Artist Date 52: Exactly Where I Am Supposed To Be

December 17, 2013 LesleyPearlLeave a comment

This time last year I was on my knees. Literally.

It was my first holiday season divorced and living back in Chicago, alone. My girlfriend called me out on my obsession with the man I like to call the Southern Svengali — the one I kissed for two nights while in Charleston in late October. She said she could not hear about it, or him, anymore.

My non-relationship was affecting my relationships.

I felt desperate and scared. I called a friend who advised me to get on my knees and ask God to remove my obsession him every day.

I did. But I needed something more.

I remembered the comfort I had found in the structured creativity of Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, and decided to pull it out again — a hopeful, albeit artsy, roadmap out of myself.

This time, in addition to taking on the weekly reading and writing assignments, I committed to the weekly Artist Date – the weekly hour or so block of time, alone, to fill my creative coffers – and to a weekly blog about it for a year. Fifty-two Artist Dates. Fifty-two blogs.

Thursday is Artist Date 52.

I am sitting in a Starbucks on Michigan Avenue killing time before Hubbard Street Dance Chicago. It is 6 p.m. and I have been downtown since 11. I am tired. I am questioning the wisdom in staying here as opposed to driving home at 2 p.m. when I was finished with my work and returning later.

Until I get the text which lets me know I am exactly where I should me. It is from my friend Matt. He is at a coffee shop around the corner, also killing time, before his couple’s therapy session where he will ask his wife for a divorce.

I tell him where I am. Within moments he is standing over me and then we are hugging each other tightly. Teary.

I remember when he told me that he and his wife were separating, more than a year ago. I still lived in Seattle, but was visiting Chicago – smack dab in the middle of my own divorce.

Matt is appropriately anxious. I reflect back to him how thoughtful he has been through this entire process – never rash. We hold hands and we pray together, in the middle of Starbucks. It doesn’t seem strange.

He leaves. And shortly after, I do too, pulling my wool long-underwear back on over my tights. It is December and the temperatures are already in the teens.

I love Chicago at night. Especially during the holidays. Michigan Avenue twinkles with white lights, and skaters glide around in circles on the tiny patch of ice in Millenium Park.

I walk up “the hill” that is Randolph Street to the Harris Theater. My body has once again adjusted to the flat Midwest and takes note of the incline.

I pick up my ticket at will-call and make a beeline for the bathroom, peeling off my long underwear. Winter in Chicago is a lot of work.

My friend Lori is coming out. We embrace and talk excitedly about her ceramics show. Lori is a genius potter. We met her at Lil Street Art Center, where I was stumbling through a beginners’ class. Lori taught me how to glaze.

She asks if I will come back to Lil Street. I am not certain as I have committed my creative energies to my writing and my dance – at least for now.

She asks if I remember Kevin from the clay studio and reminds me he is a member of Hubbard Street. I do remember. It is one of the reasons I am here.

We part company and I run into a woman I have danced with. She is enrolled in Level three West African Dance. I am in Level two. Later, I see Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

The world seems small and I am a citizen of it. Or, at the very least, a citizen of Chicago.

The woman in the seat next to mine is alone. As is the woman next to her. We make easy conversation. She is a Weight Watchers member. I am a Weight Watchers leader. She is looking for a massage therapist. I am a massage therapist. She is a widow. I am a divorcee.

She tells me she lost her husband four years ago, and she tears up. For the second time today I am clear that I am exactly where I am supposed to be. Right down to my seat: BB10.

The performance, One Thousand Pieces by Alejandro Cerrudo, is inspired by Marc Chagall’s America Windows – the installation I visit every time I am at the Art Institute, my favorite. I shared it with Matt a few months ago when we met downtown for a member’s-only café re-opening. It was summer and we sat in the courtyard noting who was checking the other out. It seems a long time ago.

One Thousand Pieces, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago

It is my first time seeing Hubbard Street Dance. The dancers’ bodies are strong. Gorgeous. Not sinewy, like ballet bodies. I think my legs approximate the same shape as theirs, albeit less toned and I feel at the same time cocky and ashamed admitting this to myself.

The stage is glossed and looks like water. I am looking for Kevin. My eyes occasionally roll back into my head. This almost always happens to me at performances. The lights go down and my sleepy kicks in. Except for last year when I saw Alvin Ailey Dance Theatre – twice.

My seats were good – dress circle one night, main floor the other. My experience was dramatically altered by looking straight at the dancers as opposed to peering down at them. I vowed then I would always buy good seats for dance. These seats are good – the Harris Theatre is small and there are no “bad seats.” But not good enough.

And then it is over.

The performance, but not my Artist Dates. They “work.” Like being on my knees works. Not so much in desperation (although I am certain I will find myself there again many times in this life), but in prayer – the antidote to it. Exactly where I am supposed to be.

Artist Date 47: Holding On To That Bull For 8 Seconds

November 10, 2013 LesleyPearl1 Comment

I drive a 13-year-old Honda Civic Hatch DX. They don’t make my car anymore. From time to time I find a note on the windshield, someone offering to buy it.

