Artist Date 33: Done. Saying Goodbye to Nin.

August 3, 2013 LesleyPearl4 Comments

I didn’t want to glaze tonight. I was done.

Done.

With my day.

I’d already snagged decidedly gorgeous, flimsy, French panties and bras on sale. Seen a Tina Turner impersonator on Michigan Avenue. A pretty good one. And connected in that profound way that strangers sometimes do with Yahkirha, a Red Cross worker fundraising across from Millenium Park.

Done.

With my pottery class.

It ended two weeks ago, but I still had two mugs and a woefully off-center bowl to glaze and finished pieces to pick up.

So I went, anyway. My ex called while I was walking there. As soon as I picked up, I knew something was off. I could hear it in his voice.

“I have to put Nin down.”

Nin is our 19-year-old cat. Correction. She is now HIS 19-year-old cat. She looks like she is wearing a tuxedo, with her black body, white chest and milk mustache. Her sexy, sleepy eyes reminded me of Anais Nin – ergo, her name.

We adopted her in 1999. Our friend, Tim, arrived home that day from a year’s sojourn in Chicago. He called from Tahoe to say he was on his way, and drove his truck straight to Berkeley to meet us for brunch.

After, the three of us wandered into the pet store next door. And I walked out carrying cat number two.

According to my ex she’s having trouble using her back legs. She can no longer pull herself up on the bed to sleep with him. Today he came home and found she had peed all over herself. As we were talking, she went to the litter box and simply lied in it.

Uncontrollable tears streamed down my face. “Put her down. Put her down.” I repeated the words over and over like a mantra.

He thanked me. Said he needed to hear me say those words. To make it ok.

Another piece of our shared life together fell away.

I thought about changing my course, turning around and going home. But something wiser in me told me to keep walking, up the ramp and into the Lill Street Clay Studio.

Robert, my teacher, was giving a demonstration to the new class.

I wandered back to the carts holding fired pieces. Some complete, some bisqued – waiting for glaze and a second fire. I began the tedious and time-consuming process of locating my work – picking up every stoneware cup, bowl and tray, looking for the etched LMP on the bottom.

Melanie was doing the same. She traveled to Seattle during our five-week class. I sent her to Flora for dinner and Molly Moon’s for ice cream – honey lavender. I was happy to see her.

Sifting through the pieces, I admired other’s work. A deeply tinted bud vase, kissed with a tear drop of shiny blue. A sculpted hand. Melanie’s star-shaped badge, stamped with the word “rock.” She wasn’t thrilled with how the glaze turned out. I thought it looked awesome.

Kevin was there too. A principal dancer with Hubbard Street and a fine beginning potter. I got to know him a little bit one Saturday evening when we both went in to the studio to practice. I watched bowl after bowl come off of his wheel while I just tried to master centering. I never did.

And Lori. We met a couple of weeks ago. She was glazing a lidded pot with a brush. She had etched cherry blossoms on to the side. It was elegant. Lovely. The kind of work I dreamed of making but felt years away from.

That same evening, she showed me some tea cups she made. Delicate cone shapes with carved out handles that looked like wood. Porcelain – glazed yellow salt.

She’s been throwing for just 10 months. It looks like 10 years.

Eventually I found my pieces. The slab tray buckled. It was too thin. But the bowl that Lori helped me glaze looked pretty good – my best piece yet. She said my mug looked really good. I told her it wasn’t my work, that Robert made it and gave it to me to glaze. We laughed.

I told her about Nin and not wanting to glaze.

She told me about her best friend unexpectedly dying and how she wanted to cocoon but knew he wouldn’t want that. That he would want her out in the street calling his name. So she did.

We talked about pottery and writing and relationships. She helped me glaze one of the mugs, filling the inside with one of the variety of whites. And when it was dry we lowered it into a vat of rutile blue, then turned it upside-down and “kissed” the glaze a final time around the rim.

I watched her glaze several more lidded pots, a large tea-cup like the smaller ones she had shown me, and a tall, thin bottle – lowering it into the vat with her finger tucked inside.

I watched the patience and care she devoted to each piece. I do not have that patience. I am not so exacting. At least not in this moment. Not about pottery. I realized this is what anything “good” requires – attention, time, care.

The same attention, time and care I take with my writing, my food, my clothing. The same attention, time and care my ex takes with the cats, Nin and Maude. The very reason I left them with him.

I put my pieces on the cart to be glazed. Wrapped my finished bowl and tray in newspaper and put them in my bag. I thanked Lori for her help and said goodbye to Melanie and Kevin.

Seems I wasn’t quite done.

Turns out, neither is Nin. I talked to my ex. He couldn’t get an appointment with a vet until Sunday. He said she seems comfortable. Slow, but comfortable. Purring. I trust him. I trust his attention, time and care. I always did.

Artist Date 32: In Between Dates. Some Things You Just “Know.”

July 30, 2013July 30, 2013 LesleyPearlLeave a comment

I’m standing on the corner of 4^th and Main in Royal Oak, Michigan.

I had breakfast with my old boss, Bill, a couple of hours ago. We met at the restaurant he owns, where I used to work. I was employee number seven. Or maybe it was six? Nine? We’re not exactly sure. We decide seven sounds about right.

I haven’t seen him since my divorce. Since he met DD. We wax nostalgic about the early days. Toast that came out 20 minutes after the eggs. The decision to hire a cleaning service because I didn’t want to scrub the toilets. The handsome photographer upstairs.

I spent years in this city. As a teenager – thrifting and hanging out at Patti Smith – not the musician, the other one. At her clothing store – talking, listening to music, wanting to be a grown up.

After college, I moved here and lived in an upstairs flat with my friend Mona and her two cats. I worked at a weekly newspaper, waited tables on the weekends, and drank my tip money.

