Everything I Didn’t Write — July and August 2015

November 15, 2015November 15, 2015 LesleyPearl3 Comments

I love words.

This should hardly be a surprise as I call myself a writer. Used to make a living as one. As the words “Left” and “Write” are tattooed on my wrists.

And yet, since leaving the United States on July 28 with a one-way ticket to Spain, I’ve written little.

Little about what it is to live in a country where I hardly speak the language. Little about the heartbreak of leaving a deep and unexpected love. Little about the humbling that accompanies beginning yet another career at the age of 45. And little about what it is to turn 46 in this place I now call home.

I’ve written little about my private victories. About being asked for directions and being able to give them – albeit in English. About when Spanish words tumble out of my mouth without my thinking – simple phrases like, “Para llevar for ella, para aqui para mi” – and having them understood. About getting paid in euros. Jumping through hoops of securing a Spanish ID card. And fulfilling a dream I’ve had for as long as I can remember – to live overseas. A dream so faint, so distant, so seemingly unattainable that I forget it was my dream and that I am actually doing it.

I’ve written little about my work teaching English, about my friendships with fellow wanderers and about my travels since arriving. Except on Facebook, where I have posted short, pithy, true-in-the-moment whispers of my life in Madrid, and many, many photographs.

What follows is a chronicle of my first 30-plus days here in Madrid – as they appeared on Facebook.

July 30

I have a Spanish phone number. (Message me and I will give it to you.) Most challenging interaction I’ve had so far, but I got it done. People are amazingly kind and helpful — like Jose, another customer at the post office who offered to help translate. (I will be going back tomorrow to get a box to receive “real mail” now that I can provide a local number.) He said my Spanish is good. I do not agree, but I think I am maneuvering well having been here less than 36 hours. Off shortly to an intercambio at J+J Books to meet Facebook friend Robert. Thanks for the connection, Jessica.

July 31

Third time IS the charm. Third day at the post office. Finally had everything in order to get a box. Here are the keys!

I wanted to take a photograph of the women who greeted me there these three days in a row, who were so patient and who were able to finally hook me up. They couldn’t imagine why. “Ayuda me.” (I meant to say “You helped me”…I was close, and they understood.) “It is my job,” replied one, in English. “It is my job.” Amazing.

August 3

First day of school.

August 4

How much do I love my girls in Chicago? How much do they love me? Thanks for lifting me up. XOXO

August 4

(Meme from aforementioned great love – posted to my page)

“Hmmm.

We can skip the wine.”

August 5

It begins to feel like home when I run into people I know on the street. I remember when it happened in San Francisco and Chicago. Now Madrid.

August 9

Falling head over heels over head for this city.

Magical skies. The energy of its people spilling into the streets after dark. A surprise misting by the evening sprinklers in Retiro Park.

Lunches with new friends — yesterday at Botin, the world’s oldest restaurant, today on Plaza de la Independencia — running into others on the streets.

Hard to believe I arrived less than two weeks ago. I feel so present, so here…

August 15

Officially overwhelmed…

August 16

Sunday morning in Retiro Park. Why yes, I should be doing homework. But first — sun, stillness and a shot at serenity. Refueling following a Saturday of letting go…and filling up for the week ahead.

August 17

Trust. Just got my hair cut by someone named Pepe. He does not speak English. I hardly speak Spanish. I think we did okay.

August 25

Woo hoo!! Student of the week. Not bad for the oldest student in the class…

Tomorrow is the BIG grammar and phonics exam, as well as my final observed teaching. All good juju welcomed.

The past four weeks have been humbling, exhilarating and, at times, overwhelming. In the home stretch…looking forward to what comes next.

August 28

DONE! When they handed out the certificates, they dubbed me Lesley~I will conquer Spain~Pearl. Your collective mouth to God’s ear.

August 29

I am walking to pick up the keys to my new apartment. At the corner of my street and Calle Mayor I see this banner. I look at the door and know it like I know my name. Every hair on my body stands up and I begin to weep.

My first night in Madrid, 16 years ago with my then husband …our waiter speaks perfect English. I ask him about it and he tells me he learned it on a kibbutz in Israel. I mention I’m Jewish and that my grandmother did not like visiting Spain because there weren’t any Jews here. After dinner, he sends me across the street … to where I am standing now, to this place with the beautiful doors.