In the glove box, in the side pockets, and behind the cup holders are stacks of CDs.

I grabbed them, haphazardly, when I left Seattle. Three Dog Night. Basia. Mazzy Star. Those were my ex’s. Donna Summer, Stevie Wonder and Torch Song Trilogy are mine. As is a disco mix my friend DJ Andy T made for me.

I can listen to them over and over again without growing bored. Singing along. The familiar words keep me awake while driving long stretches. Keep me from my thoughts.

And then I hit a wall. Pulling out disc after disc as I make my way down Lake Shore Drive, looking for something I want to hear. I come up empty. No more Bonnie Raitt. Annie Lenox. Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. No more Dire Straits. No more Gipsy Kings.

My destination for this week’s Artist Date – 47 – was easy. To Laurie’s Planet of Sound on Lincoln Avenue.

I pass by here almost daily. There is a white board outside with new arrivals written in dry-erase magic marker. There are t-shirts in the window. And inside there are records, books and CDs. I can tell from peeking in, but I’ve never been inside. Until Friday. And then, just for a moment.

There is a hipster man-boy at the register. Big curly hair, plaid button-up shirt and chunky, nerd glasses. We nod at one another. I think John Cusack, High Fidelity.

I am holding The Best of Elvis Costello and the Attractions CD. $6.99. I used to have this on cassette. I remember singing along with Elvis to “Alison,” “Pump it Up,” and “Every Day I Write the Book.” I remember my high-school crush giving me grief for buying “best of” albums.

My phone rings. It is a call I have been expecting from a friend and mentor. I drop the CD back in the bin and walk outside. I will return later for it.

But I don’t. During the course of our call, I find out she is moving away. The stars have aligned and a “not-to-be-missed” opportunity has been presented to her family. I am the first person she has told.

I am delighted for her. And I feel the loss inside of me too. I am acutely aware that our relationship will change. I am tired of change, I think. And yet, when things stay the same, I am restless and bored.

We finish our call and I go to Paciugo for gelato. I order a piccolo cup – toasted coconut, sea-salt caramel, and cinnamon – and eat it walking home. The sun is shining and the air is cool. I am wearing gloves. I tell myself I will go back to Laurie’s later.

But I don’t.

A friend comes over, and later, when I drive her home, she asks if I am looking forward to my Friday night alone. Sometimes I do. Especially this time of year, when night comes early and my radiator-heated apartment feels toasty.

I do not feel this way tonight. I tell her so, bursting into tears. By the time I pull over to her apartment I am sobbing uncontrollably in her arms.

I am so lonely. She holds me.

I have been on the verge of tears all week. This is not entirely unexpected.

Perhaps it’s because my ex-boyfriend – the one I always sort of held out hope for and thought “maybe one day…”– got engaged.

Perhaps it is because my friend and mentor is moving. Or because I have begun to look for work in earnest, for the first time in 12 years.

Perhaps it is because I chatted online with my ex-husband today and that always kind of throws me off my square.

Or maybe it is because it is the first week in November. That it’s just that way right now. I don’t know. I’m not sure that it matters.

All I know is going home by myself, to myself, is a really bad idea. I know I won’t cook or write or take a bath. I am pretty certain I will do something not helpful, like look up old lovers on Facebook.

I don’t feel like going back to Laurie’s either. I don’t want to hear the chatter in my head. And I don’t want to talk about it. There is nothing more to say. And knowing that is really something of a miracle.

Dallas Buyers Club is playing at the Century Theatres. If I drive fast I can make the 8:30 show. I make a beeline and arrive with time to spare.

I buy a ticket and claim a seat on the end. I lay my coat on the seat next to me, joining the one belonging to the man sitting two to my right. He is also alone.

I think about Tony, my first close friend diagnosed with AIDS. I remember him cutting my hair in his kitchen and doing me up like a drag queen, full-well knowing I would never wear my hair like that. But it makes him happy. I remember smoking pot with him and eating empanadas in Detroit. I remember that AZT made his mouth taste like metal and put him in a cranky mood.

But mostly, I get lost in the story unfolding in front of me.

I forget that Matthew McConaughey is Matthew McConaughey and not Ron Woodruff – a red-neck, homophobic, drug-addicted Texan diagnosed with AIDS. I open my heart to this man who lived seven years instead of 30 days.

This man who befriended a card-shark, drag queen named Rayon. Who smuggled non-FDA approved treatments into the United States for his Dallas Buyers Club. Who in helping himself, helped others.

I cry watching him hold on to that bull for eight-seconds. (See the movie. You’ll understand.) I cry when the screen goes black and silent white letters report his death. Even though it isn’t a surprise.

I have gotten caught up in someone else’s story instead of my own. It is what I had hoped for.

Driving home, I feel just a little bit better. But I am still holding on by my fingernails. Like a newly sober alcoholic counting the minutes before bed – congratulating himself and thanking God for making it through another day without drinking.

