to writers, all can be felt in its bookstores, its cafes, the naming of its streets. When I am here, I write. And musicians play. And artists put incredible paint on canvases, or create pieces of sculpture that move you to tears.

This is a city where the tempo of the city life moves to a rhythm that is nearly impossible to resist. It pulls you into the streets on long summer nights, draws you into conversations, creates philosophies, and weaves romance around lovers. It puts a soundtrack to the streams of people walking past the sidewalk cafes, syncopates the nightlife in the pubs and clubs, and serenades the revelers on the boats floating down the Seine. Once you've been here once, Paris haunts your dreams and you wake up humming its tune.

Walking the Labyrinth

2009-07-10T14:15:00.000-07:00

We took the railway down to Chartres Cathedral today to walk the labyrinth. It is centered on the floor in the middle of the cathedral, and is as far away from the front door as the rose window above the door is high. Which means, so they say, that if the wall with the rose window were to hinge down to lie flat over the floor, the rose window would directly overlap the labyrinth.

The center of the labyrinth, so we heard, catches a beam of light on a certain day of the year (offset by a meter after nearly 800 years) that shines through the middle of the Rose window. A plaque showing the minotaur used to be in the middle, but was removed and melted down for cannon balls during the Revolution.

It's the only labyrinth in any of Europe's gothic cathedrals that remains both intact and in its original site. So when Roger and I took off our shoes and walked the path, we trod in the place where thousands of pilgrims have walked, over nearly 800 years. The stones were worn and slightly uneven and perfectly constructed to accommodate the stride of a human footstep. The air was rich, the stones were smooth, the vibes were intense.

What you do is enter through the only opening and just walk the path. The path is intricate and even though there's a definite pattern, when walking it the turns are unexpected and somewhat disorienting. There are 28 turns and the precise pattern of the design takes you through all the quadrants at different times, in varying distances from the center. It looks different on paper than it feels in three dimensions. You kind of have to do it to get what it's all about, and even then it's difficult to articulate why it's so simple and complex at the same time.

Once you get to the middle, you are supposed to take a moment to reflect. Some people move from petal to petal on the inner blossom, contemplating various states of ascendance, from mineral to animal to human, finally coming to the middle where the divine and spiritual state is signified. It can also be seen as a stepping through the seven chakras, and moving from the red base to the ethereal white light of the spirit. No matter how you see it, the center is the heart of the experience, and the place where the peace and contemplation repose.

I have walked Chartres-style labyrinths before, usually in a ritual that is dedicated to mindfulness and walking meditation. What was interesting about today's walk is that there were dozens of tourists, from many nationalities, roaming through the cathedral (and hence the labyrinth) as we were trying to walk it. There was a woman before us who was walking it prayerfully, and then there was Roger and, a few paces behind, me. Among us were waves of tourists and kids and picture takers and gawkers, standing on the paths in our way, running along the lanes in games of tag, and generally being about as un-meditative as you can get.

As we were walking, there occasionally welled up some ethereal choir music, coming from some unseen nook of the cathedral. The sounds of the squeaking of our shoes, the rapid patter of the kids who were chasing each other around the circles, and the distant murmer of voices throughout the dim canvernous hall were actually comforting, human, full of life. When we sat in a nook set aside for prayer later, I meditated on those sounds some more and found them to be extremely warm... and far different from the creaks and moans and whispers I fancied I'd hear if locked up in the huge stone building and crypt overnight.

The oddest moment was when I got to the middle after about 30 minutes of walking -- an experience that, no matter how distracted you get is still pretty profound -- and turned around to face the Rose Window. A tour group had just filtered into the labyrinth and were leaning up to take pictures of the window. Surrounding me was a sea of maybe two doezen digital screens glowing back at me in the dark, echoing the image of the stained glass. All the shadowy bodies were craned up at the same angle, all were taking in the sight using the camera as their viewing device. It was not enough to look up at the window; it had to be perceived first through the technology of the day.

It's a unique type of meditation, walking a labyrinth. And today provided new insights that I'd never had before. For example, some people go through life running through and over patterns that are interesting to pay attention to, and never get a clue that there's something else going on. They are intent on moving through the space, or getting on with the "real" stuff, or taking a picture so they can dwell on the moment later.

If some of the people do figure out that there may be something more going on besides just space to get through, there are various ways to approach that apparent pattern. We can study it, we can analyze it mathematically, we can consciously ignore it, or we can try over time to make sense of it. We can decide to be mindful of it as we walk it, we can make a game of it, we can race our companions through it, or we can get extremely peeved that we're constantly running into obstacles that dislodge us from what we perceive is our goal.

Finally, once we've decided that we're going to move through the experience with contemplation and as much consciousness as we are able, the experience itself dislodges and unnerves us. The more I felt I was getting closer to the center, the farther away I actually was; as I moved away from it, I was actually getting closer. Once I thought I'd figured out the pattern, it switched on me and turned back on itself. No matter how rigorously I put one foot in front of the other, at a couple of points I was sure I'd lost my way.

Very comforting, this last part. I always travel and vow to make things different, better, more exciting, more deep when I get back. I make plans to learn a new language, to study up on my history, to relax more, to keep my sense of wonder and openness. And yet, that's just my mind telling me it knows how to keep the bends in place, how to figure out the design before it happens. It never works out the way I think it's going to, but it always actually works out far better than I could've ever envisioned. The trick, as always, is to just stay on the path, one foot in front of the other, and watch the journey as it happens. As with the labyrinth, you kind of just have to do it to know what it's all about. And even then it's difficult to articulate why it's so simple and complex at the same time.

New Thoughts on Accountability

2009-07-10T14:03:00.000-07:00

OK. That last post was a bit one-sided. There are many facets to a story, and this accountability issue is no exception.

We've been noticing one area where Americans are far more responsible than (it appears, based on the world's worst empirical data sampling) our European neighbors: littering. Our streets are, basically, a lot cleaner than those we saw in the UK, Scotland, or France. Again, based on the worst statistics possible (the only sampling that would be less rigorous was if we had never stepped foot in these countries at all), we are finding littering to be an eyesore very much in France, and London, and (surprisingly) even in Scotland. Admittedly, Scotland is so very beautiful that even one misplaced soda bottle is an abomination, but we did see a couple of those, and some strewn about newspapers that were, in that setting, really jarring.

A hasty research on the 'net (made more difficult by the fact that my browser seems intent on displaying everything in French despite my many attempts to change my settings to English), indicates that the worst culprit in UK littering is fast food. And -- of the five worst offenders of fast food litter -- the US owns three of the chains (McDonald's, KFC, and Subway.)

So... we may not be that great about packaging our food, but we are pretty damn good about picking it all up afterward. And that goes for dog excrement as well. We're not too bad with that issue as well these days.

So, hats off to us. It may not make up for global warming, and it doesn't even start atoning for W, but it is a start, and it really does make a difference. I'm kind of looking forward to going home and not watching every footfall with care.

Accountability

2009-07-08T06:54:00.000-07:00

It's inevitable, I think... to compare who we are as Americans with the rest of the world as we travel through it and notice all the differences. And I've been noticing something recently that I'd like to capture here.

The first time I noticed it was on a posting on the wall of a train station near Hampton Palace outside of London. The notice said something like "The ticket office is now relocated due to repairs. I hope you are not inconvenienced by this. If so, please come and see me. (signed) The Station Master."

Another time I heard it was on the Virgin UK train, between London and Dumfries. There had been a massive screw up with the computer and all the reserved seated were screwed up. It was hot, crowded, chaotic, and actually a fairly unpleasant situation. The head conductor got on the PA system several times and said something like "I apologize for the problem with the reserved seating. It was due to a computer error. I am changing trains at Preston but will alert the next conductor as to the problem and make sure he is aware of the situation."

"I" am sorry. "I" will take responsibility to tell the next guy. "See me" and "I" will make it right for you.

Am I crazy, or is this unfamiliar language to our American ears? Don't we usually phrase things more in the passive voice, or couched in a less personal "we?" "We are sorry if this causes any inconvenience." "Please be aware that seats are not reserved on this train." No one says "I'm sorry," at least not in writing, least of all in public. No one says "This is a problem that happened on my watch, I'm going to take responsibility for it, and if you want to see me about it, I welcome the conversation." Our phraseology seems to always be constructed with one eye on the jury box, hedging away from taking responsibility, worrying that some attorney is going to smack us for saying out loud, and in public, that we are responsible for something that may, someday, cause someone to sue us for money -- money that we might not have had to pay had we just been a bit more careful with our words.

This idea of responsibility goes in the other direction, too. I was explaining to Roger last night that the French are a proud people, people who have contributed an inestimable amount to civilization and art and our western culture. They are part of a culture that stretches back many thousands of years, and they -- actually, shockingly, amazingly -- don't actually need us. They don't particularly love us, and they don't need to love us. They don't have to speak English (but they mostly do.) They don't have to kiss our asses. We are in their country, and -- for the most part -- we act pretty rudely to them. I have seen more than my share of belligerent, obnoxious, and stupid Americans in my travels, and have tried extra hard to change that legacy. But the fact remains that, individually and collectively, we have overall behaved somewhat badly in the world. And even though we don't apologize for that, or hold ourselves accountable, other people do. They remember the Americans who yell at them in order to make them understand English better. They remember the Americans who are pushy and rude and make jokes that are all too well understood by our hosts. They remember.

And then there's the collective. There's the role the US has played in the world during the Bush Administration. There's the fact that -- because of our race to greed and our cavalier mismanagement of an unthinkable amount of money -- everyone's lives all over the world have changed, jobs have been lost, financial empires have crumbled. There's this matter of a war that everyone, even us US citizens, understood to be wrong in action and intent and conception, and was engaged upon neverthe less. These people see this all too clearly. And just because we provide incredible diversions with our Michael Jacksons and ubiquitous iPods, it doesn't really excuse us from playing recklessly with the world's stability.

Taking responsibility. Accountability. I'm sorry to say, but I don't think this is one of our core competencies as Americans. We don't say "I'm sorry." We don't say "Please talk to us if you have a problem with what we're doing." We pretty much do what we want to do, and hedge our language to be as legally defensible as possible.

