Artist Date 6.2: Crazy Time

September 26, 2016 LesleyPearlLeave a comment

I love the smell of paper.

It is one of the many reasons I prefer bookstores to the ease of Amazon. That and the sense of possibility. Of community. Staff picks. Book Club reads. All laid out on tables, ripe for reading. A smorgasbord of words.

Land of Enchantment by Leigh Stein. Grunt by Mary Roach. M Train by Patti Smith.

I pick up each one and tuck it under my arm, carrying a small stack with me through Women and Children First Bookstore. Artist Date 6.2 (122).

Because I know of Leigh but I do not know her. Because we belong to the same women’s writing collective, but we have never met.

Because I heard Terri Gross’ interview with Roach on Fresh Air while I was living in Madrid. Their English sounded so good to my American ear and home didn’t seem so far away.

Because just this afternoon, my friend Spencer suggested Smith’s book to me.

I feel connected to these stories. Like I want to hold on to them.

Others I don’t.

Spinster: Making A Life of One’s Own by Kate Bolick. The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone by Olivia Lang.

Because I fear there is no room in this conversation for my voice — my manuscript, They Don’t Eat Alone in Spain: How 52 Artist Dates Healed My Heart and Landed Me in the Center of My Own Life. Traveling alone. Living abroad. Writing a book. Because I fear I have nothing new to add. Because I believe publication might finally allow me to be “done” with my divorce.

Crazy Time by Abigail Trafford.

Because it takes me back to a time before Artist Dates. Before traveling alone and living overseas and writing a book. When I was just embarking upon my divorce.

I am still living in Seattle, still sharing a home with my soon-to-be ex-husband – but sleeping in separate bedrooms.

I am head-over-heels-over-head for my friend M in Chicago. He is also going through a divorce and we prop one another up through our disbelief and fear, talking on the phone each night into the wee hours of the morning.

I am also a wee bit obsessed with my friend (another) M in Seattle. He is the first man to see me naked – other than my husband or my doctor – in 15 years. We kiss endlessly, stopping only to share our stories — whispering under a blanket that smells faintly of dog.

But only once.

Since then we seem to be dancing a familiar “come-here-go-away” cha-cha. I know the tune, but still haven’t mastered the steps.

My therapist Saundra tells me about Crazy Time.

“Because it is a crazy time,” she says, speaking from both personal and professional experience. She says to tell Chicago M I have to go to sleep. She rolls her eyes at the mention of Seattle M.

“You told me I get to make mistakes.”

“You made yours,” she says.

We look at one another, a little bit shocked by her frankness and laugh.

“You don’t get to say that.”

“I know,” she says. “But it’s true.” And it is.

Saundra believes it is preferable I grieve the end of my marriage before jumping into another relationship. She says if I don’t, I’ll only run from the pain of it – from bed to bed, relationship to relationship – rather than addressing the source and healing.

It doesn’t sound so bad, really.

And yet, it is not my path.

I pull Crazy Time from the shelf and begin thumbing through it – only half reading.

“It starts when you separate and usually lasts about two years. It’s a time when your emotions take on a life of their own and you swing back and forth between wild euphoria and violent anger, ambivalence and deep depression, extreme timidity and rash actions. You are not yourself. Who are you?

“Then at the height of Crazy Time, you may get a reprieve. You fall in love – a coup de foudre – and the block of lead in your chest miraculously melts; you can’t believe it, you laugh, you dance. You know it’s too soon, too much like jumping into a lifeboat that you know leaks and has no oars. But you smile, feeling so good after feeling so bad for so long. Therapists call this the search for the romantic solution. But it’s usually not a solution.

“You crash… Now you’re really scared. You can’t believe how frightened you are; about money, your health, your sanity. In all the feel-good rhetoric about divorce being a growth opportunity for the new super you, nobody tells you about Crazy Time.”

Four years have passed since my divorce was made final by the courts.

