Seduced By Words

April 30, 2014 LesleyPearlLeave a comment

My friend Rachel met Philip Roth when she was a university student.

220px-Portnoy_s_Complaint — The book that started the seduction.

I was wildly envious. He was my literary idol, inspiring a poem I titled, “Philip Roth Will Save My Life.”

She told me I shouldn’t be.

She said he was coarse, almost mean. Not at all who she imagined him to be. She had been seduced by his words.

Me too. As well as Erica Jong’s, Charles Bukowski’s Anais Nin’s and a long list of other’s.

Most recently, I’ve been seduced by the words of strangers – men looking for love, or something like it, on OKCupid.

Clever words couched in a seemingly shared commonality, ending abruptly when moved from screen to voice.

I should not be entirely surprised.

I’d learned about the chasm between the written word and reality, online and real-time, this past fall when a friend, a man 12 years my junior, told me in no uncertain terms exactly what he would like to do to me. Exactly. And while he made good on his promises a few days later, the flirty simpatico we shared on screen was lost in real life. All hands. No heart.

I was reminded of this truth once again on Friday – my first, OKCupid coffee date.

We made plans a few weeks out due to Passover and my schedule. During that time we exchanged several messages, but we never spoke on the phone.

I told him how to make fried matzoh, and made him promise to cover it with real maple syrup. He told me about a cartoon character his kids like who carries a flask of the stuff.

While I wasn’t convinced this was a romantic connection, he seemed like someone I would want to know.

In person our conversation was clunky, awkward – made worse by bad acoustics and me having to lean in and ask “what?” constantly.

We didn’t talk about his children’s adoption. Or mine. Or even about maple syrup, cartoons or writing – which we both do. We talked about our divorces (Hmm…) and our experiences on OKCupid. (Mine being rather limited.)

I didn’t go into the date with expectations greater than a cup of Intelligentsia, decaf –as it was after 3. And yet, I felt sad.

I suppose there is always some level of hope – What if? Perhaps? Otherwise we would never meet strangers over coffee in the first place.

I miss my ex-husband.

He was solid. I could trust him. He showed up. Period. Even if it wasn’t always in the way I might hope.

I am also clear about what didn’t work. Why we divorced.

Two years after separating, I feel like I am finally grieving.

I miss Mr. 700 Miles — my most recent romance — too. Even though, I couldn’t trust him. He wasn’t solid. He couldn’t show up. I miss the connection that cut straight through the internet, through phone calls, texts and video chats. The feeling that I could talk to him all night and into tomorrow and we’d never run out of things to say, or ways to delight one another.

I am grieving him too. Or perhaps the idea of him. The idea of us.

I get into my car and head north toward Wicker Park, where I will meet my friends in a church basement. Later we will have dinner at the Birchwood, where I will eat a green salad with warm lentils, squash and bacon and drink hot water with lemon. I couldn’t be happier.

My mind wanders, thinking about the rest of the weekend.

Dinner with my girlfriends on Saturday night.

A Sunday morning dance class and performance. And later in the afternoon a salon hosted by my friend Megan – my Artist Date of the week –where her friend Peggy will read from her just-published collection of essays. In between, I will work on editing my friend Martha’s new novel.

I feel excited about my days. About my life. And grateful for it. Grateful for its juicy-ness, with or without a partner.

I am not certain this is true for all people – looking for love or otherwise. I feel lucky.

And a little wiser now too.

I know what I read, on the page or on the screen is only part of the story. I need to listen, to hear it too.

What is being said. And not said.

The sound of gentleness. Laughter. Banter. Ease.

And my heart – beating just a little more quickly.

Artist Date 72: I Hadn’t Even Realized They’d Been Gone

April 20, 2014April 20, 2014 LesleyPearlLeave a comment

On Wednesday, Linda emailed me to cancel our date to the Art Institute. Understandably, as she recently fell and cracked a few ribs. She is on the mend, but not quite well enough to go out.

And just like that, the universe provided me with my Artist Date – Number 72.

I’ve been struggling with them lately. Planning. Going. Writing.

I thought about messaging R. to see if he wanted to meet me. We’ve been messaging one another on OKCupid, but haven’t met yet. We will next week, over coffee.

Yes, I just not-so-subtly slipped that in…that about two weeks ago I somewhat hesitantly joined the world of online dating. Although I haven’t had a date yet.

Yes, my entire blog centers on life after divorce. The heart-breaking dalliances, and the more than year-long commitment to dating myself, courting my own creativity. But I neglected to write about this. Amazing.

Yes, blog forthcoming.

And yet, something knew better. A higher self? Just the universe at work? For several weeks now, despite my feelings and my best efforts, time and space for my solo sojourns has serendipitously appeared. And my feet have followed. Habitual. Almost like brushing my teeth. But coupled with a craving –for time. With me. Outside of me.

And so I nix the message to R. Grab a banana and a latte at Starbucks – the divorcee’s dinner – and head to the Art Institute for the lecture, “Return of the Modern Masters.” I hadn’t even realized they’d been gone.

Crossing the street I see A. reading a newspaper, waiting in line to enter the museum for free after 5 p.m. I invite him to jump the line with me – pulling out my member card.

We are early for lecture. We wander into the Nilima Sheikh’s exhibit “Each Night Put Kashmir in Your Dreams.” I saw it the day Mr. 700 Miles slipped out of my life without a word. When the heart space between us –which up until then had been just inches –became a chasm I couldn’t seem to reach across, no matter how I tried. Artist Date 68.

I tell this to A. while we view, Farewell,” a red scroll with two bodies entwined. A man peeling open his chest, exposing his heart. It reads “If only somehow you could have been mine. What would not have been possible in the world?”

I tear up.

“I’ve done that too,” he says quietly. Somehow, this makes me feel better.