It smacks of immaturity. It reminds me again of how young we are, how callow, and how unseasoned. It reminds me of how much weight we throw around and how relatively easily won our power has been. I am not bashing the US.... we have contributed an enormous amount to the world, not only in technology and innovation, but in our ability to govern ourselves with relatively little bloodshed and instability. In our election of President Obama (and the overwhelming shift from right to left in Congress), we have shown that change can be effected in our system, and that we can self-regulate. I am once again not afraid to call myself an American when traveling abroad... but I am also very well aware that just because we collectively pulled our head out of our arses, we still have much to be accountable for.

Reversing this needs to start with us as individuals. Maybe taking our own personal responsibility a bit more seriously will start to ripple up to the collective. As we travel through Paris this next week, I am going to keep an eye open for ways to be more accountable, both personally and as a representative of our country. We are not a bad country, but we are a young one. Maybe increasing our individual maturity can help our nation grow as well, at least as we are perceived in the eyes of the world.

Auld Lang Syne

2009-07-06T16:34:00.000-07:00

Auld lang syne... idiomatically, it is sometimes translated as "once upon a time," or "long long ago." Once upon a time, we spent an idyllic three days here in Dumfries, Scotland. Those days happened to be today, yesterday, and the day before.

It's very difficult to put words to this country. Robert Burns, the poet laureate of the country and a highly revered man in these parts, was able to put pen to paper and compose thousands of words in song and poetry in his 37 years on the planet. I have been here for these three small days and am having a hard time formulating even a few.

But... the ones that have come to mind, go like this: It's different over here. We have visited a medieval castle (Caerlaverock) and Drumlanrig castle, which is still a home to the Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry. We have gone to a village gala and seen a massed band of bagpipes and drums marching up and down the street, playing haunting and inspiring songs of valor and war and love and country. We have been escorted through several of the town's many pubs and found warm cozy clusters of people, laughing and drinking and spinning yarns. It has rained just about every day, and even though the nights do not get dark until after 11 p.m. right now, it is altogether too easy to guess what life here is like during the cold wet winters, when the night falls at 4:30 p.m. and does not lighten up until well into the morning.

We are in the border lands. These rolling hills have seen many centuries of fighting and blood. Loyalties shift constantly. Border rievers rustled cattle back and forth between the two countries, opportunistically taking advantage of the constant flux. The sense I get is that all this change has only solidified the people who thrive here; they are flexible, tough, and stalwart. They are attached at a deep level to their land, their heritage, their music, and their love of independence. They are not afraid of getting sentimental when they hear certain songs. They understand that love of country is vastly different from politics.

We have been staying at the Ferintosh Guest House, a B&B run by our dear friends Robertson and Emma. Again, words are failing at describing the experience. For one thing, the B&B is terrific -- well run, extremely comfortable, well situated in the town, and with terrific food and amenities. I strongly suggest everyone who reads this book a trip over here and experience it directly. So not kidding. We actually have contemplated canceling Paris (where we are flying tomorrow) to stay another week here. That good. And we will be back.

Our experience, however, has gone way past the comfort and fun of staying at a great B&B. We have found magic moments. Long conversations into the night, talking about politics and the world and people and relationships and family and art and theatre. Robertson shared with us his best whiskey, and loaned Roger his kilt tonight to go to a Jean Armour dinner (a dinner held in honor of Robert Burns' wife). Robertson and Emma took us to their favorite pubs and together we crawled around an old graveyard, reading headstones by the failing light. Our gratitude to them is boundless, and humbling.

The Jean Armour dinner encapsulated the magic. We sat in Burns' favorite pub (The Globe Inn, still in operation) along with about 50 members of a Burns society, a group dedicated to preserving his memory and celebrating his life and art. Tonight's dinner was to acknowledge his wife Jean, who not only understood and supported the poet, she also took care of at least one his illegitimate children and tolerated his many other mistresses. The men at the dinner were all dressed up as they paid their respects to the occasion. There were toasts and recitations and jokes that we could not possibly unpack from the brogue that surrounded them. There was whiskey and ale and an abundance of food.

They talked about Jean Armour and paid tribute to how she steaded Burns, learned how to live with him, understood him. These were not politically correct men; they made sexist jokes and were very much about being a men's club (that invited the women along only for this special occasion.) And yet they still understood a good woman when they saw one; and they knew that Robert Burns had a good one with Jean Armour. And to their credit they seemed to understand that the wives who sat beside them were good ones of the same caliber. And in their way they paid deference and homage to them as well.

They sang songs to haunting, beautiful old melodies. They recited poetry while the rain dripped from the eaves outside. They spoke in an accent that was almost completely unintelligible to us, but was unmistakable in its sincerity and respect.

And I kept thinking: All this is for a poet. A writer. He was a man who put words on a page. And yet he has become more than that as well. He is a voice for the lower class man. In him, they hear a comrade, a spokesperson, a flagbearer. His words are like the haunting, reedy notes of the bagpipes as they stir the warriors' hearts to march into battle. And I wonder -- why don't we have this in the states? Why don't we have these deep underpinnings of passion for certain songs, certain words, certain art forms?

I don't know the answer, and I certainly don't want to imply that we are without all forms of patriotism or love for our artists and our battles. But this is different. This truly is in the blood, and has been for thousands of years longer than ours has. This seems to come from many centuries of battles fought, blood shed, clans bonding together in death and victory. It also may be born of a class system that was so oppressive that our own forefathers fled it and established a country that was resolutely and consciously going to avoid a noble class, or any kind of class structure that results in such unfair stratification.

It feels very different to be in a land where family lineage defines you, where love of poetry and song can be expressed openly, where old men wipe their eyes when they hear certain tunes. I looked around the room tonight and met people whom I most likely will never meet again, older people who have lived lives I will never know, and who embraced us, the Americans, with friendliness and a strong desire to make sure we "get it."

I'm not sure we do, or can, fully "get it." But the feeling of being in an older world, a world where story is put into song and sung beside fires to ward off the cold, a world where the cozy warmth of a pub provides entertainment and community that television can never match, a world where there is a social fabric that is as elaborate and rich as a Belgian tapestry... is something that I want to carry back with me. I want to spin stories long into the night. I want to continue exploring places and things that make me wonder and long to know more. I want to grow old with some traditions. I want to be like the lady I sat across from tonight, her lips moving to the words of an old familiar love song, her face transfixed into that of a wistful young lass.

For Carla

2009-06-13T22:02:00.000-07:00

Today I went to Carla's memorial services. She was a fellow mother from my kids' elemetary school; her eldest and my eldest were in kindergarten together, and we moved in those circles for over a decade, watching our children grow in a sort of time lapse fast forward, while we felt we were staying the same. We age slower, we moms, but unfortunately her cancer cells were over-achievers, racing to win, and finally doing so. She died the week before her youngest son graduated sixth grade.

She was a lovely person. Reserved and gracious and graceful. I never felt I knew her very well until she found out that the cancer had returned, about three years ago. And it was in the way she died, that I learned to know her life. I learned what a spiritual being she was, and watched how she approached her fight with grace and a certain type of gratitude. She wasn't complacent, oh no. She hated this thing and hated what it was doing to her. But each step of the way she took in stride, sending out intermittent email reports that detailed her medical challenges and also let us all in on how she was dealing with them, mentally, emotionally, practically, and spiritually.

A group of women in our group banded together to bring her and her family meals, sending out schedules every month, and unflaggingly delivering them dinner several times a week. I was never able to help out, and I felt small, and powerless, and silent in the face of what she was going through. And yet, I knew... it was OK. She was the kind of person who would get how busy I was, single and raising the boys and maintaining a job. She got it.

So today I gathered with a large group of people to honor her. We gathered together at All Saints Church, and we sang hymns and participated in much needed, healing ritual. We clustered in groups and we shed tears and we smiled when we saw each other and then, remembering the context, immediately grew solemn again. The service was beautiful. It did what we needed it to do, giving us a context in which to grieve while providing a safety zone of structure and community in which to let down our guard, be vulnerable in the face of loss, and regroup with words of peace and prevailing joy and a greater plan that allows for this, and the joys of life as well. Whether we believed in the literal words or not, they were good to hear, a balm to the soul, just as intended.

Afterwards we gathered at their house and saw testaments to her life. Pictures on the wall, her friends and family standing up to speak about her, giving her life a collage of story and context and perspective.

It was a hard day for that family. One that had to be endured. One with so much input, so much extraordinary emotion, so much grief; I looked at her boys and wondered just how much they could possibly be taking in, and whether they knew that -- as hard as this day was -- it would not be as hard as the days they've been through, nor would it be as hard as the day six months hence, six years hence, six decades hence, when they would still miss their mother, it would still be unfair, and it would still be utterly and coldly and bleakly real.

And in the midst of it, I could not escape the fact that Roger and I are about to do almost the exact thing in exactly two weeks. We are orchestrating a large gathering of people, to go through a ritual together, to weep poignant tears together, to experience and embrace impermanence together. We are also renting table cloths and buying cases of wine and trying to determine how many cups to buy. We are also buying new clothing and coordinating with friends and figuring out how to get through a day of extraordinary emotion without losing it ourselves.

Whereas Carla's funeral was a celebration of life in the face of death, our wedding is going to be a celebration of impermanence in the face of life. The thing that makes us cry at both events is the tragic, inescapable reality of the fragility and the impermanence of this sweet sad frustrating mysterious existence. No matter how hard we try, the moments slip through our fingers like sand in an hour glass. We cry at funerals because of the finality of seeing our loved one's hour glass empty. I will never be able to bring them dinner. We will never see her face again. The boys have lost their mother in the receding rivers of time.

We cry at weddings because we know love has the potential to fade, that the two lives bonded together can so easily change their directions, and that death eventually will prevail, for all of us. Every union is momentary in duration. Every promise is weighted with caveat. Every kiss -- so sweet, so bitter -- is grounded in the knowledge that there will eventually be a last kiss, a last touch, a last breath.

We cry at both. We laugh at both. The difference is the infinitely small line between the yin and the yang. There is not one without the other. The ache of the funeral informs the champagne cork of the wedding. We have knowledge of both when we celebrate either. It is the dance, it is the only dance, and it is impossible to embrace either one alone.

We cry because we are safe, for the moment of time during the ritual, to relish the bittersweetness. We cry because it is good, from time to time, to not push the knowledge aside, to let it crush us just a little bit. We cry because it is real. And we cry for joy because we have the ability to cry for sadness.