I haven’t been here in a number of years. And alone, probably never. It seems the perfect destination for Artist Date 32. That’s what I had in my head when I planned my trip “home” a few weeks ago. Except I didn’t make much time for alone. I never do.

I just left coffee with my 17-year-old niece. I found her waiting for me on a concrete planter outside of Caribou – which wasn’t Caribou when I was 17. I remember “punk rock” kids getting dropped off here and walking down the street to meet their friends – as if their parents had not just dropped them off.

I tell my niece I used to hang out here 26 years ago. She’s floored. As she is when I tell her what 17 was like in my house. That it wasn’t so different. That I too felt grown up in so many ways, but still a kid in others. How I just wanted to go – to New York..but Royal Oak would do. And how sometimes I wanted to stay – in my bedroom with the blue shag carpet…forever.

Mostly, we agree that 17 is hard.

I’m due to meet Danny in a half hour. We met at a Jewish retreat the summer before we entered high school. He was funky and quirky and a good dancer – like me. Perhaps he too felt like a black, drag queen trapped in a small Jewish body.

A half hour isn’t really long enough for an Artist Date, but I decide it’s kind of like exercise – a little bit is better than none. I let go of all the “why didn’t you plan for your Artist Date” chatter and spend the next 30 minutes absorbing this place I used to call mine. The clock is now ticking.

There used to be a bank here, just south of this corner. I made out with Joe A. in my maroon Chevy Corsica, parked right in front of it. He moved to Tucson not long after.

I see a guy sitting on the patio at Tom’s Oyster Bar. He has the shiniest black hair I’ve ever seen. Beautiful, with waves. He looks like Joe’s musical partner – who I also made out with. But later. A couple of years later. Just before I moved to San Francisco. I cannot remember his name. He looks up at me. We smile at one another and he returns to his book. I do not know if it is him.

So much has changed. And yet, a lot is still the same. The independent stores that serve as anchors –Haberman Fabrics. Incognito. Noir Leather. I once bought an erotica book here and popped it in my lover’s bag before he headed out of town, with a dirty letter I penned tucked inside.

Bright Ideas – a modern, cool, functional interiors store. It’s been here as long as I can remember.

I walk in and my head quiets. I am sucked in by what is in front of me rather than what is in me, in my head –Joe A., his partner, my niece.

Detroit drink coasters. Symbols of my childhood. Drink Faygo Orange. Better Made Potato Chips. The iconic scrawl of Sanders – hot fudge and ice cream shops, and Vernors – better and spicier than any ginger ale you can imagine. It used to be used medicinally. Quintessentially Detroit. All of it. I am smiling.

There are tiny bud vases in a variety of colors, thrown on a potter’s wheel. They began as a fundraising activity and blossomed into a business. I think about my own somewhat disappointing foray into throwing. Disappointing because I had expectations. I thought I’d be good. Immediately. Because I worked with clay when I was 17. Because I have no patience.

The vases are made in Seattle. I am wistful.

There are low-slung couches with chrome and clean lines. My nearly 5 foot 3-inch body sits comfortably in these. At home my feet dangle off of the pricey futon. I bought it because I had a notion that I would sleep on it and my bedroom would be my massage studio. That’s not what happened.

I wonder if I can fit one in my hatch.

There are pillows with birds painted neon pink and green and blue. An orange flower is growing out of another. Several are felted, with messages “seemingly” just for me: “Let’s Make Out.” “Happily Ever After.” “Think Big.” “Breathe.”

Yes. Yes. Yes and Yes.

There are yellow, leather “Star Trek” chairs. Body hugging, with matching ottomans. On the wall are grey circles with the letters S,M,L. Like the three bears in Goldilocks. I wonder which one will be just right for me. In chairs. In all things.

I look at my watch. It’s time to meet Danny. I feel surprisingly and strangely refreshed having taken these 20 minutes alone. A little lighter. A little clearer. Time apart.

I find Danny down the street and throw my arms around him. He is wearing a Grateful Dead T-shirt and shoots me a big smile – a cross between a 5-year-old’s pure joy and “I am up to no good.”

I tell him I’m hungry and he takes me to Astoria Bakery – formerly Cinderella’s Attic, one of my early thrifting haunts. He orders a walnut roll. I get a cookie laced with honey and a flirtation of anise. His is better.

We catch up on our lives post-divorce. He is a year ahead of me in the process. He tells me about his kids. About dating. I tell him about not dating. About my inability to compartmentalize. My wish that I could.

I do not tell him about my Artist Dates. I am not sure why. I figure he already knows. In the same way that I already know. It’s just like that sometimes. With some people. In some places. Like here, right now, with him.

Like Trying To Hold On To Lightning Bugs

July 24, 2013 LesleyPearlLeave a comment

My mother must have the photo I am referring to...This is me and my brother, before the training wheels came off. — My mother must have the photo I am referring to. My brother and I, before the training wheels came off.

I’m trying to hold on to a new idea. A new behavior.

It’s like trying to hold on to lightning bugs.

It’s like riding a bike for the first time without training wheels and turning around to see if mom is still holding on.

I have a photograph of myself on a pink two-wheeler. I’m wearing a t-shirt that says A-Jerx. (There was a whole series of these – gum and trading cards too –a play on words of household brands with artwork leaning towards the grotesque.) My hair is in pig tails.

I remember leaning side to side, riding in an S-shape pattern trying to steely myself. Shaky. But most definitely upright.

Until I turn around. My mother is several feet behind me, standing in the driveway. She is no longer holding on. I am delighted. I am doing this thing.

And then I’m down on the ground. I don’t yet know how to keep my balance looking anywhere but forward. (Do I even now? In all things…not just biking.)

I feel like that now. Excited by self-awareness and the practice of new behaviors – seemingly without effort. And yet a little uncertain at the same time.

I spent the day with my friend Pam on Saturday. It began with gelato, moved into thrifting, dinner and ended with a stealth run to Trader Joes. All told we were together for probably six or so hours. And I could have kept going.