How is it I am living here 16 years later…literally here? With the Jews? With the vintage camera shop? The bookstore? And the bakery? With a landlord and roommate named Maite, a former UN translator just five years my mother’s senior … in an apartment with an unheard of eat-in kitchen, a balcony overlooking a plaza, a piano, and lots and lots of original art. A home I didn’t even have to look for it…it literally came to me. (Thanks Kylie.)

I’m not quite sure what to think … Moving is hard. And it is magic. And I am definitely, definitely supposed to be here.

August 29

(In response to Facebook memory “On This Day…”)

On this day in 2012, moving back to Chicago. With John and Karin on the exact same day one year prior.moving from Chicago to Seattle. Today I picked up the keys to my new digs here in Madrid. Something about August 29 and big movement in my life. Only thing missing is John and Karin…

August 30

Home. Fully unpacked for the first time in more than a month. (Including Ganesh. Thank you, Clover. And a hand-spun wool bowl made by Deb.) Also for the first time, I moved in a cab. Two suitcases. Two backpacks. A couple of shopping bags. Many thanks to Nikki who packed me the first time. (This time was easier but not nearly as much fun.) And to Jennifer who helped get me from Salamanca to Opera. As I write this, I am reminded that I don’t do any of this alone.

I’ll Be Your Mirror

October 1, 2014 LesleyPearlLeave a comment

Overlooking Lake Michigan, at Dawes Park...where, up until this year, my congregation has done tashlich. — Overlooking Lake Michigan, at Dawes Park…where, up until this year, we have done tashlich.

A couple of weeks ago I received an email from my rabbi. It was not directed to me individually, but to the entire congregation. After 17 years with our synagogue, he was leaving.

I wasn’t entirely surprised. But I didn’t know how I felt about it, or what to say, either. So I did nothing. No email. No phone call. Which, for this rather impulsive person, is growth.

Except that I continued to do nothing.

I skipped a part of Rosh Hashanah tradition, tashlich – joining the rabbi and cantor and other congregants at Lake Michigan to empty my pockets of the residue of the past year. That which I no longer needed. And considered skipping second day Rosh Hashanah services too.

This was highly unusual.

I’ve been blessed with a close, personal relationship with my rabbi. He led me through my conversion and through my get, my Jewish divorce. I traveled to Africa with him and other congregants during the summer of my divorce, and I have met with him more or less monthly for the better part of the past five years.

And it hit me. I was avoiding. Or at least I think I was avoiding. Rather than facing the pain of change, of uncertainty, of not knowing what to say, I chose to ignore it, ignore him – telling myself I would say something eventually. When I had the right words.

I wondered if these were the same thoughts that The Chef and Mr. 700 Miles had when they chose not to further pursue a romance but didn’t or couldn’t say anything about it.

I was doing what had (potentially – I’ll never know for certain as I do not live in their minds) been done to me.

I first had the realization I was not free from this behavior a couple of weeks ago. Just before returning to San Francisco, my home for 14 years.

I had a friend there I knew I owed an amends to – I just wasn’t sure what it was.

About four or five years ago I told her I needed space. Without warning. Without lead up. I did not return a couple of her phone calls in a timely manner, and when she called me on it – in a voicemail, simply asking if she had done something wrong and if, in fact, I was ok – I responded with an email, something along the lines of “I need space. I’m sure you understand.”

She replied that she did not understand, but would honor my request. And, with the exception of a single message wishing me well I was moving to Seattle, and my thank you in response, we had not spoken since.

Until a couple of weeks ago.

When, preparing for my trip, I realized I had done to her what had been done to me — almost. I left without explanation – almost without a word.

I phoned before my visit and asked if we might meet. If I might right my wrongs. She graciously said yes, and we did.

My amends was simple. That I had walked away when she needed me most, with barely a word or an explanation. That I had been selfish. That I had been wrong.

And then we talked.

About who she had been in my life and who I had been in hers. How she remembered things and how I remembered them. About why I had not been able to be there for her – because of “my stuff” and how it and I got triggered. Things I had never told her.

There were tears. And there was healing, for both of us.

I found myself thinking that perhaps The Chef and Mr. 700 Miles had come into my life, at least in part, to be my mirrors. To show me my behavior.