We are amazing beings, we humans. We create elaborate systems to get us through these moments of intensity and pain. We lose ourselves in checklists to avoid having to see the big picture more often than we can bear. And we are able to give each other the love, the support, the tender touches that we all need to get through a day like this intact. Wherever her family is, wherever you are, I wish us all a respite from care... in sleep, in love, in the peace that may come from embracing the dance with the equanimity and grace that Carla showed us in her brief passage on this earth.

The Mindfulness of Joy

2009-01-01T19:41:00.001-08:00

We're in a new year. The town of Pasadena saw it in as it has for so many years -- with a compression of people, a heightening of energy, a mad frenzy that became uncorked this morning as over a million people watched the horses and the marching bands and the gloating floats, bedecked with profusions of springlike flowers. The stealth bomber flew overhead, filling the valley with its roar. The air crackled with brisk exuberant electricity. It's happened again; we've seen in the beginning of one more calendar year.

I am looking forward to this new year. In 20 days, the first politician I've ever fully believed in is going to take over the most powerful job on the globe. In six months, I'm getting married to a man I love completely. My life is full, and full of stories. Unfortunately, many of these stories cannot be discussed publicly in this forum, at least not as they've been unfolding. For someone like me, whose stock in literary trade usually stems from some delving into some juicy aspect of my personal life, this has been like starving to death in the middle of a sumptuous banquet.

I've been trying to watch to see what's noteworthy about happiness. Being happy is lovely, but different from what I had expected. What makes it different is very subtle. I am well versed in how to deal with adversity (take the blow, process it for three days with girlfriends, eat some ice cream, and when the stories start getting funny, I know I'm over the worst.) But how to deal with happiness? What kind of story does that become?

What I've noticed is that life these days seems to consist of discrete, almost painfully intense moments. It's like traveling in a new country; every moment is a postcard I want to write to myself so I can remember everything fully. I want to fold my life into some kind of full-sensory scrapbook, so I can pull these pieces out later, when I fear the muted colors will return, and the edges will be once again blurred by depression and ennui.

Here: I'm walking the dog one morning after the recent rains. It is cold but the sun is bright and shining on the world. There is so much moisture in the air that my breath comes out in steamy billows. I am walking Sam alone; Roger has gone on early to work, but our conversation still lingers in my ears and I am still feeling the warmth of our oatmeal in my body. I turn onto a side street and let Sam sniff around, and as I'm standing there I see that the tree I'm standing in front of is emitting swirling tendrils of steam as the rain evaporates in the sun. I look across the street and see that the same thing is happening with a rooftop: lines of steam snaking along the peak of the roof, wafting up into the cold blue sky. As I look, I see that all the other trees facing the sun are also steaming, and then the whole world is suddenly doing it. There is a sense of warmth emanating out into the cold and the world is now breathing with me and there is no difference whatsoever between me and the dog and the tree and the rooftop. We are all inhaling and exhaling together in this same moment of time.

Again: Christmas evening. We are at our friends' house with a group of other people and kids. The house is almost magical, it's so pretty. Everything is green and red and the soft glow of candles and the fireplace create a delicate, enveloping softness. The lights reflect in the windows and imply fairy lands just outside of reach. The food is bounteous and lip-smacking in its perfection. And after we're done eating and are still sipping our wine, we continue our conversation while the kids go back to their electronics. It is a good conversation; the kind that connects and inspires and makes you feel grateful to have lived long enough to participate in it.

There are seven of us: five in our fifties, one in her forties, and a mother in her seventies. And as I'm sitting there, I realize that years will roll over this table and, with luck, we'll spend many more Christmas nights engaged in other but similar conversations. We will get older. Members of our group will start to get sick, and die, and we will diminish. The potency of the friendships will prevail, but our physical bodies will change as we move through more time and life takes its toll.

It was classic Buddhist impermanence raising its head. The summation of the Buddha's philosophy summed up in three words: Not always so. I was struck by the ephemeral moment, and yet happy to stay within it for as long as it lasted. As with the feeling of oneness I had with the dog, I was having a deep meditative experience, without having done anything meditative in the least.

I hadn't realized this until this morning, but the feelings I've had recently are very similar to the state we strive for in meditation. That consciousness of the moment, the awareness of being right in the center of my being, tasting and smelling and experiencing things exactly as they happen. Not using the past to script the future. Not barreling over the present because it's unpleasant, or (perversely) too pleasant, or just unconscious. The thing I'm feeling is a LOT more like being in a deep meditative state of mindfulness, than it is like feeling "happy" all the time. It's not giddy. And it's not necessarily euphoric. It's extremely and intensely present.

I don't know which comes first: the joy or the mindfulness. But they are closely related, I believe. All I know is that these feelings of presence -- whether on the cushion or off -- are very similar. Not necessarily comfortable. Not necessarily easy. But absolutely dialed in to what is happening right now.

This is what I wish for myself and all of us this bright new 2009: a sense of being in our life right now as we are living it, an awareness of the moment from within the moment, and a deep appreciation of the gossamer threads that connect us to each other in our fleeting lives. The calendar leaves fly by so quickly. Let us know each moment as it presents itself.

Awakening

2008-11-05T08:25:00.000-08:00

There's been a madness in the world. For the last eight years, ten years, I'm not sure when it started. It's a darkness of the soul, a despair in the collective. It's shown itself in deep polarities, bitter entrenchment, rampant immaturity, and reckless abandonment of those things that usually hold the social fabric together. Things like integrity, honesty, truth.

These words still sound foreign to us when we roll them around in our minds. As do words like faith and hope and belief. Somewhere along the way we lost the sense that these things can truly be ours once again. Somewhere along the way we lost our light.

There's been a sadness in the world. Some of us found solace in institutions like church, and party affiliation, and solid answers. Others of us found their refuge in the New York Times, and anti-depressants, and solid questions. We have all been looking for solid ground. We have all taken the path that seems best for us and for our country. This is not a time to blame or point fingers: that time is over. I think this is something that has come around as part of the cycles, like a season that turns into darkness.

Looking back, I see us all in a deep soporific shadow. It manifests in ways that are horrible and disturbing. Role models who should be adulated are besmirched and beslimed. Friendships once solid crumble away under revelation and rage. We have none of us acted honorably, consistently, with direction.

I'm not sure when it started. Was it the greed of the internet bubble in the 90's? When the game of creating a business turned from looking at the market to seducing the venture capital? Was it the ends-justifies-the-means politics of the elections of 2000 and 2004? I don't know when the dimmer started dimming, but when churches start sporting posters declaring that they are against torture, because there is actually a national debate going on about its pros and cons... it's obvious the light is out, and we've forgotten even the concept of a flickering match.

Whenever it started descending, I see the sine wave of our times crossing from light into darkness on September 11, 2001. At that point we lost our mind, in sorrow and grief and rage, and started operating from a place of deep unconscious reactivity. Flailing about, on a personal and national level, we fought shadow demons in every corner (except, apparently, the correct one.) It was on 9/11 that we lost control, and the world could understand why even though it mourned the choices we made. And it was on November 4, 2008, that we regained control, and showed the world that our system, eventually, can correct itself.

You can only tell you've been asleep when you awaken. And today we awaken with a new leader, a new sense of freshness, and a new desire to move forward with honesty and faith. I am going to let myself believe in this country again, because it has proved - more powerfully than ever - that its concepts are solid and true. Things can change. The pendulum can swing.

There's been a madness in the world. A sadness in the world. And now it's over.

Zombies Run Wild

2008-10-31T09:26:00.000-07:00

I walked into a Halloween store the other day and felt profoundly disturbed. Everywhere I looked there were images of gore. Severed heads with staring bloody eyeballs. Truncated torsos. Scars and mutilations and carnage.

It was like visiting the inside of my brain. These days my head is filled with the pain that humans can inflict upon each other. Betrayals of trust. Fabrics of families and schools and countries torn apart by free-wheeling moral recklessness. The past reaching up to destroy the present and future. Mental illness. Greed. Selfish and nihilistic pleasure-taking. And the horrifying undercurrent of hatred and fear against one of the most inspiring and high-minded statesmen our generation has ever seen.

Shadow is bursting out all over. In our lives, in the world, it seems like we are getting polarized. The brightness is getting brighter, and the shadow is going crazy making itself known. Like bugs scattering when the light bulb is turned on, I'm seeing things scuttling back into corners. And the snapshots of their ugliness is imprinted inside me. Makes me recoil. Wakes me up at night.

Halloween has a purpose. It makes this fear and revulsion conscious, present. We can put on these costumes and laugh. We can alchemize the things that repel and frighten us, and turn the tables on brutality and atrocity and death.

Frankly, for me, it's giving me the creeps, even as I can intellectually understand it. It's too close to home. Too similar to the thoughts that are haunting me in my witching hours in the middle of the night.

Tonight I plan to do this holiday justice. Armed with a cosmopolitan, my lover and a kid who still loves to dress up, I plan on walking up and down the street taking good stock of all of this. I want to look at the false images of carnage and horror and understand what they mean.

Bringing the inside out is what we do when we open up our psyche's crypt and let the zombies run free. We are giving death the finger. And in the process of doing this, I can hopefully start seeing the world as it is -- my children healthy, my household safe, my body whole. Right this second, we're OK. The horrors of the past and future can stay there, in the past, in the future. The past and future don't exist anyway.

So let the monsters lurk and the witches scream. As long as we can bring consciousness to the dark underbelly, we're still OK.

The Piano

2008-10-22T06:02:00.001-07:00

Once there was a girl who played the piano.

She would play it when the house was empty, when her mother was out shopping or still at work. She would play when she need to feel something, and when words were too much, or not enough. She would play her white piano and something inside would feel very sad, and yet very much at peace at the same time. She would play the notes over and over and gradually, as the notes became more fluid and her hands became more sure, something inside of her would rest and be at peace.

She played the piano for ten years. She started when she was small and gradually she became more fluent. Her mother loved to hear her play. Loved it so much that she began to demand it, to shame the girl into playing for her pleasure. She would listen from the other rooms and somehow there was a taking, an appropriation of the notes. The notes coming out were so personal, so hard won, and so painfully beautiful, that the girl started being uncomfortable when she was listened to by her mother. She could no longer hear the music through her own ears. And when she listened through her mother's ears, the notes sounded awkward and wrong and full of everything the girl wanted to flee.

