Shaking The Coke Bottle and Other Sexy Little Gifts From the Universe

November 22, 2013 LesleyPearlLeave a comment

My friend Dina calls it “shaking the Coke bottle.”

That feeling when “nothing” is going on. When life doesn’t feel sexy. When I am going about my business doing what other people do. Grocery shopping. Paying bills. Taking out the trash. And, seemingly, not much else.

I don’t like it. Given my druthers, every day would be my birthday, New Years’ Eve and the 4^th of July all wrapped into one. (Actually, I don’t really care for either of these holidays, but they speak to the notion of fireworks and something shiny, new.)

I want to make “something happen.” Anything. Ergo, Dina’s Coke bottle. I imagine it as glass, and filled with soda made from sugar, not corn syrup – before it was retro. My thumb covering the opening. Fingers wrapped around the body. Shaking violently and knowing when I let up a spray of sticky sweetness will shower me, and anyone in my midst.

Sounds great, actually. The sweet spray, that is. Trouble is, the mess. And the dreaded clean-up. Sticky residue.

Julia Cameron, author of The Artist’s Way series, writes that “too much drama equals not enough work.”

There is no drama right now. Not enough work either. Correction, it is there. I just don’t seem to be doing it.

Entering billable time for the past month. A tedious and mundane task that will take me, at best, 45 minutes.

Submitting two pieces – already written – for publication. Their titles and the word “pitch,” scrawled on my white board months ago and never erased.

Tackling the looming job search.

What I am doing is writing. This is a good thing. (Consider that the word “write” is tattooed on my right, inner wrist. “Left” on the opposite.)

Except when it keeps me from taking small actions that chip away at what appear large and overwhelming tasks. When it keeps me from making those satisfying little check marks on my to-do list.

This morning, while journaling my morning pages, I gave words to the hidden fear that the Coke-bottle fantasy seeks to remedy, or at the least, cover up.

That I will run out of subject matter to write about. My blog will grow dry and fallow. My life will grow dry and fallow. I will grow dry and fallow.

There is no romance. No big, new job. No decadent travel in the works. There is “nothing” going on.

What I forget is, when I do what’s in front of me, the rest, somehow, seems to magically take care of itself. And often, sexy little gifts from the universe emerge – if I choose to see them that way.

Strangely, it is not a linear process. A plus B does not equal C.

It is like weight loss.

There are weeks when I do everything “right,” the scale registers a gain and I call it a liar. And weeks when I do everything “wrong.” It shows a loss. And I thank the weight-loss goddess and keep on moving. When this happens to my Weight Watchers members, I remind them that it is what they do most of the time that matters.

Or like marketing. My spiritual business teacher insisted that we students reach out to 20 people a day and speak our vision – what we do, what we offer, what we promise.

“I am a massage therapist and bodyworker. I help people fall in love with their bodies, take care of their bodies, and do things they never imagined possible.” Twenty times a day.

When I did this, clients came to me. Not a single one directly from the outreach. But from other places. The universe answering my call. Proof that energy begets energy.

Or, as my friend Teresa used to tell me, “Nature abhors a vacuum.” Or, eventually something is going to happen.

So today, I will do what is in front of me. I will lead two Weight Watchers meetings. Meet for another informational interview. Go to a friend’s gallery opening.

I might even drop an email to my friend Steven about a trip to Italy we’ve been considering.

As I commit to this not-so-sexy stuff, the footwork, I feel my grip loosen – fully aware that the sticky, sweet will go flat. But that my life has not. Even if it sometimes feels that way.

Post Script. I met a milliner at tonight’s art opening. She shared that she used to make hats full-time, but that she had to get a “real job” when she got divorced. She found one, with great benefits and vacation. And that leaves her time and energy enough to continue to make hats.

“We’re looking to hire,” she offered. I smiled at the synchronicity. I told her our situations are strikingly similar, handed her my card, and asked if we might talk further.

Sexy little gift from the universe. And no clean up.

Love Letter to My Farnow, From the Dancing Queen

September 24, 2013 LesleyPearlLeave a comment

The side of my face is pressed to yours. I feel your beard against my cheek. The bone of your right pelvis against my own. Your leg gently, but firmly, straddling mine.

You dance tango. But we are not dancing tango.

No matter, it is the sexiest dance I’ve ever had in my life. I’m certain of it.

I have not danced like this in more years than I can count.