Holding on to that bull for eight seconds. Holding on.

Artist Date 46: Why I Am Here

November 2, 2013 LesleyPearl2 Comments

Some Artist Dates are easy alone. Museums. Lectures. Dance performances. Opera. Theatre. Some, like movies, I even prefer that way.

Live music, however, is far more difficult. Even when the audience is children. Perhaps even more so.

And yet, this is the set up for Artist Date 46.

I am parked outside of Schubas. My friend Matt’s band – Future Hits, self-proclaimed Fun (Yet Secretly Educational) Music for Kids, Families and Teachers – is playing this afternoon. It is a Halloween performance and party for children, hosted in collaboration with Whole Foods, The Kite Collective and Adventure Sandwich.

I stand in awe of how Matt puts himself out there. Performing. Recording. Last year, Future Hits cut its first CD, Songs for Learning, funded by KickStarter. This past summer he spent a month in South America, improving his Spanish. An ESL teacher for Chicago Public Schools, he requested, and received, a grant that paid for everything.

But right now I am standing in fear. Rather sitting, in my 13-year-old Honda Civic. I feel anxious about going inside. I don’t have children.

I sometimes feel this way walking into synagogue by myself – which I began doing several years ago.

As fresh meat, I was quickly swarmed and warmly greeted. Peppered with questions. Top on the list: Do you have children?

“No.”

“Oh…”

Pause. Uncomfortable silence. I often feel I have to fill that space. Say something clever or pithy to put us both at ease. I am getting better at just letting that dead air “hang.” Like summer in Charleston. Heavy. Still.

I wonder what they are wondering. If I cannot have children. If I am childless by choice. If I am waiting for the perfect sperm to swim into my life. I am told that this is none of my business.

Mostly, I imagine they wonder what brought me there. It’s a reasonable enough question. And the assumption that I have children is equally reasonable.

Many, perhaps most, join a congregation when their children are of school age. They recognize it as time to do what their parents had done – provide their children with a Jewish education. Sometimes for no other reason than, “this is what we do.”

Perhaps the second most popular reason for joining is the gift of a complimentary one-year membership, given when the Rabbi or Cantor of that congregation marries a couple. (I will have to query my Rabbi to see if I am correct in my speculation.)

I walked into synagogue for my own reasons. Neither recently married nor considering a Jewish education, I am the Jew who converted to Judaism. It’s a long story. One that doesn’t fit neatly into conversation over coffee and pastry after services. But it is mine. And I am assured that I have a place in the congregation.

Nonetheless, it is often still daunting walking through those sacred doors alone.

It is too at Schubas. Even after seeing my friend Joe, smoking outside. He doesn’t have kids either.

I walk in, pay $10, get my hand stamped and say to the bouncer, “Am I the only one here without kids?” “Nah,” he replies. Looking in, I’m not so sure.

The lights are dim and a bunch of little people in costumes are making kites and eating granola. Matt and his band mates are dressed in caveman attire. Think Flintstones.

Our friend Lily is selling CDs. Gene is on the floor with his son, Oscar, making a kite. Jenny is helping her son Seth into his costume.

Matt’s mom, Rhonda, is here. His dad too. I love Rhonda. Our conversations meander from fashion to Transcendental Meditation (which we both practice) – seamlessly. I feel like the universe has conspired for us to meet. We pick up where we left off last time.

Matt is delighted to see me. Grateful for the support. He always is.

I remember the first time I heard him play, at the Beat Kitchen. I arrived early and was standing on the corner outside. When he saw me, he dropped to his knees – on the sidewalk – his hands in prayer. Total gratitude.

This is why I am here – to support my friend. But I forget, falling into a swirling pit of “me.” Self-conscious about my childless-ness. Even though I (mostly) chose not to have any.

And then the music starts and I forget all of that. I forget myself. I have seen Matt perform many times, but this my first time hearing Future Hits. Even though I was a KickStarter supporter, which earned me a button and a CD.

I’m surprised. The music doesn’t feel like kids music. It is pleasing to my ear. It’s not sing-song-y like Barney. Something to be endured. I am delighted watching Emma go from bass to flute to tambourine.

The kids are invited to dance. They do, with joyous abandon. Oblivious to the concept of rhythm. I would like to shake a tail feather myself…but I’m suddenly self-conscious again. So I watch instead. Although I do raise my hand when the band asks if anyone’s birthday is in October.

There is a kite parade for the kids to show off their creations. More music and a dance contest. The winner – dressed as a werewolf – leaves with a Halloween-decorated bag of schwag.

And soon after, I leave too. Holding tightly to the light I see in Oscar’s face. In Seth’s. And the lesson they teach me. Beaming over the simplest things. Costumes. Music. Paper kites. They do not concern themselves with why they are here. Just that they are.

“I Love You.” “Thank You.”

October 31, 2013February 7, 2014 LesleyPearl3 Comments

My divorce buddy signed his final divorce papers today. It’s been a long time coming. At least from the outside looking in.