Soon, she could not play in front of anyone. Once she tried to play in front of her school and couldn't find the notes. The more she tried, the more she was aware of the other people's ears and opinions. And the more she was aware of the other people's opinions, the more she worried that she would be found lacking, or that they would want more of her, or that there was something wrong with her playing any kind of music and finding that sweet sad space inside her that loved to express itself outside of words. The harder she tried to make her fingers remember the notes, the less she could hear the music in her heart. And the harder she tried, the worse she became. Until she stopped in the middle. Completely blank. Unable to continue.

One day the girl came home and found there was a large space in the dining room where the white piano had been. Her mother had given it away, she told the girl. Because she no longer played it. Because it was just wasting space.

The girl screamed that she had been playing it. That she played it when she was alone. That it was one of the last refuges she had. But her words were not heard. Her mother was too angry that she had not heard enough of the music that she had been providing lessons to produce. So the piano was gone. There was no more chance for her daughter to withhold her music.

The girl grew up. She learned to survive and make money and hold together her own household. One day she bought herself a piano. It was old, it weighed a ton, it was bulky in her small apartment. She bought it so no one could ever take her piano away from her again. She moved it from apartment to house, from house to apartment. She loved the piano. But she rarely played it. And never in front of people.

One night she played it in that still place of great sadness and weight. She felt that sweet sad shifting of something being expressed when words weren't enough, or were too much. And she woke up the next morning and realized she'd been taking away her own piano all these years. So that no one could ever do that to her again. It wasn't enough to just play when the house was empty. She would simply not play. And then she would never have to know how it felt when the music was taken away without her ability to stop it.

The more things change...

2008-09-28T19:23:00.000-07:00

I went to an evening social event last night that happened to be exactly next door to the house I lived in while I was in high school in the 1970s. White wine in hand, R and I walked around the corner lot and I explained the layout of the house, what it felt like to live there, and how wrenching it was to have to leave.

The house is in an established part of Pasadena, a staid and graceful neighborhood of comfortable homes with well landscaped yards and 1930s architecture. This isn't the old money section of Pasadena around Orange Grove and the Arroyo, but it's an architectural step above the developments of the northeast. It's not the bungalows of bungalow heaven either. To me, living there for a few years, it was saturated with a kind of Ozzy and Harriet complacency... which made my skin itch with annoyance at the time, but that I now aspire to and crave.

I remember the streets through the filter of my troubled adolescence, with the smog hanging thick in the summertime and casting a haze down the vanishing perspective of the gridded streets. Much of the beauty of the neighborhood was lost on me. I rode my bike along the ragged sidewalks, and fantasized wistfully about the lives going on within the quaint English cottages, what it would be like to live in a home draped with wisteria and mystery.

My mom and I first moved to the neighborhood, into a two bedroom house that we bought for $19,000, and were already a freak of nature without a man in the house. She and I had been solo for many years, so I barely noticed it. But these were the days when a "broken family" was something to be commented upon in low voices and furtive glances. Living in apartments, as we had for the previous couple of years, this didn't seem to matter much. But this was such a stable neighborhood, it was obvious that we were unusual.

But the shock was yet to come. When we moved down the street a year or so later, it was because she had remarried and we could afford a much bigger house (at the obscene price of $45,000). The fact that she had remarried was not the issue. It was that she had married a black man. And black men were not something you would ever see picking up a paper in this neighborhood... unless he was the guy who had delivered it.

A black man. It got very quiet around our house. I can't say we ever had any specific problems, at least not that I knew about. But it was very... quiet after we moved to the big house down the block. It felt like there was a shield of discomfort surrounding us.

He was a black man but embodied very few stereotypes. He worked at the post office, was somewhat short and overweight, and was (as my mom would always describe him) as comfortable as an old pair of slippers. He wasn't Malcolm X (which was too bad as that would've suited my mood perfectly), he wasn't a cool hip poetry-spouting bebop king (which would've been even better). He was as conservative and boring as any of the other heads of household in a three mile radius. But he was black. And that was unusual and freaked people out and they avoided us mainly -- I think -- because they had zero idea of what to do with us.

Maybe we weren't really aware of how bad it was as we were dealing with problems of our own (they fought and were divorced within a couple of years, and the wreckage of the marriage carried with it a foreclosure on the house and the slim remainder of my childhood innocence.) There were no crosses burning on our lawn or anything like that. But the whole situation was greeted with deep mistrust and fear, which had nothing to do with the man himself and everything to do with the unknown.

As we walked by and looked into those comfortable long-lost windows again last night, I was heartened to see an Obama sign on the front lawn. And I woke up this morning and thought how far we've come in the last 35 years. It really is true, I thought. There is such a thing as progress, and enlightenment of thought.

But as I've mulled this over all day, my comfort has diminished. Once again there is a black man in the national neighborhood, and he's once again being treated with a knee-jerk repulsion. People are embracing a ludicrous ticket led by a befuddled old man and a self-righteous moose-shooting bimbo, embracing it like it's the second coming itself come to save the day -- and all because of this primal antipathy towards a man with dark skin. Once again, as it was 35 years ago, the neighborhood is reacting with mistrust and fear, which has nothing to do with the man himself and everything to do with the unknown.

Hanging Directions

2008-07-29T09:50:00.001-07:00

Be forewarned: this is really a very weird use of my blog this morning. But I need to know. And I need for you, whoever is out there, to give me some information.

I really had the wind knocked out of my sails this morning when I was confronted by a Whole New Thought. I won't go into details how it came up, but it was brought to my attention that some people hang their shirts with the buttons facing to the left (as it hangs on the pole in the closet) and some hang their shirts with the buttons facing to the right. I, personally, am a right-facing kind of gal. And the person I was calmly and rationally discussing this with is, as it turns out, a left-facing kind of guy.

Which is fine.

Really.

I'm OK with diversity of thought.

But, being me, I have to be, well, right. I mean, I have to do some research to prove that my way is better. Well, OK, not to prove. But more to find out if I've been some freak of right-facing nature my whole life, or if I've got company. And let me make it clear, that clothes-hanging is the ONLY place in my life that I prefer the right to the left. It's not a political statement, by a long shot. Actually, I'm just really interested in seeing if this is a gender-based preference (as he asserts) or just habituation.

So I started asking around. My data set, at this moment, consists of two people. One of whom laughed outright at the thought that anyone would even GIVE a shit and was pretty much happy when most of the clothes ended up mostly on the hanger, and the direction the buttons were facing was utterly and completely moot. (She also said, I believe with a hint of sarcasm, that I deserved someone in my life who was as preoccupied with button-facing as I am.)

Another friend looked at me like I was crazy (I'm suspecting I'll have to get used to that), without any comprehension of what I was talking about, until we determined that his pole stuck straight out (in his CLOSET, god!) so the way his buttons faced was kind of moot as the hangers were all facing him straight on. He did make a good point though: that when he gets his shirts cleaned at the cleaners, they are put on the hanger in such a way that the buttons WOULD face left if he had a pole that went sideways (in his CLOSET). So, OK. Maybe the cleaners have a point. But I'm not giving this up without more stats.

So, now I'm really curious. I'm curious about all sorts of things: which way buttons should face, if button-facing is anything that anyone cares about, if this is a gender issue, and (of course) which way people's poles face (in their CLOSET).

I'm glad you waited almost a month to see what new profound thing I'd come up with in this blog. All of you with RSS feeds (you know who you are) who were momentarily elated to see me post something... well, sometimes ya get what ya get. I DID write a pretty good post at www.theDHX.com the other day, so if you really need some dark profound shit, you can procure over there.

For me, today, it's buttons. Buttons and which way your poles face.

Please comment. Inquiring minds want to know.

Interdependence Day

2008-07-06T10:45:00.000-07:00

Interdependence is and ought to be as much the ideal of man as self-sufficiency. Man is a social being. Without interrelation with society he cannot realize his oneness with the universe or suppress his egotism. His social interdependence enables him to test his faith and to prove himself on the touchstone of reality.
--Mahatma Gandhi, 1929

The 4th of July has always been my favorite holiday. It doesn't involve mandated gift-giving, it usually involves beer and hotdogs, and it ends with fireworks. What is not to love about this day?

For many years I found myself in Boston on the 4th, camping out with friends on the Esplanade the night before, and spending the hot muggy day alternating between taking shifts on the blanket to maintain our stakehold, and wandering around downtown looking for ice, or beer, or a cool building to stand in. At night we'd heave a collective sigh of relief when the Boston Pops would take their chairs -- as much because the event itself was about to start as that the marathon was soon thereafter to be over. They would play and we would lie down on our weary backs, waiting for the ultimate final set to begin. And when they'd play the 1812 Overture, with the fireworks over the Charles, and the cannons blasting from the Cambidge side ... it was a transporting experience. All the forces converged at once: the cameraderie of being with friends in a yearly ritual, the banter back and forth, the swapping of stories from previous escapades coupled with the power of the music, the cannon blasts thumping our bodies with their sub-aural percussion, the piccolos slicing our inner ear with their achingly sweet high beauty, and the fireworks arcing high overhead.

I always remember those nights. I also always remember a 4th spent in Singapore, at the American School. It was 1979 and my friend Dee and I had been traveling the world for about six weeks. Dee's sister-in-law was a teacher in Singapore and we took a much-needed week to stop and regroup. We were happy to find some fellow Americans to spend the holiday with. From that vantage point, so far away from home, I could finally see that we were really only one country on the planet after all. That the world was not skewed in a way where the US was 95% of everything and the rest of the world kind of scrambled to fit in the remaining sliver of influence and importance. From that spot on the athletic field thousands of miles away, I felt at once diminished and rightfully in perspective, for the first time in my life. Home was a distant spot, far away from our horizon. It made the United States seem a precious, and relatively very small, place.

And yet, with all the exotic 4th's I've seen, this one just past was, I'm pretty sure, the best I've ever had. My last thought of the very long day was that if I could come back and re-live any one day of my life, a la "Our Town," this was a day I would gladly revisit over and over for eternity.