I am referring not only to the leg between mine. Or the man, 10 years my junior, to whom it belongs. But to the friends surrounding me. My farnow, the Kiwi word roughly translated as “family of choice.” Farnow I’ve known for 20 years. Farnow I’ve known for just 20 minutes.

We are dancing to Patti LaBelle. Donna Summer. The Cure. New Order. All of us. Like we did in Detroit. In San Francisco. When I was 20-something and it didn’t feel like “a thing” to stay up late to go dancing.

I am sweaty. Low to the ground. All hips and legs. I feel vital. Sexy. Alive.

“You are in a very good place,” my friend Steven tells me. He is right. I am.

But not for the reasons you think.

This isn’t a story about sex.

This is a story about recognizing another one of my teachers. About the universe tapping me on the shoulder, inquiring exactly where I am with the old idea I tossed into Lake Michigan – along with stale bread. the ritual of tashlich – on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, just a few weeks ago.

The day I muttered, “I let go of the idea that I am only good for sex.” Over and over, like a mantra. The notion being that I might be attractive to men for more reasons than this.

Prior to my marriage, I used my sexuality like a calling card. A year outside of its dissolution, I’m not sure what is. Or if I have one at all.

Earlier in the evening, we did a different sort of dance. Flirty. My ass to your ass. My back to your chest. Your leg between mine for the first time.

“Is this ok?” you ask. Yes, I nod. It is more than ok. I cannot stop grinning.

And then…you are sitting on a stool, no longer dancing. I am not quite sure what has happened. I think it has something to do with the girl sitting next to you, but I am not certain.

I do not want to interfere with anyone’s real life. I am on holiday. This flirtation is fun. But I do not want to hurt anyone. So I leave it be. I leave you be. Mostly.

I dance with Steven and Tim. Anja and Derek. Anne-Marie and Tom. Everyone but you. I ask G-d to help me to be to be present to the people who are with me and not to worry about those who are not.

Later, when you are alone, I apologize for possibly getting you into trouble with a girl. You insist I have not. But that you are certain I am one to get into trouble. You are teasing me.

I tell you it is incredibly sexy when you reach down between your legs to tap on the cajon – the box drum – which I saw you do the other night, playing music with my friend, Tim.

I notice you don’t drink. Neither do I. We talk about living life feeling everything. “EVERYTHING,” you say slowly, emphatically, with a knowing smile.

We talk about G-d. That yours is like Star Wars, “The Force.” That mine is magic, poetry and serendipity. The kind of stuff I couldn’t think up myself.

You ask me about my work. My Judaism. My writing. We talk about your music, the religion of your upbringing, and our friendship with Tim.

I tell you I enjoyed dancing with you. You smile and reply that you enjoyed talking with me. I am flummoxed. It is as if the universe is asking, “Remember your taslich mantra? The one about being attractive for other reasons…Are you paying attention?”

We dance that slow, sexy dance, and say goodbye. I kiss either of your cheeks, feeling your beard against me again. I ask if I will see you again on this trip. “G-d willing. Allah willing,” you say, and list a couple of other names for G-d, but I do not hear them. I am touched by your response.

And you are gone.

I go back to the floor and join my farnow and dance until DJ Gerry can play no more. I think about you whispering in my ear that I could surely tango. That I am a good dancer, but I must know this already.

I do not see you again. I am a little bit sad, but not at all surprised. It isn’t necessary. I have received your teaching.

I want to tell you this. And that my meeting you is a wink from the universe – is G-d. But I do not. It seems too intimate. Too much.

So I blog instead. My sober artistry. A kind of “love letter,” sans stamp. Destination: Dublin, Ireland. I sign it,

“Until ‘the force’ conspires for us to meet again. In gratitude, Lesley.”

Artist Date 38: Creating Community…It’s Not About the Shoes

September 6, 2013 LesleyPearlLeave a comment

I don’t know if I filled my creative coffers this week. By my spiritual and social ones are brimming over. And that will have to do this week for Artist Date 38.

Overlooking Lake Michigan, at Dawes Park.

Rosh Hashanah – the Jewish New Year. 5774. I’m at Dawes Park in Evanston for the ritual of tashlich – where we empty bread from our pockets into a body of moving water. Some think of it as casting away one’s sins. I prefer a gentler interpretation. That I am simply cleaning out the residue of the last year. Whatever is stale. Has been sitting around in the corners of my consciousness slowly growing a somewhat furry mold.

