Big Kahuna Yard Sale. The Chicago Mosaic School. Viva Vintage Clothing.
I am walking down Ravenswood Avenue, following the elevated Metra rail tracks. A pathway I have taken hundreds of times. Except that I usually don’t go south of Montrose. I haven’t had a reason to. And I usually walk on the east side only.
Except today.
Artist Date 82.
Earlier tonight I ditched my plans to attend an end of Ramadan feast for Muslims and Jews. I am tired and overwhelmed and this small gesture seems like a big step towards self-care.
It is not easy as I am of the variety who fears missing out on something fantastic. Of the variety more comfortable going and doing than sitting and being. Even though I have maintained a meditation practice for more than 12 years. Even though I make my living, in part, doing massage – the stillest work I can imagine.
I like an Artist Date rich with stimulation – music, prayer, food, potential tumult. Like an end of Ramadan feast.
But today I choose to fill myself in the quietest, stillest way I know how. Doing one of the only two things that made any sense to me during my divorce and for months after. I am walking. (Writing being the other.) Walking somewhere familiar. (Ravenswood between Lawrence and Montrose.) And then somewhere new. (Ravenswood between Montrose and Irving Park.)
It seems like such innocuous newness. Hardly worth mentioning. And yet, I see all sorts of things for the first time.
A Latin restaurant. A pilates studio. Ballroom dancing lessons.
A beer-tasting room. Several artist studios. AVEC painted on a building. And again on a bridge.
French taggers?
I take photographs of the tags and send them to a friend along with a text that reads, “Um…how do you pronounce that?!”— referencing the hotel concierge who suggested he and his date have dinner at (emphasis on hard A)vec.
He texts back “Aye-Veck!” and “Aw, Heck” and continues on and on in French. I get about two-thirds of it, then confess I know just enough French to order pastry and ask for directions without embarrassing myself in Paris. (I may or may not understand the response, depending on the speed of the speaker.)
We go back and forth like this for a bit and I realize I am very much AVEC. I am very much WITH my friend. Which is lovely and fun. I adore him and we laugh a lot. But this is not why I am here, wandering Ravenswood Avenue, alone.
I think about the rules I created early on for my Artist Dates: Do not do anything I wouldn’t do on a “real” date. Answer a telephone call or text. Listen to music. Check Facebook on my phone.
Eighty-two dates in, I’ve loosened up on the rules, perhaps even forgetting them – until now.
I stop texting and slip the phone in my pocket.
I am amazed how quickly, how easily I can be pulled from myself, from one moment into another, from what is right in front of me.
Forty-five minutes ago I took my ear buds out and paused Aretha Franklin on Pandora. The sound of the Queen of Soul distracted me from myself, so I put the music away. Now the words and this relationship distract me. I put them away too and return to myself.
With storytellers Carmen and James. Carmen holding Dollar Store trophy for Best Story of the Night.
I am nearly seven years sober and I am sitting in a bar by myself. On its face, this does not sound like a good thing. Except that it is a very good thing.
I’m at Story Club – a monthly “live literature” event where three featured performers tell true-life stories, and three audience members, invited up at random – their names pulled from a monkey carved out of a coconut, the words “Have Fun” scrawled onto the base – do the same. Artist Date 81.
My feet are slick with massage oil and slosh around in my orange peep-toe wedges. My head throbs, a reminder of the two cysts I had removed from my scalp just this morning.
I take a seat at a table up front, and immediately wonder if I should sit on a stool at the bar instead – where “singles” sit. Even though I have trouble seeing and hearing and engaging when I am that far from the stage.
I wonder if I should see if I can join another party of one at one of the banquettes against the wall.
I wonder if it is ok to take up this much space – me alone. It is a question that has haunted me my entire life.
I stay at the table, order a club soda with lime juice, pull out my reading glasses and dive into my book.
I am sitting at a bar alone with a club soda and a book.
At the table to my right, a gaggle of girls talk about San Francisco. About writing. And about a secret Facebook group of women writers – 26,000 strong.
I want to tell them I used to live in San Francisco. That I too have been wooed into the fold of these female wordsmiths. That they both excite and frighten me. And that I’m not even sure how I came to know them. But I say nothing.
My name is pulled from the coconut monkey – the first of the evening. I climb to the stage, take a breath and begin reading…”The waxy brown cotton of my lapa feels soft between my fingers. Like my body. Like my heart.”