We did all the usual stuff -- the utterly charming South Pasadena parade and the fireworks at the high school at night. And in between we had a party with the obligatory hot dogs and beer and a blazing sun. But what made the difference this year was that I didn't end up celebrating my own independence as I usually do. I found myself reveling in interdependence. And the realization that that was in evidence on all fronts made the day sparkle with fireworks for me long before the sun even set.

Wikipedia defines it thusly:

"Interdependence is a dynamic of being mutually responsible to and sharing a common set of principles with others. . . . Some people advocate freedom or independence as a sort of ultimate good; others do the same with devotion to one's family, community, or society. Interdependence recognizes the truth in each position and weaves them together. Two people in a good relationship are said to be interdependent.It can also be defined as the interconnectedness and the reliance on one another socially, economically, environmentally and politically."

The party was a lot of work. There was shopping to do and a backyard to set up and food to prepare. I put the kids to work cleaning up the treehouse, sweeping and dusting the house, and they were willingly at the ready to pitch in with anything we needed. They were great. I also had my friend, my co-conspirator, around. I had always wanted a good guy to share the parade and the fireworks with, but his involvement went way beyond what I'd ever hoped for. He and I ran around Smart & Final comparing prices of beer and paper plates. We got out the drill and fixed the tree house steps when he found out (the hard way) that the wood was completely rotten. He helped me lug patio furniture around and ran out for ice and beer when we ran low. At the end of the day, the boys help me clear out the backyard and throw out all the trash. All of us were interconnected and worked together -- moving towards a common cause without sacrificing our identities or needs.

What I realized was this: it's not about independence any more. It's not about being free and a solitary soldier and heaping all the work upon myself in order to maintain my sacred uncompromising isolation. And it's not about being taken care of and sitting back to allow decisions to be made around and about me. It's about both. It's about allowing the breathing room to flow between people, where individual needs are met at the same time as the collective goals are being pursued. It's about a kind of trust. A trust that will allow changes to the plan. That will allow for better ideas to float up. That will allow for me to be taken care of at one point, so that I can better take care of the other person later.

Last Friday was truly a harmonious collective endeavor. The conversation flowed, the food was good, the day was leisurely and the sun charted its course across the sky. And when we sat exhausted at the end of the day on the new football field and watched the fireworks explode overhead, this time it was a celebration for me of being intertwined within a family I love and cherish. Instead of looking from a vantage point thousands of miles away, I was able to see it from within, and know that I was finally home at last.

Graduation

2008-06-13T07:46:00.000-07:00

I needed to buy some graduation cards the other day so I walked up to Vroman's at lunchtime. I stood by the rack in the stationary section and was surprised to find myself start to well up. Wow, what a basket case I am, I thought. I'm crying just at the thought of two people moving forward in their lives. And I knew I was hitting up against something kind of big.

We cry at ceremonies. What is that about? Why do we cry at weddings? It's not really the cynical "hope over experience" factor, I don't think. Because otherwise, why would we cry at graduations? It's not like they are consciously entering into a situation that very often goes badly... the graduates have worked, accomplished, are looking forward to a bright future, and are moving on.

Why does this affect us so?

I think it's because one of those nexus points of life that force us to confront beginnings and endings. We all know that things have a beginning, middle and end. At ceremonial moments such as a graduation, we are conscious that we are poised right at the juncture of an ending and a beginning. It's sad to see the past, filled with events and memories, neatly compartmentalized and slipped into a drawer. And, at the same time, it's joyful to see the future entice us with its unseen vistas. A graduation is that moment between archiving and opening.

At my son's sixth grade graduation yesterday, I realized another thing as well. Culturally, at least for those of us not attached to a single religious tradition, we are lacking in coming-of-age milestones. Not being Jewish, my family doesn't have bar or bat mitzvahs to work towards, accomplish and grow from. We say a girl becomes a woman when she gets her first period. We say a boy becomes a man when he loses his virginity. These seem, at this point in the 21st century, to be woefully primitive and unconscious events to hang such an important transition upon.

There are few lines of public demarcation in our current culture. And I've always felt that our noisy, inchoate, frenzied society reflects this lack. We have men who grow physically but never emotionally. We have women who are never easy with their womanhood, preferring to either stay little girls or move immediately to crone-dom. Everything between childhood and old age is frequently a blurry mess of uncertain expectations and obligations.

Yesterday, my son and his classmates stood up and gave their graduation speeches. Some kids performed a song or a dance. It was a ceremony they always knew they would be participating in. My son had been dreading it for years. And they all prepared, they all practiced, and they all presented themselves with staggering maturity, articulation and poise. We were watching young people grow up before our eyes. We were witness to their movement away from childhood. It was conscious, it was heartfelt, and it was profound. Not a dry eye in the house.

We are always moving from endings to beginnings and back again. I think that any time we can stop those moments and make a ceremony of them, especially in the company of other people, they are made that much more conscious and potent. Rather than being trapped in a flow of constant risings and subsidings, it's so very moving to stop the waves, just for a moment, and give the whole painful wonderful process a moment of respect and acknowledgment.

To the sixth grade class of 2008... congratulations. We are privileged to be witness to the amazing young men and women you are and the incredible people you will become.

You're Soaking In It

2008-05-18T23:28:00.000-07:00

I hate writing this blog, I really do. It really demonstrates what a nimrod I am sometimes, and how pathetic it is that it's taken me this long in life to get some fundamental concepts.

It was the popcorn bowl last night that did it. And the dishes from tonight's dinner. It may come as a huge surprise to many of you (given the usual state of romance in my life) that I am actually kind of a neat freak, especially when it comes to dishes. I'm kind of a fanatic about washing dishes immediately after a meal. During preparation of a meal, I'm the one throwing away every stray scrap and peel and washing the dish the second something gets taken off of it. I'm pretty annoying, actually. The perfect meal, to me, is one where you can wash every dish it's taken to cook it in WHILE you're cooking it... so that when you're done you only have the eating dishes left to wash. When possible, I'll wash the dishes before dessert, so I can really enjoy dessert. I used to be much worse, actually. But this is really how the inner OCD freak inside me likes to operate.

So. That's me. And the only reason I reveal all these ugly facts about myself, besides wishing you to feel secretly superior and tell your friends about my blog because it will make them feel secretly superior as well -- is because you need to know how enormously significant a thing it was for me to leave my popcorn pan, the butter melting pan and the bowl in the sink last night.

And not wash them.

At all.

Until this morning.

Huge. Unprecedented. But.. hey... it's been a kind of unasetting month. Pyshcic turmoil. Confusion and communication gaps. Ancient wounds being opened up and bursting forth with poisons and decays from fifty years ago. Days without tears were a norm for several weeks running.

And yet I'm learning some stuff. I'm learning to live a life without definition or a plan. I'm learning to survive uncertainty. I survived some hideous trips down memory lane and am thinking I may still remember how to laugh. And I seem to be learning that time helps immeasurably with resolving some issues. It's like time is the great hair conditioner of the soul. You pour it on and things untangle. Knots unkink. Seemingly insurmountable ganglions gradually diminish and become benign.

So I figured I'd try something wild last night: put the oily pans and bowl in the sink, squirt them with dish soap and leave them overnight. This morning, I got up, saw the pile of dishes, dumped out the water and deemed them easily ready for the dishwasher, and had them neatly dispatched in less than a minute.

Which was a lot easier than doing them last night.

Which means that procrastination helped me, rather than increasing my burden.

That's the painful part of this blog. Because I realized something: sometimes working to make something happen is simply not as effective as letting it be for a time... and then pretty much letting time take care of it itself. Time can do a lot of work for us in these situations. I am painfully learning to simply let some issues in my life soak in their own juices for awhile. I don't know what's going on. I don't know how to change the things I'm not happy about. I know a lot of things have changed for the worse recently, and I don't know how to fix any of it.

And I have to continue to not know for a long while.

As my son Chris once said, when I was agitating about some other guy -- "chill out, mom. Let it marinate a bit."

Let it marinate a bit. There is no substitute for time. As my friend the physicist says: T (for time) changes everything.

So tonight, I'm going to take the psychic dishes and just let them soak in the sink for awhile. I'm tired. And I'm tired of working so hard. I'm tired of being in pain, and I'm tired of being in so much control. Let time and soap bubbles and water relax the crusted gunk that's stopping up my flow. Let time and some benign neglect wash some old stuff out, with a minimum of effort on my part. If time can't fix the problem, then time will make that clear as well.

Psychic Farts

2008-04-26T08:30:00.000-07:00

Remember my co-conspirator? The man in my life with whom I have started to breathe in tandem?

We have hit the danger zone. The point in all new relationships -- usually occurring about the 2 - 3 months mark, in my experience -- where suddenly the transparency starts to wear off.

You know what I'm talking about. It's that feeling you get when you first fall in love and every thought just flows completely seamlessly between the two of you. "I and my beloved are one." It's such a lovely feeling. You both marvel at the juiciness of the strawberries. You see the same shooting stars. You know, without a doubt, what the other is thinking at every moment of the day. And the blissfully transcendent part of that is... is that you're right. You DO know what the other is thinking. Your souls ARE commingled. It's heady, druggy, surreal and marvelously real stuff.

And then there's that moment. It's that moment when you look at the other person and you have no clue... NO clue... who he is, what he's he's thinking, what he's doing, or how he even got there in the first place. It's like a bad science fiction shot where suddenly the protagonist is wearing some hideously disfiguring mask and the heroine looks at him and scrapes at her face in screaming horror. Oh NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! It cannot BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!

The transparency has been replaced by profound confusion and obscurity. Nothing makes sense anymore. You start to order iced tea for him -- because that's what he ALWAYS drinks and that's what you've ALWAYS done -- and he looks at you with disdain and orders lemonade. Or you order lemonade -- because he ALWAYS like to change things up and last time he ordered iced tea -- and he looks at you with disdain and orders iced tea. The rules are upside down, insane. And you feel like you've been slipped crazy pills and stuck in the wrong story with the wrong man. And you have a horrible feeling that it's going to have the wrong ending as well.

We found that spot last week. It was at Islands with the kids. I came out of the rest room and saw him looking out the window idly. And I could plainly see a huge thought bubble coming out of his head. A thought bubble that said "Is that all there is?" I fast forwarded, on his behalf, through the next forty years of our mutual lives together and could hear him screaming inside. It was going to be decades of this Islands, these teenagers, this tired old woman, this endless grinding choice between iced tea and lemonade.