I’ve stuffed a package of naan bread in my bag. It’s been in my freezer since November. A friend brought it to a party I had, to go with the curried lentil soup I was making. I’m not much of a bread eater, so I tucked it away for just such an occasion.

Another woman has matzo. I could have brought that two. I buy too much every year.

It is my third High Holiday season with the Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation, so I know where we meet. But this year is different. I not only know the place, but I know many of the people here too.

My friend Phil is here with his family. He introduced me to this congregation – specifically the Rabbi — a number of years ago, when I was feeling particularly wayward and spiritually lost.

Since that time I have developed a close relationship with Rabbi Brant and Cantor Howard. They are tuning up for this short, mostly musical, service that precedes the tossing of the bread. Jeff is tuning up as well. We met a couple of years ago at a Shabbat morning service I attended just once.

He seemed to sense I was new and somewhat hesitant, and warmly welcomed me in. I have had several encounters with him since them. Perhaps my favorite being when he sidled up to me during last year’s High Holiday services.

He said he read my blog postings from Rwanda and that he liked my writing. I thanked him and told him I used to write professionally. “It shows,” he said. And was gone.

Moments before I had silently cried out to G-d, asking what the plan is, what it is I was meant to do. I recall looking up toward the heavens, smiling and saying, “got it.”

Mary Jo is here. Brant introduced us several years ago when I completed my conversion to Judaism. She joined him and Howard as my witnesses, and was there in that same role when I received my get, my Jewish divorce.

I am now on her permanent invite list for Passover, and the breaking of the fast on Yom Kippur.

I feel a tap on my shoulder. It is Rachel. She is a Weight Watchers member I know.

Monica is here with her family. We met at Shabbat services at the lakefront a couple of years ago. Michael is here too. He blows the shofar every year at High Holiday services. He introduces me to his daughters who are following in the family tradition.

I see Hannah. She used to wear her head shaved like mine but now she has a mass of ringlets. She tells me that she’s bought a condo and that she broke up with her boyfriend. She introduces me to her friend Kelly and we agree we must get together.

A woman I have never met before approaches me. Her name is Sheila. She likes my shoes and takes a photograph of them.

Yes, they are “the shoes.” The shoes that have seemingly come to identify me. My orange Fly London peep-toe wedges.

The first summer I owned them, people literally chased me down Michigan Avenue to find out what they were and where I got them. It was fun, talking with all sorts of people I wouldn’t otherwise meet. And today is no exception.

Walking to the water, a tall woman with a mess of dark curls puts her foot next to mine. “Nice shoes,” she says. She is wearing the same ones in pewter.

She tells me she is tossing out the year of rehabbing her broken wrist. It is healed. I do not tell her what I am tossing. Instead, I tell her I like our shoes so much that I have two pairs. That the second I bought before my divorce was final, when my then-husband kindly said, “Do what you need to before we separate our monies.”

I bought a new lightweight massage table, a Torah commentary, and the peep-toe wedges in mustard. We laugh at my choices.

I wish her a sweet New Year and peel off to throw my bread, my karmic residue. There are so many things I could get rid of. The litany that I repeat every year – self-doubt, unkindness, judgment of myself and others. I recall that last year I tossed away my identity as a wife.

It was a Monday. I knew divorce papers were signed on Mondays in the county where we filed. I had a sinking feeling at that moment that I was officially divorced. A call to my mediator later in the day confirmed it.

Today I am casting away what my friend Lisa likes to call “an old idea.” I am embarrassed to admit that I have continued to hold on to it. Actually, I’m not sure I was consciously aware that I had it, but a series of recent events has cast a glaring light upon it and I can no longer turn away.

I point myself east, tear off a piece of naan and whisper to myself, “I let go of the idea that I am only desirable for sex.”

It is windy and the naan flies back at me. I turn west off of the dock where the waters are still. I repeat the words.

I’ve got a lot of naan so I say it a couple of more times, ripping and tossing. Ripping and tossing.

When I am done, I am approached by a woman. She asks me about the shoes. She is radiant and I tell her so. She tells me about her job search. Her cancer.

I suddenly remember that people used to tell me things about themselves all of the time. Friends and family, and random, almost strangers too. Cab drivers especially. I realize people are talking to me in this way again.

It’s not the shoes. Because I wore the same ones last year…I am different. My heart has healed just enough to let some of my light shine out. I am open and there is room for others. They sense it and come in.