My divorce buddy took this photograph of me.

I remember the day he called and told me that he and his wife were separating. My then-husband and I made the same decision three weeks earlier.

I call him my divorce buddy because we walked through this thing – the dissolution of marriage – together. Hand in hand. On occasion, literally, but mostly figuratively.

A buddy, like in kindergarten, required for just about everything. To walk down the hall, ride the bus, go to the bathroom. I don’t know if it was because two are harder to lose track of than one, or that if one should stray, at least he or she wouldn’t be lost alone.

That’s what it felt like. We weren’t lost alone.

We would talk on the phone nearly every night for hours. And on the nights we didn’t talk, we texted. Until I came to Chicago that summer – 2012. Something changed. Seemingly everything.

There was a chasm. One that hadn’t been there the night before when we talked for three hours when my red-eye from Sea-Tac was delayed. I couldn’t get close no matter how hard I tried.

My Rabbi laid it out in simple terms. We no longer had a phone and 2,500 or so miles between us. We were standing face to face. I had feelings. And expectations – although I tried not to.

I don’t know what he had. I often said I was not “in this” alone, but face to face, I was no longer sure.

And then, when separated by miles and a phone again, we seemed to fall back into a comfortable intimacy. I spent two weeks in Rwanda that summer, and called him from Belgium, where I stopped for a few days before coming home.

My travel companions continued down the long airport corridor to their connecting flight home, while I found myself in baggage claim – orange hard case in hand. I ran my credit card through the phone and dialed. It was 2 a.m. in Chicago. I knew he’d be up.

He sounded surprised and excited to hear from me. I told him we had to talk quickly because I had no idea how much this call was going to cost but I had a feeling it would be a lot. (It showed up as $65 on my credit card statement. Worth every penny.)

In Brussels, with my friend Tim. Not my divorce buddy.

He gave me some practical instructions about Brussels — the airport, the train and the city — and I began to cry. He was doing “that thing” that he does. “That thing” I always loved about him. Even when we were both married and I had a crush on him but he had such good boundaries that I never worried about it.

He made me feel safe. I told him that.

And then I told him I had to go and blurted out quickly, “I love you,” and before I put down the receiver he said, “I love you too.”

He had said it just once before. The night he called me to tell me he was getting a divorce. At the end of the conversation. When I promised him he wouldn’t be alone. That it just wasn’t possible…thinking but not saying, “You can be with me, silly.” Instead, I said, “I love you, my friend.” And he said, “I love you, too.”

It wasn’t a romantic “I love you.” From either of us. Either time. Regardless of my feelings, in those moments, my expression was pure heart connection. I believe his was too.

Tonight he told a group of us that he signed his final papers. My eyes welled up, tears of empathy, of gratitude and of memory.

Later, I took him aside, and told him I was sorry. That I understood. That I knew. That his “news” reminded me of what we had walked through together. He nodded and wrapped his arms around me.

I leaned into his ear and whispered, “I love you.” Silence. And then he said, “Thank you.”

Awful.

I wanted to tell him I knew he loved me too. But I didn’t. I guess because it wasn’t necessary. Because I already knew.

Because I’ve changed just a little. I am no longer interested in proving myself as necessary. Indispensable.

And because our situation has changed too.

Learning he has signed his final papers, that his divorce is nearly complete, feels like an ending. (My divorce was final in September 2012.) That we have fulfilled our obligation to one another. That our karmic contract is complete.

I felt a little something break off. It felt sad. But also necessary, right and true.

I didn’t join him and the others for dinner. I came home – alone – instead. Also right. True.

Our friendship isn’t over. We’re just no longer lost together. We can let go of one another’s hands.

Doing It Again. Confessions of a Reluctant Doula.

October 20, 2013 LesleyPearl2 Comments

I vowed I would never do this again.

And yet, the words tumbled out of my mouth. At the same time both jumbled and awkward, certain and clear. Clover reflected them back to me.

With Clover, on one of our many gelato/sorbet dates this summer. — With Clover, on one of our many gelato/sorbet dates.

“Are you saying you want to be my doula?”

“Um…yes. I guess.”

Pause. Smile. Squint. Think. Nod. Nod again, excitedly.

“Yes. Yes, I do. If you will have me.”

She stood up from her chair — her pregnant belly announcing itself to all those around us – and threw her arms around me. Both our eyes wet with tears.

Just a few months earlier, she had told me she was pregnant.

Sitting on the marble wall outside of the Sulzer Library. It was summer and we had just polished off our cups from Paciugo – sorbet for her, gelato for me. I was talking about boys. None of it new or terribly important.

And when I stopped, she was talking about babies. Specifically, her baby.

Later that night, we danced in the street to a band from West Africa. And when she was tired I walked her home, suddenly terribly protective. I called her Lil Mama – what a boy from South Carolina used to affectionately call me – and told her I would support her in any way I could.

So it shouldn’t have surprised either of us when I offered to be her doula.

Except that I am not certified as a doula. Greek for “a woman who serves.”