We never run out of things to talk about. And we giggle, constantly. When I am with her I feel like I am at a perpetual Bar Mitzvah party at Tam O’Shanter Country Club circa 1982.

Except for when we are baring our souls. Speaking the words we only whisper to ourselves in the dark. And being met with love and compassion, always.

It’s awesome.

I told her so on Saturday night when she was dropping me off.

We were giggling about the cute boy at Trader Joes. The one I chatted with for 20 minutes in front of the canned beans. The one I gave my number to a couple of weeks ago. Who sweetly explained that he hadn’t called because things were “complicated.”

While he and I were talking, she posted on Facebook that she was watching a “love connection.” So she was surprised that he didn’t ask me out. That we spoke for that long. That he seemed completely unaware that anyone else was in the store besides us. That the chemistry, to her perspective, was palpable. And yet, nothing.

She asked what I thought I might do about it.

“Nothing,” I replied.

He has my number. He knows I’m interested. And his landlord is a friend of mine. He knows where to find me. “It’s like you taught me,” I said. “I don’t ever again want to be a dog begging for a bone.”

It was, as they say, a moment. A spiritual awakening.

I also told her I decided to not contact an old flame when I head to Detroit later this month. He’d been dancing around in my head for weeks. And yet I hadn’t contacted him. Suddenly I knew why.

I “played the tape.” I realized that, best case scenario…even if I did see him,even if it was like it used to be, that I would be trading my serenity for a passport stamp at Crazy.

I had learned I’m not the kind of girl who can casually physically connect, then say, “That was fun. I’ll see you next time I’m in Detroit.” That I get attached. That I want more. Deserve more. That my life is here, in Chicago. Looking forward.

I told her, and here’s the kicker, I only want to date someone who I have as much fun with as I do her.

She smiled. I knew what she was thinking. What she has said to me so many times, “You are growing.”

I felt chuffed. That great British slang my ex-mother-in-law used to use, that roughly translates to “pleased with myself.” I felt like I had “licked this problem. This old way of being.”

And then this morning I felt differently.

I saw Mr. Detroit on Facebook. I immediately thought how nice it would be to catch up on nearly 20 years. Just coffee…riiiight.

GRRR!! I thought I “had it,” I told my friend, Lynn.

I told her how I felt like it slipped right through my fingers. Like the lightning bugs – which half the time I cannot even believe are real, they are so magical.

I remembered all the times I thought “I got this,” in Weight Watchers. And all the times I gained my weight back. And then some. I wondered what was different this time. How it was that I had maintained a 35-pound weight loss for 11-plus years. Through three cross-country moves, getting sober, finding my birthparents, getting divorced, and burying a birthparent.

The only answer I could come up with is that I just kept practicing the behaviors. When they were new. And when they weren’t so new. Even when I didn’t feel like it.

I kept weighing and measuring. Writing down my food. Moving my body. Making better choices. Most of the time. I haven’t been perfect. Thank goodness that wasn’t demanded of me.

It isn’t demanded of me with Mr. Detroit. Or Mr. Trader Joes either. I can, and will, have these thoughts…these suggested detours to Crazy. But I’m no longer a slave to them. I can notice them, perhaps name them, and…not react to them. I can do different. And keep on doing different until different becomes the new normal.

Until it’s like riding a bike. Which today I can do AND look over my shoulder. Even take my hands off the handlebars, and stay upright. No longer on the ground wondering what the hell happened.

A Year After the Day Before Everything Was About to Change

July 20, 2013 LesleyPearl3 Comments

Wandering in Brussels with my friend, Tim. I love putting the camera in front of faces and seeing what is captured. — With Tim, in Brussels

A year ago today I was in Brussels.

I didn’t know that everything was about to change. Or maybe I did know. The universe did. Perhaps that’s why I was blessed with an extra day there, even though it didn’t feel like a blessing at the time.

I’d spent the past two days in what I’d come to call “Paris Small.” One of them, with my old roommate Tim, who flew in from Dublin for just one night – just to be with me. We rented an IKEA-decorated studio, a few blocks from the train station. Its red wooden shutters opened onto the square. It was perfect.

That day, we Skyped with Tim’s boyfriend Martin, who was living in Yorkshire. We got our heads shaved. Ate Belgian Waffles covered in powdered sugar, walking and talking until the sky turned navy.

I spent the next night alone. I called my friend, Michael, my divorce pal in the States, before going to sleep. Just as I did most nights back at home. Ever since my ex asked me for a divorce and he and his wife also decided to separate.

The next morning, a year ago today, I arrived at the airport and learned that my plane had been grounded due to a cracked windshield. I stood in line for more than two hours before reaching the counter to re-book my flight – surrounded by people loudly sighing and complaining.

I made friends with a gay boy from Missouri. I watched the family in front of me – husband and wife, and almost grown kids. They seemed nonplussed. Almost enjoying the time. As we approached the counter together, I commented on how happy they seemed.

“What else can we do?” the father responded.

Happy, even though they had missed the Chicago portion of their vacation. Would miss their connection to San Francisco. And were just hoping to recoup their time in Los Angeles. Happy.

They wrote a list of suggestions for how I might want to spend my extra time in Brussels.

We wished each other well, and parted ways. Me, with a voucher for a hotel room across the street, and a boarding pass for a different flight tomorrow. No longer direct, I would fly to Frankfurt – the first airport I landed in overseas, nearly 20 years ago – before arriving in Chicago.

I took the train back to the City Centre after checking in to the hotel and retraced my steps down the cobblestone streets. Enjoying another waffle. Purchasing pale nougat studded with almonds and dried orange pieces to bring home as gifts.

I walked to a park overlooking the city and read in the cool sunshine. I browsed a museum gift shop, as I arrived too late to see the exhibit. And then I took the train back to the hotel, stopping in the airport to buy a phone card, hoping to speak with Michael again.