In The Weeds

August 5, 2013August 5, 2013 LesleyPearlLeave a comment

I like to think I am aware of my surroundings.

I’m not.

Out on a morning walk, I wander into the native planting section of Winnemac Park. There are wood chips on the ground, soft landing for my feet. A low wooden fence.

I’ve been here before. But it’s been a few weeks. Months. I’m not sure. I lose track of time.

Today the planting is as tall as my head. Taller. Green stalks, some with yellow flowers and brown centers. Purple flowers and greenish centers. What we used to call Queen Anne Lace when I was a child. I have to push my way through it, clearing the way for my next step. Jungle-like.

I am smiling.

I walk through it again on my way back home, as the morning grows hot and humid. This time I pull out my ear buds. Right after Labelle’s Lady Marmalade.

It is so quiet. Right here in the city. I hear the birds. The dogs. The cars passing by on the perimeter merely a hushed vibration. It immediately feels different.

I don’t know why I’m surprised.

My ex always had music playing. And while I love it, I often found it overwhelming. I craved the quiet.

And yet, now living on my own, music is very much a part of my background. Perhaps the quiet frightens me now, alone with my thoughts.

But now it feels like a respite. A great, big exhale. As if I am on an entirely different walk. As if the walk just moments before had never been. The change is palpable.

I look to a weeping willow and think, “I need to come here every day. Even just for 10 minutes. To walk on the wood chips. To get lost in this “forest” of native planting.”

Ah. That still small voice. I couldn’t hear it over the Donna Summer Pandora Channel (which, by the way, is excellent for walking…except when you are trying to hear that still small voice.)

I greet a big, black lab on the path. He is off-leash. I am afraid for a moment. I peer around the corner looking for his owner. “Is he friendly?” I ask. He is.

His owner had been lost in his own world –his nose tucked into one of the tall purple daisy-like flowers.

I feel a tinge of sadness leaving. I always want more.

Walking home I admire the beautiful teak wood furniture on the porch of a brownstone. Its pads noticeably missing. The greenish brass elephants flanking it.

Wooden flower boxes hang off the window of a multi-unit brick building. The only ones – obviously installed by the tenant. His joy. Her contribution to the neighborhood.

Tiny gardens are planted in the small open spaces outside of single-family homes and brown-stone three-flats. Shady spaces, lush with green leaves and plantings, moist rocks and black earth. A burgundy Japanese maple.

I smile, sort of wistfully, at the sad attempt at yarn bombing on the trees outside of the church across the street.

Arriving home, my mind is noticeably still. I could hear Pandora playing in my bag, I had forgotten to turn it off – The Weather Girls, “It’s Raining Men.” Miracle. I hadn’t been thinking of them at all.

Artist Date 31: He Played Debussy on my Naked Body. Believing in the God of Synchronicity

July 22, 2013 LesleyPearl1 Comment

Last week Stephanie W. invited me on an Artist Date. This week Stephanie G. did.

However, unlike Stephanie W., who offered a suggestion – one that allowed me the prescribed solo experience of an Artist Date – Stephanie G invited me to join her and our mutual friend, Hallie, at the theatre. Not solo. Technically, not an Artist Date.

Yes, I spend this sort of time splitting these sorts of hairs. As if the Artist Date police might show up at my door. So I was relieved to read the following in Julia Cameron’s Walking in the World – her follow-up to The Artist’s Way, where I first became acquainted with the Artist Date.

In the section titled “Basic Tools,” Cameron writes:

“…the Artist’s Date…is assigned play…

“Synchronicity – that uncanny knack of being in the right place at the right time – picks up markedly as we practice Artist’s Dates.”

Stephanie’s invitation to The Royal George Theatre for The Pianist of Willesden Lane – Artist Date 31 –felt like that, like play, like synchronicity.

I’ve been thinking about music a lot lately. My coffers crying out for sound.

I considered Harry Connick, Jr. at the Chicago Symphony. Tickets were pricey unless I wanted to sit in the rafters. Which I didn’t. I wanted to see him. Easy on the eyes, as my friend Teresa used to say. Sitting in the gallery section would only frustrate me.

I considered a free concert at Millenium Park. I considered a trip to the record store.

Yet I found myself in a woefully off-center, red-velvet theatre seat, flanked by Hallie on my right, and a mercifully empty seat on my left. A Steinway Grand (Baby Grand? Concert Grand?) and a handful of oversized frame mirrors on stage in front of me.

