Opportunities – A Wandering Jewess

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.

I am chewing on a piece of ginger candy and drawing a daisy – poorly – on a square of yellow paper, giggling to myself. The enormous blow-up animal in the other room, the one with its ass cocked north, is dancing around in my head. I am happy. Not just in a general way. But in this very-present, animal-ass-in-the-air, right-now moment.

I give it an 8.

I’m on the fourth floor of the Chicago Cultural Center, at The Happy Show – Artist Date 36. Two people mentioned it to me within two days of one another. I take it as a sign.

Walking in, I am asked to rate my happiness and to take a gumball from the large, plastic tube with its corresponding number. I say 7. Popular number. This is the least filled cylinder, followed by 10.

Ten. No greater happiness. Unless it goes up to 11 in a This Is Spinal Tap sort of logic. I have been at 10…in moments. And I think that’s sort of the point – recognizing pure-bliss, happy, 10 moments when they happen. And thanking your lucky stars.

Noticing the runny yellow and crisp white of a fried egg. The chills up your spine every time you ride a scooter on a beautiful, windy road. No helmet. Listening to music you love, but don’t know well enough to have stories associated with it. These are Stefan Sagmeister’s – the show’s creator – happy moments.

Mine is on my bike. A vintage, Raleigh three-speed with a basket and a bell. Except I wear a helmet. And I don’t listen to music. I sing. Usually Rosemary Clooney’s “Do You Miss New York,” or Talking Heads’ “Road to Nowhere.”

“There’s a city in my mind, come along and take that ride and it’s all right. Baby, it’s all right.”

Sagmeister designed album covers for Talking Heads, as well as my hero, Lou Reed. I wonder if he designed Little Creatures, the album this song is from.

I am photographing every inch of the exhibit – Sagmeister’s 10-year exploration of happiness – literally. The language is so spot-on. I don’t want to forget a single word – all of it printed on yellow walls, in fonts that look like handwriting. Some words are cleverly crossed out. Perfectly imperfect.

Rules to live by, culled from Sagmeister’s diary, manifested in print, sculpture, video, and dance.

“Uselessness is gorgeous.”

Thousands of cigarette papers are taped to the wall with fans blowing on them. I step away from them to see the words embedded in the paper. It is gorgeous. I think about my friend Pam noting that I wear a $2 shirt from the Salvation Army with $85 underwear.

Not quite –$35 is my max.

“Make the first step.”

I watch a video of a group of Balinese girls performing a dance, unrolling strips of yellow fabric, displaying these words. Sagmeister recalls his mother approaching people, rather than waiting to be approached.

“I do this,” I think. Almost always.

“Over time I get used to everything and start taking it for granted.” Sagmeister writes the words with his finger – in the dirt on a car, in soapy suds on a man’s hairy chest. With playing cards and with hotdogs.

Yep. It’s true. And, Sagmeister explains, even the words “I love you,” said by the same person, become boring. I think about my ex-husband. In the year since our divorce, he has often told me that he misses our life together. And that I look really good.

I want to tell him he should have thought about that before he opted out, but I don’t. I know there are reasons our marriage stopped working. Among them, I am certain, that somewhere along the line we took one another, and our life together, for granted.

“Actually Doing the Things I Set Out to Do Increases My Overall Level of Satisfaction.” Agreed.

“Everybody Always Thinks They Are Right.” ‘Nuff said.

“Drugs Are Fun in the Beginning But Become a Drag Later On.” Ditto.

On my way out, I am asked to draw my symbol of happiness on a square of yellow paper. No smiley faces allowed. It is the second time I am asked to do this – the first time, on the way in, I draw a heart on one side, two stick figures holding hands on the other. This time I draw a daisy. I don’t know why. It just makes me smile. Like the flowers I buy for myself most every week at Trader Joes.

Hans – my favorite, morning check-out guy – once gave me sunflowers. Pulling them from my basket, he asked if the blooms were for me. When I told him that they were, he responded, “They are on me. And pick up a second bunch on the way out.” I think it made us both happy.

I walk through the exit, which has been made into art. The words, “every” precede “exit,” and “is also an entrance” follow it. As instructed, I push a button and take the card which shoots out. It reads, “Find a reflection of yourself and tell it what you really think.”

On the way out, I stop in the bathroom. I look in the mirror and whisper to myself, “You are lovely.” My lips curl into a big smile. And I am.

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And you? What do you say to your own reflection?

A Wandering Jewess

My Journey Back To Self

Tag: Opportunities

Waiting For This Moment, With No Idea What Comes Next

Artist Date 36: The Happy Show