Mr. 700 Miles finally did make contact with me. His words were simple. That he had “left” because he fell in love with someone else. That he was sorry. And with those words that last bit of wondering, that last bit of residue, was gone. Like the residue I would normally rid myself of at tashlich.

I wanted to write back, “Thank you,” or “Was that so hard?” But I did nothing – other than thank him and wish him well in my heart.

However, I did make contact with my rabbi. I sent him an email that night after the tashlich that wasn’t. I apologized for having been so silent. I told him I had assumed he might be overwhelmed by the response of congregants and others to his news.

And I told him I didn’t know what to say. But that I honored his decision. The graceful way he was moving through this transition. And that I hoped we would find our way to a new chapter in our friendship.

I did go to second day Rosh Hashanah services, where we talked briefly about what I had written. My tears drowning out my words.

I let them flow, rather than trying to talk through them. No longer avoiding. No longer doing what I thought had only been done to me.

Artist Date 81: I Could Swim In Your Voice. And Drown In My Own.

July 22, 2014 LesleyPearl2 Comments

With storytellers Carmen and James. Carmen with trophy from the Dollar Store for Best Story of the Night. — 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 5^th-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.

Artist Date 79: Aho Matakuye O’yasin

July 1, 2014July 18, 2014 LesleyPearl4 Comments

Bent and tied river willows form the structure of the sweat lodge. Photo: Paul Tootalian — 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.”

Artist Date 78: Both, And.

June 24, 2014 LesleyPearl2 Comments

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.

Writing AND Living. Both, And.

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

February 20, 2014 LesleyPearl10 Comments

Love is pain.

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

Love. Joy. Desire.

Trust. Faith. Intimacy.

Jealousy. Anger. Betrayal.

Heartbreak. Wound.

Anxiety. Disillusion. Despair.

Loss. Grief.

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

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

Joy. Desire.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

November 10, 2013 LesleyPearl1 Comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But I don’t.

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

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

I am so lonely. She holds me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Waiting For This Moment, With No Idea What Comes Next

August 28, 2013 LesleyPearlLeave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tomorrow we will begin our journey home.

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

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

And in about an hour, I will be too.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Artist Date 34: In It’s Proper Place

August 12, 2013 LesleyPearlLeave a comment

I hired a professional organizer.

I have admitted that so many areas of my life had become unmanageable, and then asked for help. So why not here? I’m tired of the stacks and stacks of paper that have no home.

I am, as Maggie – the professional organizer – said, “the tidiest, unorganized person” she has ever met.

We met last week for a consultation. My assignment prior to our first paid meeting, this coming Tuesday, was to go to The Container Store and “just browse.” My only guidance was to think of “boxes” – four of them. In. Out. To Be Dealt With. Want to Keep – Just Because.

We agreed I would take photographs of items that interested me, but that I would buy nothing. It seemed like an easy Artist Date – Number 34.

I was mistaken.

I rode my bike over to The Container Store this afternoon. Tossed my basket in a cart and began my work. Up and down every aisle.

Almost immediately, I was overcome with sadness. All around me, groups of people. Couples shopping together. Roommates shopping together. Moms and dads and bound-for-college kids shopping together. Together.

I remembered shopping here with my ex – when we moved to Chicago for his residency. I felt wistful stumbling over the collapsible mesh cubes – the kind we bought to store our record albums. He didn’t think they would work well, but I knew better. Three of them sat under the Parson’s table, holding our music collection – his and mine. I left them in Seattle.

Albums I bought in high school at Sam’s Jams in Ferndale. The Specials, debut album of the same name. Elvis Costello, “Punch the Clock.” Howard Jones, “Human’s Lib.” My mother’s copy of the original Broadway production of “Hair.” My brother’s copy of Queen, “A Night at the Opera.” There is a piece of masking tape on the front cover with his name and our telephone number written in magic marker. I’m not sure how I ended up with it.

I knew every word to every song, having spent hours on my blue-shag carpeting, in my bedroom, singing along with the words printed on the album sleeves.

I don’t have a record player, so I left them. Plus, they were too cumbersome to pack. Funny thing is, it’s not the lost records that choked me up. It was the damn mesh cubes.