He tells me he couldn’t face hurting her. That he told himself he was sparing her. Sober now, he understands he was only sparing himself.

I tell him that 700 Miles is active in his addiction to drugs and alcohol. He nods. “That’s what we do.” This is not the first time I’ve heard this in regards to him and our story. I nod, but I still do not understand it.

I show A. Marc Chagall’s “America Windows” outside of Rubeloff Gallery, where the lecture is. He hasn’t seen it before. I tell him that Ferris kissed Sloan here. I am not sure he is old enough to remember the movie. I feel like a docent, showing A. my Art Institute.

The lecture moves quickly – giving context to the positioning of the paintings and sculptures that have been returned to their rightful homes.

I am tempted to take notes. I have before, knowing I was going to blog. Sitting with A. I feel somehow self-conscious. As if he might ask why.

I think about my friend Nithin commenting on kids and not-kids filming concerts on their phones. Experiencing the music through a screen rather than directly. Disconnected. Too busy “showing” everyone where they are – via Facebook, Twitter and the like – rather than “being” where they are.

I imagine my note taking might fall into the same category. I allow myself to just listen. I free myself from the need to remember.

A. and I part ways after the lecture. He is meeting a friend for a concert at the Chicago Theatre. (I wonder if he will watch it through his phone.)

I climb the open-backed stairs – the kind that make my ex-husband nauseated and panicky – to the third floor galleries, to see the “Returned Masters.”

The galleries are crowded. I wander. Thinking about the lecture. About artist life in Europe before and during WW II. But ultimately seeing the work through my own lens.

I drink in the juicy, ripeness of Max Beckman’s “Reclining Nude.” And I wonder why I am so set on waif-y thinness for myself.

I smile at Chagall’s “White Jesus,” recalling it is a favorite of the current Pope. I notice my tendency to breathe deeply when facing his work. As if I might inhale something of him.

I recall “Human Figure with Two Birds” from the Max Ernst show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I greet it and Loplop – the bird which comes to represent Ernst, “the private phantom attached to my person” – like an old friend.

I giggle at the “Exquisite Corpse,” a game played on paper by Man Ray, Andre’ Breton and Yves Tanguy while they waited for WW II to end – each adding to an unseen figure, folded back accordion-style, out of sight.

I long to feel the smoothness of Alberto Giacometti’s “Spoon Woman” and Constantin Brancusi’s “White Negress II.”

The “returned Masters” have helped return me to my own. Out of my head and my heart. Into my feeling body. Like the Masters, I hadn’t even realized it had been gone.

Welcoming Juniper Maya with the Hand of God

April 7, 2014 LesleyPearl7 Comments

I keep my phone plugged in to an outlet near the floor so that its light does not interrupt my sleep. But also, because it brings me to my knees first thing in the morning – prayer becomes non-negotiable.

It is 1 a.m. and I am on my knees. I have only turned off the lights two hours ago.

“Is it time?” I ask, seeing it is Clover.

“It’s time,” she says, her voice both dreamy and reassuring. “Take your time.”

We have plenty of it. Nearly 17 hours until Juniper Maya is born. Clover is her mother. And I am Clover’s doula – Greek for servant or birth support.

I brush my teeth and pop in a fresh pair of contact lenses. Pull on a pair of grey skinny corduroys, a purple and white checked blouse and the sweater I can’t bear to give away. The blue merino wool one with the tear under the armpit, and that is separating from its collar.

I pack a bag with berries, yogurt and cereal. Baby carrots. Apples. Sweet potato. Clover and Andy have been cooking and freezing for weeks in preparation for the birth and the days and weeks after. But I pack this, along with a journal and a book – just in case – and jump in my car, leaving the bag with my glasses and toothbrush by the door.

It is quiet out and beginning to snow. I circle the block twice and find a spot nearby. Before getting out of the car, I pray. “Please join us in this sacred moment. May this be a safe and joyous birth for mom and baby.” Or something like that. I am surprised. I didn’t plan to pray. It just sort of spilled out of me, as my prayers often do.

Andy buzzes me in. There is a handmade sign on the door – birth in process. We greet one another in the hallway in whispers.

Inside, it is dimly lit. There are candles. Music is looping from a play list created just for this moment. It is all part of Clover’s birth plan. She greets me sleepily in a short, cotton nightgown. Soon she will be wearing nothing at all and it will seem like nothing could be more natural.

********************

Clover and Andy demonstrate the routine they have established. With each contraction they grasp one another’s upper arm. Andy leans back and they count through it – together. One. Two. Three. Four. Up into double digits, until it is over.

I trade places with Andy and begin counting and leaning and holding on. This will be our foundation for the next 17 hours. The ritual we return to.

It is warm inside. Clover gives me one of her t-shirts. It is grey and oversized with butterflies on it. My friend Julie’s mother Carole (now deceased) often visits both her and I as a butterfly. I know she is with us now.

********************

We eat. We walk. We count.

Clover bounces on the birthing ball. She does cat and camel poses on her hands and knees while I stand behind her, pressing her hips together to midline. Relief.

We doze in bed. Clover and Andy lying next to one another. Me lying perpendicular to them at the foot of the bed. Later I will lie between them, placing my fist in Clover’s low back, gently pushing her sacrum toward her feet. My arm stretched over her body. Her hand clenching mine, until I think my tarsal bones might break.

Clover reminds us of the images that ground her. A sparkly oak tree. The river that runs behind it. A nearby staircase made of fluffy, white feathers. Her spirit guide, Strident.

Andy takes apart the dining room table to make room for the tub. Inflates it and fills it with warm water. Clover climbs in and smiles. The water is holding her and everything she has been carrying.