Since then, my ex-husband has bought a home that he shares with the woman he’s been seeing for a couple of years. Chicago M is about to become a daddy. And according to Facebook, Seattle M — the one with the dog blanket — is “In a Relationship.”

I pick up Smith’s M Train and take it to the register, first slipping the other books back into their proper places on the shelves.

Still traveling alone. Still writing. Sometimes still in Crazy Time.

Gently Nudged

September 6, 2016 LesleyPearlLeave a comment

With gratitude for those who have supported my Go Fund Me campaign, “They Don’t Eat Alone in Spain” — a post-divorce narrative of how 52 Artist Dates healed my heart and pointed me in the direction of my dreams –- and my goal of manifesting blog into book deal. Those who inspire me. Those who unselfishly prod me toward my one, precious life.

August 14

Among my many 20-something gripes was the idea that I didn’t “have a thing.” A passion. A commitment. A “thing” that defined me. Drove me. That people associated with me.

A medium of creative expression.

Like Sherrod Blankner with paint. Over the years I watched her toil outside my house on Liberty Street in San Francisco and at Artist Residencies in Mendocino. I watched her put on shows in Berkeley and sell her work to patrons everywhere. She was (and is) a “working artist.” A description she once laughed at … “If that means I earn enough to pay for my supplies, I suppose I am.”

Like Julie Brown with a lens. We met on assignment for the Jewish Bulletin of Northern California in 1995 — the camera to my pen. Portraits. Projects in Guatemala. Even my wedding — she wanted to be a guest, but wanted me to have beautiful photographs even more — Julie captured, and continues to capture real life from the other side of a piece of glass.

Thank you, Sherrod. And thank you, Julie. For inspiring me with your work and your commitment. And for your generous donations to my “They Don’t Eat Alone in Spain” campaign.

Turns out I did “have a thing,” and a medium … I always did. Words. It took the aftermath of divorce, sans romance, to wrangle them out of me and onto the pages of “They Don’t Eat Alone in Spain.”

liberty-street — Liberty Street in San Francisco … where I logged many hours with both of these ladies.

August 19

In Jewish tradition, the number 18 represents “chai” or life. And it is customary to give gifts in denominations of $18.

So it seems only appropriate that my friend and “sister of choice,” Julie Kupsov, would so generously donate to my “They Don’t Eat Alone in Spain” campaign in this way.

Not only because we are both Jewish. But because we have experienced so much life — the birth of her son, for which I had the great, good honor to be present as her doula — and death — the passing of her parents Irv and Carole, who provided a safe, loving home away from home for me for more than 30 years — together.

And everything in between.

Julie pushed me to accept a newspaper job in San Francisco more than 20 years ago … thus leaving Detroit and our standing Thursday “date night.” And she loaned me money to volunteer in Rwanda in the midst of my divorce. … where the seeds of my book and my Spanish sojourn were planted.

Muchas, muchas gracias, Julie. (We learned that much in high-school Spanish class, right?) For your generous support of my campaign and of all my journeys.

(By the way, Julie is a genius writer in her own right … keep your eyes peeled for her name on Amazon!)

me-julie-and-jaron — With Julie and Jaron … just before leaving for Spain.

20 August

Math was never my strong suit.

“I don’t get it,” I’d sigh, slightly exasperated, plopping my textbook down on Mr. McClew’s desk in high school.

“OK,” replied the ever-patient instructor of snotty, privileged teens. “Tell me what you don’t get.”

“It!”

“I can’t help you, Lesley … You have to tell me what you don’t understand.”

I’m not sure I ever could. That I ever got “it.”

But I’ll tell you who does … my mother.

Because of her generous contribution to my “They Don’t Eat Alone in Spain” campaign, I’m more than half-way to my goal. And over-the-moon delighted and grateful.

What?! Fuzzy math? Lesley logic? The campaign says $1,956 to date. The goal is $4,250. Huh?? My mom is old school. She wrote me a check.