I tried phoning him from my room, and then realized I hadn’t put enough money on the card. I stuffed it in my wallet and went to the lobby to take advantage of the free WiFi.

I noticed it was my friend J’s birthday while trolling Facebook. I sent him good wishes, which he was on the other end to receive. It was still afternoon in New York.

He told me he would be spending his birthday eating crab legs with his girlfriend. I told him I was on my way home from Rwanda. That I was grounded in Brussels. That I was divorcing. And that I was moving back to Chicago.

I threw up on him. And then I went to dinner.

When I left Seattle nearly a month earlier, I didn’t know where I would settle. Now I had a plan.

I arrived in Chicago the next afternoon. (I was fortunate, for those who were able to re-book on the original flight remained grounded in Brussels for another day.) I informed my friends I was now going by Liora – my Hebrew name – as that was what I was called in Rwanda, the result of having two Lesleys on the trip.

I had dinner with Michael. And after, we stood under a street lamp, holding on to one another for what felt like forever. I didn’t want to let go. I told him I would see him in a month.

My friend Emily picked me up at the airport that evening. She remembered what re-entry was like after spending time in Africa. We had dinner. She took me grocery shopping. And then she dropped me off at home.

The cats greeted me at the door. My then soon-to-be-ex-husband was noticeably absent. I felt painfully alone as I rolled my hard orange suitcase into the house.

I saw Michael sooner than anticipated. At my request, he flew to Seattle, helped me pack my car and drive home. We stayed with friends of mine in Missoula and Bozeman. I shot a gun for the first and only time somewhere between the two cities.

2012-08-31 10.30.32 — Hiking in the Badlands.

We camped along the Missouri River, under a blue moon, at Teddy Roosevelt National Park. Hiked the Badlands the next day, and stopped somewhere outside of Fargo that night, sharing a room at The Bison Inn.

We stayed with my college roommates on our final stop in Minneapolis. They stuffed us with homemade treats. Michael replaced the radiator in my 2000 Honda Civic. It failed just as we were entering the city. My job was to hand him the tools he called for.

We arrived home the day before Labor Day, around 11 p.m. I dropped him off at home in his questionable neighborhood, sobbing on the front lawn.

July 19, 2012. I didn’t know everything was about to change. That, in many ways, it would be the last day of my “previous life.” How could I? And yet, how could I not?

I believe my brain was protecting me from that which I could not yet conceive of.

My divorce was final a little more than 10 months ago. I live alone for the first time in my life. I buried my birth mother in the spring.

I felt new lips over mine for the first time in many, many years. And I watched my heart crack open. Then again. And again.

A couple of weeks ago, I initiated the process of separating our monies. When that is complete, only our condominium, which we rent out, will bind us – financially.

I applied for a job today. The first in more than 11 years. I’m excited. Fingers crossed.

This morning, two women commented that I sounded really good. A third asked for my blog address. Later, my friend Jess asked if I could have imagined how much I would have healed by now. It struck me as funny, as I didn’t feel particularly healed. I decided to trust her perspective, and that of the three other women.

I wrote J a birthday greeting. I wished him what I wish for everyone I love – joy and the causes of joy. And then I wished him something special – something just for him: a nice piece of liver for dinner.

He knew exactly what it meant. And suggested a watermelon instead. I laughed out loud.

It is comforting to know not everything has changed since July 19, 2012. To know that some things have survived. Friendship. Love. Shared memories and private jokes. And most of all, me.

Artist Date 30: Among the Flora, Invited Out

July 17, 2013 LesleyPearl2 Comments

One of my readers invited me on an Artist Date. Number 30.

Actually, she’s a friend…and a reader. Her name is Stephanie. Last week, she sent me an email inviting me to the Bucktown Tree and Garden Walk. Hers would be among the 80-plus featured.

I was touched, delighted that she had somehow become “involved” enough in my story, in my process, to join in, to help me along.

So Saturday morning I pedal my vintage Raleigh to her neighborhood. The day is sunny and hot, but not humid. A Chicago miracle.

I tie up my bike at Club Lucky and buy a ticket for the walk. In exchange for $5, I receive a map of the gardens with descriptions of each, access to a complimentary trolley, and a coupon for $10 my next meal of $35 or more.

I hear my name called. It is a woman I used to know. I didn’t recognize her. She isn’t surprised to see me. She heard I moved back to town. That I am divorced. Chicago feels like a small town. It is comforting.

We embrace. And I jump back on my bike, headed to Stephanie’s, forgoing the trolley.

Her partner Errol is on the porch painting, plein air. She is inside sautéing onions and baking a pizza – snacks for the other artists expected today.

She gives me a tour of her home, its walls spilling over with her artwork, Errol’s and that of other creatives. Her first still life hangs in the stairwell. It is a pear. Or is it an onion and ramps? There are several, grouped together. I don’t recall. In some ways it doesn’t really matter. Her raw natural talent is obvious. It is the kind that makes me wonder why I bother.

Stephanie and Toulousse — Stephanie and Toulouse

I meet her cat Toulouse, and a black one whose name escapes me. He is missing some bone in his head, which makes his face appear somewhat smushed.

I leave my helmet and my basket with her, and receive explicit directions to stop by Sam and Nick’s. She points out their location on the map. “Just tell them we sent you.”

On the way I stop at my first floral garden, (Stephanie and Errol’s was planted with art – some framed and hanging. Other funky and environmental. A striped sidewalk created with a power washer and wood planks. Painted sticks growing out of the soil. Their colors “changing” from orange to green depending on your position. Like a painting by the Israeli artist, Agam.)

Marsha is watering plants. She seems surprised to see me. Actually, many of the garden owners do. As if they have forgotten that the garden walk is today.

She shows me her zinnias and her tomatoes. Nothing remarkable, but lovely. Sweet. Growing.