Morning comes through the pulled shades. Andy calls the midwives around 7:30. Clover has been laboring for 12 hours now. Hilary, the midwife, tells her to keep her voice low, in her abdomen, as opposed to in her throat – which feels more natural. This will help move the baby lower into her pelvis.

Her grunts and noises sound remarkably sexual when she does this. It seems fitting the noises would be the same both conceiving a child and delivering it.

Clover and I are walking. Her hands on my arms. Mine upon hers. She looks directly into my eyes. Hers are big, round, open. Is it fear? Trust? Amazement? Fatigue? I’m not sure. I meet her gaze, as she has asked me to. And I tear up. I am trying to be solid but I feel like I will fall apart at any moment.

No one has ever trusted me this much. Trusted my heart. My body. My psyche. I am overwhelmed.

********************

The first midwife assistant, Sarah, arrives around 8:30 a.m. She is extraordinarily perky. She has slept. We have not.

She watches Clover and I move through a contraction.

We have a new pattern. She squats and I squat with her. I tell her to see the oak tree. To see Strident in the oak tree. She softens and collapses into me and I hold her naked body against my clothed one. We will repeat this again and again.

Sarah puts a fetal heart-rate monitor on Clover’s belly. She will do this following each contraction to make certain everything is as it should be.

I leave Clover with Sarah and walk into the kitchen. I look at Andy, who is making me yet another cup of instant coffee. I tell him this is perhaps the most important thing I have ever done. “Me too,” he says.

A few hours later a second assistant arrives. And around noon, Hilary – the midwife – shows up.

They are all very matter-of-fact. Except about moving. When Clover moves, the baby moves, they explain. And so we keep her moving. In the tub. Out of the tub. In the bed. Out of the bed. Over the toilet. On all fours. On her side. Squatting.

I hold. I squat. I invoke the oak free and Strident until the images no longer produce the desired effect. “No more oak tree,” she says.

Clover’s temperature rises and falls. She steps out of the tub and we wrap her in towels. Moments later she throws them off. She is like James Brown, hobbling off stage with a cape draped over him, then tossing it off and jumping into the splits. All except for the splits.

We laugh. All except Clover. She is somewhere else. Focused.

Not once does she say “I can’t.” Only, “this is taking so long.”

********************

It is late afternoon and she begins to push. The midwives continue to keep her moving. Reminding her to keep her voice low in her body. She is in the tub. I am taking photographs, as she has asked me to do. The camera hides my tearing eyes.

I do not know if they are happy or sad tears. Perhaps both.

I put the camera down and kneel on the side of the tub so that Clover can grasp my hands as she has so many times now. She does, and then lets go, grabbing on to the handles on the side of the tub. It is her and her God alone in the tub. We are her chorus, surrounding her.

And the miracle emerges – all head and a shock of dark hair. Her tiny body tethered by the umbilical cord. Hilary shouts, “Catch your baby! Catch your baby!” And she does.

The pool is red. Clover is radiant. Energized.

Hilary pulls a cap on to Juniper Maya’s tiny head and wraps a towel around her. She lies on Clover’s chest. Andy cuts the umbilical cord.

********************

I feel the tears rise up inside of me. I want to leave.

I am sleep deprived. My body is full with food I wouldn’t normally eat. Spoonfuls of crunchy peanut butter. A chocolate energy bar. Chicken stew. A cold sweet potato. And yet I still feel hungry.

I am acutely aware that my long-distance love, Mr. 700 Miles – the one who slipped away without a word several weeks ago – is shockingly, frighteningly present. That he has been for the last 17 hours, during which time I have told him, again and again – quietly, internally – “You gotta go.” He is never gone for long.

I feel sad that I cannot, will not, be able to share this experience with him.

I feel sad that he will never meet Clover, Andy and Juniper Maya.

I feel sad because I recently had the thought, “I would have a baby with this man.” A thought I had never had before. Not even with my ex-husband.

I begin cleaning. Picking up towels strewn across the floor, determining which can be laundered and which go in the trash. Emptying trash bins and putting in fresh bags. Scrubbing the slow cooker. Loading the dishwasher.

I watch Sarah drain the tub with a hose – siphoning the water mixed with blood and other fluids into the toilet.

I gather my things and greet the family in the bedroom.

Hilary is stitching Clover. Juniper Maya is nursing. I help Andy send a text to waiting friends and family.

Clover tells me the small box with ribbon is for me.

We hug. We kiss. We exchange words of gratitude. None of them quite capturing what we have shared.

I tell her I love her and that we will talk about it – all of it – later.

********************

I am barely out the door and I begin sobbing – heaving, convulsing, cannot catch my breath tears.

I arrive home and see my bag at the door. The one with my toothbrush and eyeglasses. I scramble some egg whites and pick up the phone, calling Sarah, Lynn, and Chase. I call Anne. And Kristina. Anyone but Mr. 700 Miles. I leave messages for each of them. And one by one, each calls me back.

I open the box from Clover. Inside is a delicate gold chain with the smallest hamsa (palm-shaped amulet) I have ever seen.

I fall into bed.

Tomorrow Clover will tell me the hamsa is the hand of God. That my hand was the hand of God.

I will recall telling Andy this is perhaps the most important thing I have ever done.

And I will be certain of it.

Artist Date 69: Spicy. Trouble.

March 30, 2014March 30, 2014 LesleyPearlLeave a comment

It smells warm inside Savory Spice Shop on Lincoln Avenue. Artist Date 69. And while I know intellectually that warm is not a smell, it feels like it. Spicy. BBQ rubs. One is called Pearl Street Plank. I take a photograph of it.

I am afraid I am going to get into trouble.

I am often afraid of getting into trouble. Like the time Julie and I smoked cigarettes inside the multiplex at a midnight showing of The Crying Game.