I am a pre-natal massage therapist and instructor. A friend. Terribly interested in the miracles our bodies engender.

And I’ve done this once before. A little more than six years ago, for my oldest and dearest friend Julie.

My then-husband and I were preparing to move from California for his medical residency. In the two months leading up to our departure, we would travel to Chicago to look for a home, and to Oklahoma for my ex-boyfriend’s wedding.

Julie asked that I consider a third trip – to Detroit, for the birth of her son. She wanted me to be her doula.

I was in an underground parking lot when I received her call.

Every fiber in my being wanted to say no. It wasn’t practical. It was expensive. I felt overwhelmed.

The words that flew out of my mouth were, “Of course.”

I arrived a few weeks later – three days before her due date, and departing four days after. It was spring. No one thought my schedule and the baby’s would sync. We gave it to the universe.

We spent our days on long walks. Visiting her mother. Talking – about everything and nothing. Like we always do.

I massaged her legs while she sat on the exam table in a flowered gown, waiting for the obstetrician. And pressed acupressure points on her hands and feet – “downward elevators” in Chinese medicine.

We ate a late breakfast following a trip to the gym – her last before becoming a mother. Julie wanted to use the elliptical machine. (She swears this is what started her labor.) She ate little of her French toast. Her stomach pushed so far up into her ribs, it left little room for food.

Around 11 p.m. that night I got the call. It was time.

I met Julie at the hospital door. Steve parked the car.

We walked the hospital floors for an hour, until she was dilated enough to be admitted.

Once in her room, we talked and laughed and napped over the next many hours. Somewhere there are photographs of me wrapped up in blankets, looking like a woman from the old country.

Her husband fed me crackers and peanut butter. I watched Julie instinctively comfort herself. She labored many hours, insisting on a vaginal birth – even though the doctor on call wanted to perform a C-section.

Thankfully, the labor nurses supported her choice.

At their urging, I held up one her legs and counted her contractions out loud until hoarse. Jaron’s head emerged. Then his shoulder. And then the rest of him – slipping out quickly like a fish.

I saw him first and looked at Julie with wet eyes, nodding. I didn’t have any words.

Jaron was placed under a heat lamp, like a Big Mac, while the doctor tended to Julie, and the nurse made notes. He looked wise, terribly nonplussed by this abrupt move from his inner world out.

“You’ve done this before,” I said.

Right after the birth. My first time as a doula. — Right after the birth. With Jaron.

They say babies don’t smile right away, but I am certain he did, as he reached into the air. “Playing with the angels,” Julie said, referring to the idea in mystic Judaism that babies are born so pure they can see angels. A lovely idea.

I returned to the hospital the next day. Julie was eating a cold grilled cheese and French fries – seemingly already accustomed to the realities of motherhood.

She told me I should do this work professionally. “Never,” I replied.

A few years later her niece asked me to come to New York to be her doula. I was flattered, but politely declined.

I didn’t want to be on call. Couldn’t imagine putting a price to the work. Wasn’t willing to sleep on a fold-out chair for just anyone. Just her.

I was grateful for the experience. To be invited so intimately into my friend’s life. But I had no desire to repeat it.

Until I did.

Clover had just gone public with her pregnancy on Facebook.

As we ate perhaps our last gelato and sorbet of the season, I intuitively knew that I would be there. Sleeping on a fold-out chair, eating crackers and peanut butter, a blanket wrapped around my head like a babushka. Serving the miracle.

Cotton is the Proper Gift for a Was-A-Versary

October 14, 2013 LesleyPearlLeave a comment

Today is my wedding anniversary.

Twelve years ago today... — Twelve years ago today…

Except I’m no longer married.

What do you call an anniversary that is no longer?

Was-a-versary? Once-upon-a-time-a-versary? Just plain shitty?

Are there traditional gifts for it like for a wedding anniversary? Paper for the first year?

Yes, of course. Divorce papers.

And cotton for the second? According to the wedding website, The Nest, cotton represents durability and the ability to adapt.

Yes. This is so. Even on days when I feel really fragile.

I don’t remember this day last year. The first. Perhaps it was just too painful and my brain protected me, blocking it out. Like it does, I am told, with the pain of childbirth – this “amnesia” being necessary for the perpetuation of the species.

The amnesia has cleared. And this year I am more than present for the pain.

It hit me out of nowhere, or so it seemed – arriving Wednesday and continuing to linger like a low-grade cold that lasts all winter long.

I arrived home from my cousin’s wedding, the second in less than 30 days, and was riding my bike when I felt a rush of energy shoot through my body. It centered in my heart and moved out to my extremities. Coursing, over and again. Sharp heat.

I pedaled as hard as I could – trying to force flush this poison from my system. It didn’t budge.

My eyes welled up behind my oversized Old Navy sunglasses. My nose flared and felt hot. But I couldn’t quite squeak out a cry.

I needed more than a cry. I needed a wail.

This is the feeling I used to drink over.