Thank you, Linda Park. For your contribution. And for always supporting me …

Pink hair. (“Not a word,” she’d mutter to my father after a trip to the hairdresser.) Bad behavior grades. (I once received an “unacceptable” conduct mark. She told the teacher in no uncertain terms this was preferable to me cowering in a corner. And afterward, convinced Coach Downs to give me a passing grade in gym class.) Pillbox hats to high school. (Enough said …)

Moves to San Francisco. Chicago. Seattle. Chicago. Spain. And Chicago again.

My choices may not have been her choices. But she “got,” and still gets, that this is my one and only life. And she bolsters me in any healthy way she knows how.

Like saying “yes” to my book “They Don’t Eat Alone in Spain” — a (mostly) happily-ever after, after divorce tale. The story of how 52 Artist Dates healed my heart and helped me to step into my one and only life. The life I always dreamed of.

mom-in-70s — Feeling held … now and then.

Want to know more about “They Don’t Eat Alone in Spain” — how 52 Artist Dates saved my soul after divorce and landed me smack in the middle of my own life — or how to contribute to my Go Fund Me campaign? Click here.

Artist Date 1.2: Life, Animated

July 24, 2016July 24, 2016 LesleyPearlLeave a comment

My commitment to the Artist Date began as a response to pain. To a man I affectionately referred to as the Southern Svengali and the short, sweet romance after my divorce that I couldn’t let go of. I sometimes forget that.

I forget because the weekly, solo play date as prescribed in the book The Artist’s Way, healed me from obsession I only hesitantly admitted.

I forget because two years of creative commitment, coupled with other work, allowed me to release him. Us. And my ideas about the way we should be in one another’s lives. (Which looks dramatically different than I had imagined. And while our contact can now best be described as sporadic, the connection remains strong … sweet and satisfying to both of us.)

I forget because it gently nudged me into becoming the kind of woman I dreamed of being. A woman engaged in life in interesting ways. Who does interesting things. Who has interesting conversations about more than relationships.

But today, I remember.

I remember as I find a hole in my schedule and watch my mind like a rubber band – snapping back to thoughts of the man I dated before I left for Madrid.

While I know there is no slipping back into one’s life as it once was, I had hoped we might explore dating again when I returned. But it hasn’t turned out that way. And in these quiet, alone moments, I find myself once again struggling with letting go. Of him. Us. And my ideas about the way we should be in one another’s lives.

And so it is grace when I hear the whisper that perhaps now is a good time to re-commit to my creative self again. That an infusion of new stimuli might once again quiet my mind and lead me back to the woman who has interesting conversations about more than relationships.

(While a year in Madrid seemed to have the makings of one grand, extended Artist Date, my days were filled with the stuff of life. All occurring in a language not my own. And Artist Dates became, unfortunately, sporadic.)

I peruse the movie guide — more concerned with time, location and the act of going than what will be projected on the screen – and choose a film.

I cut short a phone call. Say no to a text from a friend asking if I would like company. Both occurring after I’ve made the decision to go. The universe seeming to ask, “Are you sure?’

And I am.

I hop on my vintage 3-speed cruiser and pedal to the Music Box Theatre. Artist Date 1.2. (Officially, number 117 … renamed for congruence with my rededication to the practice and my return to Chicago.)

Grinning ear to ear, I purchase my ticket. Giddy to be with me.

This has always been the magic of the Artist’s Date. A turning inward. A return to myself.

Ironic, as the movie I have chosen – Life, Animated – is a documentary about Owen Suskind, a young man with autism and the tools he and his family use to pull him out from his personal world.

How Walt Disney movies become the lens and the lexicon for connection. The language for articulating what we all want. Friends. Romantic love. Work. A sense of purpose. And what we all feel from time to time, what Owen calls “the glop.” The inevitable pain when the things we want elude us.

We join him in watching scenes from Bambi on his first night alone in his independent living apartment – after his mother and father have left. And later, The Hunchback of Notre Dame when his girlfriend of three years ends their relationship.