The Precipitating Incident happened within the next hour. He said something that hurt my feelings. I mentioned it later. He got mad. Suddenly we're in uncharted territory: Our First Fight.

I'll spare you the details. It included the usual pieces on my part: lots of words, not enough words, and a migraine. I don't know his usual pieces, yet, but both of us processed a lot. And to our credit we delved in, did the analysis and soul searching and apparently have come out the other side intact.

And this is what I wrote him this morning: It kind of doesn't matter where that "is that all there is" aroma came from the other night. He could've been feeling trapped first, or I could have. When two people are dancing so closely together, it's hard to tell who originates and who projects. Whatever it is, and whoever the psychic fart emanates from, it becomes collectively apparent fairly immediately. On some level it really doesn't matter who starts up the music... because we're both going to start swaying in time to it in relatively short order.

It's a rite of passage, this ability to be more fully human. Thankfully (I say this with all sincerity) we're working on the psychic and not physical level yet, in terms of holding and releasing our inner gases... but it's a big step. There's stuff inside that needs to come out at times.

I have no good solutions as to how to best navigate this dark ugly stuff. But I do know it has to come out at some point, otherwise everyone's uncomfortable and it gets out anyway. To totally belabor this ridiculously gross metaphor (and then I'll stop, I promise), I think the key here is honesty and breathing room. And compassion for everyone's humanity. We all have our secret thoughts. We all have our moments of wanting an escape, even from things that we love. We (sorry, really, this is the last one) all gorge on the pleasures of life and sometimes we eat too fast. Sometimes we don't give ourselves time to digest. And sometimes we just are victims of our own unconscious reflexes.

Breathing room and honesty. And a sense of humor, that helps too. If I figure out where to find some psychic Bean-o, I'll let you know. I promise.

Permissions

2008-03-26T08:38:00.000-07:00

This morning I woke up thinking about the word "permission." It's a really interesting word when you open up the hood.

The "per" part is way cool -- it means "through," "thoroughly," "utterly," "very" -- as in "pervert," "pervade," and "perfect." (All my references, by the way, I got by clicking around Dictionary.com if you want to go play on your own.)

The "Mittere" part is a bit more complex. When used with Permission, it's defined as "to let, or to make (someone) go." When used with "Admit" however, they define it as "let go, to send" as in a mission. And when used with "Commit" it's defined as "to send, give over". The key thing I get from that is an active sending out and releasing.

So, in one way of looking at it, permission is an extremely active, maximum amount of sending out, releasing, and letting go. An active non-grasping. A conscious opening of the hands for the express purpose of releasing whatever is being held.

In software development, "permissions" are something a bit different. When a user is give a set of security rights, those are called his permissions. So you can have permission to edit one set of documents, but be in "view only" mode for financial spreadsheets. This kind of goes with this other sense of the word, which is "Consent, especially formal consent; authorization."

So it isn't just this opening up and sending out. Sometimes it's very very formalized. The "permit" is a legal document that authorizes availability to something. A permission is a physical (or digital) locking or unlocking that enables access to functionality.

Which makes me think we could do some interesting things with this word. Like, write down, physically, our permissions. What we are going to permit ourselves to do in this lifetime. Give ourselves a permit to make money, say, from our chosen dharmic path. (I so hope that's a word). Give ourselves a permit to be recognized publicly for our teachings and our creative skills. Give ourselves a permit to stop once in awhile (that's for me). Give ourselves a permit to breathe (that's also for me). Give ourselves a permit to be really, truly happy in relationship. Give ourselves a permit to love and be loved. On and on and on. Like a physical, written unlocking of some things.

Because it's not all about our grasping of stuff. Sometimes stuff has us in its grasp (inside our heads). Being locked in or out of something is a form of grasping. Having this deep feeling of not being deserving of something, is a locking in, like being inside of a clenched fist. Having a deep feeling of always being secondary, or invisible, or not enough... that's a grasping. It's a different form than we're used to thinking about. We usually talk about grasping in terms of aversion or attraction. This is when we are grasped, surrounded, kept from, not permitted... by our own thoughts. So the opening up and letting go is a permission. An active releasing. A conscious opening up of the grasping that surrounds us.

Little kids are taught to ask us adults for "permission" to do something. This is ingrained in us, this sense that we need to ask a higher authority for the ability to exercise a certain amount of freedom. When we're small, this makes a certain amount of sense; permissions are installed to keep us safe from dangers we don't yet understand. In software, this is known as a user's "security" setting -- if you are too inexperienced or too dumb to really be able to use all the functionality safely, you are constrained by the software itself to limit your freedom and access to certain pieces of the program.

But we're no longer kids, right? At least not in many areas. Maybe we need to look at the places that no longer need to be kept safely kept out of reach. Like excess money. Like excess creativity. Like excess love. Within moral bounds (like we can't give ourselves permission to go kill our boss when he pisses us off), we need to trust ourselves enough to use the entire program. Our security settings may need to be adjusted to accommodate the fact that we're no longer new to this life, we're no longer inexperienced, and maybe it's time for us to spread our wings and use all the tools available.

[Cross posted with my other blog at www.TheDHX.com. And special thanks to "L," my muse and playmate and partner in extraordinary conversation these days. You didn't exactly give me permission to repurpose my email to you this morning, but I'm doing it anyway.]

Saturday Night

2008-03-24T07:18:00.000-07:00

"I want you to help me fulfill one of my deepest fantasies," I murmured into his ear the other night.

He glanced up at me, startled.

"Okayyyy," he said, with a nervous smile.

I took a deep breath and uttered words I never thought I'd be able to say to anyone in this lifetime. He listened thoughtfully, mulled it over a second, then put on his game face.

"OK," he said with a twinkle in his eye. "I'll drive."

Fifteen minutes later we were roaming the produce section of the new Whole Foods. The store is an orgiastic explosion of beautiful food and happy healthy people and I've been going there as a sort of religious ritual ever since it opened. And every time I've walked its still-gleaming aisles, I've experienced the same aching yearning. And that was to do exactly what we were doing now.

To go to Whole Foods, with a lover, to shop for food for a meal we would prepare together that evening seemed, for so long, like some unattainable Emerald City of joy. I don't know why it took on that proportion, but it always kind of shimmered with elusive sadness to me, like one of the most simple and intimate activities two people could do together. It implies comfort, and leisure, and dedication to spending time together. It implies that you've seen all the movies and gone to all the plays, and that you're so caught up with all your bookkeeping that the only thing left is to indulge in a four or five hour dinner. It's European. It's something you would see in a Meg Foster romantic comedy.

Obviously unattainable.

And here I was, with a willing participant in my little dream world. We wandered through the orderly stacks of vegetables, feeling and analyzing our choices like we were picking out items for a museum. We stood in front of the seafood counter and I looked at the eyeballs of the iced fish and the green sheen of the mussel shells and took a deep breath of contentment. Deeming the fish selection somewhat limited, we went upstairs and engaged the butcher in a deep discussion about the attributes of the perfect spencer ribeye steak. My companion selected a worthy cut; the butcher massaged the soft tissue of the meat with thumbs, declaring it a good choice; and I dropped the cool package into the cart with a sense of a job well done.

We prepared the vegetables first. He washed and chopped while I got the barbecue going. I added some balsamic marinade to the mix and dug out a big spoon for him to toss it with. The division of duties soon blurred. The meal evolved nearly without our participation; we just followed some instinctive choreography and moved through our steps without really thinking.

Afterwards, we settled ourselves in front of the TV to see what old movies might be on. "An American in Paris" was just starting and as we curled up to watch Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron fall in love on the banks of the Seine, I realized that we had just engaged in a similar dance. The effort was in the past, and all that was left was flawless execution.

Conspiracy

2008-03-10T22:07:00.000-07:00

con·spire /kənˈspaɪər/ [kuhn-spahyuhr]
[Origin: 1325–75; ME < L conspīrāre to act in harmony, conspire, equiv. to con- con- + spīrāre to breathe; see spirant, spirit]

I find myself in a conspiracy. With a man. We are breathing together. Acting in harmony. Our spirits are commingling.

We hesitate to put a capital "R" in front of the word that describes what we may be embarking on. Like naming God, we know the danger of putting labels on things. Labels call to them their own destruction. We talk around it, acknowledging the essential messiness of all such liasons, their potential for pain. We have both been around the block so many times that a night with YouTube and a beer seems a very viable substitute for all human entanglement.
And yet.

It is good. It is scary. The feelings contain spectrums of color I swear I've never seen before. It is poignant. And much of the time it is oddly calm, like when you're driving 100 miles an hour behind a fully loaded semi, and feel yourself weightless and gliding, pulled by the slipstream.

Today he is sick. Not in a way that will keep him down more than a few days, but sick enough to be reclusive and inward. This little deviation is enough to call forth my own inner demons. Today my fear takes me hostage. I am consumed with it, unable to believe that the whispers of loss could possibly be false.

The fear is a hangover. The last time I saw him was as pure and simple as my imagination today is complex and dark. Maybe it's my own fatigue creeping in. He apologizes profusely for exposing me to his germs, is scared I'll blame him if I get sick. I try to explain to him that it would be fine. That getting sick would be a sign of connection that I haven't felt in so many years. My immunity is strong. But if I fall ill, it was worth it many times over.

I think about this today as I am encased in an office conference room, locked in an endless meeting. The conversation we had on my way into work swirls in my head, making me crazy with my inability to escape and participate in my real life. Words forms inside my brain, take shape with urgency, and I start scribbling madly in the margins of my handout.

This is what I write:

We are infected with love. We are infected with loss. We cannot help but spread our joy, our fear and our sorrow. It is a symptom, a condition of being human.

We don't do this to each other. It is a function of our being, of our breathing in and out. We spread our emotional germs as a by-product of our interchange, our interdependence.

We breathe the same air. I inhale what you give off. You inhale my detritus. I can stay safe only by never breathing in. You can keep from infecting others only by not ever letting go. Keeping everything to ourselves is impossible. I need what you've got, and you need me.