Walking into the private space of a stranger, I am reminded of being in Amsterdam. According to my Frommer’s guide residents intentionally keep their shutters open – proud of their homes, inviting a peek inside.

This is Marsha’s first season in the garden. She moved in recently, leaving the suburbs and joining her husband in the city. Her house is on the market and she is keeping her fingers crossed. She gives me hope – seeing her in this new space, putting down roots, with a partner. And also knowing that she had a life all her own before this change. And I assume, to a certain degree, still does.

I don’t tell her any of this. Instead I tell her about my recollections of Amsterdam, how I recently killed a cactus, and about being invited on an Artist Date by her neighbor. I run my hands through a tomato plant and bring them to my face. I love the smell. I rub my hands on my neck, as if putting on the earth’s fragrance. I thank her and say goodbye.

A wading pool is set up at the corner of Hoyne and Moffat, along with a glass bubbler filled with ice water, cucumber, melon and strawberries. A few chairs are perched in the shade of a tree. There is a note, “Relax and Hydrate.” I fill up my water bottle and keep moving.

I stop at Nick and Sam’s. Sam is wearing a white bee keeper’s hat. I go inside and talk with Nick about his artwork. Striking etchings using photos from the Kinsey Institute. He points out the racy elements because I don’t see them – not at first.

I admire his collection of roller-skate cases lined up on a shelf, each with a tag hanging from it – letting him know what is stored inside.

I visit more than a dozen gardens. Some consisting of little more than sod on a double-wide lot – one with a basketball net and cement court, another with a large inflatable swimming pool. Two toddler girls in matching hot pink bathing suits and white sun hats are wading in it. Their limbs, deliciously chunky.

Others sit on top of garages, tucked behind homes.

I follow arrows and stairs climbing up. Water spills out of the wall and is caught in a ceramic bowl, a chalice. Suspiciously clean, striped pads sit on top of teak furniture. Several blue umbrellas block the sun. A man, presumably the owner, offers me a bottle of water from a cooler. I feel like I am at a spa.

At another, an intruder. I am greeted by a man eating his lunch under a wooden canopy covered with vines, listening to the radio. His daughter hangs shyly behind him, swaying side to side, her head following her hips.

Most of the homes are noticeably without “hosts.” Only a laminated card, with a number corresponding to the map, identifies them as part of the walk.

I had expected storybook gardens, like something from the south. Manicured. Dense. Sweetly pungent. Or wild and overgrown, with tall, smiling sunflowers – like my favorite one in Mendocino, a sleepy resort town on the northern California coast. A sign implores visitors to photograph, but to refrain from picking.

Instead I encounter mostly neatly trimmed hedges, modest groupings of plants and flowers that clearly thrive, creative use of small space —bringing nature into the city.

I remember moving to Chicago the first time, in 2007. I was heart-sick for San Francisco. For pastel-painted Victorians, rolling fog and rolling green hills. I made it my mission to take the most beautiful path I could wherever I went. The one with the most trees, prettiest homes. I had forgotten about that.

Eventually I settled into Chicago. My surroundings ceased to be new. And I ceased to notice them. Until today.

I return to Stephanie and Errol’s to pick up my things. A few of Errol’s painter friends are here. They ask if I am a painter. I shake my head. I tell them that I am a writer, a dancer, a frustrated potter. A girl on an Artist Date, being reminded of the loveliness all around me.

Plant Whisperer

July 9, 2013 LesleyPearl4 Comments

I killed a cactus.

Actually three of them. And two succulents.

One of the cacti sat in a beautiful terrarium – a gift from a friend. I took it to the shop owner and he replaced it with a sweet baby succulent, along with specific instructions. Water once a month. Half a cup, using a dropper. The succulent gets an extra watering mid-month. Ditto for the larger succulent, a jade, I bought the same day.

The baby succulent wilted to nothing – is lying flaccid upon itself. One of the cacti, like the first, is about to go. And one is gone. Dead. Dried up. As if it had never been there.

And the jade?

I bought it in response to the suggestion I don’t date for a year. An homage to Leviticus – to the prescribed year without planting and harvesting that follows seven years of specific crop rotation, allowing the soil to rest, regenerate, to become prepared.

I remember sitting in meditation and the imagery coming to me, followed by the thought, “I am the soil.” And then, “I should get a plant.”

All went well for a few weeks. And then it appeared to perhaps be outgrowing its container. (The shop owner assured me it wouldn’t for at least five years.) The soil seemed constantly dry, even though I followed watering directions to the letter – sitting it in the sink and letting the faucet run until water leaked out of the bottom.

Now, two sad, pale green stalks remain.

Normally, I would laugh about this. I never have had terribly good luck with plants. Except for mint. And even that dried up eventually. However, this jade had come to be a symbol of me taking care of me, of my own soil. So its demise makes me more than a little uneasy.

I remember coming home with it. Talking to it. (I never talked to a plant before.) I told it I didn’t know how to care for it. That it would have to tell me how.

I recently read a piece in Oprah about a woman who claimed to have a black thumb. She planted a garden and she got weeds.

One day a friend informed her that her weeds weren’t just any weeds – that they were delicacies in Japan, good for cooking.

But her cooking was like her gardening — yielding less-than-desired results. Until she asked for help.

She took the weeds to a chef in New York. He taught her how to cook them. And she kept bringing them. Eventually selling them to the restaurant, and about 100 others.

A couple of years ago, she and the chef wrote a cookbook together – Foraged Flavor . She quit her job as legal counsel to devote herself fulltime to her new work.

And my dead plants? What are they, the universe, God, trying to tell me – besides that I too have a black thumb? As my friend Stan likes to say, “What’s the lesson? What’s the gift?”

That sometimes conditions are just too unfavorable – that the plants needed a little bit of light and received none? That other people – even shop owners, even experts – don’t always have the answers? That I can follow directions and still get shitty results – that nothing is guaranteed?

That things die? That I need to pay attention to what is still living (barely) and nurture that?