My voice is sing-song-y and gentle. A heightened version of what I call my massage voice. It is sweet and loving, lilting and melodic. It tells you the things you wish your mother had told you. That you are human. That you are lovely. That you are good.
I hear my poetry professor Catherine Kaikowska reading her work – perched on top of a desk. Her legs crossed, Diet Coke in hand. Hair wild. “Deja-rendevous. Deja rende, rendezvous.” Hypnotic. I could swim in her voice.
But I would like to drown my own. I have fallen out of love with it. My voice. My story. Just this moment. I am bored with it. All of it.
I have not written about love and pain and loss. I have not written about sex. I have written about my connection to my body, to my spirit. It feels esoteric. Less familiar. Less sexy.
I have left out the juicy bits. The part about tearing off my lapa – my West African dance skirt – and jumping into a pond naked with my crush after the sweat lodge. The part about him plucking me out of the water – naked – when my strength failed me and I could not pull myself onto the high dock.
I have not written about any of it. I have not given him a clever moniker and chronicled the story of my heart. I have held it instead. Held my heart. Held my words. It feels unfamiliar. Untrue. It is the story I am used to telling.
But tonight, James and Carmen tell it instead.
James (AKA GPA – Greatest Poet Alive) who has committed to memory the story of Maria breaking his 5th-grade heart when she circled “no” in response to the query in his note – “Will you be my girlfriend? Yes? No?” Not even a maybe. Not even a spritz of Geoffrey Beene’s Grey Flannel to the paper could sway her.
Carmen who invites us into her bedroom and her psyche at the moment when her friend with benefits asked her to talk dirty to him in Spanish. Her words are funny and irreverent, honest and sad. She rolls her Rs and says things like, “Aye, Poppi.” She feels like a caricature.
They are storytellers.
I fear that I am not. That I am only a writer. At least right now.
Carmen – one of the gaggle of girls talking about San Francisco and the secret group of women writers – tells me otherwise. As does James, when we gather together after the final performance.
My story is lush, he says. That he closed his eyes while I read. Listened to my words. Let my voice paint the pictures for him.
He let my lilting, sing-song-y massage voice – the voice that tells you that you are human, that you are lovely, that you are good – my storyteller’s voice, tell him a new story.
Bent and tied river willows form the structure of the lodge. Photo: Paul Tootalian
The waxy brown cotton of my lapa feels soft between my fingers. Like my body. Like my heart.
I thought the African skirt would become this way over time, as I danced in it – but it remained rigid and stiff. Until today, when, in the dark and heat of the sweat lodge – Artist Date 79 – it softened, pinning itself to my body.
I roll the fabric between my fingers like rosary or prayer beads. I feel the moisture accumulate between my breasts – grateful for their small size. Grateful for the darkness to peel off my sports bra, unnoticed, and let my t-shirt from the Knoxville Farmers’ Market cover me. Given my druthers I would wear nothing. But I respect the modesty requested at this ceremonial gathering of men and women.
I close my eyes, breathe in the sweet sage, and fix my ears on the beating drum and the sound of my friend Paul’s voice.
It has been a journey just getting here.
********************
I arrive despite a blinding thunderstorm, the need for on-the-road car repairs, and a bit of information which shakes my sense of perception and causes me to question if this is right for me, right now. And with the aid and calm of friends who ferry me to and from.
I walk about a quarter of a mile through wet, freshly mown grass to where the lodge is set up – my orange, peep-toe wedges gathering silky, green slivers.
I remember wearing these shoes through Rwanda two summers ago – collecting the red earth of the land of 10,000 hills between my toes – and recalling Patsy and Edina schlepping their Louis Vuitton bags through sand in the Morocco episode of the BBC’s Absolutely Fabulous. Dragging my rolling suitcase filled with towels, sweat and apres-sweat clothes, I feel like a bit actor in the Sweat Lodge episode.
********************
Paul is draping blankets over the hut he constructed out of river willows – collected from his sister and brother-in-law’s property a few miles away. Rocks are heating in a pit outside of the lodge, and he has built an altar from the dirt inside of it.
Paul is the third in a line of spiritual teachers with the same name. The first being my university religious-studies professor, the second, the one who taught me to meditate – leading me through initiation with an offering of fruit, flowers (star gazers, my favorite) and the bestowing of a mantra.