We are mechanisms that live by ingesting the refuse of each other. Our lungs rise and fall in tandem, like the waves upon the sand. We have no control over what we carry with us. We give off energy like radiant spores. Our energy infects and heals and soothes and agitates. We can attribute blame or feel guilt but the things we emit are outside of our control. Our cross-contaminations are what keep us alive.

Sometimes the air we breathe is suffused with joy. The smell of clean laundry, night blooming jasmine, a lover's skin. It is impossible to distinguish the perfume from the poison. To be afraid of inhaling one is to lose the other forever. The equation simply does not square itself out.

No matter what we call this thing, I am pleased to be infected with it. I am happy to have it in my blood stream. Without a doubt, it could turn on me and knock me on my ass so fast my eyeballs would explode. I understand that part. I don't like breathing air mixed with equal parts danger and sanctuary. But that's the nature of this conspiracy. It's never one or the other. It's a cycle of give and take. And the alternative to both is to sit in fear on the sidelines, waiting for the safe moment, for the clean touch.

Why We Do It

2008-02-19T07:54:00.000-08:00

Sioux City, Iowa. Temperature outside: 11 degrees.

I am out on the road with Opera A La Carte. For the 24th year, I am in a overly heated hotel room looking outside at a blanket of snow-covered flatness. We did a show yesterday in Wayne, Nebraska where the temperature at load-out was 3 degrees ("feels like -14" say weather.com). Yesterday the high was 11 and today it looks like we'll get to 20, so we're in for some balmy weather.

Today we drive to Lincoln, Nebraska. Part of this is fun, if you consider the simple pleasures of free raisin bran and whole milk in the morning a fun thing. (I do.) Sometimes putting in a show is fun, albeit hard work (the day goes from 9 a.m until midnight, so it's a long day.) And sometimes, like yesterday, it's not that fun.

Yesterday was one the two days in the last 24 years that I had serious and profound doubts that we would be able to have a show. There are always problems to be solved, but I have never really been in a position to really doubt whether we could do the thing at all. Good, bad or indifferent, the curtain always rises and some kind of lighting comes up and singing occurs and music happens and we do a show. We've had fires, accidents, heart attacks (in the audience), injuries (onstage), more "wardrobe malfunctions" than anyone can count, lost props, dropped lighting cues, dropped lighting instruments (that was fun), ripped curtains, failed scenery, 35 minute intermissions because of impossible set changes -- you name it, we've done it. Every show is different. Every show has its own brand of catastrophe. And every show goes the same way: it starts, it continues, and it ends with applause.

Yesterday was a new one for me. At five minutes before the house opened I had no lighting cues whatsoever. After a day of focusing, troubleshooting dimmers, hanging and patching and cutting non-essentials and (then) cutting essentials, we had finally gotten to a place of looking at cues. And realized, the very hard way, that my lighting guy didn't know how to run the board. Like... AT ALL. Couldn't save a cue, couldn't separate the house lights from the stage lights, couldn't combine more than several lighting channels (they had to be contiguous) more than one chunk at a time.

So my options were to bring up an official cue (with a bunch of different lights) WITH the houselights up all at once, or turn everything off and then build the cue in real time while the singers were singing. Which is what we ended up doing. While the house was filling up, we managed to figure out how to a) turn off the house lights (that was a big step), b) turn on the conductor's light, c) turn on one chunk of stage lighting at a time. Because we could do those three things, at will, on cue, in various orders, we had a show. A show that looked absolutely and incontrovertably BAD... bad bad bad... but a show. And, of course, the audience had no clue and gave us a standing ovation.

Why do we do this? This is a question that my boss (the director/producer and star) and I ask each other all the time. Over the years we've had a variety of answers: "Because we love the money" (yeah right!!!) or "because we're stupid" (my personal favorite for about five years). But the best one we've come up with, that has stuck for a long time is "because we don't know how to stop." This is actually the most true: we don't know how to stop. I don't know how to stop being in this company, with people I've known for half my life, working for a man who is as infuriating and endearing as my father. It happens so sporadically that I have a hard time training replacements and, like childbirth, once the pain is over with there's a curious amnesia that sets in. I don't know how to stop. The company is as much a part of me as I am of it. So here I am again, humping through the world in a Ryder truck, swaddled in scarves and gloves, driving through the night and living on Sun Chips and M&Ms.

Why do we do this? Another answer occurred to me this morning. After the cluster fuck of a show yesterday, a core group of us sat in my partners' room drinking some kind of midwest beer and talking a mile a minute until about 3:30 this morning. We were loud and laughed until we could barely feel our face muscles any more. We discussed the show of course but it rapidly went back to old tours, antics on the road, things we've all collectively seen, done or heard about. People we've worked with over the years. Stories about hijinks, near misses, whacked out personalities, and always the stories about hookups on the road, who's done what with whom.

The stories are great. Laying down sheets of PVC film in a hotel hallway and creating an olive oil slip 'n' slide in Texas. Skinny dipping stories abound -- in the Gulf of Mexico, in various pools (with and without pool covers), in any puddle large enough to justify ripping off clothing and jumping in. (The skinny dipping is a particular art form that two of our members have perfected... they now make it a mission to jump into at least one body of water per tour). Stories that revolve around people, mainly. And the quirky fabulous things that people do when stuck with each other in unusual circumstances for a prolonged period of time.

And I realized that there was a new answer to the "why do we do this?" question. It's because of the stories. The stories give this thing life and justification and release. The stories help us decompress and hold our sides with laughter. The stories are our legend and the glue that will bond us together for many years, long after the company has disbanded.

During yesterday's train wreck, I just sat there and tried to breathe and get through it. And as I did I realized two things: The show does go on, and an answer ALWAYS comes. The answer may not be "Ah ha, now I know how to run the light board." It could be "ah ha, if we can turn the house lights up and the stage lights up it'll look like shit but at least they'll be able to see the stage." It could be "if we make a ton of changes and sacrifices this is a way we'll survive." But the answer always comes.

Why do we do this show called life? It's not just because we don't know how to stop. It really is about the stories. It's about who is doing what with whom and what disasters we've skirted and how we've made it through another near miss. And at the end of the day, we huddle with the closest members of our tribe and remember and define ourselves with love, with laughter, and with the fondest of memories about the very worst situations.

The Ups and Downs of Dating

2008-01-15T21:14:00.000-08:00

The day before I got dumped last week, I had an extremely enlightening ride in the elevator. I was in my office building, on the 19th floor, when this kind of crazy haired lumbering guy lurched to a stop outside the closing doors. My co-rider politely stuck her hand out and opened the doors for him, whereupon he lurched into the car and started talking.

"Did you see the up and down arrows out there? They're burned out. I mean, I didn't see them. Have you seen them recently? All of them are burning out. I never know which way an elevator is going to go any more. With my luck, it's always going the way I don't want to go. Like, I'm surprised this is going down because, you know me, if I want to go down, the elevator is always going up. I've stopped even going into an elevator if I haven't pushed the buttons first. I mean, you never know which way it's going to go, but if you've pushed the button at least you can pretend that it's the one you called for. Still, with my luck, it's always going to be going the wrong way. And, of course, I'm always getting stuck. That's the way it goes with me. I've been stuck three times in these elevators. These elevators just don't like me."

For 19 floors, out the front doors, and all the way to the parking structure I heard this. I was nice and laughing along, but by the time we mercifully parted ways, all I could think was "what a bozo."

Since I was on my way to therapy, and figured I'd get a jump start on the whole metaphor thing, I was thinking about this guy as I got on the freeway and started driving. It was like traffic and my ex-boyfriend, I thought suddenly. This guy and I could be on the same freeway at the same time... and he'd call me up, pissed as hell, frustrated as can be, because he was stuck in traffic. And I wouldn't be. I'd be sailing along. But wherever this guy was, there was traffic. Mainly, I more than suspected, because he was always stressing about the traffic and it infuriated him no end to find himself in it.

Just like my ex-boyfriend, the elevator guy was just sure as can be that every elevator he was on was going to be going the wrong way. This was his identity. This is what separated him out from every other goon on the planet. And the times it went right didn't matter, because it didn't prove his point.

Of course, I felt lofty and serene pity for these poor mortals because -- after a week of lovely dating after the initial great blind date -- I was heading down the slippery slope of a glorious infatuation. We'd been talking or emailing daily, we'd had lunch, a movie and a great dinner in the course of a week. We had plans for the following Saturday to see a play. "When it works, it works," I told my girlfriends, with a happy laugh.

It had been so long since it had worked.

It was so incredibly great.

And, at the same time, I heeded the warning of the elevator guy. I don't have issues with my elevators. And I don't have issues with the traffic. I'm a pretty easy going girl when it comes to a lot of things. But I do have my areas of self-definition. And relationship is definitely one of them.

It's been a... umm... fallow time in the fields of fraternization. It's been a time of, well, regrouping. Reflecting. And, right, processing. Readying myself for the next thing. Which, really... really... hasn't been appearing on the horizon with any great frequency.

Or...

really...

at all.

For, like, ever.

You know when you're in a really hot relationship and the guy goes away for awhile and you go into work and say, MAN, I haven't been laid in TWO WEEKS. And everyone just groans. And you know how married people -- even married people -- get it at least once a month or so. And you know the Woody Allen joke -- How often do you have sex? Him: Never, like two/three times a week. Her: All the time, like two/three times a week.

This has not been like that.

This is six-months-between-kisses slow. Last calendar year was the worst it's ever been, in terms of intimate encounters, since the mid 1970s. Sex, like all out grunting sweaty sex? A distant memory. Sex with someone I'm madly in love with, with full connection and drug love and all the rest? ... I need my Alzheimer's deep memory retention to go back that far.

So, me being me, I have my stories about me and relationships. I mean, I kind of actually DID write the book. I come by my stories honestly, and I know that. And I also know that stories can be dangerous.

So I was guarding with all my might against jinxing this new thing with my cynical stories. When he didn't call, I just thought, in my Buddhist way, "Oh, he's not calling. It means nothing except he's not calling."

When I didn't hear from him for a day, I thought, after I chanted a bit, "Oh, that is fine. In the real reality, he is simply silent. It has nothing to do with me."

And when I started wanting to spin off paranoid fantasies of some ex-girlfriend coming back into his life, sweeping him off his feet, and he is conflicted, can't make the choice, but of course he finally does... and it's with her, and not me... again.... I dismiss those thoughts as old elevator stories. My elevators always take me the way I want to go because I don't think about them too much. And relationships can do the same, as long as I don't overthink them.

