Artist Date 107: As It Was Promised to Me

May 1, 2015May 1, 2015 LesleyPearl1 Comment

I have come to crave myself.

I was promised this would happen.

The first time when I left Seattle — my therapist gave me a copy of the poem “Love After Love” by Derek Walcott.

The time will come

when, with elation

you will greet yourself arriving

at your own door, in your own mirror,

and each will smile at the other’s welcome.

and say, sit here. Eat

You will love again the stranger who was your self.

Give wine. Give bread. Give back you heart

to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you have ignored

for another, who knows you by heart.

Take down the love letter from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,

peel your own image from the mirror.

Sit. Feast on you life.

The second time was a few months later, when my friend Sarah sent me a text, a photograph of a page in a book and a couple of highlighted lines — I do not remember the exact language, something about “holding on to the jewel that is myself” and “no more compromises.”

Both sounded like a bunch of pretty words and glib proclamations — neither which I could relate to.

My heart was broken. I was broken. Being alone was the worst thing I could imagine, as I was sure it was an indicator of what my future looked like.

I wanted to dress my wounds with the skin of another, healing from the outside in — although I didn’t realize it at the time.

And yet, I put the Walcott poem up on my refrigerator, next to a portion of the poem “Dreams of Desire” by Oriah House…

I want to know if you can be alone

with yourself

and if you truly like the company you keep

in the empty moments.

…and next to a tiny square of paper that had fallen from one of my journals. It was old — leftover from my single days in my 20s in Detroit. I do not know the source.

Most of us approach things exactly the wrong way around. First we want someone else to make us feel secure by lavishing us with affection and approval. But what you find out is that you are the source of love. When you have done the right inner work, you find that those black holes, those persistent needs and demands have been covering up the source of love, the boundless ocean of love within you.

It seems a higher part of me deeply understood the power of words and of seeing the same words day after day, and it believed in the ability of words to burrow into my subconscious and change me.

And so I find myself aching to be alone and responding with what Twyla Tharp calls “the creative habit” — the Artist Date, number 107.

It is unplanned.

I see posters for the show “Archibald Motley: Jazz Age Modernist” on my way into work and decide to go. I mention this, throwing in the words “Artist Date,” to my colleague Nancy.

“Oh that’s right…you have a date tonight,” she says, not quite hearing or grasping what I have said.

It is true, I do have a date tonight — the first in many, many months. But first I have a date with myself, I explain.

I bound up the stairs of the Chicago Cultural Center as if to meet a lover. Instead, I meet myself along with the paintings that have called me here.

They are vibrant, sensual, humorous — each telling a story that can only be told by one who has lived it.

Gazing in silence, the chatter of my mind clears. I can hear my breath, my heart. I can feel the cool of lush trees and grass and even a man’s suit — painted an Easter green in “Sunday in the Park.” I can feel the heat of pink bodies — all breasts and asses, high heels and cigarettes (Delightful!) in “Between Acts.”

I can feel my own body soften and fill with a sense of contentedness that comes with giving myself what I need most — in this moment it is time, attention, quiet, a sense of normalcy.

Perhaps this is why I take an Artist Date today — before a more traditional one– so that I might fill myself with these things and not mistakenly ask another to, so that I might have a chance to greet myself at my own door and feast.

Artist Date 101: Si, Es Verdad

February 1, 2015February 1, 2015 LesleyPearlLeave a comment

2015-01-22 18.18.44 — ” Los Dias al Reves” — “Inside-out Days” by Pep Carrio. Part of “Think With Your Hands” exhibit at Instituto Cervantes.

I’m trying to download the app that goes with the exhibit “Think With Your Hands.” I have been unsuccessful so far.

No matter, I am taken with the art — even without the 3-D animation I can control through the app. If I can download it.

Organizer calendars, the kind kept pre-smart phone, the kind I still keep, filled with images — collage, watercolor, pencil –one for each day for a year. Then for three more. In the fifth year, a commitment to fine-line marker only. The sixth, full-color on both pages of the spread. More than 1,000 images, 1,000 days. ” Los Dias al Reves” — “Inside-out Days” by Pep Carrio.