That the soil is poor, needs nutrients? That my year off is ending early?

I don’t know.

The plants have proven themselves to be quiet messengers. I will continue to ask, and to listen closely.

Have You? Do You?

July 8, 2013 LesleyPearlLeave a comment

Me and my cousin, Andrew. He was my first crush. He shows me what a good man is. What love looks like. He has also heard most of these stories.

Have you ever held onto a crush because it made you feel like you had something going on? Even though you had nothing going on? With him or her or anyone else?

Even though you haven’t spoken a word or had contact in quite some time? Even though he knows he could have you if he just said the word…but doesn’t?

Have you ever latched on to a few kind words from an ex? Allowed a simple sentence to set your mind reeling with possibilities? Wondering what he is up to now? Even though you haven’t seen one another in more than a decade. And you aren’t even sure if he’s married or not? Have you ever wanted to inquire with a mutual friend of his relationship status but decided against it only because you didn’t want to appear tacky?

Have you ever rifled through old journals looking for entries about your time with the above-mentioned ex because you are certain you wrote about it? And when you found those few pages read them over and over again until the images were seared onto your retinas?

Have you ever lingered over every detail about a romance that happened nearly 20 years ago? The one where you were 25 and he was 40 and you asked him, “What is 40 like?” Where he made sure you didn’t die or kill yourself in a drunken frenzy – your first time overseas? And then sang to you in the airport when you said goodbye, lamented over the things he didn’t do with you, knowing you would never see one another again.

Do you tell it with such vivid color all these years later that your girlfriend insists you to write about it? But you don’t.

Have you ever felt closer to your crush after spending time with his friend? And felt guilty about it even though you didn’t do anything wrong?

Have you ever slipped his name into conversation just to keep it alive? To keep him alive?

Do you ever wonder about the ones you call unfinished business?

Your first real love. The first one you got naked with?

The one with good boundaries, who kept you at arm’s length because he was your professor and you were his student. But sometimes you wonder if maybe…just maybe, it could have been different.

The one who slipped his hand down the back of your pants and guided you down the street by your crotch. Made you praise God for dirty minds and dirty hands.

The one who wanted a partner when you wanted a parent. You couldn’t see it then but you can now. And sometimes you wonder what it would have been like if you met later?

Have you ever looked up your ex’s current on Facebook and wondered if you were thinner? Prettier? Better in bed?

Have you ever waxed nostalgic over others and wondered what the hell you were thinking?

Do you sometimes forget that you are making a choice every day? Not to settle. Not to post a dating profile online. But to grieve. To get your own house in order. To trust in magic and serendipity and the divine rhythms of the universe.

Do you sometimes forget that you actually have said, “no”? Not because the suitor wasn’t perfectly lovely, but because you didn’t have romantic feelings. Because you wanted to honor the feelings you did have, wanted to honor yourself and honor him. Because you remember what it is like to say “yes” when you really mean “no.”

Do you congratulate yourself when you remember?

And yet, choice or no choice, do you sometimes feel that strange sense of empty space – like a wall waiting for art? You know nature abhors a vacuum because your friend Teresa told you so and she’s rarely wrong. So you wonder when nature will come charging in.

Do you sometimes wonder if the universe remembers exactly how long it has been since you have had sex? Does it sometimes make you cringe? And other times fill you with a sense of esteem for discernment you had never previously known?

Do you sometimes know that God has done you favor because you otherwise might have stayed somewhere you shouldn’t have. Or gone somewhere you didn’t need to be?

Do you sometimes still have a little bit of crazy that tells you that you are better, worthier, more interesting and more attractive if you have a partner?

Do you sometimes look at someone new and think “maybe,” and know in the past you would have forced that “maybe” into a “yes?” Made it fit, damn it. Made him fit. Like Cinderella’s shoe on a stepsister’s foot? But for now you just say “maybe.”

Have you? Do you?

Me too.

The Last of the Firsts

July 5, 2013 LesleyPearl3 Comments

I thought that Passover was the last of the firsts…first holidays, birthdays, anniversaries without my ex-husband.

I was wrong.

I knew that July 4^th was technically the last, but I didn’t think it would matter. It wasn’t of special significance to either of us.

And yet, here I am in my pajamas, feeling it. I’m sick. Sore throat. Heavy eyes. Headache. Exhausted. It came on fast and furious yesterday afternoon and by this morning had me down for the count. No beach and BBQ to distract me. I’m aware that yes, this holiday too, registers in the cycle of firsts.

Funny enough, we weren’t together for the 4^th last year. I was on my way to Rwanda, with a group from my synagogue in Chicago. He was in Seattle, dating another woman. We were pretty transparent about these things. At times, painfully so.

But I was coming back to Seattle. To the home we still shared with our cats Maude and Nin. To “our life,” altered as it was.

It wasn’t until I left in August, arriving in Chicago the evening before Labor Day, when the cycle began.

Labor Day was a blur through tears. Then his birthday. Rosh Hashanah. Yom Kippur. Our wedding anniversary. And my birthday. In quick succession.

Our divorce was final on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.

I didn’t have a dinner at my house as I usually do. I didn’t yet have a house.

Instead, when I received the dissolution of marriage papers in the mail a few days later, I gathered a few friends in support. We ate noodles together – never mentioning why we were there.

I broke the fast on Yom Kippur at a friend’s house. She let me know that once invited, I am always invited.

I don’t recall his birthday or mine. Or our anniversary. What I remember are the beautiful gifts he gave me for many years. A hand-carved wooden jewelry box. A hand-colored pearl and smoky quartz necklace I had been coveting. Things I mentioned in passing and had forgotten about, but that he made note of, and surprised me with.

Halloween passed without fanfare.

Then Thanksgiving hit hard. I was invited to the home of a friend of a friend. She also told me that once invited, always invited.