Heartbreaking moments punctuated with joy and hope, most evident when Owen connects with his own passion and a sense of purpose. His “Disney Club” – where he and other adults with developmental disabilities view and discuss their favorite films. And experience an unscripted visit from Gilbert Godfrey, the voice of Iago from the movie Aladdin.

I sob witnessing their squeals of laughter, excitement and disbelief … as I am reminded that the universe is full of surprises. That it is always willing to conspire with us. And that our greatest joys often come packaged in a way dramatically different than we might imagine them.

That gorgeous moments of serendipity occur when we turn first turn inward – connecting with our tenderest truths – and then out – vulnerably sharing them. We allow the world to join our party. And sometimes even Gilbert Godfrey shows up.

Things Change. Feelings Change. I Change.

May 11, 2014 LesleyPearl5 Comments

I recently received a packet in the mail from my synagogue, alerting me that the anniversary of my birth mother’s death is this month.

One year.

I should have remembered, for so many reasons. But mostly, because the Mother’s Day card I sent her last year arrived on the day of her funeral. It was delivered after the service, while her sister, brothers, nieces and I cleaned the house, preparing it for sale.

The past three years, the time that I had known her, I struggled to find a card. I didn’t think of her as my mother or my mom. I already had one – the woman who raised me. But biologically, she was. No question about it. And I knew it would mean a lot to her to receive it. So I bought her one each year. Something not too schmaltzy. Not too love-y dove-y.

But last year was easy. We had had a tremendous healing that fall – when I flew to Charleston for what I thought was to say goodbye. In a sense, it was, as I never saw her again. However, she lived for another six months and during that time we spoke fairly frequently.

Things change.

When her brother phoned me last May to tell me she had died, I felt sideswiped.

My job back at the house was to toss everything that either wasn’t necessary or someone didn’t want. Notes on a criminal case she was following and perhaps hoped to write about. Minutes from meetings of the Daughters of the American Revolution. Charleston history. Credit cards that had never been activated. (As I write this, I look at my own on the table next to me.)

All of it, and so, so much more into big, black garbage bags used for lawn and leaves. One for shredding. One for tossing.

I came downstairs when I ran out of garbage bags and saw the card on the counter. I knew my own writing. I said nothing.

I went to the store for bags instead. While I was out, I texted my friend – the man who had captured my heart when I visited six months earlier – and confirmed our meeting the next day.

The Southern Svengali.

I fell head over heels over head for him. And when I left, I was certain I would never see him again.

I was wrong.

Me and my mom mom, the one who raised me.

I saw him the next night. People around us asked if we had known one another forever. It seemed that way.

Although I longed for more, our romance never moved beyond hours-long make out sessions on my first visit. And while intellectually I knew better, I was convinced I would never get over him.

I was wrong about that too.

We had a falling out after my birthmother’s death. He took exception to the moniker I had assigned him. He latched on to the deceptive characteristics of the Svengali character, while I chose to focus on the Svengali as teacher – the one who pulled out the artist inside, as he had me.

We haven’t spoken in nearly a year, although we have exchanged a few kind messages. He left Charleston for the winter, and I didn’t know about it for months as I had stopped visiting his Facebook page. And I fell head over heels over head for someone else. Which is all a complicated way of saying I did get over him.

Things change.

It is important for me to notice the changes, because lately it feels like nothing has changed. Including me. At times, I feel as sad and unsteady as when I moved back to Chicago in the late summer of 2011, just after my divorce. It is a feeling. It is not truth.

It hadn’t occurred to me that my heightened bout of sadness and dis-ease, at least in part, may be connected to the anniversary of my birthmother’s death. It is a comfort to recognize. To realize that the feeling of going backward may be connected to the act of reflection, of turning back.

The good news is, I don’t have to stay back.

My birthmother as a teen. She's in blue. And pregnant with me. — My birthmother as a teen. She’s in blue. And pregnant.

Inside the packet from the synagogue are several items. The words to Kaddish – translated as “holy,” – the ritual prayer of mourning, praising God. A showing of gratitude amidst pain. And suggestions for honoring the deceased through Tzedakah – an obligation of charity, righteousness.