The Pianist of Willesden Lane is the story of Lisa Jura. How her commitment and passion for the piano, along with the “kindness of strangers” and some sort of higher power – call it synchronicity – saved her life during World War II. Written and performed solo by Jura’s daughter, Mona Golabek, The Pianist of Willesden Lane is told both in words and music.

Bach. Beethoven. Rachmaninoff.

Debussy.

I feel fingertips on my body.

I am lying in bed with the former symphony conductor. He is playing the notes on my naked body – silky strains that sound like watercolor. Ridiculously sexy. He is teaching me about music. Telling me about his life. Interlochen. Tanglewood. Studying with Leonard Bernstein.

I have been assigned to write the obituary for his father – a kind-hearted, heavy-hitter in the community. We speak over the phone. He is funny, wry. Smart and sweet. I find a photograph of him in the files. He has dark hair and a beard, bright eyes and a kind smile. He is wearing a tuxedo. I am smitten.

We meet through a series of synchronicities, and spend the next couple of weeks in bed – with Debussy, and frequently a pint of Ben and Jerry’s Mint Oreo Cookie. I fancy myself “Mrs. Former Conductor.” And then it is over.

I haven’t thought about him for a long time. But my body remembers.

Like the Holocaust survivor I interviewed. She lost her sense of smell during the war. She regained it more than 40 years later when she returned to Germany. She smelled manure. Her body remembered.

I’ve been thinking of her ever since I saw Brighton Beach Memoirs a few weeks ago with my friend Michelle. I told her how I had the great, good fortune to interview and tell the stories of so many Holocaust survivors when I worked for the Jewish Bulletin.

I don’t hear their stories much anymore. Most of them are gone. Until now.

Lisa Jura arrives in London from Vienna – one of thousands of children on the Kindertransport. She is 14.

A few years later she is a student at the Royal London School of Music. In the evening she plays piano in a hotel bar, where she meets many admirers. Among them a Royal Air Force commander.

He is shy. His English is poor. His comrades approach her with a rose and act as his translator.

He says she is the most beautiful woman he has ever seen. That she must tell him when she makes her debut. And then he is gone. Not just from the bar, but from London. To war.

Lisa Jura and the Royal Air Force Commander.

And then it is over. The war. Just like that.

Miraculously, the commander is at her debut. So are her two sisters. They too have survived.

The lights go up. Golabek steps out of Jura, and back into herself. Post Script. Lisa Jura immigrated to the United States. The commander followed her, married her. He is Golabek’s father.

I get teary. Really teary.

I want to believe in ridiculously romantic love. The kind I shared with the conductor. The kind I had a glimpse of when a certain southern gentleman, upon learning I could not possibly see him again, pulled me close to him and said, “I’ll come find you.”

I want to believe in a God that allows three Jewish sisters to survive the Holocaust and then somehow find one another in post-war London. Who then places two of them across the street from one another in Los Angeles.

I want to believe in Go(o)dness. The go(o)dness of people who care for children that are not their own. Who feed them. Clothe them. Shelter them. Love them. Foster their talent and dreams while a war wages outside their window.

I want to believe in the God of Synchronicity. And I do.

Plant Whisperer

July 9, 2013 LesleyPearl4 Comments

I killed a cactus.

Actually three of them. And two succulents.

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

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

And the jade?

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

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

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

Now, two sad, pale green stalks remain.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I don’t know.

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

Have You? Do You?

July 8, 2013 LesleyPearlLeave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Do you congratulate yourself when you remember?

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

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

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

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

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

Have you? Do you?

Me too.

Artist’s Date 24: Finding “Epic” Acceptance

June 2, 2013 LesleyPearl1 Comment

When I was about eight, my parents took me to see The Black Stallion at the Keego Theatre, a movie house where they played second-run shows for a buck.

Onscreen, a storm is raging. Passengers of a luxury liner jump into life rafts. A young boy cuts free an agitated, tied-up horse, and it leaps from the boat. The horse’s angry owners hold the boy at knife point before he is flung into the dark, choppy waters.

I am hysterical. Sobbing. Unable to catch my own breath. I do not know the horse will rescue the boy. That the story is just beginning.

My mother pinches me under the arm. “Do we have to go out to the car?” she asks.

My feelings are too big for my family. This is what I believe, true or not.