I should have seen it coming. The weddings. The short-lived sex with a boy 12 years my junior. It was great fun, but as so often has been the case in my history, over practically before it began. Over before I was done.

Tim, Master Cake Maker. — Tim — Friend, former roommate and wedding-cake baker.

He told me up front he was in no place for a relationship. But “a little sex won’t kill me,” he said. Funny, I told him it might kill me. I knew that somehow my heart would hurt, but I couldn’t help myself.

And then I cut a cord that tethered my ex and I together. I told him I could not be his best friend.

Our divorce was about as amicable as they get. We lived together through it all. Used a mediator. Never went to court. The whole thing was done in less than six months.

The night before I left Seattle we sat on his bed waxing nostalgic – remembering him calling me and asking me out for the first time, and me asking “Why?”

He said I was pretty and I had cool shoes. And then he looked in my eyes and told me I was still pretty. That I still had cool shoes. The next morning, I was gone before he woke.

We were close for a while. And then we weren’t. I began to heal. I leaned into the people about me. Into my art, my writing, my dance. He noticed the change in me. In the dwindling frequency of our conversations and commented on it.

“I guess you need space,” he remarked. I did. But I was so afraid of losing him in my life that I asked for it in a wishy-washy sort of way. Backpedaling often.

When he said it again, a week or so ago, I replied in the affirmative. This time with a little more backbone, adding, “I cannot be your best friend.” He immediately, expectedly, retreated.

On Wednesday, home from my travels, and the whirlwind that has been my life for the past few weeks, I felt the culmination of the days and of my experiences. Grief. Sadness. It crashed over me like a wave, and all I could do was feel the incredible force of it.

It reminded me of body surfing in Punta Mita with my ex – the Pacific Ocean as warm as bath water. I got caught by a rip tide and was thrust down into the sand beneath me, head first. Terrifying. I began to flail, unsure which way was up. Until I remembered what I had been taught.

Don’t fight. Stay still. That my body would naturally float to the surface. And it did.

I never told my ex, or anyone else, about the experience. Until now.

I’ve been back in the ocean many times since then. The experience remains with me. A shadow. A teaching. A reminder, like all of my experiences – especially the most recent ones –I am durable. Adaptable. Like cotton.

Artist Date 42: Dressed, Safely Shrouded

October 11, 2013 LesleyPearlLeave a comment

I think I need a headdress.

Feathered, painted and beaded. Like the one I’m standing in front of at the Chicago Art Institute – Artist’s Date 42. According to the description, it is meant to express a sense of beauty, while spiritually protecting the wearer, providing potency in battle, diplomacy and/or courtship.

I could use that – spiritual protection and potency. Especially in courtship. I feel like I’m fumbling all over the place in this suddenly, or not so suddenly, single world.

Perhaps a wig would suffice. Cover up my naked head. My naked heart.

My cousin Andrew told me I should consider wearing them. Over dinner a few weeks ago at a trendy, too loud, see-and-be-seen, restaurant, he leaned in and said, very seriously, “I’ve been giving it some thought…I think you should wear wigs.”

I laughed, but he was dead serious, waxing the possibilities of an Uma Thurman Pulp Fiction bob. I showed him a photograph of me wearing a large Foxy Brown afro wig many years ago in Oakland. I told him I wished my hair grew like that. How I longed to wear a wig but worried about offending people – lest those whose hair grows that way think it is a joke, this seriously small white girl sporting a do belonging to someone else.

We made a date to go wig shopping but never quite made it.

I had forgotten about it until now.

And really, I probably shouldn’t be thinking about it now. Or even be here at all. My friend Julie arrives from Detroit in a few hours. Her visit comes on the heels of my friend Ernie’s visit from Seattle, which came on the heels of my trip to Dublin, and precedes my trip to Minneapolis – for my cousin Andrew’s wedding – by just days.

And yet, I am here. Stealing away for an hour or so, by myself, with no intention any more noble than to see with different eyes, hear with different ears, feel with a different heart. To leave here a little better than I arrived. To fill my mind with something other than “me, me, me.” It is a relief.

My plan was to visit the African Art. But I am stopped in my tracks in the Native American section. Thinking about wigs. About my cousin. About my other cousin – Diane.

I visited her in Albuquerque when I was 17. The trip, my first time traveling alone – to see Diane in New Mexico and Andrew in Los Angeles – was a high-school graduation gift from my parents.

I bought suede fringed boots, the kind with no hard sole, on that trip. They snaked up my legs, stopping just beneath my knees and tied with crisscrossing leather cord. Burnout style. And also, a wooden box, the top decorated with a sand painting of Father Sky – it says so in pencil, written on the underside, good for storing treasures.

Diane bought me a miniature wedding vase, a smaller version of the kind I would drink from at my own wedding 15 years later.

It seems like forever ago. As does my trip to see Diane. Except the memories of my marriage feel sneakier – unexpected – and not as purely sweet as those of my trip to New Mexico.