Our paths have been crisscrossing for most of our lives. We agree the universe has been conspiring for us to meet.
The Altar. Covered Lodge. And our guide, Paul. (I call him “The Reluctant Shaman.”
There are eight of us, the last arriving in a John Deere Gator Utility Vehicle. She looks like an African Queen, regal in her loose batik dress with dragonflies on it, her grey hair braided at the temples and wrapped around her head like a crown. Her face is at once both sad and serene.
She reminds Paul they have been in ceremony together – with her former partner. The break-up is obviously fresh.
Words tumble out of my mouth about divorce, change and the painful nature of endings – no matter how right or how kind. How people will say all sorts of stupid things. And that she is, no doubt, on the precipice of some sort of adventure. She smiles in a way that tells me she has lived a thousand lifetimes and knows that this kind of pain is just part of it. That she has chosen this and is not fighting it.
I mention that I wasn’t sure I would make it here today. That I wasn’t sure it was right for me, right now. “Until now. You are why I am here.”
********************
Paul smudges each of us with sage and we enter the lodge on our hands and knees, proclaiming “Aho Matakuye O’yasin – Greetings, All My Relations.”
I remember Patsy smudging my ex and I when she officiated our marriage. And me doing the same for my friend Chase when her divorce was final, smudging the entire house – making it “her own” again.
********************
It is hot and humid inside. I feel a wave of nausea wash over me as Paul explains what will happen in ceremony.
Rocks. Herbs. Water.
Chanting. Praying. Smoking.
Complete darkness.
Connectedness to the earth. To one another. To ourselves.
I am afraid. Afraid of the total darkness. Afraid of what I might feel, what might “come up.” Afraid I cannot physically or psychologically endure this – even though Paul has assured us that this will be a “gentle sweat.”
But the heat is like a balm – different from the still Midwestern humidity that settled heavy around me just moments before. The drumming and chanting force all thoughts from my mind. I only hear my friend’s voice – strong, confident, prayerful – and the African Queen’s. It is sweet and slippery and hard to hold on to. But very much there. Just as I feel her, very much there, next to me.
Everything softens. My body. My brain. My lapa. I feel the sweat sliding down my body and I am deliriously in love with it. This body I have fought for so much of my life. That has brought me here and is sustaining me today. It is strong and small and very, very feminine. I feel my hands pressing into the earth beneath me. My legs. My feet. My ass. The soft dampness of moist earth is flesh, the spiky grass is hair and we are one.
Apres sweat — eyes wide open. Photo: Paul Tootalian
I pray for my stepfather and my two girlfriends who are battling mightily. And I ask for prayers for myself. For compassion and acceptance for myself, for where I am, not where I think I should be. My voice cracks and I add, “May we all have compassion and acceptance for ourselves and for one another.”
I pray for the man who hurt my heart not so long ago. I call out his name when I am certain no one can hear me.
********************
I smoke from the Chanupa — the sacred, ceremonial pipe. Sober nearly seven years, my addict is awakened.
I am back in college, sitting in a circle. My friend Brian stirs the bowl and lights it while I suck in all that I can, holding it in my lungs. I converse easily while I do this – like one of the big boys.
But I am not talking. And this is not weed. It is tobacco, although it tastes like juniper and pine. It is ceremony. It is holy. It is community. It is what I longed for, sitting in a circle like this, so many years ago.
********************
I weep in the darkness. I am certain no one can hear my dying animal letting go. And it is over.
We crawl out on our hands and knees, just as we had entered, saying “Aho Matakuye O’yasin – Greetings, All My Relations,” once again.
Paul greets each of us with an embrace, and we greet one another in the same way. The African Queen’s eyes are wordlessly different. Lighter. As if the color has changed. She presses me tightly to her.
The group walks towards the house for a celebratory feast, but I stay behind and wait for Paul.
While I am waiting, I do cartwheels around the lodge. One after the other after the other, until I feel dizzy. I feel the pull of my pelvis – the source of chronic pain – and I welcome it. I feel the lightness of my body, of my mind and I welcome it, give thanks for and to it.
I had believed I was here to meet the African Queen. That was only half of the truth. In the stillness of the after-lodge, I know its other half, its twin — I was here to meet myself. “Aho Matakuye O’yasin — Greetings, All My Relations.”
I just wrapped up a contract work gig – my first “straight job” in 12 years.