Frames loaded with seemingly disparate objects, a wooden cut-out of a woman the only constant. Wearing a dress made of Swiss cheese. Sleeping in a horse’s belly. Swimming, torso-less. All arms, legs and head. “Los Suenos de Helena” — “Helena’s Dreams” by Isidro Ferrer.

I am marking my own commitment, my own days — Artist dates, 101 of them today. Swimming toward my own dreams — across the Atlantic, to live and to work.

No husband. No boyfriend. No booty call.

No kids. No pets.

My parents are healthy.

Not even a plant.

If not now, when?

I have been dreaming of living abroad for as long as I can remember. Only really pondering it since my divorce almost three years ago. Seriously considering it since returning from Italy in October.

And now planning it — researching TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) courses, reading blogs, Skype-ing with friends of friends living and teaching overseas and having coffee with those who once did.

Not so long ago, the only dream receiving this sort of effort and attention was love. I only knew it when it was no longer true — a few months ago, when the Reluctant Shaman came to visit.

The morning he left, we meditated in front of my altar. Then he ran his fingertips from the center of my forehead out to my cheeks — opening my third eye — wrapped his arms around me, kissed the space between my brows and said goodbye.

When he was gone, I lamented that we were only friends.

“He lives in Michigan, you live in Chicago,” I said out loud, to no one.

“His dream is to build a retreat center, yours is to live in Europe.” As the words tumbled from my mouth, I could feel the next ones forming, pushing out, birthing themselves.

“I have a dream bigger than a relationship,” I said, excitedly, repeating the phrase as if to make certain it was so.

It was so. A revelation. A victory.

One that is now being tested — less than three months after my big aha — at Instituto Cervantes, Artist Date 101.

"Los Suenos de Helena" -- "Helena's Dreams" by Isidro Ferrer. Part of "Think With Your Hands" exhibit at Instituto Cervantes. — “Los Suenos de Helena” — “Helena’s Dreams” by Isidro Ferrer. Part of “Think With Your Hands” exhibit at Instituto Cervantes.

I’m fiddling with the app when a man approaches me.

“Hello,” he says, slipping behind me so I have to turn around to face him. “How are you?”

I search my mental Rolodex, trying to locate him. How do I know this man? Clearly we’ve met. Why else would he stand so close? Act so familiar?

I tell him I am fine and inquire how he is, stalling. He grins at me.

I got nothing.

Finally I ask, “Do I know you?”

“No,” he replies. “I just wanted to meet you and thought I’d say hello.”

This never happens to me.

I laugh at the novelty of his gesture, the simple wisdom in making an introduction to an attractive stranger without premise.

We exchange names and handshakes. He asks what brings me here. I tell him I am moving to Spain.

“Where?”

“I’m not certain yet.”

We talk about Barcelona — Gaudi. The beach. Sagrada Familia. Madrid — The capital. Prado. Picasso’s Guernica. A partner program whereby I can learn Spanish part-time and receive a student visa, allowing me to work legally.

He shakes his head. How can I “just go?” Don’t I have things? Stuff? Property?

“Very little,” I offer. Whittling my life down to two suitcases shouldn’t be too hard — I hope.

He tells me he taught English in France, when he was in his 20s. I am not in my 20s. Not even close.

I smile, thank him for introducing himself, and excuse myself — returning to the exhibit.

I attempt to comprehend the Spanish spoken around me. (I get about one-sixth of it, at best.) And by the artists during their talk, taking off the headset that pipes in translation. (I get even less.) I try to download the app again. I never do.

None of it matters. Only that I “passed.” That I chose a dream bigger than a relationship. That I chose me.

A higher mark than I ever received in high school Spanish class.

Si’, es verdad.

Postscript: Less than 12 hours after my Artist Date, my path became clear. Seven days later, I put down a deposit on coursework in Madrid. I leave July 2015.

Artist Date 99: Like a Motherfucker

January 7, 2015January 7, 2015 LesleyPearlLeave a comment

Forgive me, it has been 16 days since my last Artist Date and 19 days since I’ve blogged.