Thanksgiving was our “wandering” holiday, ever since we left California. Up until then we spent it with my old roommate Tim, who hosted it Martha Stewart-style, complete with printed menus.

Once year we traveled to Chicago to be with Tim, when he lived here for about 10 months. We called it “the year Tim worked a lot.” We were in complete denial that he was gone.

Another time we shared breakfast with him and Steven, at IHOP. We were on our way to London, for our honeymoon – just after 9/11. The airport was spooky quiet.

We never had a Thanksgiving ritual in Chicago or Seattle. We were always invited somewhere, but it was never the same. The only constant was that we were together.

I celebrated my sober birthday in late November with a big soiree at my house. He was noticeably absent. Neither there to make pot after pot of coffee nor to help clean up. I texted my South Carolina crush late that night, when everyone was gone and the last dish was in the rack, feeling palpably and frighteningly alone. He had already gone to bed.

I was invited to spend Christmas Eve with some new friends. Christmas Day I found myself at the table where I had spent Thanksgiving. My ex and I spoke frequently over those 24 or so hours, remembering our Christmas Eve gatherings – a take-off on my cousin Wendy’s annual party on Christmas Day for Jews who have nothing to do. I would make a big pot of mushroom risotto. He would bake. Christmas Day we would go to a movie.

We were both pretty heartsick. Both of us broken-hearted by our forays into new romance. We found comfort talking with one another.

New Year’s Eve I spent at a party at my friend Sheila’s house. I didn’t make it until midnight.

The year before we were skiing at Steven’s Pass. My ex rented a house that backed up to a river. It had a loft bedroom, crazy fireplace and heated floors. We sang karaoke and did jigsaw puzzles. I brought the knitting needles, yarn and instruction manual he bought me for Hanukkah. I never used them.

We bickered on the trails. He was a cross-country skate skier. I was not. In our early years together I took a few lessons and got moderately better. But I never really got the hang of it. We incorporated wine tasting into our ski weekends, drinking before or after. Sometimes both. It worked. Until it didn’t. When I didn’t drink anymore.

That last trip, I spent a few hours in the “lodge,” – an anonymous room where one could purchase chili, cookies wrapped in plastic film and powdered cocoa while the television blared. I read Patti Smith’s Just Kids, while he skied hard, the way he liked to.

This year on Valentine’s Day, I unearthed our last cards to one another. They were sad. We knew that our marriage was ending but hadn’t yet said the words. I blogged about it.

By March it was over. He asked me for a divorce at the end of that month, just before Passover.

I invited a handful of friends for a Seder in Seattle. He joined us. It didn’t seem unusual at the time.

This year I celebrated twice. Once at my friend Mary Jo’s. A second time in my apartment, looking out at the Catholic church across the street. There were 12 of us. Some of the usual suspects, friends I had made over the years in Chicago, as well as some new guests. My Divorce Buddy, the one I used to spend hours on the phone with late into the evening, stayed to do dishes with me. It didn’t feel so lonely. Not until he asked me about one of my girlfriends.

Memorial Day I rode my bike to a BBQ and blogged about where I was the year before – with my friend Ernie, at the ocean, wringing my hands about making out with Mr. Thursday Night, worried it wouldn’t happen again. It didn’t.

June 19 was the anniversary of our first date. I know that because it’s my brother’s birthday.

July 4. An entire cycle completed. Unless you count the first time we had sex, which I recall only because it is my cousin David’s birthday and we had drinks with him in San Francisco at the Latin American Club that night. That will be later this month. I don’t *think* it will rattle me as I’ve never marked the occasion before, just been aware of it.

The sun is going down. It is noisy outside. I am reminded of when we lived in Humboldt Park. July 4 felt like a war zone.

I was invited to a BBQ tonight by a man I recently met. He’s easy to talk to – open and forthright about his divorce. He’s a good hugger. Nice looking. I don’t have any feelings about him. But I’d like to get to know him better.

I sent him a text telling him I won’t make it tonight.

I made myself kale salad, roasted squash and corn on the cob. I read, napped, wrote and napped some more. I walked a few blocks to Paciaugo for gelato – campfire banana, orange-chocolate-saffron and rose – came home and put my pajamas back on.

It all seems right somehow, spending the last of my first alone. Caring for myself. Readying myself for a whole new cycle of experiences.

Artist Date 28: Me, Kate Moss and the Joannes

June 29, 2013 LesleyPearlLeave a comment

About this time last year, my friend Joanne told me she had two style icons – me and Kate Moss. I was surprised and tickled. But mostly tickled.

I remember what I was wearing that day. A tight pink and white striped “French sailor” t-shirt from Old Navy, with buttons along the boat neck. Too loose, Army-green cigarette pants from Target, purchased prior to my ex asking me for a divorce – before the weight slipped off of me, seemingly overnight. A thin, woven belt, and my yellow peep-toe wedges with ankle straps.

I felt like a page torn from Glamour –“Great Looks for less than $50,” or something like that. Minus the shoes. The shoes would put me “over budget.”

The shoes always put me over budget.

“What calls for the most care in a woman’s costume is unquestionably the foot gear and the gloves.”

The words are stenciled on a wall at the Art Institute of Chicago, along with numerous other pithy statements about dress. I am here for a member lecture and pre-viewing of “Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity” – Artist Date 28.

Sometimes I feel light, superficial, because I am delighted by statements like Joanne’s. I feel that it should not matter.

And yet, I am at a show that has toured the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Musee d’Orsay in Paris before landing in Chicago, a show that is focused on fashion. Earlier this year I saw another, “Inspiring Beauty: 50 Years of Ebony Fashion Fair,” at the Chicago History Museum.

I consider that, perhaps, how I choose to cover my body might not be a simple matter of practicalities and aesthetics. That fashion – how we dress ourselves, individually and as a culture – is in fact, a statement of sorts. A reflection of time, mood, politics. Think hemlines rising as the economy upticks.