By straight I mean sitting at a desk, in front of a computer, and working 9 to 5. (Cue Dolly Parton.)
At first I wasn’t certain how I felt about the opportunity. I wasn’t clear on my role. My body hurt from sitting. My creativity suffered.
And then I hit my stride.
I appreciated having a place to come to – a single place, as opposed to the many I traverse to and from as a massage therapist and Weight Watchers leader. I appreciated earning a consistent paycheck. I loved working in a team toward a common good – and that I got to spend five days a week with one of my best girlfriends while doing it.
I even enjoyed the sometimes hour-long commute down Lakeshore Drive, listening to NPR.
And before I knew it, it was over.
I was recently telling my friend Gene about this while catching him up on my days.
I mentioned that had I missed several weeks of Artist Dates. And that when I went on one last Saturday – number 78 – I still hadn’t blogged about it a week later.
“Sounds like you are living life rather than writing about it,” he said.
Ideally, I would do both.
However, his comment reminded me of a conversation I had a few months earlier with my friend Nithin. He had gone to a concert the night before and noticed the number of people watching the performance through camera phones – recording, photographing and uploading to Facebook. Documenting rather than experiencing. At least to his eyes.
I wondered if I had been doing the same. Living with an eye on writing.
——————–
The Saturday before last, two days after my contract job ended, I said no to a sweat lodge in Michigan and to a birthday party across town, and called it self-care.
Instead, I rode my bike, ate ice cream from Jenni’s on Southport (Bangkok Peanut with coconut and dark chocolate) and napped naked under a ceiling fan, wrapped in crisp gray sheets.
And when I woke, I headed across town for a long-overdue Artist Date, the first in weeks – a reading at Quimby’s books, celebrating and promoting the publication on my friend Mike’s book Heavy Metal Movies.
He’d been working on it for years. And I could not be more delighted for him.
Mike took the stage in a blue, fuzzy hat with horns – think Fred Flintstone and the Royal Order of Water Buffalos – and then shared it with his wife and a host of friends who gave voice to their own stories on what Mike referred to as “heavy metal, hard movies, and the torrid, torpid twain where both doth meet from a pantheon of ferociously funny, horrifically hilarious headbanging crackpots, visionaries, and mirth.”
I’m not a heavy-metal girl. And at least one of the readings more than verged on the grotesque. And yet, none of that mattered.
Each had moved beyond ego, to share their words and their work. Work that came from their own passions, their own living. Their presence onstage served as a reminder of possibilities — that there is, in fact, room for each of our voices at the table, and on stage — and also an invitation to do my own work, from my own living. In sweat lodges and in bookstores. On my bike and in my bed. Fully awake and sometimes napping.
I am writing my morning pages – one of two “core practices” in The Artist’s Way, my unofficial roadmap through the past two years of transition – the daily purging of random thoughts taking up real estate in my head. It is Saturday, the end of the week, and I realize I have not planned an Artist Date (The Artist’s Way other core practice) for myself.
A part of me rejoices in my loosening the vice grip I seem to have on everything. A part of me laments.
Am I entering the transition from passionate love to either compassionate love or break up? The six-month mark in a relationship when partners finally rouse themselves from bed and can think of something other than sex and one another.
If it is, I’ve had a hell of a run – 77 weeks of Artist Dates and only recently have I become somewhat bored, lazy with the idea of planning a solo excursion for myself.
Trouble is, I am the type that loves to be in love – the first six-months girl, as evidenced by my blogs. The Southern Svengali. Mr. 700 Miles. My Divorce Buddy. Ridiculously romantic stories with heartbreaking endings.
My lament is about wanting to hold on to my ridiculously romantic story with myself – with my Artist’s Dates.
——————–
Italy – quite possibly the sexiest, most romantic place on the planet – calls like a siren.
I Google “volunteer, Italy” and in minutes am poring over possibilities.
I have volunteered overseas twice before – in the South of France and in Rwanda (the trip that gave form to this blog). Traveling this way gives me a deeper sense of people, place and purpose. It is cost effective. And I meet other unaccompanied adventurers I might not otherwise know.
I find “my trip” through Volunteers for Peace – two weeks with the Milano Film Festival. Only seven volunteers are accepted, and a letter of motivation is required.
I get writing.