I feel like a Jewish Catholic at confession. Except the only one I’m asking for absolution is myself.

I miss my alone time. Artistic input into my body. My head feels foggy. Squeezed. Heavy and thick. As if there is no room…no room for anything more. No room for anything at all.

I am daydreaming about when and where I can get my fix — my dose of solitude and creative sustenance.

I didn’t expect this, didn’t expect to be “hooked” when I entered into this commitment a little more than two years ago. I didn’t know what to expect. Only that I needed help.

I was newly divorced. My biological mother — who I had only met just four years earlier — was dying. And the relationship I wasn’t having — the one with a handsome southerner who lived some 900 miles away, who I kissed for two nights like a horny but innocent teenager — was effecting my relationships.

My friend S. told me in no uncertain terms she could not, would not, hear his name again.

I was on my knees, desperate. The humbled position where all change grows from.

On Christmas night 2012, a voice I’ve grown to know — my wise-self voice — suggested I work through The Artist’s Way again. Adding that this time I go on weekly Artist Dates — a once every seven-days solo sojourn to fill my creative coffers — as is suggested in the book.

I went to lectures, museums, opera. To pottery classes, dance performances, walking tours. Movies, thrift shops and book stores. All of it, alone.

On occasion, I miss a week — choosing to spend a final day with a friend before she becomes a mother or sharing my artsy outing with another — but it is rare. And I’ve never gone this long without…until now, at the Davis Theatre — Artist Date 99.

My therapist in Seattle was the first to suggest Cheryl Strayed. “I read her before Oprah,” she insisted, imploring me to pick up Wild, as well as Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar — the best of Strayed’s advice column from The Rumpus.

Queen Anne Books placed a special order for both books. They arrived the day after I left for Chicago.

I mostly forgot about them until this past summer — two years later — when my friend Lori insists I buy both books. She tells me “writers read,” and drags me into the Book Cellar where she puts a copy of each into my hands and guides me to the cash register.

Both are dog-eared now, and tear-stained. Sentences underlined, entire pages bracketed. Words resonate. Lessons I do not want to forget. Whispers from the universe reminding me where I came from, where I am today.

“Unique as every letter is, the point each writer reaches is the same: I want love and I’m afraid I’ll never get it.” (Tiny Beautiful Things)

“…for once it was finally enough for me to simply lie there in a restrained and chaste rapture beside a sweet, strong, sexy, smart good man who was probably never meant to be anything but my friend. For once I didn’t ache for a companion. For once the phrase a woman with a hole in her heart didn’t thunder into my head.” (Wild)

Sitting in the darkened theater, Strayed words — now images — alive before me, I say, yes. And yes.

I still fear the possibility of not finding romantic love again, but it doesn’t drive me anymore. It doesn’t dictate my every action. My every reaction.

I can be in “chaste rapture beside a sweet, strong, sexy, smart good man who was probably never meant to be anything but my friend.” Lying next to one another on my couch following morning meditation, the Reluctant Shaman’s lips pressed to my forehead — my third eye.

I no longer ache for a companion. The words, “I do not wish a man were here,” crossing my lips as I cross the Seine last October, alone on my 45th birthday..

Strayed took to the Pacific Crest Trail — alone — to learn these truths. To feel them in her bones. Mine was a different path, made of clay and dance and music. Of film and paint and spoken word. Of pasta and gelato and nearly three weeks in Italy. All of it, alone. But the truths, the same.

“So write…,” Strayed writes in Tiny Beautiful Things. “Not like a girl. Not like a boy. Write like a motherfucker.”

Yes.

Looking for Ladybugs

October 10, 2014 LesleyPearl3 Comments

My friend Kerry told me to look for ladybugs while I was in Italy.

He was referring to the part of the movie, Under the Tuscan Sun, when the sexy, older ex-pat from London tells Frances, a recently divorced American reinventing herself in Italy, that looking for love is like looking for ladybugs. That when she was a child, she would spend hours looking for them, eventually tiring and falling asleep in the grass. And when she awoke she would find herself covered in them.