I see these rituals as a reminder of what the Buddhists call “right action,” or what 12-Step programs call “doing the next right (or indicated) thing.”

I used to believe I would think my way to happiness, contentedness or change. That if I only dug deep enough I would finally “figure it out.”

What I’ve learned, and then forget and re-learn, is that things change. Period. That includes my feelings and my perceptions.

And that I change when I avail myself of the suggestions contained in the packet from the synagogue. What the Buddhists and the 12-Steppers and all the spiritual traditions espouse – prayer and action.

I do different. I feel different. I become different.

Artist Date 73: Navel Gazing

May 3, 2014 LesleyPearlLeave a comment

Navel gazing.

It is the story of my life. Or perhaps it is just my fear. That seemingly subtle line between interested self-awareness and narcissistic self-centeredness.

I begin blogging in 2012. Dubious. Wondering what, if anything, I have to say. And who, besides myself and perhaps a few kind-hearted friends, would care.

The questions become irrelevant as life becomes more Technicolor than I am used to. I have no choice. I have to write.

About Rwanda. My birth-mother’s death. Divorce. Romance. Healing.

The unexpected gift of my return to writing following a 15-year absence – what spurs me on in my early, tentative efforts and continues to spur me on today – is the return voices of others. The sense of connection, and its immediacy, is a balm.

I feel seen. Heard. Supported. And even, dare I say, useful. It seems the words I give to my name my experiences are words others have struggled to find.

In time, I find the writing itself is healing. That I am healing myself.

And yet I sometimes still wonder what, if anything, I have to say.

On occasion those closest to me take exception to my writing and I have to consider if what I have written is hurtful or dishonest. If I have compromised their anonymity. Their right to privacy.

And, when blog posts garner little response, I question if what I have to say is still relevant. Interesting. Of value.

Self-doubt. It is the devil of all creatives. Likely all people. But for those whose very lifeblood is the exercise of expression through words or clay or paint or charcoal. Violin, ballet or film. It can kill – the art. The process. The artist. Either metaphorically or literally.

Sunday – Artist Date 73 – is that kind of killer.

I am invited to Megan’s house for a salon. (Think 1920s Paris, the apartment of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas.) Her friend, Peggy Shinner will be reading from her recently published book of essays on the body, “You Feel So Mortal.”

Megan thinks I will enjoy the afternoon, both as a writer and a bodyworker. And, she thinks I should perhaps meet Peggy.

Approaching Megan’s door I hear piano music blending with animated chit-chat. Inside there is a table covered in finger foods. Slices of grainy-European bread topped with slices of egg and watercress. Cheeses, jams and chutneys. Chocolate-covered fruit. Elegantly-penned signs in front of each platter, describing its offering.

I make a cup of green tea and easy conversation with the handful of women I know.

Megan introduces Peggy and me, highlighting our shared status as writers and Jewish women. She asks me about my writing. I trip over myself, talking about my blog – life after divorce, not dating, Artist Dates, healing. My proverbial elevator pitch in desperate need of revision, or at the very least practice.

I tell her I believe it might be a book. She smiles.

Later, Megan summons us upstairs, inviting us to find a seat from a row of chairs. Peggy comes to the front of the room, opens her book and begins to read.

“I have Jewish feet,” she reads, continuing on about her father’s and how they are the same. Then digging deeper, she reads about Jewish genetics, especially as applied to feet. And how it was used against her people, my people, in Nazi Germany.

Her story is bigger than just her feet. Just her family.

I feel small. Self-important. Silly. Why don’t I include research in my writing? Facts. Or history — like she does in another essay about her mother and her relation to Nathan Leopold, who with Richard Loeb, sought to commit the perfect crime.

In a Q and A session following the reading, Peggy specifically mentions her desire to reach beyond her own story. To have a greater context.