The movie had been out for a while and we were the only ones in the theatre. Julie lit up. I was aghast. “What? Are you afraid we are going to get into trouble?” she asked. A little bit mocking. Well, yes…I was. Just like when we smoked cigarettes in seventh grade on Shabbat.

Julie was raised in an Orthodox Jewish household. On Saturdays, my mother would drop me there for the day. Sometimes we watched movies on the Betamax (Meatballs was our favorite.) – her father’s concession.

Irv was a wise man who understood that raising his girls in an observant home, but not in an observant neighborhood, was tricky. Their customs were “other” than those of the secular Jews surrounding them. So while Julie could not go to movies and dances on Friday night and Saturday, she was allowed to watch movies, regardless of the prohibition against using electronics on the Sabbath. And also to go for long walks. Walks that often involved McDonalds’ French fries and Virginia Slims Menthol 100s.

Julie was brazen. I was convinced we were going to get caught and get into trouble. We didn’t. But that sense that I might have to explain myself has never entirely left me. Even today at the Savory Spice Shop.

I know some stores prohibit photography. I know I could ask if it is ok. But I don’t. Instead I snap and hope no one will question me. It is this sort of internal gyration that causes me anxiety. The kind I could easily avoid.

An employee says to let her know if I have any questions, and invites me to sample and to brush any excess onto the floor. She adds that my boots are “magnificent,” and we talk for a solid five minutes about the quest to merge fashion and function. I am reminded, part of the joy of a funky aesthetic is people want to talk to you. Want to talk to me.

She makes no comment about my photography.

I finger baking spices and books on pickling. But the spices from far away call me like a siren. Exotic. Other. Like I always wanted to be. I try to conjure up the smells of the market in Kigali, in Argles, in Jerusalem, but I cannot. I only know I was there.

I smell red peppercorns from the Szechuan Province. Green ones from Mysore. Dried Kaffir Lime Leaves. Asafetida from Iran, also known as Devil’s Dung and Stinking Gum. The label says it smells like garlic gone bad. To me, it smells like sulfur. Eggs.

There are Grains of Paradise from West Africa and Pinchito from Southern Spain. Preserved Lemon and Pomegranate Molasses. Marrakech Moroccan Spice and Berbere Ethiopian Seasoning.

I think about cooking and wonder what I would make. My repertoire has become small as a single woman. Often times, it just doesn’t seem worth it. So I stick to egg-white omelets, soups and salads. Black beans, kale and squash. An occasional piece of fish roasted with fennel and oranges and olives.

I think about travel. The recent loud and incessant call to go away – somewhere big. Somewhere sexy. Sometime this year – my 45^th come October. Italy or India.

Today I do not have to decide.

Instead, I allow myself the pleasure of revisiting Africa. Spain. And France.

Israel. Germany. Amsterdam.

Ireland and Mexico.

To return to each marketplace I visited – photographing beans drying in the sun. Salted fish. Unskinned rabbit hanging from a hook.

To the suburban movie theatre and the safety of Julie’s home. To her basement where her papa fed us Oreo cookies with a finger pressed to his lips as if to say, “shh…don’t tell.”

I think about the real trouble I caused in my travels. The kind I should have been worried about but wasn’t. In Berlin. Avignon. Puerto Vallarta. Today I know better.

Today there are no secrets. Nothing to hide. Nothing to get me into trouble.

Artist Date 68: Power Cords

March 18, 2014 LesleyPearl2 Comments

I have given my power away.

I feel vulnerable. Ashamed. I am “that woman,” wringing her hands about “that man.”

Disgusting.

I gave my power away when I said, “I can’t do this.” Telling him I needed more. And that he didn’t seem capable of giving it to me. And did it anyway, becoming more and more deeply entwined in our long-distance intimacy.

I did it when I told him I could not Skype with him. That it was too hard to look into his green eyes. To see him look back at me in a way I can’t ever recall being seen. And did it anyway.

I did it when I promised myself I wouldn’t reach out to him for 30 days. Not as a game or a test. But to find out how he shows up. And reached out anyway.

I did it every time he mentioned bad timing, money or miles between us, and chose not to listen. Only paying attention to the part where he changed his mind, usually about 10 minutes later, saying he did want to “find out about us.”

I made the rules and I couldn’t keep them. Just like when I used to drink. And it left me feeling the exact same way – anxious, obsess-y, over-thinking. Knowing in my heart that something isn’t right, and trying to make it work anyway. Somehow believing “this time will be different.” Powerless.

***************

I am standing in my bedroom in front of a batik wall hanging of Ganesh — Hindu boy with an elephant head, Remover of Obstacles – like I do every morning.

I kick my meditation cushion to the side, put my hands in prayer, in front of my third eye, and inhale deeply.

“Lord Ganesh, give me back my power.”

I feel a surge through my body, a response, and am flooded with words of direction.

Carry Ganesh with you. Visit India. See Nilima Sheikh’s “Each Night Put Kashmir in Your Dreams” at the Art Institute. Artist Date 68.

***************

It is the Saturday before St. Patrick’s Day. The train headed downtown is filled with drunk twenty-somethings in oversized green, foam hats, green socks and beads. I put on my sunglasses and turn up Nina Simone and try to forget that he did not show up last night.

That he has not responded to my text.

That I am the one with the problem.

I get off several stops earlier than necessary and walk. It is cool and sunny and I feel happy in my grey wool coat, knit hat and red ankle boots. I make note of the galleries on Superior Street. Future Artist Dates. I feel my power growing.

***************

I step inside the Special Exhibit Gallery. It is quiet. Still behind glass doors. I stand in front of a painted scroll titled “Valley.” The canvas is green. Lush and gentle. A verdant map. I begin to cry.

“That really affected you, huh?”