I wasn’t sure I was looking for love in Italy. Or even a romance – although I assured him and others that my heart was open to the possibility. However, as the days to my departure date grew more near, I was more than certain I was here to do something.

I saw my first ladybug when I arrived in Umbria, 24 hours after arriving in Rome.

After I nearly took the wrong bus from Arezzo to Cita de Castello – twice – and a young man named Leonardo approached me, offering help in English. After we spoke for nearly 45 minutes – talking about writing and language and being “black sheep” – and friending one another on Facebook.

After Giulia and Elide – my contacts for the AltroCioccolato, the “other” chocolate festival I came to volunteer for – picked me up at the bus station. And after bringing me to Roberto’s house – one of the festival’s founders – where I sat in the sun while he plied me with buffalo mozzarella, tomatoes – shiny with olive oil, and espresso.

It was a few hours later, driving to pick up groceries at a biological food co-op. A large ladybug graced a sign announcing that our destination, The Happy Worm, lay ahead.

The next day, I saw three more. One embellished a pizza parlor sign. Another, actually a mess of them, covered a car steering wheel.

The final one landed on another of the volunteers – Duncan, the youngest of the group and the only other American. He asked me if I wanted it, knowing nothing of Kerry and our conversation. I told him I did. He put his arm next the mine and the ladybug crawled over to me without any prodding. And refused to leave.

That night, I found myself in the city’s hospital. What had merely been a health nuisance while I was in the states had escalated enough for me to make contact with healthcare professionals back home at .99 a minute.

I was fairly certain I would have difficulty getting a live voice at Northwestern Hospital, so I called my physical therapist to ask her advice. She told me to call my doctor. That she wasn’t comfortable giving advice on this matter. When I told her I didn’t have an internet connection, she looked up the number for me.

Several holds, disconnects and phone calls later, I was advised by a medical assistant to seek attention.

I knocked on Giulia’s door and told her I needed to go to the hospital. As she dressed, my roommate Ingrid, from the UK, offered to join us for moral support. In the piazza at midnight in this sleepy village Giulia – a native of Italy – asked around for a cab. A stranger offered to drive us, dropping us off at the hospital and wishing us buona fortuna — good luck in Italian.

Ninety minutes later I was warmly assured by a doctor that I was in fact, ok. I received a bill for 25 euros which I was instructed to pay the next day. And Elide – whom Giulia had called – drove us home.

Earlier that evening, in the hospital, I broke down in tears. Overwhelmed. Afraid. And aware that my ex-husband, a doctor – was no longer “my person.” That I was “alone.” Giulia responded, wrapping her arms around me and saying, “We are your family.”

And I realized that ladybugs weren’t just on signs and steering wheels and the arms of volunteers. That ladybugs – that love – followed me everywhere. All the way to Italy. To Umbria. Just south of the Tuscan sun.

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 89: Fifteen, Sixteen, Seventeen…Twenty-Two

September 26, 2014October 31, 2014 LesleyPearlLeave a comment

Walking west on the new Bay Bridge, while the old one is torn apart, cast away... — Walking west on the new Bay Bridge, while the old one is torn apart, cast away…

I am a marker of time. I look for patterns in numbers, hoping to find or make meaning of them.

Like last week.

I had been aware of the numerical arrangement in front of me for awhile.

September 15. My spousal support would be cut almost in half. September 16. Two years since the dissolution of my marriage was made final. September 17. My Divorce Buddy’s birthday. The man who walked lock step with me on this path. Also the day I would board a plane bound for San Francisco, for a friend’s wedding.

The same friend whose home I stayed in the last time I was in the Bay Area. When every morning I would write “I am alone because I am getting ready to be alone.” The words gliding off my pen, seemingly without thought or effort on my part. When my then-husband asked for a divorce.

It all seemed “full circle.” As it should be. Recognizing the pattern, the blog began writing itself. The same way those prophetic words did each morning. Of themselves.

And yet, September 15 came without fan fare. I did not check my bank account to confirm the new, lesser amount had been deposited. The 16th was much the same. I felt, remarkably, “nothing.”