I don’t buy Peggy’s book. I say goodbye from a distance, a wave, mouthing the words “Thank you.” I am in some sort of self-imposed shame spiral.

I come home and finish reading, “Seducing the Demon,” by Erica Jong. I have forgotten how smart, sassy and irreverent she is. Her casual use of “fuck” and “cunt.” She is my hero.

The book includes an essay that Jong read on “All Things Considered” in 2006. “On Being a Car Wreck” – a response to unfavorable reviews of this book.

“So, instead of seeing the review as a personal vendetta or sexist attack, I’m living with the fact that the critic simply thought my book sucked. So how can I write a better one?

“…Become less self-centered…How do I get over myself?…I’ve always wanted to improve and evolve as a writer…I’ve finally, at age sixty-four, gotten to the point where I realized that there are lives and characters more interesting than mine…”

She was sixty-four. I am just forty-four. Plenty of time.

Falling Into My Feet

January 29, 2014 LesleyPearlLeave a comment

I’m standing in the dark looking at my x-rays with Stephanie, my new chiropractor.

Tears stream down my face. I see my body. All of it. Even the IUD I had put in just before my trip to Rwanda because I vowed I would not have my period in Africa.

I can no longer turn away from the physical pain I so rarely mention or acknowledge. The pain that has been with me, moving but constant, for so many years.

Suddenly, I understand. As a bodyworker and massage therapist, it’s hard not to. But the dysfunction is so obvious a 4-year-old could point it out – kind of like “one of these things is not like the other.”

My left hip is significantly raised. Several inches significantly raised. I laugh and explain that I have a really bad case of what my friend Brian used to call “bus leg” – the stance he would take while waiting for one of four different buses that ran up and down Haight Street in San Francisco, one knee bent, leaning into the opposite hip. He would light a cigarette in the hope that this would hasten its arrival.

My body is telling my stories.

Stephanie laughs and points out that not only is my left hip raised, but my right hip is rotated forward. I step into this position – exaggerating the rise of my lift hip and the twist of my right – and I immediately feel the pain.

Stephanie shows me my cervical spine, my neck. It is devoid of any curve and tilted to the right. Cocked like a dog considering what his master is saying and whether or not to ignore it.

I tell her the tilt makes sense. That this movement, right ear dipped to the right shoulder is the motion I associate with my mugging in 2007.

Just two months sober and back in California, I am held up at gunpoint on a Sunday morning in Oakland. Blocks from where I attended massage school, where I taught, and where I treat clients each quarter, returning “home” for a busman’s holiday.

I pick up a coffee from Carerras and am talking on the phone with my friend Robyn when I feel a flurry of activity around me – circling, swirling energy, like a cartoon Tasmanian Devil. And then a gun inches from my nose.

“Give us your shit and we won’t shoot.”

“They are kidding,” I think. “In about 30 seconds they are going to say ‘We’re just fucking with you, lady,’ and I’m going to tell them this is not funny.” But they never say that. I think I am dreaming but I don’t wake up. And then I slip back through the rabbit hole of reality and scream a scream I didn’t know I had in me.

They just look at me.

I think about everything in my bag. My passport and how my husband and I are supposed to leave in five days for Mexico. The flash drive that has all of my files on it and has not been backed up. My keys. But I am frozen. I cannot say a word. I cannot push out a logical sentence like, “Let me give you the money but I keep the rest, ok?” Because this is not logical.

Instead, I cock my head to the right, opening up my shoulder and allowing them to take the bag I am wearing across my body. They pluck my metallic-pink cell phone from my hand and are gone.

I scream and piss myself running back toward the school. I have attracted attention and people who were not there just a moment ago are asking, “Are you ok?” I do not realize they are talking to me until one grabs hold of me. I tell her my story and she calls the police while a man takes my arm and walks me back to the school.

My friend Tim picks me up that afternoon. I get a new passport and go to Mexico. And when I return to Chicago, I engage in EMDR work – trauma therapy. I get relief. But the story is still in my body.

The story is my body. They all are.