It is the museum guard –a woman named Denise. She wears long braids gathered together. I nod. She says a few more things but I cannot take them in. I am lost. I politely tell her I need to be alone in my quiet. She nods. I feel my power growing.

I approach the canvas, “Farewell.” Red, with two entwined figures – one holding open his robe, displaying a map of Kashmir where his heart should be.

“If only somehow you could have been mine. What would not have been possible in the world?” The words stenciled in gold at the top of the canvas. “We’re inside the fire, looking for the dark,” on the back.

I feel like I have been punched in the gut.

The tears return. I am breathless.

I return to “Valley.” “…And though the guards searched for him with the sun in one hand and the moon in the other the demon baffled them.” Stenciled on the back.

He sought me. I am baffled, wondering where he is now. But knowing I must continue to seek myself. I feel my power growing.

***************

I share a bench and a cup of tea with a couple in the member’s lounge. We talk about shoes. About art. About recovery and vibrators and relationships. They tell me I need a man who is here. I know they are right. I feel my power growing.

***************

In some ways I feel like I have been waiting all of my life for this man. And I am “Dying Dreaming.” (The words, like all those in quotes, names of Sheikh’s canvases.)

But I also know that his life is still a “Construction Site,” while I am “Gathering Threads” — stringing together the people, places and pleasures that bring me joy, that make me whole. Power cords.

(Not An) Artist Date 67: Mundanely Juicier

March 13, 2014 LesleyPearl2 Comments

I woke up Monday morning to an email from my friend Clover, sent to her intimate circle. A report on her day, her condition, her life in Chicago as she is about to bring new life into Chicago.

“It’s a beautiful Monday morning– 40 degrees and sunny…I am feeling good and I’m on my way to work…I am taking it very slow and easy…I feel ready to burst. She is rolling around in there this morning – hanging out on my bladder. No signs of labor yet.”

My heart swells and my head feels clear. I am reminded of what is important in the world.

Tuesday.

“The snow is almost fully melted and it’s really starting to feel like Spring…I began to have some abdominal cramps. Not sure if these are the Braxton-Hicks contractions everyone speaks of, but I am feeling closer to labor everyday…

I am so tired, taking it slow and breathing lots. My body is doing such hard work!

…A new life on its way, the prospect of motherhood, the challenge of labor…”

The challenge of labor. I am Clover’s doula. (Greek for “servant.”) Her and Andy’s support and advocate during birth.

I have done this just once before, for my girlfriend Julie. It was a gift. A labor of love. Something I never considered doing again. Until a few months ago when the words tumbled out of my mouth and Clover and I embraced over a marble table at Julius Meinl, “sealing the deal.”

I pull out my pre-natal materials and make a stack of them on the floor, next to my bed. Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth, Pregnancy, Childbirth and the Newborn. Pre- and Perinatal Massage Therapy. A binder of handouts and lesson plans. I too am getting ready.

“It is Wednesday and nearly everything here is covered in a fine dusting of snow…the trees look majestic. I love this little morning surprise beauty of winter…

Andy and I started the new remake of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, which made me feel such awe and wonder at our world and our infinitesimal place in it. I feel asleep after 30 minutes, as I do these days…

I decided to stay home from work today and relax..I am hoping that the strong sense of waiting with subside, though I somehow doubt it will. At least I am waiting along with all of you.”

This morning, out Clover's window. — This morning, out Clover’s window.

I phone Clover and ask if she would like to wait together. I had planned on writing. Or an Artist Date. Number 67. But being alone with my friend for perhaps the last time for a while seems mundanely juicier.

I remember my last day with Julie before she birthed her son, Jaron.

We went to the gym where Julie mentioned she sometimes sees my junior high-school crush. I felt excited and hopeful. She told me I shouldn’t be. That he never wiped his sweat off of the equipment.

After, we ate breakfast at Giorgio’s. Julie was excited to have French Toast, but had no room for it. Just 5’2” and carrying high, there was hardly any space between her ribcage and her baby. We laughed at the injustice of it.

Back at her house I rubbed acupuncture points on her hands and feet – “downward elevators” in Chinese medicine – to stimulate labor.

She delivered her baby the next afternoon.

We reminisce about this seemingly mundane day regularly. I recall the joy I felt being able to touch my friend. To see her so radiant. To be useful.

I feel the same way about Clover. I see her at the top of the stairs and I tear up, even though I saw her just five days ago.

She makes me a cup of tea and I pull one of her feet into my lap. I sink my fingers into her swollen flesh, searching for bone. The baby is moving about.

She tells me about a dream her husband had several years ago about their daughter, and calling her by name. They had been on the fence about having children. Andy’s disclosure became an opening in their willingness.

Clover is having a girl. She has not told me her name. I hear Annabelle in my head. I do not tell her. Like me, Clover has no poker face.

She asks me if I ever wanted to have children.

I tell her I never really knew. That, for a long time, I never considered it. Probably because I somehow knew I couldn’t stay sober for nine months. Although I never acknowledged that to myself until many years had passed without my having a drink.

I tell her about J, who regularly told me he would marry me. That we would have daughters. That he held an image of me and our girls lighting Shabbat candles – which amused me as neither of us were particularly religious.

Kind of like Andy’s dream. Except it didn’t happen.

She says at times, I have felt like a mother to her. That I showed her how to mother herself. I am humbled.

We talk about sex and love and fear. We eat carrots and hummus standing over the sink because her ass has gone numb from sitting. She hands me her hands and I rub them, pressing into the downward elevators. We cry.

The next time I see her she will likely be in labor. I will perhaps be holding her leg, telling her, “You can and you are,” my mantra during Julie’s labor.

And then we will welcome her daughter.

Pretend Boyfriend

March 5, 2014 LesleyPearl5 Comments

I tattooed my aspirations on my body lest I forget them. Lest I again consider leaving myself.

“You want a relationship, right?”