On the 17th, I forgot to call my Divorce Buddy to wish him a happy birthday. (Unlike me, he’s not a marker of time. I imagine he may have been grateful for the oversight.) I was too busy packing.

Which left me wondering about 18, 19, 20 and beyond.

Eighteen had me meditating in Golden Gate Park — returning to the “twice” in my twice-daily practice — and then running into my first massage instructor. (Ironic, as I was staying just a few blocks from the massage school I attended and later, where I taught — although I didn’t realize it until I arrived and looked out the window.)

Nineteen, 20 and 21 had me walking on the Bay Bridge and dancing under redwood trees, all the while fielding the persistent question, “When are you moving back?”

My answer, a surprising and consistent, “I don’t know.” Followed by the insistence that “I’m just waiting for the earth to stop shifting beneath me.” And “The universe will tell me.”

It always does. Oblivious to any date on the calendar.

Like it did on 22, my last full day in San Francisco. The only day of my seven with alone time specifically set aside. I returned to Golden Gate Park — to the Japanese Tea Gardens, a place I had never been before. And then to Ocean Beach. A place I went often…especially when life felt crazy. I’d stand in the sand, squint my eyes and wonder if I could see across to the other side if I tried hard enough…knowing I never could.

The place I took my ex-husband on our first date. Where I kissed him for the first time. The ocean wind whipping my once long hair around my face, showering it with a fine mist of salt water.

I sat on the white-washed wall separating the beach from the parking lot, wishing I had something to throw into the ocean. Something to “give away,” to further separate me from him. To further cut the ties that had kept me tethered — unknowingly, until this trip — to him. I had nothing. Nothing but words. A prayer.

“Let the love that began here, let it end here. Let it wash out with the tides. And let something new wash in.”

Twenty-three I arrived home. The eve of 24, on the Jewish calendar, a new year began.

Twenty-five. Today. I worshipped in synagogue this morning but skipped taslich — the ritual casting away of sins, that which no longer serves us. I had already done it…a few days early.

And I prayed, “…let something new wash in.”

Artist Date 88: Tied

September 14, 2014 LesleyPearlLeave a comment

It’s Sunday and I’m not at dance class…which feels really weird. I’ll be away more than here – to San Francisco in September and Italy the following month – so it didn’t really make sense to enroll this session. Except it’s “what I do.” Except today.

The sun is hot, the air is crisp and the sky is a perfectly blue sky blue. The kind of day I would lament missing if I were in the dance studio.

I jump on my bike and pedal to Wicker Park for the Renegade Craft Fair: Artist Date 88.

There’s a DJ spinning records and it’s all I can do to not spontaneously bust into dance. Although I’m pretty sure no one would mind.

There is leather and pottery. Fibers and lithographs. And lots and lots of jewelry.

I strike up a conversation with a young jewelry maker from Wisconsin. We talk about art school – where she went, my desire to go. She is flanked by her mother who notes the wholehearted support she offered her daughter in following her bliss.

For years I blamed my parents for my not going to art school. Truth told, I don’t think I had the drive, let alone the chops. I fancied myself a fine artist but I didn’t have the discipline. A discipline I only found later in life – much later, in my 40s, when I took on Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way for a second time.

Feeling desperate, crazy and on my knees, I embraced the book as others might the Bible or the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. Viewing it as a salvation. The keys to the kingdom. The yellow brick road.

I took on nearly every suggestion – most noteworthy, the bogeyman – the Artist Date. That hour or so alone each week to fill my creative coffers. Scheduled. Planned. And penciled in to my calendar.

A commitment to myself and my creativity.

It changed my life. And I’m pretty sure saved it. Or at least my sanity. It forced me to focus on me. Not in a navel-gazing way, but more in a “What have you done for me, lately,” Janet Jackson kind of way. Except I’m not asking some no-goodnik while dancing at a diner…I’m asking myself.

When I speak of it, I feel like the Pied Piper. And today I should have brought my flute.

I run into my friend Whitney, who introduces me to a colleague, who innocently asks, “What brings you here?”

The answer seems obvious. The art. The weather. The promise of Black Dog Gelato. Instead, I tell her about The Artist Date.