And the laundry aisle. I remember spending hours trying to find just the right laundry bin to collect my massage sheets and take them back and forth from my office to home, to be washed and folded. First I bought a cart with the idea that I would take the train to and from my office. With sheets. In the winter. I quickly gave up this environmentally-conscious fantasy and started driving to work.

I found a lot where they cut me a deal because I was a local business owner – $14 a day. A steal, considering I was right off of Michigan Avenue.

Tony, the Palestinian kid who hooked me up, got fired right before I moved away. I always felt badly about it – even though I hadn’t done anything wrong. I used a red, collapsible “laundry” backpack to haul my sheets the six blocks from the lot to my office.

I missed having someone to discuss options with today. I suppose that is why I took photographs, to discuss them with Maggie.

I looked at fabric bins. Metal bins. Cardboard bins – some made of bright, solid colors, others printed with flowers and graphic designs. Bins made of recycled paper. I snapped photographs of each product and its accompanying card, describing the item and listing its price.

I got distracted by travel supplies. Luggage tags. Hanging dop kits. (I need a new one. Mine is torn.) And Ziploc bags for creating more packing space – like the space bags I used when moving cross-country. I stacked my dresses and trousers inside, while Michael used a vacuum cleaner to suck the air out. We were giddy when the first was complete. Shrink wrapped clothes.

I remembered that I needed hooks for hand-towels in my bathroom. Milk crates for my prayer and meditation nook – to lift my deities and ritual items off of the floor, and to be covered with a piece of fabric I bought in the market in Kigali.

I also remembered that Maggie and I discussed finding a solution that didn’t involve putting anything else on the dining table – which is also my writing desk, my art table, and where I spend about 80 percent of my time when I am home.

I looked at hanging solutions. There weren’t many. A few different kinds of folders that hang from the wall. Some painted metal. Some plastic.

Then I wandered into the Elfa department – custom solutions for the closet. So complex there are employees specific to just this department. I know people go wild for the yearly Elfa sale, as it is pricey.

And yet, open, wire drawers on casters seemed to make sense. With a top to hold my printer. I looked at other shelving units as well. I remembered our conversation about rethinking how I consider my dining area. That is it really more multi-purpose. Think function rather than fois gras or fondue. I serve neither. But I do throw a hell of a dinner party. And it needs to work for those occasions too – especially as Rosh Hashanah is right around the corner and for the past 19 years I have, more often than not, hosted a holiday meal for stray Jews and others.

I thought about my friend Tom who is going to string two lines of wire across the wall opposite the windows so I can hang photographs, cards and collages with metal clips – slightly reminiscent of the drying lines in the darkroom I once inhabited.

I picked up several catalogs, tucked them into my bike basket, and did a final sweep of the store.

I felt myself welling up the entire ride home. I wanted to be excited but I wasn’t. I was sad. Acutely aware that this was yet another step in creating my home, my life, without my ex. Acutely aware that we don’t talk much lately – my choice, to save both my heart and my sanity. All of this necessary, but still painful – nearly a year after our divorce was final. Time takes time.

I thought about something Maggie said. That there is always something more under the disorganization – something else going on. She believed the stacks of paper, the lack of “home” for my things, was me being afraid I couldn’t put my hands on something when I needed it. A need to keep all of my things near.

My friend Kevin refers to this as my issue with object impermanence. The notion that until a certain age, children do not believe in that which they cannot see. Put a towel over your hand, et voila, you have no hand. At least in their minds.

It’s like that with me and people sometimes. If I can’t put my hands on them – see them, feel them, hear them – it is as if they were never there. It’s better than it used to be. At least to me. I’m not sure what Kevin would say.

So this organizing business – finding a home for my things, learning to be ok with them in their proper place – maybe it will spill over into the other areas of my life. That the people I can’t put my hands on anymore – for a variety of reasons –perhaps they too will find new homes. Tucked away in my heart. Never gone. But in their proper place.

A Wandering Jewess

My Journey Back To Self

Tag: loss

Everything I Didn’t Write — July and August 2015

I’ll Be Your Mirror

Artist Date 81: I Could Swim In Your Voice. And Drown In My Own.

Artist Date 79: Aho Matakuye O’yasin

Artist Date 78: Both, And.

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

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

Waiting For This Moment, With No Idea What Comes Next

Artist Date 34: In It’s Proper Place