It is why I often watched television upstairs in the guest room, alone – my emotions leaking out with Folgers commercials and documentaries on PBS. It was a source of teasing – mostly good-natured – in my family. But I was too sensitive to realize it.

Sitting in the Davis Theatre watching Epic – Artist’s Date 24 – I remember all of this. The fear. The anxiety. The shame that is tied to these feelings. I am experiencing it now.

I’m old enough to know that good will prevail. This is a PG movie. I know that the Leafmen will “win,” that the pod will bloom in the full moon, that the forest will be saved.

And yet.

There’s this loud, foreboding music. Crescendo rising. Bats flying. Forest dying.

The Images are dark. Mandrake, nemesis of the forest, of life itself, wears a rat skin like a hooded cape.

I feel my heart quicken, a desire to turn my eyes away. I am afraid. I do not trust it will end well.

I am the only adult in the theatre without a child in tow and I feel a little bit self-conscious. I retreat to my head. Do the parents think I am suspect? A child molester? Why aren’t the children afraid like I am?

A dad ducks and scurries out, gripping two little hands, one in each of his. Are they frightened? Or do they have to pee?

I saw the trailer for Epic a few weeks ago, on another Artist’s Date. I was enchanted by its beautiful images – flower-people, with heads like cotton pom-poms, dandelions turned to seed. Faces on sunflowers and gerbera daisies. I was called by its questions about belief.

This is what brought me here, on a day I find myself emptied out, running on fumes – the promise of loveliness. Of faith. Of possibilities. This is what I receive:

Professor Bomba’s unshakeable belief in something he can’t see, but only knows. Like God. Like Horton Hears a Who. His willingness to be perceived as crazy. His willingness to lose seemingly everything for his belief.

The Leafmen’s simple code, “Many Leaves. One Tree. You are Never Alone.”

I learn that love can bloom riding gently on a deer. And a pod that blooms in full-moon light is the source of all creation. That hummingbirds make great horses, but common brown sparrows can do the job too.

I am reminded that relationships between fathers and daughters are sometimes hard. And that it’s ok to hold on to someone you hardly know – if they offer you a hand or a torso and you need one.

That each of us has a purpose – even slugs and snails. We might not know it. Don’t always ask for it. But we can embrace it. And continue to put one foot in front of the other.

That life is about finding out what we are capable of. How high we can jump to get ourselves out of a hole. And that each of us can learn to fly.

That we all experience loss. Of a parent. Of a friend.

And that sometimes, love comes back – oftentimes in the most unorthodox and unexpected of ways.

Queen Tara’s energy, twinkling light like Tinkerbell, speaking to Ronin and to MK after she has left this-worldly plane.

MK’s reunion with Nod, straddling “normal” and Lilliputian-sized worlds for the promise of connection, of love.

I think of my own recent reunitings, seeing someones I never thought I’d see again … and then did.

The tears stream down my face. Gratitude. Beauty. Joy. I feel their salty release. I notice them, like I notice the fear, and do nothing. I let them roll off of me in the darkness. I can sit with them. They are not too much for me.

New Ring. Old Questions. Remembering Mr. Thursday.

May 28, 2013 LesleyPearl1 Comment

I spent last Memorial Day weekend with my friend Ernie at his beach house in Westport, Washington. It was cool and grey, not unlike the weather here today in Chicago. Except that it was expected, as it is usually that way.

We cooked and talked and listened to the soundtrack from Saturday Night Fever over and over. We napped and read and took long walks on the beach where we created a healing ritual: The Sacred Spiral.

It was a response to the shame both of us had known in relationships, coupled with Ernie’s own experiences dragging a large stick in wet sand in a circular pattern, ever-widening, until it touched the shore on one side, the tide on the other.

We did this in silence, often crossing over one another’s markings. At the end, we each wrote a message in the sand. Mine was, “God is Good.” A reference to a conversation I had just a few days before.

I haven’t thought about that weekend in a while, until this past Thursday. I was buying an enviro-sac, an overpriced bag that rolls up small and lives in one’s purse, ready for the impromptu shopping trip. As I was paying for it, I spied a ring in the display case –long and wide with a big, blue stone set in the center. The typewritten tag next to it read: 1970s cocktail ring. $16.

I slid it on. My small hand appeared longer, elegant.

I had the immediate thought that with this on my left hand, I could now sell my wedding and engagement rings. Different finger, but no matter. It closed the space.

I bought it.

Walking home, I thought about where I was at this time last year, and suddenly remembered exactly where I was at this time last year, the Thursday before Memorial Day.