As I speak, I become excited by own story. Almost as if it is someone else’s story. And I am reminded that my life is really quite magical. That I AM the woman I always wanted to be. A cool, creative, urban chick. Like the women I saw in photographs when I was 12 – waiting on line for a shave or a Mohawk on Astor Place in New York.

It is the same feeling I have talking to the boys from San Francisco – where I lived for 14 years – who make and sell tea, T-We. We talk about what took me there – a job. And what brought me here – love. For my then husband, when I followed him to Chicago for medical residency. And later for myself, the people, and the place itself – when I returned by choice, alone, a little more than two years ago.

It’s the feeling I have trying to put a ribbon into an old manual typewriter – part of a salon set up on Division Street by a woman renting vintage furniture. I tell her I learned to write on a typewriter – an IBM Selectric – when I was in journalism school. About editing the newspaper on boards. Printed stories rolled on to glass with wax and hacked at with a blue marker to fit the page. It is the work that took me to San Francisco. To Germany and Israel.

It’s the feeling I have talking with the woman who make shoes with ribbon laces – MOPED. I am lacing up a pair with gold ribbons and wonder aloud if they might not serve me well in Italy.

We talk about volunteering overseas. My upcoming flight of fancy at a fair-trade chocolate festival in Umbria, where I will live in an apartment with other volunteers from around the globe, and play out my “I live in Europe” fantasy. I tell her about volunteering in Rwanda and in the South of France. How traveling this way allows me to go alone without being alone. How it ties me to people and place and purpose.

Like the ribbons I pick to take with me – seven in total. Purple. Black. Grey. Pink stripes. Navy stripes. Silver glitter. Gold.

Ribbons that tie me to these shoes.

To the ground. To myself. To this life. The one a 12-year-old imagined – right down to the shave.

Artist Date 84: Moreloveletters

August 17, 2014 LesleyPearl1 Comment

“If you can read this, then it’s yours! Enjoy!”

I’m standing in the bathroom at Weight Watchers with Leah. A brown envelope sitting on top of the tampon machine catches my attention.

There’s a hashtag on it: #moreloveletters as well as a website: moreloveletters.com. Inside is a card with an owl and the words “yooo-hoo!” And inside that are these words:

“Dear Amazing Person,

You are the lovely recipient of a card from moi! A total complete stranger! Not the creepy kind, more like a loving kind to tell you how awesome you are! Every day as you grow you become more and more amazing! Don’t ever doubt yourself! You rock! Keep smiling! Share joy with others! Lots of hugs, Sunshine”

A wave of joy and gratitude washes over my body. It is an auspicious beginning to my Artist Date – number 84 – which in my mind doesn’t begin until this evening. I have treated myself to a front row ticket for the Chicago Human Rhythm Project. I wasn’t familiar with it, but I liked the sound of it. And already, the magic of the Artist Date – the magic of being filled up – has begun.

I am reminded of my spiritual business teacher Anne Sagendorph Moon, who taught me that money begets money. That I am able to receive only by giving. And to tithe the sources of my inspiration.

I recall another of Anne’s students getting two, crisp, $100 bills from the bank, dropping them in the hands of two complete strangers and running away, grinning.

This note in my hand feels like a $100 bill. My life feels magical and full of possibilities. I want to deliver my own little brown-wrapped notecards of love into the world.

And for the rest of the day, I do. Energetically giving and receiving loveletters until I can pen my own and join this crazy, mad, lovely movement. Hoping that love begets love.

I text the chef – a man I’ve just begun dating. I recall it is a day of great transition for him and I wish him well. I do not ask him any questions, nothing that requires action or a response on his part. I receive one anyway. “Was thinking of you…Funny.”

I call out a message of encouragement to the woman in the dressing room next to mine at Intimacy – a upscale lingerie shop. An invitation to treat herself. She has just let out a squeal of joy. That “aha-you’ve-changed-my-life-with-the-right-size-bra-and-thank-you-for-showing-me-how-to-wear-it-properly” cry of relief. I know it. I’ve had it here. More than once.

She laments, “Now I have to make choices. I’ve never had choices.”