The car accident on New Year’s Eve day when a Ford F-250 with a horse trailer goes through the back of my Honda Civic Hatchback. When my husband takes the car to the shop on January 2 and they ask, “Did everyone live?”

The piece of my cervix I have removed when I am 24 – ridding my body of its pre-cancerous cells. And the doctor in California who, upon examining me for the first time, says, “If anyone asks, this is not what an ordinary cervix looks like.”

My breast reduction when I am 40 and the shame and depression that follows me for years like an ex-boyfriend who won’t let go. Faint memory now, like the scars that run vertically from breast fold to nipple.

Healthy foot. Not mine. But what I imagine it looks like now.

My body has held on to each of these and made them its own – painting over experience with a broad brush stroke of pain. Not unlike the stories I repeat so often that they become my pained reality – whether or not they are completely accurate. My skewed perception becomes truth.

I come home from my treatment, take my boots off and place my naked feet on the hardwood floor. I feel the ground beneath me. Supporting me. As if for the first time. Whereas before I seem to have been standing on only a part of my feet, tottering.

I have fallen into my feet. Into my body. Into truth, and the possibility of a new story.

Your Honest, Open, Dirty, Loving Ways

November 5, 2013 LesleyPearlLeave a comment

My ex-boyfriend J is getting married.

I’ve often said nothing good comes from a sentence that begins, “So I was on Facebook…”

I actually spoke to J twice this summer. Once from home, the second time from the road -- from the guest room at my aunt and uncle's house. — I actually spoke to J twice this summer. Once from home, the second time from the road — from the guest room at my aunt and uncle’s house. With them here.

That’s how I found out. His engagement was at the top of my news feed.

My stomach sank to my feet. Hope dashed. Fantasy abruptly ended.

I felt sad. Silly. Stupid. Ashamed.

I love J. I always have. I knew him the second I saw him. I’m pretty sure it was the same for him.

We dated in our 20s. Ours was a sweet, sexy romance – albeit brief. Our breakup caught me off guard. Perhaps because he more than one time said, “I know I’m going to marry you. And we’ll have daughters. I know we will have daughters.”

I’ve written about this – about him, about us – before.

The last time we saw one another was in California – about 17 or 18 years ago – on Venice Beach. I was returning my roller skates. Until I found him on Facebook. His profile picture was a photograph from childhood. I wasn’t entirely certain it was him, so I wrote, “Is that you?”

“It is indeed me,” he replied. “And it is indeed you.”

In the years that followed, we wished one another happy birthdays, occasionally commented on each other’s status, and traded inside jokes – mostly about Philip Roth and liver. We occasionally had lengthier exchanges. Like on his birthday in 2012. I was delayed in Brussels. He was on his way out for a crab dinner. I told him I was getting divorced.

This past summer we spoke for the first time since Venice. After hearing his voice, I remarked, “Oh…that’s what you sound like.” I had forgotten.

That night he told me why he ended our relationship. I had asked many times over the years but he had never responded to that particular piece of the conversation. This time he did.

He said I woke something up in him. A piece of him that desperately needed healing – healing I couldn’t give him. That he had to do for himself.

He had been attracted to me. To our sexual energy. And that something about my “honest, open, dirty, loving way” got under his skin. “In a good way.” And he ran.

He affirmed that I had been important in his life. Just not in the way I had hoped to be.

I knew J was in a relationship and had been for many years. That he always exercised terrific boundaries.

And yet, there was always a little piece of me that held out hope … that maybe one day J and I would find our way back to one another – in that way. I didn’t live my life maneuvering around it. Obsessing about it. But it was there.

And now it isn’t anymore. It can’t be.

A couple of weeks ago J showed up in my clairvoyant reading and healing. He had in the previous one too.

The first time he showed up, the clairvoyant saw us holding hands, smiling, and taking a big leap together. She said we may never connect again romantically, but that we are inextricably bound for life.

I didn’t like that so much – the first part.