I was kissing a man who wasn’t my husband.

Not long after asking for a divorce, my husband casually remarked that we were “free agents.” I was floored, but I chose not to fight it, or fight him. The ending had already been written. We were just uncomfortably in the middle, clumsily navigating our way there.

The kiss was clean.

We had known one another for a couple of months. We’d been flirtatious. He too was going through a divorce. It felt obvious. That evening, electric.

His lips over mine. My face in his hands. New. Unfamiliar. Searching.

He showed me the scar where his gall bladder was taken out. He asked me about the scars on my breasts.

We took a walk in the woods, our arms linked, talking and kissing and talking and kissing. His dog leading the way, turning back from time to time to make sure we were still following.

He told me his story and when he was done said, “Now you.” He wanted to tell me who he was. He wanted to know me.

I sat on his lap in the kitchen before leaving that night. Words rumbling in my mouth, behind my face. I wanted to say them but I was afraid they sounded silly. I told him anyway. I said, “God is good.”

He laughed, looked straight through me with his crinkly eyes and said, “God IS good.” And he kissed me.

I took to referring to him as Mr. Thursday, because I wanted to respect his privacy. At least, that’s what I told myself. I think somewhere deep in me I knew that was all he would be –Mr. Thursday. Mr.-Thursday-right-before-Memorial-Day-2012 to be exact, as we never connected in that way again.

I talked to Ernie about him that weekend. How I somehow already knew this wasn’t going to go my way, even though I didn’t want to know it.

Thursday and I had agreed that neither of us were remotely interested in a relationship. Looking back, I probably would have jumped at one, given the chance. Anything to get out of my discomfort. But I bravely told him I was on my way to Africa, and then back to Chicago. That perhaps we could just enjoy one another’s company. He agreed.

The next day I woke up with that sick sense of dread. That what was true yesterday was no longer true today.

It was painful. All those relationship questions that first bubbled up when I was 12 and Alan Wittenberg didn’t like me back were waiting for me – still unanswered.

“Why doesn’t he like me?” “Why did he change his mind?” “What if I were prettier, thinner, less emotional?”

And then, a more adult concern, “Why do I attach so quickly?”

I didn’t think I would have to address these questions again at this point in my life. I felt like I had learned nothing. Like I didn’t know the rules. My divorce buddy in Chicago, my friend who was three weeks behind in my footsteps, assured me that none of us do.

I haven’t thought about Mr. Thursday in a long time. My fixation with him was replaced by a fixation on another man, which was replaced by a fixation on another man. And then that fixation was replaced by truth. What is versus what I would have liked it to be.

I find myself in a place I’ve never been – I am not with a partner, pursuing a partner or lamenting the loss of a one. It’s strange new territory. There is no one I’m interested in. My attention falls simply “on me.”

I called Ernie this weekend and reminded him of where we were a year ago. About Westport. About Mr. Thursday. About seeing his ex on the beach with their dog, Cordelia, and his new partner. About turning on our heels before they saw us.

Ernie said he and his ex can sit down and talk now – civilized – with no need to turn away.

God IS good. So is my $16 ring.

Artist’s Date 20: When God Fills the Space, a Trip to the Island of Lost Souls

May 18, 2013May 30, 2013 LesleyPearl1 Comment

“You look familiar. Are you famous?”

This is an auspicious beginning to any date – even an Artist’s Date, one that I take by myself.

I assure Eric, the salesperson at Blackbird Gallery and Framing, that I am not.

“I love this,” he continues, gesturing to my bindi. “All of this,” he adds, waving his hands in small circles around his face. “You are beautiful.”

I like this man. Of course, he is gay.

In my hand is a cardboard tube. I’ve made a handle out of packing tape so I could carry it from Nashville to Knoxville to Atlanta and home to Chicago. Inside are two posters.

I bought them at Hatch Show Print in Nashville – America’s oldest working print shop – where letterpress posters summoned me through glass. Where nary a square inch of wall isn’t covered with iconic images of Johnny Cash, Patsy Cline and the Grand Ole Opry.

A smattering of them are for sale, among them “Luana. Danse Savage” and “Island of Lost Souls with the Panther Woman.” As soon as I spotted them, I knew they were mine.