The words tumbled out of my Rabbi’s mouth. Innocuous. More a statement than a question. Nearly an afterthought as we wrapped up our monthly meeting.

“I…I think so,” I stammered.

We stared at one another. There it was. The truth. It fell flat on the floor, spreading out in the space between us. Consuming. Shocking.

We’d spent an awful lot of time talking about relationships over the years. Talking about my fathers – both of them, the biological one and the one who raised me, my Dad. My husband – now my ex. The smattering of men who had come in and out of my life since the dissolution of my marriage.

My Divorce Buddy. The one I talked to each night, into the wee hours of the morning. Half a country apart. Both of us alone, in the dark, navigating our way through the sometimes messy endings of marriage.

The Southern Svengali. Genius artist in a Johnny Cash t-shirt. He guided me through Charleston and my last visit with my biological mother before she died. Pressed his lips against mine and nothing more. Called me “Lil Pearl” and taught me how to be a better artist.

And most recently, the man I have affectionately come to call Mr. 700 Miles – referring to the physical distance between us. In our hearts…it is just inches. But in our lives… oceans and continents apart. He is clearly, plainly, 100 percent unavailable.

Separated, but not quite divorced. ”Kinda dating” someone in his own zip code. He is finding his own center – spiritually, emotionally, creatively – and his own truth. Work I have already done. Work I continue to do.

And yet, when we talk or Skype, there is a familiarity that speaks of karmic attachments and lives shared. Quite simply, I am in love with his heart.

He is, what my friend Rainey calls, a pretend boyfriend. They all are.

A "selfie," on the road with my Divorce Buddy. He never wants to show up in pictures. Hm... — A “selfie,” on the road with my Divorce Buddy. He never wants to show up in pictures. Hm…

She uses the words in a matter-of-fact way that implies everyone has one. Has had one. Like a cell phone or email address.

Deep friendship. Emotional intimacy. Trust.

Companionship. Connectedness. A shared sense of not being alone even though you are – when you are one instead of two.

But without a physical dimension, or a commitment to anything more.

She assures me that she has had several over the years. And that sometimes, pretend boyfriends become real boyfriends. But mostly they are pretend.

This has been my experience too. Although I am usually too blinded by hope to see it at the time.

Good for practice. For reminding me of my loveliness. What it feels like to be close. And allowing me to believe in possibilities.

No good at all in moments when my bed feels cold and lonely. When I want nothing more than to feel arms wrapped around me.

Downright disastrous when I bring expectations of a real relationship to it.

My friend Kerry called me out on my penchant for pretend boyfriends this past weekend. He wanted to know what I was afraid of. Why I wouldn’t try online dating. Why I wouldn’t make myself available to someone who is available.

A gift from one of my pretend boyfriends. He said that I fell out of his head and on to his sketchbook.

I felt sick inside.

“I don’t want to be left,” I said quietly in a voice that did not seem my own.

Was I referring to my partner of 15 years “leaving me?” My birth parents “leaving me?”

Or was it me leaving myself? Pushing aside my art, my values and my aspirations for someone else. Someone who never asked me to. And for something else – a relationship. Believing that alone I was somehow less valuable.

Earlier that day, I left a voicemail for one of my girlfriends. “I want a real boyfriend. Not a pretend one. I just had to say that out loud,” I announced into the digital abyss.

And I do. Someone who is here. Who I can physically feel. His lips over mine. His breath on my neck. His hands on my body.

Someone to hold on to me. And who I can hold on to.

Someone to eat with. Sleep with. Dance with.

A partner. An equal. Someone I can grow with. Grow old with.

But I want me more. The chance to be with myself. To not leave again.

Yes, I want a real boyfriend. I just don’t want one yet.

Artist Date 64: Not Too Much

March 1, 2014 LesleyPearl4 Comments

I do not do yoga.

As a massage therapist, I know it is kind of part of the gig. But I can’t.

It freaks me out. Holding poses for an extended period makes me panic. Whether I am in a big anonymous class or in a tiny studio with just three other students and the most gentle instructor imaginable, it is always the same. Open heart. Teary eyes. And a small voice crying out in the silence, “Are we done yet? Are we done yet?” I ignore her and…panic. More tears.

People tell me this is good. That it means I should do more yoga. That I am working something out. I ignore them and make a mental note never to discuss this topic.

Until now. In a yoga studio. Artist Date 64.

My friend, and clairvoyant genius, Debbie Taitel, is conducting a post-Valentine’s exploration of the 4^thChakra, the energy center of the heart.

I think I am safe because it is a meditation workshop and not yoga. And I meditate. I have for 12 years.

But I am wrong. The panic is there almost immediately. Stifling.

Debbie first mentioned the workshop to me a couple of weeks ago, during one of our clairvoyant sessions. As I watched my heart tentatively open to hope and the possibility of love for the first time in what seemed like a very long time – for an almost bachelor, a man from my childhood, living nearly 700 miles away. (Artist Date 62)

Last week I told him I “couldn’t do it.” (Artist Date 63) Whatever “it” was. Seemingly falling head over heels over head for one another. He asked how realistic it was. I didn’t care. I wanted to find out about us. He said he did too. But when I sensed his wavering, come-here-go-away, and when the excitement in my stomach turned into a knot, I said “no.” And we somewhat sadly settled on friendship. At least for now.

I thought that with this grand gesture of self-love and adult decision-making, my feelings would go away. I was mistaken.

He has been dancing in my head for a good portion of the day and I am surprised.

So it is a relief when Debbie asks us to invite anyone “grounding” through us to please leave for the duration of the workshop. I ask, but he remains. Or I keep him near. I am not certain. It is the pink elephant in the room I have been told to pay no attention to.

I am embarrassed. Ashamed. I assume the shift is easy for him. But I do not know this.