Or, as Gloria Groom, the show’s curator says in her lecture, “clothing is not fashion.”

The exhibit is bursting with paintings and sketches. Advertising, bits of clothing and accessories. Bustles, corsets, shoes. Costumes for walking the boulevards of Paris. For going to the sea.

“As fashion was an integral part of Paris’ character, some places – the boulevard, parks, racetracks and theatres – were constructed with the idea of it’s well-dressed pubic in mind.”

Groom ends her lecture with a joke, a “warning.” That those experiencing a bad hair day, clothing day, face day, might do well to avoid the exhibit. That mirrors and reflective surfaces abound.

I am standing in front of a collection of hats. Fifty or more. jeweled. Feathered. Contained in a single square of plexiglass spanning floor to ceiling. I see myself admiring the millinery. Recognizing one that reminds me of the hat I wore at my wedding. I mention this to the woman standing next to me. She asks me about it.

It is made of tightly woven straw, pinned up into corners, decorated with ribbon flowers and glass fruit. I had to have it.

I do not mention I am divorced. It does not feel germane. We are talking about hats. This is progress.

My marital status creeps in later, standing in front of an Edouard Manet painting of Nina de Callais, called “Lady with Fans.” She is lying on her side, looking straight into the camera. If there were a camera. Her eyes are big, dark, open.

She is dressed in black, but she is not mourning. She is wearing jewelry. If she were in mourning she would not be, Groom explains. Groom adds that de Callais is divorced. That perhaps she is “re-baiting the trap.”

The placard next to the painting notes that de Callais was known for hosting salons of writers and artists.

A woman next to me says, to no one in particular, “She is ugly.” I do not agree. “Don’t you think she looks and sounds like fun?” I say.

“Perhaps. But she is ugly. At least she is painted that way.”

I say nothing. Like my friend Julie says, “You can’t argue with crazy.”

I wonder if I am re-baiting the trap. Maybe. Not long after I moved back to town, my friend Tori commented that I dressed differently – sexier, more body-conscious. I wasn’t conscious of it. But now I am.

There are corsets. Boudoir paintings showing seductively naked shoulders and upper backs, napes of necks teasingly exposed.

“A woman in a corset is a lie, a falsehood, a fiction. But for us, fiction is better than reality.”

I think of a party I attended in San Francisco in the mid- 1990s. There is a poster of the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders, circa 1976, hung in the bathroom. By today’s standards, and even those of almost 20 years ago, the women – once considered the pinnacle of beauty in America – would be seen as flabby, soft. Their breasts, saggy. Their thighs, heavy.

Like the photograph of Marilyn Monroe that was recently popular on Facebook. She’s in a yellow bikini. Boy short bottoms. Tie halter top (I covet this suit.). She is reclining. Folds of skin naturally line up across her belly in horizontal rows.

I have folds across my belly.

I am acutely aware of the phenomenon of Photoshop. Of airbrushing. That no celebrity would willingly allow this photograph to surface. But that it might show up in The Star or The Inquirer, with a headline like “Monroe Hits Maximum Density.”

It is a little after 4. I have given myself an hour to tour the exhibit. It is not long enough. I have somewhere to be.

I want to stay and stare at the woman in the Frederic Bazille family reunion painting. The one in the polka-dot dress staring out at me. Her face is sweet. It is shaped like mine.

I want to take off my shoes and run my feet through the fake grass covering the floor in the Plein Air (open air) room.

I want to lean into Bazille’s portrait of Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Hiked up on a chair, his arms wrapped around his bent knees. He is bearded. My type.

I want to scroll through Henri Somm’s sketchbook, digitally brought to life.

I want to see the related exhibits: “Undressed: The Fashion of Privacy” and “Fashion Plates: 19^th-Century Fashion Illustrations.”

I return home and there is a message from my friend Joanne. A different Joanne. She was at the lecture too. She saw me. I saw her. But we didn’t see each other seeing one another. She says, “You looked lovely in that dress.”

I wonder what this dress – its halter-style, plunging neckline and flirty skirt, covered in large red and navy flowers – says. Is it a sign of optimism, worn the day before the Supreme Court overturns the Defense of Marriage Act? Or is it nothing more than a response to a sticky, summer day in Chicago?

I Released The Gold and Diamonds of My Past

June 16, 2013 LesleyPearl1 Comment

I released the gold and diamonds of my past.

Handed them

To a stranger. And pocketed

A check for $217.

It was a generous offer.

Commodities.

No consideration of

Labor, artistry,

Time.

Only weight.

Once I would have drunk

This pain. Eaten

This pain. Fucked

This pain.

Fuck this pain.

No more.

It waits until

After

The headache, the heartache

The bellyache.

Waits

For tears. For

Grieving. I am

In a garden awash in violet.

Hidden behind

Deceptive trees.

Hidden like the little stone

Of my heart.

I offer to take

A photograph. Sweet lovers.

They will return home, holding

Evidence. Their time

Together.

A line of people

Sit,

On a wooden footbridge, feet

In rows in water,

Still, man-created

Stream.

I join them.

Peel the yellow straps

From my ankles and plunge

Into the cool wet.

Sun burns hot

On my neck. Kissing

My shoulder.

Spring has come slowly

This year. I long

For the earth’s tongue

On my skin.

Inside my wallet, Glass horse.

Ceramic salmon.

Medallion. Roman numeral five.

Animal-spirit guides.

Passing of sober days.

Talisman.

Is man?

And a single

Penny. Consider my wish.

For love.

For THAT kind of love.

Tongue on my shoulder.

Slow to come.

Cum.

Cool.

Wet.

I let go

Of another piece

Of metal.

Watch it sink to the bottom,

A lost and found of wishes

Dreams, prayers.

In water, still. Wish,

Still. Dream,

Still. Pray,

Still.

A Wandering Jewess

My Journey Back To Self

Tag: divorce