So I keep on moving, rather than sitting (or like my friend Sheila likes to say “bathing”) in the feelings. I look at pipes, teepee covers and silver jewelry, eventually moving on to the African Art section – something without connection to the past. Something entirely my own. Sort of.

Unless you consider it is my ex who bought me a gift certificate to the Old Town School of Music and Dance, where I study West African dance. Or that I found myself in Rwanda right in the middle of our divorce.

And yet, Africa is mine. It always was. A dream since I was a child. He just helped get me there.

The collection is small.

A few voluminous robes – the kind I have seen my instructor Idy dance in, constantly moving the sleeves in gorgeous gestures to keep from getting the fabric caught up in his feet. A couple of headdresses and costumes, one depicting the ideal mature woman in the 17^th century – prominent nose, jutting chin, and large breasts.

I think of my own breasts. Small. No longer pendulous. Faded scars run from breast fold to areola – subtle reminders of my reduction surgery. A different beauty ideal.

I am struck by the words tacked to the wall.

“Dress is among the most personal forms of visual expression, creating a buffer and a bridge between the private and the public self…Special forms of luxury dress…may (also) signal particular standing within a community or a moment of transition from one role to another.”

I think about the Native American headdress. Of my own dress. My friend Tori says I dress differently since my divorce. Sexier. It was not my intention, but I believe she is right.

Across the room is a timeline of events, highlighting key moments in both African and world history. I snap photographs so I can remember them.

1884: European nations meet for the Berlin West Africa Conference, initiating the European scramble to colonize Africa. By 1900 only Ethiopia and Liberia remain independent.

1957: The nation of Ghana gains independence from British colonial rule, launching a continent-side decolonization movement.

1980: Zimbabwe gains independence from Great Britain; it is the last European colony to do so.

1990-94: Civil war in Rwanda leads to genocide.

I remember my friend Geri’s map-of-the-world shower curtain – so old, Rhodesia was still on it.

I think about my own map. My timeline. My dress. My independence. Messy. Uncertain. Liberating. But unlike Rhodesia, I got to keep my name.

Waiting For This Moment, With No Idea What Comes Next

August 28, 2013 LesleyPearlLeave a comment

I am on the kitchen floor. My back slides down the refrigerator and I collapse in a heap, sobbing. I have been waiting for this moment.

Hiking in the Badlands. The difference of a few days.

A friend of mine often called from the kitchen floor when she was going through her divorce. I thought somehow I had evaded this. I was wrong.

I tell my friend Lisa this. She is in Chicago. I am in Seattle. It is a year ago today.

I cannot put together simple thoughts. I do not know what to put in the car. I am leaving tomorrow. My books are boxed and ready to be shipped when I have an address. I have done nothing else. Lisa tells me to wake Michael, my friend who has offered to help bring me home.

I lie down next to him in his bed, turning in on myself – into fetal position— and weep. I want him to comfort me. To wrap his arms around me. He does not. He tells me to put on a pot of coffee. That we have work to do.

I have given away most of my clothing. It is too big. What remains I lie in a large Ziploc bag. Michael attaches the vacuum hose to it and turns it on. We are giddy watching my Calvin Klein dresses and still-too-large, but-I-wear-them-anyway,Old Navy jeans get shrink wrapped into clear, plastic pancakes.

He loads my belongings into the 12-year-old Civic, making good use of every available inch of space. I just watch, as if this is “happening” to me. I feel disconnected and numb.

When he is finished we climb the cement stairs outside of my house to the top of Queen Anne Hill. My cousin Lois has invited us to come eat apples from her tree. It is sunny and warm. We sit in the backyard and talk while her dog, Tsipi chases the tennis ball Michael tosses to her. He is the dog whisperer, much like my ex-husband, and she knows it.

Later, we meet Ernie and his dog, Cordelia – a tea-cup pinscher – at Molly Moon’s for ice cream. One last cone – half honey-lavender, half salted caramel. One last goodbye.

That night, I meet my ex in the bedroom that used to be ours. That is his now and has been for a few months. I forgot what a nice view it has. And that the walls are still painfully bare. I look at the duvet cover from Ikea. I don’t remember when we bought it, just that we did – together. There is cat fur on it. Like there always is.

I say goodbye. I don’t remember the words. Only that I ask for his blessing for a relationship I’m not yet having, but hoping for, with a man we both know. A man I have grown close to in the months since he asked me for a divorce. “If that is what you want,” he says, referring to this man.

Michael is watching television on the couch. I sit next to him and link my arm in his. I rest my head on his shoulder. There is a slow-motion battle scene on the screen. Native Americans in traditional dress and men in cowboy hats. It is another time. Music. An arrow goes through someone’s chest and he falls, slowly, slowly, slowly into the water. It is dreamy and surreal. The show. This moment. I still feel like I am watching all of it.

Tomorrow we will begin our journey home.

I don’t remember going to sleep. Just waking up. Meeting some friends one last time and taking photographs. My friend J gives me a card, sharing his feelings for me. I have suspected them. He has kept me at arm’s length my entire year here. It was “the right thing to do,” he says.