I send my short essay to my friend, Melinda for feedback. She likes most of it, and gently offers, “Is this an opportunity to introduce yourself as a creative, fun, movie-loving, gelato-eating event coordinator who is a world traveler and wants to visit Italy without referencing your divorce?”
Yes, it is. And so I do – removing the reference to my divorce from the essay before hitting “send.”
——————–
And so this morning, noodling over my morning pages, I settle on a trip to the library or bookstore, to pour over travel books. Artist Date 77.
I think about Powell’s and flash on a date I treated my ex to when he completed his first year of residency – a bike tour of Chicago, highlighting book stores, record stores and pastry shops.
Recalling what I have done for someone else but am not doing for myself lights a fire in my belly.
It is warm and stuffy in the library – a small, neighborhood branch. I am surprised how many people are inside, considering outside holds the promise of the spring we Chicagoans have been waiting on. Most of them appear to be studying – determined.
I find the Italy section in the stacks and am disappointed to not find a single travel book. No Fodors, Frommers, Lonely Planet.
I pull La Bella Figura: A Field Guide to the Italian Mind, Traveling in Italy with Henry James, and D.H. Lawrence and Italy from the stacks. I finger through the first, I am somewhat amused but it is not what I want to read. I am distracted by the underlining and highlighting that mars the second. I put them back, hold on to D.H. Lawrence and check out – unsatisfied.
At the Book Cellar I grab three titles and settle into a somewhat comfy chair wedged in the corner of the shop.
I am quickly overwhelmed. My plan is to travel on after the Film Festival (I am already assuming I am going.). But where? Venice? Rome? Florence?
The Amalfi Coast? Sicily?
Too many choices. Too much for a single trip. Too much to consider.
This was supposed to be fun. It isn’t.
I close the books and return them to the shelves – still unsatisfied.
Perhaps it is enough to know they are there when I am ready – tomorrow, next week, next month. When I know more, like if I am in fact going. (I will receive notice in three to five business days.) Or if I am going somewhere else. Like to Reykjavic for its film festival, or Portugal to help restore a traditional, community bread oven – other possibilities.
Perhaps all that really matters is I took action to rekindle this romance – the only one I have any control over. I recall our couple’s therapist, Robert insisting that even if only one of us is doing the work, the relationship will change.
In 7th grade I kept an oversized scrapbook on the top shelf of my closet, the same place I kept a bag with all of my “important papers” – report cards from every grade, drawings I had made for my mother, my adoption paperwork.
Baryshnikov — Then. Photo: Galeria de Bailarines.
The scrapbook was a gift my brother received for his Bar Mitzvah that I co-opted. The pages a mismatched collection of images and daydreams affixed with Scotch tape. The musings and considerations of a not-quite woman beginning to define herself.
Pictures of Miss Piggy. An interest I borrowed from my cousin Wendy Schechter and her obsession with all things pig. A review of the book, I, Me, Mine by George Harrison – clipped from the Detroit Free Press. An homage to my best friend Nicole, who had recently introduced me to John, Paul, George and Ringo. An attempt to blur the lines between us, like we did with our matching Tretorn sneakers and Bermuda Bags.
But some of it was purely mine. A coin that my mad crush Kenny picked up off of the floor and handed to me, marked “Lucky penny from Kenny.” A newspaper photograph of Mikhail Baryshnikov. All muscle and tights. Breathtaking.
Neither a pig nor a Preppy Handbook has crossed my threshold in more than 30 years. I do still see Kenny on occasion. And while he has been married to the same man for more than 25 years, I still have a crush on him – a source of joy and amusement for us both.
And last Sunday I saw Baryshnikov for the first time – Artist Date 76.
I receive a text from my friend Stephanie on Friday, asking if I have $50 and want to see Baryshnikov. Oddly, I hesitate. It will mean missing dance class. Irony. I mention this to my friend Pam, who responds, “Are you crazy?” She has a point. This is an icon. A legend. Sarah Jessica Parker’s boyfriend on Sex and the City.
I text back with a definitive “Yes.”
Intellectually I understand this is once again NOT an Artist Date as I am not venturing alone. (I am, however, getting better at breaking the rules.)
But it does fill the criteria of filling my creative coffers. And, perhaps more significant, it reminds me of the juicy, sexy, charmed life I lead. The one I am beginning to reclaim – and by that I mean once again notice – now that there is little distraction in the boy department.