The second time he showed up, she simply said, “You just let go of him.” And that 10 percent of my energy returned to me immediately.

I had no idea. I hadn’t even tried. And I didn’t like that so much either.

But perhaps she was right, because this afternoon I did something that surprised me. I was drafting a personal note to send, but chose to post a comment to his wall instead – just like hundreds of his other friends had done. Just another Bozo on the bus. Not claiming any special status.

“Mazel Tov! Wishing you much joy.”

Not even an “XO” – our usual sign off.

It is not untrue. This is what I wish for him. In the most honest, open, dirty, loving way.

A Year After the Day Before Everything Was About to Change

July 20, 2013 LesleyPearl3 Comments

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

A year ago today I was in Brussels.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Artist’s Date 19: We’re Only As Sick As Our Secrets

May 4, 2013May 4, 2013 LesleyPearl5 Comments

I met Catherine Kaikowska my senior year of college, in an 8 a.m. poetry class.

She was all black. Turtleneck. Boots. Leggings. All hair. Brown. Shoulder length. Wide and kind of frizzy. She hiked herself up on the desk, crossed her legs in front of her and cracked open a can of Diet Coke. “Fuck, it’s early,” she mumbled.

I liked her right away.

She liked me too, and invited me to meet her at The Peanut Barrel – an East Lansing institution known for good burgers, cheap pitchers of beer, and peanut shells covering the floor – where we sucked down Labatts Blues, chain smoked and talked about sex until closing.

She was from Ohio, and used to work the door at a club where Chrissie Hynde played before she made it big with The Pretenders. The place she vowed she’d never return to until that time.

I haven’t thought about Catherine in a long time. Until last Thursday, when I slipped a biography of Anne Sexton into my robin’s egg blue Samsonite carry-on bag, circa 1972, and boarded a plane bound for Nashville.

I was first introduced to Sexton in Catherine’s class, along with Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich and her mentor at Michigan State University, Diane Wakoski. Yet my interests lied with the testosterone-rich voice of Charles Bukowski. The beatnik fantasy of Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

I pulled the book out – a tomb, really, nearly 500 pages, hardcover and wrapped in acetate that is supposed to protect it – at Midway Airport, after checking my orange hard-case luggage and picking up a mediocre Americano. Artist’s Date 19, surrounded by fellow travelers with faces tucked into ipad and smartphone screens.

If we are only as sick as our secrets, then Sexton was the picture of health – for she had none. She was transparent, as I have been described. Only more so.

Teacher and mentor John Holmes begged Sexton not to publish her darker, highly confessional poems. Advice she ignored, and turned into, “For John, Who Begs Me Not To Enquire Further.”

And yet, clearly she wasn’t well, as she took her own life at 45, just two years older than my 43.

Sexton threaded the stories of her life through men – how they reflected her. She was wildly flirtatious. A presence. And, at times, profoundly sad.

She tended to sexualize significant relationships. She had fluid boundaries.

She felt, at times, in competition with her mother. And was considered alcoholic.

She gave away her heart too easily.

In “More Than All the Rest,” a poem to her long-term psychiatrist Dr. Martin Orne, she writes:

“Oh, I have raped my inner soul/And give it, naked, to you,/Since my warm mouth and arms/might love, and frighten you.”

I saw myself. I looked around the airplane to see if anyone else saw me too.

I felt sick, like the medical-school student convinced she has contracted each disease she studies.

But I am not Anne. I didn’t suffer post-partum depression. I didn’t hand over my children to be raised by my mother-in-law. I don’t have children. I’ve never been pregnant.

I haven’t been institutionalized. I didn’t take my own life.

Sexton’s gift was making something out of her sick. Creating art. Allowing others to see inside the most shameful parts of herself and whisper, “me too.” In the process, she found both “her people” and herself.

Me too.

The plane touched down. I was 78 pages in. I slipped an index card into the book to hold my place, on it is a prayer I had written. My own words. My own healing.

A Wandering Jewess

My Journey Back To Self

Tag: healing