I stop at Macrina Bakery on the way home to pick up coffee and morning buns. I mention I am going on the road and the barista gives me the drinks for free. Michael is pulling together his things when I get home. My ex is gone.

And in about an hour, I will be too.

I don’t yet know what lies ahead. Just that I am going. That I have chosen to go.

I don’t know that I will camp under a blue moon along the Missouri River. Hike in the Badlands. Or shoot a gun for the first time in my life.

I don’t know that I will bury my birth mom. Fall head-over-heels in a crush that does just that. That I will reclaim my rightful name as writer.

I don’t know that I will once again fill my house and my closet with someone else’s treasures. That I will still be single one year later. That my dream of becoming a Rabbi will fall away from me like molting feathers.

I’m not sure that I could comprehend any of it if I did know. But I didn’t have to.

Over the years, my ex frequently said it would be my turn next. One year later, I know that it surely is.

I Just Haven’t Met You Yet

August 8, 2013 LesleyPearlLeave a comment

I’ve been keeping a nightly gratitude list now for close to 10 years. The practice was first suggested by my then spiritual-business teacher, Anne Sagendorph-Moon.

I would buy small, lovely journals and packages of 36 fine-point markers, and each night, in bed, write my list – a different color for each blessing in my life.

The practice has taken different shapes and forms over the years. For the past few, I have done it on my computer, exchanging my list via e-mail with a friend in San Francisco.

So whenever a gratitude list is suggested as a part of any spiritual practice, in my head I tick it off as “Got it.” “Done.” Until yesterday. When I had a *new* experience.

I am in week 2 of Walking in the World, Julia Cameron’s follow up to The Artist’s Way. The book resonates deeply for me as walking and writing were the only things that made any sense during my divorce. Either action had the power to ground me – almost immediately. Still do.

My assignment yesterday was to take a 20-minute walk, with the intention of naming the blessings in my life with each foot fall.

Off I went, down Ainslie Street towards Winnemac Park – a few short blocks away from my home. A place where I can duck into short paths, surrounded by tall, weedy plants, and feel like I am far away. As I began walking, I began naming – to myself, my lips moving in the silence.

“I have a home. I am in Chicago. Japanese maples.” It felt contrived, forced…but I kept muttering to myself anyway. “My friend Julie. Michigan blueberries. I know how to be alone.”

I was flummoxed. Was it really true? Did I really know how to be alone? Not just survive sans partner, all the while “wishin and hopin and dreamin,” but really know how to be alone and really be ok with it? Even grateful for it?

Yes. I think so.

This is not to say I wouldn’t like to meet a mate. It’s a pretty universal desire, as my friend Mary Kate pointed out to me. But it is how I live my life “in the in between” or “until that time” that determines my “ok-ness.”

I’ve been great with the action part, filling my life with dance, writing, friendship and family. Travel. Writing. Recovery. It’s the perception part that was kicking my ass. Until it wasn’t.

I’m not sure what happened. I used to think being alone meant I was a loser. Unloveable. Undesirable. I suddenly don’t feel that way anymore. I see my aloneness, to quote a good-bad Michael Buble song, as “I just haven’t met you yet.”

I remember being in my 20s. My friend Carlos set me up with his business partner – a Jewish doctor. He owned a great, stone cottage on a lake. Good art work. But we had little in common. Little to talk about. I wasn’t excited. About him. About us.

But I liked the idea of him. Of us. And I thought, “I can make this work.”

Thankfully I didn’t have to. I got a job offer in San Francisco not long after we met. The universe at work.

I recently had that thought again. I met a man. Nice looking. Easy to talk to – especially about our divorces. But that was where it ended. We didn’t have much else to say.

As I was having those “this could work” fantasies, it hit me – why would I bother?

I know what it is like to meet someone and feel literally swept off my feet, equilibrium disrupted. To wonder how it is we ever didn’t know one another. To have so much to say to one another that we both wonder how we will ever get it all out…but delight in trying anyway.

This wasn’t it.

So I added to my list: Grateful to know what excited feels like. To have experienced it. To remember it. To have faith that I will experience it again.

Grateful to know when I’m not excited. And to know I would rather be alone than to settle. To know how to be alone so that I am never beholden to anyone again.

And then…

I am grateful to know what great sex is like. I am grateful to know what it feels like for someone to be wild about me. To not be able to keep their mitts off of me. Touching my hair, my face, my hands, my ass. Kissing me in the middle of a crowded room because he “just had to.”

Thank you Mr. Sexy Photographer from Detroit. Thank you short, horny, Jewish artist. It was a long time ago. But I remember. And I have got to believe these weren’t limited-one-time exclusive offers either.

That is a new idea. To believe in abundance in ALL things. Including love.

I am grateful for that too. And for the women who promised me I would arrive here one day. The ones who cry when I share this with them. They are abundance. They are love. I am loved. And grateful for it.

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.

A Wandering Jewess

My Journey Back To Self

Tag: Friendship