But this evening I am distracted. I Google Baryshnikov. He is 66. And stands 5’6.”
Does he still dance, I wonder, recalling the email I received earlier in the week from Hubbard Street Dance. The subject line “Guess Who Dropped In?” with a photograph of him smiling, observing rehearsals.
I have no idea.
In fact, I don’t actually know where I am going or exactly what I am seeing – I didn’t ask – just that I am going and that I will see him.
Baryshnikov — now. Photo: T. Charles Erickson.
And I do. And he does…dance, that is. Just not as I imagined.
His slippers traded for jazz shoes, his tights for pleated trousers. His dance, a part of the story but not the story. The story. Two actually. Adapted from the writings of Anton Chekhov and performed as Man in a Case at the Museum of Contemporary Art.
He glides across the floor softly, alone – his arms holding the lover in his mind, in his heart. Jazz on the radio, his guests dozing after dinner. It feels spontaneous – but of course isn’t – like my mother and I swing dancing on the kitchen linoleum.
My heart leaps.
So convincing in his roles, I have forgotten who he is.
But now I remember, and his every movement is a dance. The gesture of his hand. The roll of his hips. His torso leaning forward and back, flirting but never touching. Sexy.
When it is over, I join the throngs from my fifth row seat, rising in applause. My eyes wet. Looking to him as if I might catch his glance when the lights go up.
I do not.
I do not tell Stephanie about it — my folly, my fantasy — either. Or about my scrapbook. Baryshnikov, the pigs or the penny.
I hold them to myself instead – the lines un-blurred. Mine alone, still.
I didn’t even pretend to go. Or to dress up what I did do instead, like the way I used to dress up my alcoholism. Wrap it up in trips to wine country and witty repartee with vintners and sommeliers only to be told by a stranger in no uncertain terms that wine aficionado is just a fancy word for a drunk.
No, I didn’t pretend that a day at home cooking constituted an Artist Date. (Although it might have.) Or that the date I had with my friend Clover before she gave birth to Juniper Maya, thus setting her life on a wildly new trajectory, somehow counted either.
My friend Lynn told me this would happen eventually.
I recognized that my process — the weekly Artist Date — had become a practice. And that it had unintentionally given a sub-theme and a structure to my blog, and the story of returning to myself post-divorce.
She said there would be weeks that I wouldn’t go, or that I wouldn’t blog. And that those experiences would be worthy of words too.
So here they are. Without apology.
It is both a relief and a disappointment.
——————–
Friday afternoon Pam asks me about my weekend plans.
Party. Haircut. Client.
Weight Watchers. Dance. Church basement.
I confess I am not sure where or how or if I might squeeze in my Artist Date.
“You can’t always be prolific,” she replies.
Somehow I think the rules don’t apply to me. That I should be above them. Better than that. Less than human.
That if I make a commitment, I have to stick to it. Period. Which is ironic as I am greatly irritated when held to words I ostensibly said 20-plus years ago – possibly in a blackout.
I come home from work feeling tired, overwhelmed and jangly. At a friend’s suggestion, I call the hostess and offer my regrets – letting her know I will not be able to attend. I tell her the truth, which she not only understands but supports.
It occurs to me that perhaps I am the only one keeping score.
The next day my client cancels. The day prior, my own massage is canceled too.
It feels like a message from the universe. All of it. Slow down. Lie down. Say no.
Stay home. Pay some bills. Write.
Ride your bike. Go thrifting with a girlfriend. Eat gelato for no other reason than it is sunny and more than 70 degrees.
Be less frantic.
Make room for nothing.
——————–
I remember being an editor at the college newspaper when the Gulf War broke out. The entire staff gathered around the small television precariously placed on top of a metal file cabinet in the back of the newsroom, watching CNN.
We are too young to remember Vietnam. We have not lived through a war.
We dispatch the writers and photographers on to campus to capture the mood and the moment. In the newsroom, we debate our position and how we will represent it on the Opinion Page, of which I am the editor.
We consider blacking out the entire page – as it was rumored our predecessors had done when the United States put troops in Vietnam.
Instead we run a single photograph taken that evening – a student sitting cross-legged, lighting a candle. In prayer and hope, I imagine.
I think about that big black page as I begin writing today. Of darkness. Nothingness. And the statement it made.
I don’t have a statement to make. My lack of Artist Date just isn’t that important. The only war going on is inside of me. The only dying off I need consider is that of old ideas.