Eric unrolls them onto a large table and places weighted felt bags at each corner so they lie flat. They are made of heavy cotton paper, printed in single color ink. Luana is deep purple – women dancing in short fringed skirts, with cuffs around their ankles. Island of Lost Souls with the Panther Woman is forest green – a vamped-out, busty broad holding a wild cat on a leash.

Island of Lost Souls. I feel like I took up residency there about a year ago. I often times still feel wayward. Uncertain. Acutely aware that little in my life has stood on terra firma for some time now.

Marriage dissolved. Another move cross-country, this time bringing little with me that feels like home. At the time it felt liberating – packing the 13-year-old Honda Civic and leaving the rest behind. Only later did it register as frighteningly impulsive and potentially foolish.

And yet, my ex doesn’t seem to feel any less lost than I – living in the house where we once lived together, sleeping in the bed we used to sleep in together, surrounded by “our things.” Perhaps I got the better end of the deal. Spiritually, at least.

I like the panther on the poster. And the va-va-voom dress the woman is wearing. A sexy new take on Cat Woman. The possibility of living as a super hero.

Luana reminds me of Sunday afternoon dance class at the Old Town School of Folk Music. Of the serendipity and just plain good luck I had to dance with a troupe in Rwanda this past summer. The dancers’ surprise and delight that the muzungo (white person) could follow.

Luana seems the opposite end of the Island of Lost Souls. Yet I am both of them at once.

The posters are big. Big enough to make a dent on my big, blank canvas of a wall – painted eggshell by my landlord. The colors, the same as those in the fabric hanging on the adjacent wall – a few meters cut and carried from the Rwandan market.

They are not what I had envisioned here.

I had imagined my friend Slade’s sketch of me. Shaved head, bindi, a whitish aura around me – he is not the first to comment on it. I look a little bit African American, a little bit Hare Krishna. Thin, wispy, spiritual. I love it. I love how he captured me. But the piece is small, and it lives in his sketchbook.

I had imagined a map. Or a series of maps, playing off the unintentional travel theme of the room. Snowshoes on one side of the entry way, license plates from California, Washington and Illinois on the other. Stacked suitcases turned on their side make a table. There’s the Rwandan fabric, and a painting I bought from my friend Scotty of a woman leaving her home, leaving her tribe. It’s called, “You Can Take it With You.”

I am amazed at how the space is filled when I let go of my ideas and make room for God.

Eric and I lay frame corners on the edges of the posters. Painted wood. Maple. Birch. No. Not quite. I place a sample of metallic sage on one, metallic plum on the other. A marriage is made.

Eric places a card on top of the posters. It shows the differences between three types of glass. Three price points. I submit to the middle grade. Less reflection. Less distortion. UV protected.

We talk about spacers and decide I can do without.

Eric crunches numbers and square inches. I look at paintings and photographs on the walls. The artists are young, accomplished – as evidenced by their bios. Talented. I feel woefully far behind in my craft. As if I’ve been losing time for some time. On that Island of Lost Souls for far longer than I realized.

He produces a framing estimate that shocks me. Even with my $61 Yelp! coupon credit it is much more than I anticipated. I consider leaving and sticking a tack into Luana and the Island.

I think about all the things I left behind so that I could create something new. Something shiny.

I hand over my credit card and put down a deposit, hoping the second half will show up on next month’s bill.

I tell Eric about the posters. About dancing in Africa in the middle of a divorce, leaving the Island of Lost Souls for a spiritual sojourn. He tells me about his photography work. We talk about my return to writing.

Perched up on a three-legged stool, I realize I am flirting. It doesn’t matter that he is gay. I feel light. Like myself. Or who I used to be. I enjoy our easy rat-a-tat-tat repartee.

I ask him his sign. Sagittarius, he says and I laugh. I should have known. I tell him I love Sagittarians. I do not tell him that the book Love, Sex and Astrology says that Libra and Sagittarius meet at half past 7 and are in bed by 8.

I keep this to myself, along with stories of all the Sagittarians I have loved – my first real boyfriend in college. My one-time drinking partner. My religious studies professor – the object of my unrequited desire for so many years. Unfinished business.

Instead, I tell him I am a Libra. He tells me I seem strong. Resilient. I smile and nod.

“Sometimes,” I say.

After nearly an hour with Eric, I leave with a pink receipt and a card for his next open studio.

As I cross the threshold on the way out, a couple walks in with a large piece of art for framing. So large it requires both sets of hands. Divine timing. God filling the space I am leaving.

A Wandering Jewess

My Journey Back To Self

Tag: God