I am consumed by the thought that I do not want to write about this. Especially as he regularly reads my blog. I feel vulnerable and uncomfortable. I want to run. Just like in yoga.

Debbie asks us to ground ourselves and I see a climber’s rope shoot out from my 1st Chakra into the earth, its metal claws digging into clay and dirt. Debbie saw me do this once before – during one of our sessions. She found it clever. A good way to shake off the too many grounding through me.

But today it feels unstable. I want an oak tree growing out of my ass, downward into the earth. But this is what I have.

(c) 2004. Andrew Hall, PortlandBridges.com

She asks us to create roses in our mind. To fill them with past hurts. Unrequited loves. Loves we either did not or could not return. And to destroy them.

I see the International Rose Test Garden in Portland. My ex and I visited here one winter when he was interviewing for jobs. The bushes are clipped. Dead.

My eyes get teary and my nose flares. I feel like I am on the verge of big, heaving sobs. I see my ex husband. My mother. My father. The first boy I took my clothes off with.

I see my first real boyfriend. And J – perhaps the love of my life, me with a dick. Mr. 700 Miles.

I feel Debbie lay a box of tissues on my thigh. I am afraid to move. That I will come totally unglued if I do and land on the floor, a throbbing puddle. I feel white energy leave through my heart and it is over.

I destroy the rose, stripping it naked, petal by petal, while those around me engage in more violent scenarios – skeet shooting or blowing them up.

In the final meditation, safely shrouded in golden light, I loop my own energy over and over through my 4^th Chakra, my heart. I feel nauseated. A wave slams into my gut and through me. If I were standing it would knock me over.

Debbie smiles. This is the energy I put into the universe, she explains. The kind that makes people “run for the hills.” I nod, as do most of those around me. It is the love energy, meant for me, mistakenly turned out and overwhelming others.

I think about the old idea I still carry around sometimes, that I am “too much.” It is quickly displaced by the realization that I no longer feel like running. Not from here. This place or this pose.

Not from this love. Not from myself.

Not too much.

Artist Date 62: Standing On…? Wondering Where I Am.

February 20, 2014 LesleyPearl10 Comments

Love is pain.

That is what the quilt says. Right in the center on a big red heart. All around it are stages, stops – like on a game board. Candy Land or Risk. Yeah, Risk.

Love. Joy. Desire.

Trust. Faith. Intimacy.

Jealousy. Anger. Betrayal.

Heartbreak. Wound.

Anxiety. Disillusion. Despair.

Loss. Grief.

It is Valentine’s Day. I am at the Greenleaf Art Center for the exhibit – Be Mine. I am meeting my girlfriends here, but they are stuck in traffic. So I am alone. Impromptu Artist Date 62. My second this week.

I step back and look at the quilt that greets me as I walk in the door, wondering where I am on it.

Joy. Desire.

I met a man. Or perhaps I should say, re-met. We knew each other once upon a time. Kind of. We are getting to know one another – not quite again – but now, for the very first time.

He is smart and funny, creative, sensitive and sexy. I’m pretty sure he feels the same way about me. We can talk for hours about anything and everything. We laugh a lot. And I find myself smiling a lot. Friends have noticed this.

There are about a thousand reasons why this will likely not work out and I will land on the square marked Heartbreak. I occasionally visit Anxiety already. I hate uncertainty. But I can’t not see this through. I want to find out about us.

Trust. Faith. I am trying to practice both in my life. Not so much with him, but with the universe, my higher power. Intimacy. Yes. We are building that — slowly. He lives several states away, so we are forced to go at this pace. Although the recent addition of Skype dates – we have one tonight – have added a heat to the flame.

I have not told him every single thing about me – emotionally vomiting, as if to say, “So can you handle that?” And, obviously, I have not slept with him. I haven’t led with my sexuality – my one-time calling card – either. Refraining from saying things like, “I think about you bending me over the butcher block and hiking up my dress around my waist.” I think them instead.

"Ungentlemanly Behavior." Artist, Cathi Schwalbe. — “Ungentlemanly Behavior.” Artist, Cathi Schwalbe.

Loss. Grief. I still find myself here sometimes too. Not as deeply entrenched as I once was. I am no longer up to my knees in it. I am standing in the sun, my feet wet, in a puddle left from the storm.

Post-divorce, grieving the loss of the fantasy, that that one person will be there no matter what. Always. That this love will quiet that part of me that silently screams “Don’t leave me.” It is a lie.

Day one of my life on the planet. Separated from my mother. I do not recall a second of it. Yet I know a part of my work here is to heal it.

I watch it get kicked up and manifest in unconscious, desperate attempts for control and certainty. As if that will heal me. But it doesn’t. Neither did a husband. Nor meeting my biological parents. The work is mine alone.

I move on to a series of men’s shirt collars embroidered with real messages from the artist’s experiences with online dating. “What kind of underwear girl are u?” “Every young man want to get laid by a gray hair lady.” “You want a naughty pic?” It reminds me I have not finished my Match.com profile. And that I probably won’t.

There are maps covered with pins and handwritten notes. Heart-shaped boxes filled with broken glass and newspaper clippings. A video of a woman covered in striped fabric dancing with a bee.

I return for a third time to a piece titled, “Love Letter.” It is long and tall, like a body. With hair at the top, words winding down the center, like buttons, and rocks circling the bottom. The artist, Sherry Antonini writes, “Love Letter is a meditation on listening inward and noticing outward; on persistence and on beginning again with what is left over.”

I read the poem running down her torso again. It is still too much to take in. So I photograph it – in pieces.

“Keep time. But throw away most other things, including reasons to worry…Watch for signs, however small. Push through with ideas, envisioning them as even bigger than you think they deserve to be. Do this until you can once again see yourself shine…

"Love Letter." Artist, Sherry Antonini. — “Love Letter.” Artist, Sherry Antonini.