I decide the absence of Artist Date 75, and the absence of spin or excuse, might serve as a metaphoric kindling of light. A prayer and a hope that I might quit keeping score. That I might continue to make room for nothing. That I might allow myself the space to change my mind. And to be gloriously, imperfectly human.
It is Saturday. My friend Amy has invited me to see the world premiere of Cicada at the GreenHouse Theatre – Artist Date 74. It has been a labor of love – hers and others – for three years. She has asked all of her friends to bring their friends. To spread the word.
I say “yes” to the first part, “no” to the second – honoring my commitment to my weekly solo date. To myself. And write it in my calendar in pen.
But now I want to change my mind. I want to see a boy.
He is young. Younger. He visited my OKCupid profile. I visited his.
He reminds me of Mr. 700 Miles – my last love, my last heartbreak. Right down to the part where he moved home to be with his mother when she was ill. That’s the part that really knocked me out about 700 – his seeming unselfishness and big, shiny heart, which he proudly wore on his sleeve.
It is flawed from the start and I know it. Making contact because he reminds me of someone I used to love. Someone I am trying to let go of and clearly have not entirely because I am still writing about him. Because I am attracted to someone who reminds me of him.
We exchange a few messages. And then we talk. He isn’t 700. But I like his voice and there is something sweet and spiritual inside of him. We talk about gratitude. I tell him I’m sober – something I have consciously not mentioned in my most recent dating forays up until now, for no other reason than it is not yet germane.
We make a date for the following week, based on my schedule. But I want to meet sooner. I think of inviting him to the play with me, reasoning that I sometime go to events with others and still count it as my weekly Artist Date. Even though it isn’t.
But I know this isn’t the answer.
I meet him in the afternoon instead. Prior to the play, when a client cancels. We go for a walk at the lake. I tell him I had thought of inviting him to the play but didn’t – explaining the ritual and commitment of my weekly Artist Date. He says he wouldn’t have gone, he wouldn’t want to get in between me and me. My words, not his.
I had the same experience with 700 in January when I let it slip I would skip my Artist Date to talk with him on the phone for the first time. He said he would feel horrible if I missed the movie I was planning to see and suggested I call him later – which I do.
It is astonishing how quickly I will abandon myself.
——————–
It is a story about holding on. And letting go. About memory. Identity. The stories we repeat.
Conversations with ghosts that allow us to live on with those no longer present. Some haunting and angry. Some decidedly sweet and tender.
I think about my own ghosts. About serendipity – the times 700 has recently “showed up.”
An invitation he sent months ago to download Facebook Messenger pops up on my phone without cause or reason – his name and profile picture announcing the old request.
The license plate frame on the car in front of me, from a car dealership in the town where he lives – a village of only 5,000.
I whisper, “Are you there?” Sometimes I swear I can feel him. I wonder if he is thinking of me in those moments. I like to think so.
It hurts watching Amy, as Lily, struggle to let go of the one she loves best.
It is not a single action, letting go. More a process. A dropping off, bit by bit, until there is nothing left but the shell of what once was, and you don’t even notice until someone asks you about it.
Like when I went to the Facebook page of the Southern Svengali for the first time in months, and saw he was living in Boston. How could I not know? And how is it, I could not care? I was happy for him. For the work he was doing. But I was not affected by it.
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Two days later I cancel my second date with 700 Stand In.
I am overwhelmed. I am working three jobs. Plus writing, dancing, and ostensibly looking for work.
I have not exercised since Sunday. I am again sleeping less than six hours a night. My apartment is a sty.
Something has got to give. The choice is obvious. I choose me.
I let the few other men I have been communicating with know I am on hiatus until June 12 – when my contract work is completed. I give them my email address and I disable my OKCupid account.
I feel sad. Like I have given away a puppy. I forget doing what is right does not always feel good.
I know if I can let go of the attention, and the possibility of romance at least for now – the rest will drop off too. Like it always does. Until I don’t even think of it, think of him, until his name is mentioned. And by then 700 miles is just a measurement of distance between here and there.
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.
On Wednesday, Linda emailed me to cancel our date to the Art Institute. Understandably, as she recently fell and cracked a few ribs. She is on the mend, but not quite well enough to go out.
And just like that, the universe provided me with my Artist Date – Number 72.