“Buy them all,” I yell through the walls. Laughter. Hers. The salesperson’s. My own. A host of other women behind closed doors. “Seriously. Do it.”

I don’t know what she does, but I leave smiling with a bag full of lacy bits. Bras and panties. Silky. Filmy. Embroidered. Embellished. The price tags make me giggle. $40. $65. $110. Ridiculous. Each rings up at 70 percent off. A sexy little loveletter to myself.

I call a friend and hold her heart. I eat dinner and go to the show where I receive the sweat, the lifeblood, of the dancers – literally. Bits of salty water catching light, cast into space. The clickety-clap tapping of the feet of teenage girls allows me to imagine a different trajectory. Sliding doors.

I am recognized as a dancer in my own right by the woman in the seat next to me. She dances the beginning level West African class at the Old Town School of Music and sees me coming in for the intermediate one.

She sees me. She has seen me. She wants to know how long it has taken to arrive where I am. I tell her I have no idea.

On the way out, I trade a big, wide grin with the handsome sound engineer. His smile back reflects my own.

I do not give him my card or try to engage him in conversation. I allow this simple exchange of heart to stand on its own, as if to say “Namaste — I see the God on you.” A final loveletter of the night.

Choosing To Be A Lesbian Alcoholist

August 7, 2014 LesleyPearlLeave a comment

Patsy and I in Israel, nearly 20 years ago.

The last time I saw Patsy was at my wedding – nearly 13 years ago. She officiated, combining Jewish, Hindu, Native American and British elements into a ceremony that spoke to both of our hearts and sensibilities.

I spoke to her yesterday for the first time in more years that I can count – not quite 13, but far too long.

We talked about Mickey – her mom – who had just died and what that felt like for her. About meeting in Israel on a press trip nearly 20 years ago. And so much of what had happened in the in between. Things we caught in passing, in pithy Facebook posts and the occasional email.

She had no real sense of what had happened between my ex and me. Or even that I had (happily) given up the fight with alcohol nearly seven years ago.

And because she had not been with me for every step, every man, every tear and nuance of the journey – she saw the story, my story, far differently than me. Her reflections were, in a word, a revelation.

She had recently asked me in an email if there was “someone special” in my life.

It was the question I have come to expect. To brace myself for. To both love and despise – as it can feel both hopeful and humiliating, depending on the day, my mood and the current state of my heart.

I told her that I did not. That it hurt my heart to write that.

I told her about the suggestion that I not date for a year after my divorce. How that was pretty easy as no one was really asking. (Which is not exactly true. More to the point would be, no one I was interested in was asking.) And how that year had come and gone.

I told her I had met some extraordinary men, experienced some wonderful emotional intimacy and some wonderful romance. But none had been truly available for one reason or another.

I told her I am online, like every other schlub, although it is not how I imagine meeting someone. And to keep me and my big, juicy, open heart in her thoughts and manifestations.

It was “my story.” The one I tell myself. The one I tell here.

Yesterday, she helped me tell the next chapter. It had a decidedly different feel.

I told her about the “romantic friendship” with my spiritual-traveling twin. About the man nearly 13 years my junior, who has been dancing around me (and me, him) for some months, and our breakfast date that morning. And about a similar dance I have been doing with a man who looks a lot like Daniel Day Lewis – my ex’s doppelganger.

I told her about the friend who continues to tell me, “I’m still interested.” How my feelings remain platonic. And that I have no desire to try to “make them” otherwise.

And I told her about a new man – the chef – who I actually did meet online. We’ve had just a few dates, and my feelings feel “right sized.” He is easy to talk to and I have fun spending time with him. I find him attractive and I like how he kisses.

“I think you are very genuine,” he blurted across the table a few nights ago. I like that too. Because it is kind and observant, but mostly because it is true.

Patsy replied, “You ARE dating a lot of men right now. You are having fun. You just haven’t settled on one.”

It was true. It IS true. It sounds different from “I am still not in a relationship,” even though the actual details are the same. And it feels different.

She added that in the nearly 20 years she has known me, that I have always had men in my orbit. Always. That I have always been attractive to men. Always.