“Make a list of the things you hold at core. Those essences nearly forgotten, cast aside for too long…Months or years it is that you have been bound tight and stilled, silenced in some darkness. But the beauty of light is insistent…

“First, you fill up a room, then you empty it, one piece at a time and all in its right time. No one can tell you not to. Or that you can’t. That you never will. Or won’t ever again.

“When you rotate the stones point them in line with your heart’s desire, you put your hands once again on your own gleam of power and touch possibility.”

I head toward the front door as my friends are entering. Unplanned. Serendipity. I meet them, filled, spilling over. Love. Joy. And later, this man who makes me smile big, on Skype. He notices my grin and tells me he likes it. I read him the poem, still trying to sort my way through it. Intimacy. Faith. Desire.

Real. With Most of Her Hair Loved Off

February 8, 2014March 31, 2014 LesleyPearlLeave a comment

I’m sitting in a big upholstered chair at The Book Cellar, a stack of children’s books in my lap. Tears streaming down my cheeks – red from the warmth inside.

There is a discussion panel about the Arab Spring just a few feet away from me. Every seat is filled – except for mine, tucked away at the end of the stacks. A couple of people are standing.

I’m supposed to be choosing a gift for my friend Clover’s yet-to-be-born baby. Her friends are throwing her a shower this weekend. And she and Andy have asked guests to bring a book for the baby’s library. I’m pretty sure I’ve chosen hers – Friends, by Eric Carle’s. The words are simple, the illustrations lush. I think about our friendship. That my wish for her child is to have a friendship like ours.

On the inside back cover is a photograph of Carle and his friend. They are three-years old. The month it is taken is written in German, by his mother. Carle never saw his friend again. “I often wonder what happened to him,” he writes.

Tears.

I think about people leaving and having no say in the matter. Powerless. My adoption shit is all stirred up.

I am reading The Velveteen Rabbit. I sort of know the story – my friend Rachel used to reference it, talking about being real and having all the fur loved off of you. But I don’t think I ever actually read it. Or had it read to me. Until now.

“ ‘What is REAL?’ asked the Rabbit one day…’Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?’ “

I smirk.

“ ‘Real isn’t how you are made,’ said the Skin Horse. (Named for his bald brown coat and missing hairs of his tail.) ‘It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”

Loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with…I let the words wash over me.

“ ‘Does it hurt?’ asked the Rabbit.”

Yes, I whisper, to no one in particular.

“ ‘Sometimes,’ said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. ‘When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.’ “

Bullshit.

“ ‘Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,’ he asked, ‘or bit by bit?’ ”

All at once. Wound up. That is my history – mostly. All in love. Insanely inside one another’s skin. Until now. I’ve been getting to know some new someones, bit by bit. It is new.

“ ‘It doesn’t happen all at once…You become. It takes a long time.’ “

Amen.

“ ‘That’s why it doesn’t often happen to people who break easily or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept.

So we don’t all become real?

Do I break easily? Because I cry easily. Because I hurt easily. I decide that it is not the same thing. Although pieces have certainly chipped off in transit. I am soft, at times ridiculously so, free of sharp edges. And despite my seemingly fragile nature, I do not have to be carefully kept.

“ ‘Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.

“…but once you are Real you can’t become unreal again. It lasts for always.’ ”

Yes. I think so.

Except for when I am not. Not Real. Twisting myself inside out to be who I think you want me to be so that you will love me. It is more infrequent now. Subtle. But it still happens. Awful.

The way I make myself small, without even knowing it, so you won’t feel overwhelmed by me. My desires. My needs. My emotions. I found myself doing it today. Unconscious. Until I wasn’t.

“How sick to be small and to sit by and wait until you can accept more of me,” I wrote in my notebook.

The Skin Horse tells his story. Illustrations, William Nicholson. — Skin Horse tells his story. Illustrations, William Nicholson.

“The Rabbit sighed. He thought it would be a long time before this magic called Real happened to him. He longed to become Real, to know what it felt like; and yet the idea of growing shabby and losing his eyes and whiskers was rather sad. He wished that he could become it without these uncomfortable things happening to him.”

Me too. But so far, these “uncomfortable things” have been the wellspring of change in my life.

I remember once saying to my girlfriend Julie, having again gained back all of the weight I had lost and then some, that if someone could wave a wand and make me a healthy weight, I was certain this time I would maintain it.

I doubt it.

The Rabbit does become Real. Not just to the child who plays with him, but to everyone. Real with real hind legs – no longer made from just a single piece of fabric – the kind that allow him to jump without the boy tossing him in the air.

And one day, when Autumn became Winter became Spring, the Rabbit saw the boy again – playing in the woods.

“ ‘Why, he looks just like my old Bunny that was lost when I had scarlet fever!’

But he never knew that it really was his own Bunny, come back to look at the child who had first helped him to be Real.”

Come back to look at the child…yes, sometimes they come back. High-school friends I never really knew. Birth parents. And old boyfriends – 18-plus years later – just to say they are sorry.

Sometimes.

I pick up both books and take them to the register. I have one gift wrapped for Clover’s baby. The other I keep for me – the one with most of her hair loved off.

A Wandering Jewess

My Journey Back To Self

Tag: Friendship

Seduced By Words

Artist Date 72: I Hadn’t Even Realized They’d Been Gone

Welcoming Juniper Maya with the Hand of God

Artist Date 69: Spicy. Trouble.

Artist Date 68: Power Cords

(Not An) Artist Date 67: Mundanely Juicier

Pretend Boyfriend

Artist Date 64: Not Too Much

Artist Date 62: Standing On…? Wondering Where I Am.

Real. With Most of Her Hair Loved Off