I did all of it right, except this time it was true. On Wednesday the email came: ex girlfriend, unfinished biz, have to see it out, sorry. No matter how much I scripted or descripted the scenario beforehand, I was still faced with the same old ugly truth: my elevator was going the wrong way. Again. You know me.

So what does this mean? It means I had very few choices in how to deal with the matter, but the ones I made are critically important. I could choose to be gracious and kind to him, and understand that sometimes life is complex. I could choose to accept that this has happened, give myself over to some old-fashioned wallowing, eat some cookie dough, and enjoy the knowledge that time is a great anesthetic. And I could choose to not use the word "again," ever, when describing the situation to myself in my head.

Yes, I got dumped. Yes, the "poof" factor has reared its head. Of my many superpowers in life is to indeed attract men who have other women as their first priorities. AND... it doesn't have to turn into an elevator story. It doesn't have to be something I only notice when it proves my point, and thus secretly relish. I don't have to only snort in self-derisive triumph when it happens again.

I can keep it simple and acknowledge that the path has changed. The path always changes. And sometimes the lights signalling the way you should go are burned out, and sometimes they're not. Either way, the goal is to just try to learn what you can from the ride. And if it's going in the wrong direction, then maybe you can dig in and learn even more. About yourself, about your expectations, and about the serendipity of the world.

Dividing by Zero

2008-01-01T18:53:00.000-08:00

I was just forwarded such a great essay that I'm inpsired to share it with you this way, rather than just sending everyone the link. It's called Death and Underachievement: A Guide to Happiness at Work.

The basic premise is that our efforts to make ourselves happy usually are so extreme that they make us unhappy. The greater the energy we outpour to achieve what we think are "the right goals," the more fatigued we are, and the less time we have for what is the ultimate goal -- which is to live our lives fully while we're here on the planet.

You can read it for yourself... please do. And when you're done, this is my take on it. It's not a whole lot different from what the Buddhists and other eastern practictioners have been saying for centuries. Suffering is what happens when what (A) we think should be reality doesn't jive with (B) what is reality. Our little brains latch on to that disconnect and we spin around like little rats on a treadmill, working ourselves into a frenzy trying to make A look like B. The more A doesn't look like B, the more crazy we get.

Here's a perfect case in point. I went on a blind date last night. This is something I entered into willingly and (before we got too close to the actual hour of meeting) with a good dose of happy anticipation.

But as the clock neared the fateful meeting hour, the anxiety and unhappiness about the whole thing went exponential. I stressed about every single way this thing could go horribly wrong.

I stressed about where to meet him. I stressed about parking. I stressed about sounding too pushy. I stressed about sounding too passive. I stressed about my nails (like anything could be done to fix them). I stressed about my lifestyle, my job, my kids, my dog, my body, my way of talking, my way of thinking.

I screamed at myself to not say anything too revealing, to keep up my boundaries, to be more vulnerable, to act sophisticated, to act naive, to act smart, to act innocent, to not mention old relationships, to discuss what I've learned from previous relationships, to not talk about relationships at all, to not talk about my passions at all, to not talk about anything at all but to -- above all -- be interesting and be a good listener. In essence, the pep talk I was giving myself was to eradicate all aspects of my personality, try to be invisible, and... really... to just survive the night because nothing could be worse that what I was about to put myself through.

Seriously. If that isn't suffering... what is?

I forced myself to do a 30 minute sitting meditation somewhere during the day to shut my stupid brain up. Because I realized, somewhere amongst the chatter, that all the things I was worried about have actually no relationship to anything in reality.

In reality, I talk a lot. In reality, I write a lot. In reality, I'm opinionated. In reality, I'm just ... me. As Popeye would say, I yam what I yam.

What I was making myself totally crazy with was the disconnect between what I thought I should be (someone, well, else) and what I am. I was trying to avoid perceived judgment, without stopping for a moment to realize that the judgment has nothing to do with anyone but the judger. If he thinks my nails suck... that's OK. It doesn't mean my nails suck. It doesn't mean my nails don't suck. It just means he thinks my nails suck.

Who cares?

Nor did the possibility enter my mind that the guy could be not whom I am looking for. Maybe he'll have some annoying little tic that reminds me of some ex's other annoying little tic. Nothing to do with him, but a complete deal-breaker for me. He may have a myriad other things going on within himself that have nothing -- nothing -- to do with my nails, or shoes, or hair. And finally, anyone who is going to judge me even remotely as harshly as I was judging myself is no one I would ever want to be with anyway.

None of that entered into the conversation I was having with myself. It was all about the suffering and the need for me to match non-reality A with reality B.

So where does the craziness come from? It comes from the past and the future. From critical voices of parents and media ads to hopes and dreams and fairy-dust. It has nothing to do with the present. The present is like a mountain pinnacle... surrounded with space and air and light. This concept of "past" and "future" are meaningless up there. They have nothing to do with the view, with the sense of aching vastness, with the clarity of the breeze.

The past and the future do not exist.

Not up there. Not down here. Actually, not anywhere.

Which means striving for something in the future, and placing your present joy on hold while you do so, is like striving to divide by zero. It's a meaningless concept. If you are unhappy now, by definition: you are unhappy. Period.

I'm certainly not the first to come up with these thoughts, but the essay made me realize there's another way of looking at them. If striving for perfection later is making your life imperfect now... think about it. Because changing something now is do-able. Even if all that takes is just introducing yourself to actual reality and making friends a little bit with it. The fact was that I was about to have dinner on New Year's Eve. Which sounded like fun. (And it was.) And all the rest of it was just garbage that never needed to be dealt with because it was the rat on the treadmill, convinced that it could transcend reality if it just worked harder.

I'm not advocating not planning.

I'm not advocating giving up.

I'm certainly not advocating not giving a shit.

On the contrary... I'm suggesting we care more. About what's going on right now. And that starts by removing that sense of success being just around the corner.

So this year of the rat, I suggest that we give up that treadmill. Let's not lock into that frenzy of expectation and dissillusionment. Let's ditch the idea that if we just work a little bit harder we can make what we'd like to be reality match up with reality itself.

No treadmill. No resolutions to be "better." No nothing... except the occasional nod to the things that are, and a whispered thanks for being there.

Our First Podcast

2007-12-06T15:21:00.001-08:00

Jill and I did a podcast for a great site called Divorcing Daze. It was just posted and sounds pretty good. We come off as pretty smart and funny (it was the equivalent of a verbal good hair day)-- and have a chance to say some good stuff about the relationship between moms and stepmoms.

Check it out!

Hear My Song

2007-12-01T07:34:00.000-08:00

"It's about one moment
The moment before it all becomes clear
And in that one moment
You start to believe there's nothing to fear
It's about one second
And just when you're on the verge of success
The sky starts to change
And the wind starts to blow..."

From the musical "Songs for a New World"

For the past week I've been working with my son and a group of stunningly talented young people on a musical theatre proudction. It's a fundraiser they're putting on themselves, in association with Pasadena Junior Theatre, to help raise money for a trip they are planning to New York next year.

The show is a compilation of Broadway songs and monologues, culled from a variety of shows. The songs range from deliciously cute ("Omigod you guys" from Legally Blonde, the musical) to traditionally satisfying ("Oh What a Night" from The Jersey Boys}. There are songs about being at the beginning of life, an artist, different from the rest of the world and having that aching feeling of anticipation and uncertainty as you wonder what the rest of your life is going to hold. There is a monologue about the moment you realize that theatre is a magical world that can sweep you away with passion and drama, and bring you back again safely, but forever changed.

In short, it's terrific.

The production is tonight. My son is singing a song from Fame called "I Want to Make Magic" which, in my opinion was not constructed for anyone with normal vocal chords, let alone a 15 year old with a range that seems to omit every other interval of fourths. He requested some extra time here with me so we could have access to the piano, sheet music, and some time to actually find the notes and try to imprint them. The song is beautiful, but difficult.

I've been working like a demon at the day job and going over to the theatre every night this week to set up the lighting. Dinner has been a peanut butter sandwich left on my dashboard all day and consumed during the commute. I've been dragging myself into the small space, not any more of a theatre than a room in a church with a raised area and a small procsenium at one end, wondering when I'm going to learn I'm too old to do two jobs and live on 4 hours of sleep.

And then, every night, the magic has happened. By an hour into setting up the lights or writing cues or running a rehearsal, I'm back in my body. More than back in my body... I'm fine. I'm gloriously fine. The production takes me up, the alchemy of lights and words and music and human bodies performing art in real time infuses me, and suddenly I'm just locked into the sweet spot of life again.

This has happened every night. Despite the frustrations of working with an unknown lighting board, the threat of popping a fuse every time all nine (9) of my lighting instruments are lit, and the intrinsic fatigue that comes with working 15 and 16 hour days back-to-back ... every night it's been good.

Some images I've taken with me:

I look at those kids on stage singing and dancing and I know our future is in good hands. These kids have put this whole thing on together. They are committed artists who spend their days in high school and their nights and weekends taking lessons or rehearsing or performing. They are smart and bright and funny and directed.

One night I was looking for my son to get him to pack up. The houselights were still out and I finally found him in the back of the room, huddling inside a patch of light streaming in through a window, doing his geometry homework. This is how it starts, I thought. The life of being an artist. Figuring out how to make the rest of it work while you pursue your passions. Finding the stray bits of lights while the show goes on around you.

Theatre is a holy place and a sacred endeavor. In much the same way as a church, it brings people together in communion of a common experience. It uplifts and enlightens and changes. It produces transformative tears of joy. If the early Christians felt about their church the way I feel about theatre, the Crusades and other atrocities suddenly become a bit more understandable. I would consider strapping on some live grenades and driving into a shopping mall if I truly believed that act would save the institution forever.

Theatre is one of those things that make life tolerable. As one of the songs says, "Hear my song, it'll help you believe in tomorrow; Hear my song, it'll show you the way you can shine." Theatre raises our consciousness and soothes our soul and is a holy act for those of us who participate in its creation. Yes, it's hours of work, but so is flagellation with horse hair. And, I'd suggest, infinitely more satisfying when the final curtain comes down.