This was news. I had not seen it that way.

Seems I have spent the past 30-plus years mostly noticing the time in between. The times of breakup and/or longing. And believing that everyone else was constantly in relationship – meaningful relationship – and wondering why I was not.

She reminded me of the other chef. The one I dated before my ex-husband.

And I recalled the hotel bartender in Israel who suggested I show him the pictures in my room. When I replied, “I think you’ve seen all the pictures in all of these rooms,” he asked if I was a lesbian. Earlier he had asked if I was “an alcoholist,” as I turned down a drink. Close enough.

I chose an evening with my new press-trip friends (among them, Patsy) over an overseas fling, and a good story to be certain. I chose to be the lesbian alcoholist.

And in that recalling, I saw myself as Patsy saw me. (And likely, many others.) Attractive. Discerning. At choice. I have always been at choice…in relationships. And now, in how tell my story.

Artist Date 83: On The Path All Along

August 5, 2014 LesleyPearlLeave a comment

I’m late.

I peel myself away from the Lebanese pastries – empanada-like sweets filled with sweet cheese, the other with nuts, covered in rosewater – special for Ramadan. From this conversation which is at once both playful and real. That reminds me what it feels like to connect deeply. To be met spiritually.

I dash into my apartment and dial into the conference call – 7 Pathways to Freedom, Love and Abundance. Artist Date 83.

Debbie is mid-meditation. I sit down at the table, rest my feet on the bar that goes across the underside of it, close my eyes and let myself fall into her words.

She suggested the workshop following my most recent clairvoyant reading and healing. It made sense to me. I knew I needed a pathway. Or more to the point, help continuing on the path I am on. Lately, I’m having trouble seeing the road.

Nearly two years out of my divorce, I expected to be, to have been, in a relationship by now. I expected to be financially fully self-supporting.

I’ve had men in my life. Moments of romance and intimacy.

Months of late-night phone calls navigating the sloppy paths of our mutual divorces, followed by a road trip on the sloppy path cross-country that brought me home. Hours-long make-out sessions lasting from steamy evening into near dawn. Skype dates where I bared my soul, and my body, on the promise we’d “give it a go,” throwing caution to the 700 miles that lay between us.

I’ve had work.

A place to show up – more days than not. Money. Benefits that don’t fit neatly into an offer package. No health insurance or paid-time off. Instead, the opportunity to make an impact. To work with others. To stumble in a safe place. And to shine brightly too.

Cobbled together with the cash and prizes of divorce, I’ve had enough to live on. More than.

But I want more. More than moments. More than enough without spousal support. (Which, sooner rather than later, I will no longer receive.)

My hope is that something will open up for me in this workshop. Some chakra blockage will get knocked loose.

I close my eyes and listen to Debbie’s words. I am overcome with shame.

Shame for the relationships in my life where feelings don’t match.

Shame for the sex I’m not having.

Shame that I was set free…and remain free.

(The words slip off of my fingertips now, in real-time, as I write. Freedom. One of the promises of the workshop. It is not lost on me. But in workshop time I only feel shame.)

“I am ashamed that my friend’s feelings don’t match my own.” The words slip past my lips as we share our experiences of the meditation.

(And again, in real-time, I realize this is not exactly true. I think of this particular relationship, where we share a deep connection – a love for one another that is acknowledged often and freely by us both. What is not matched is where we are in our lives – what each of us is available for.)

I speak my embarrassing, humiliating truth and nothing bad happens.

A half hour later we disconnect. I do not recall a thing I have heard. I am grateful for the audio link which will arrive the next day.

I brush my teeth, wash my face, and write my nightly gratitude list. I am grateful I do not feel like calling Mr. 700 Miles today. For Lebanese pastry and time with a friend who loves me. I am grateful for therapy tomorrow and the Cheryl Strayed book I am reading, Tiny, Beautiful Things.

The list goes on. Long. Abundant.

Freedom. Love. Abundance. The workshop promises. All right here, right now, in my life. I am on the path. I always was. Now I can once again see it.

A Wandering Jewess

My Journey Back To Self

Tag: Love