I’ve been struggling with them lately. Planning. Going. Writing.
I thought about messaging R. to see if he wanted to meet me. We’ve been messaging one another on OKCupid, but haven’t met yet. We will next week, over coffee.
Yes, I just not-so-subtly slipped that in…that about two weeks ago I somewhat hesitantly joined the world of online dating. Although I haven’t had a date yet.
Yes, my entire blog centers on life after divorce. The heart-breaking dalliances, and the more than year-long commitment to dating myself, courting my own creativity. But I neglected to write about this. Amazing.
Yes, blog forthcoming.
And yet, something knew better. A higher self? Just the universe at work? For several weeks now, despite my feelings and my best efforts, time and space for my solo sojourns has serendipitously appeared. And my feet have followed. Habitual. Almost like brushing my teeth. But coupled with a craving –for time. With me. Outside of me.
And so I nix the message to R. Grab a banana and a latte at Starbucks – the divorcee’s dinner – and head to the Art Institute for the lecture, “Return of the Modern Masters.” I hadn’t even realized they’d been gone.
Crossing the street I see A. reading a newspaper, waiting in line to enter the museum for free after 5 p.m. I invite him to jump the line with me – pulling out my member card.
We are early for lecture. We wander into the Nilima Sheikh’s exhibit “Each Night Put Kashmir in Your Dreams.” I saw it the day Mr. 700 Miles slipped out of my life without a word. When the heart space between us –which up until then had been just inches –became a chasm I couldn’t seem to reach across, no matter how I tried. Artist Date 68.
I tell this to A. while we view, Farewell,” a red scroll with two bodies entwined. A man peeling open his chest, exposing his heart. It reads “If only somehow you could have been mine. What would not have been possible in the world?”
I tear up.
“I’ve done that too,” he says quietly. Somehow, this makes me feel better.
He tells me he couldn’t face hurting her. That he told himself he was sparing her. Sober now, he understands he was only sparing himself.
I tell him that 700 Miles is active in his addiction to drugs and alcohol. He nods. “That’s what we do.” This is not the first time I’ve heard this in regards to him and our story. I nod, but I still do not understand it.
I show A. Marc Chagall’s “America Windows” outside of Rubeloff Gallery, where the lecture is. He hasn’t seen it before. I tell him that Ferris kissed Sloan here. I am not sure he is old enough to remember the movie. I feel like a docent, showing A. my Art Institute.
The lecture moves quickly – giving context to the positioning of the paintings and sculptures that have been returned to their rightful homes.
I am tempted to take notes. I have before, knowing I was going to blog. Sitting with A. I feel somehow self-conscious. As if he might ask why.
I think about my friend Nithin commenting on kids and not-kids filming concerts on their phones. Experiencing the music through a screen rather than directly. Disconnected. Too busy “showing” everyone where they are – via Facebook, Twitter and the like – rather than “being” where they are.
I imagine my note taking might fall into the same category. I allow myself to just listen. I free myself from the need to remember.
A. and I part ways after the lecture. He is meeting a friend for a concert at the Chicago Theatre. (I wonder if he will watch it through his phone.)
I climb the open-backed stairs – the kind that make my ex-husband nauseated and panicky – to the third floor galleries, to see the “Returned Masters.”
The galleries are crowded. I wander. Thinking about the lecture. About artist life in Europe before and during WW II. But ultimately seeing the work through my own lens.
I drink in the juicy, ripeness of Max Beckman’s “Reclining Nude.” And I wonder why I am so set on waif-y thinness for myself.
I smile at Chagall’s “White Jesus,” recalling it is a favorite of the current Pope. I notice my tendency to breathe deeply when facing his work. As if I might inhale something of him.
I recall “Human Figure with Two Birds” from the Max Ernst show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I greet it and Loplop – the bird which comes to represent Ernst, “the private phantom attached to my person” – like an old friend.
I giggle at the “Exquisite Corpse,” a game played on paper by Man Ray, Andre’ Breton and Yves Tanguy while they waited for WW II to end – each adding to an unseen figure, folded back accordion-style, out of sight.
I long to feel the smoothness of Alberto Giacometti’s “Spoon Woman” and Constantin Brancusi’s “White Negress II.”
The “returned Masters” have helped return me to my own. Out of my head and my heart. Into my feeling body. Like the Masters, I hadn’t even realized it had been gone.
A Wandering Jewess 