Artist Date 63: True Blue

February 22, 2014 LesleyPearl4 Comments

2014-02-21 15.24.31 — TRBL by Christopher Wool

TRBL.

Christopher Wool’s iconographic piece. The words stenciled in red enamel. TR. Drop a line. BL.

Trouble. Yes.

“Or True Blue,” he offers from the stage at the Art Institute of Chicago. Artist Date 63.

Yes. And that is trouble too.

I have decided to do something I’ve done just once in my life. Leave first.

The one other time I did this, the relationship had turned abusive. I felt I had no choice.

I always have a choice, I am reminded.

There is no abuse here. Not even a relationship really. Not yet. An exploration. A friendship ripe with feelings and confessed crazy attraction for one another. And 700 miles between us.

He once commented it was 400 miles between us and I didn’t correct him. When he later said 700, I knew he had looked it up. “You’ve been thinking about this (visiting),” I said. “I haven’t stopped thinking about it,” he replied. We were on Skype. I saw myself bat my eyelashes coquettishly like a shy giraffe, without even thinking.

But 700 miles aren’t really the problem. It’s the every thing else. We are in decidedly different places in our lives. I am in the clearing, coming out of the forest. He is, appropriately so, tied up in the weeds. Almost available. Like the tables I would hover over at the bar in college, waiting to settle into. Almost.

Lately, there is more time between our communications. I find myself in knots. Wide open. Vulnerable. Uncertain of where I stand.

I wonder when I will talk to him. What is going on in his head. In his life. I don’t like it. I don’t like how I feel. This poor use of precious psychic energy.

2014-02-21 15.20.40 — SEX. LUV by Christopher Wool

I woke up Friday morning. As my knees hit the floor, I began crying. “I can’t do this,” I said, to no one in particular. “I need more.” Tears. Shock. Relief.

In the past, I would wedge my way into “almost available” anyway – finding an opening in a man’s attraction and desire for me. But untrue to myself and to him. Acting breezy, when I felt anything but. And soon pissed off when I didn’t get what I really needed. And lying to myself and to him about needing it at all.

This time feels different. I like him too much to ask that of him. I like me too much to ask it of myself.

All of this is running through my head, as I sit in a somewhat broken chair, listening to Wool speak. Everything he says reminds me of this relationship. My heart. What I have to do. Am afraid to do. Am afraid I won’t get the chance to do because I will either lose my nerve or he will somehow slip away without me having had the chance to speak my truth.

TRBL. Trouble. True Blue. Wool says art is most successful when it does what it says.

Does he do what he says? Do I?

I think about my vision board hanging from a wire on the wall in my apartment. Mr. 700 Miles asked about it the last time we Skyped. I brought the computer to it, showing him the words and images I’d torn from magazines on impulse and pasted on a large piece of cardboard. “Power of the Pen.” “Happiness is not for Sale.” “Effortlessly Simple.”

“In Full Bloom.” “Yourself.” ““Make love.”

“Find your true blue.” The words are small compared to all the others. In typewriter font like my tattoos that read, “left” and “write” and overlaid on a couple standing nose to nose. I pointed to the picture and the words and he just smiled.

More slides. SEX. LUV. He Said, She Said.

Wool talks about process. Creating images through loss. Drawing and erasing. Drawing and erasing. And sometimes even scraping. The tearing away became “the most interesting part.”

But he insists process isn’t that important. That the work should stand on its own.

It all seems a metaphor for my romantic life. My willingness to tear away from this man romantically to see what the universe has in store for me. For the first time – perhaps ever – truly believing I deserve more.

I wander through the exhibit after the lecture. FO. Drop line. OL. I laugh out loud. Yes. FOOL. TRBL. SEX. LUV. I am all of it.

Post Script: Later that day, I did say the words I first uttered on my knees, “I can’t do this. I need more.” To him. I felt sad and strong and sad again. But ultimately, I felt LUV. For him. For myself. True Blue.

Artist Date 61: Permission to Want Love

February 16, 2014February 16, 2014 LesleyPearl4 Comments

I cannot remember the last time I was carded. My friend Debbie reminds me that I don’t drink, so I am not often in bars. So my lack of recent experience with carding shouldn’t be a surprise.

But I am in a bar tonight –the night before Valentine’s Day. I have been “invited” for the final performance of “Solo in the Second City” – a live lit(erature) series about the nature of relationships. Artist Date 61.

I wish I would have known about this sooner, but I didn’t. And the only reason I know about it at all is because I participated in my first ever live lit event last week – Story Club, a monthly event featuring three invited storytellers, and three audience members whose names have been pulled from a hat. Except it’s not a hat, it’s a monkey carved out of a coconut with the words, “Have Fun” scrawled on it.

It is the winter of the Arctic Vortex in Chicago and only three people have put their names in the monkey. This is seemingly unheard of. I am one of them.

I climb up on to the stage, pull on my “cheaters” and read an extended version of my blog post “I Love You.” “Thank You.” About me and my divorce buddy. About walking through hell together. And learning to walk on my own. It is tender and raw and real. I feel like I have earned my place on this stage. It feels amazing.

I am followed by Carly Oishi, a featured writer. She weaves together three stories of love and loss. I am riveted. She is speaking my heart even though I do not recall her exact words.

At the end of the evening, I approach her and introduce myself. I tell her I like her piece. She tells me she likes mine and invites me to “Solo in the Second City.” I mention it to Debbie and we agree we will go.

And so I am here, at Beauty Bar, sitting on a low bench surrounded by 1950s hairdryer chairs, listening to stories of breakups and broken hearts.

One woman reads about watching relationships bloom and wither. But only watching. She has closed her heart off. Closed herself off. I know there is more because I am overwhelmed with feeling and identification, but I cannot access it.

Another reads, perhaps more accurately shouts, about when a man drops off the face of the earth without a word. Not a peep. A text. A fuck off. Nothing. She talks about body parts that are usually covered up meeting other body parts that are usually covered up. About giving someone VIP access to that place where her children were born from. She says it is a big deal.

It is a big deal. To give someone VIP access to that place. To literally let someone inside of you. For so many years I did not think so. There was no velvet rope. No line to enter. At least to my mind’s eye. And each and every one who came (no pun intended) was given an all access pass. Once upon a time. Now single again after 15 years coupled, and solo in the Second City, I can play it differently. I can have a different experience.

I am humbled by her cautionary tale of pain. For taking me back to how it was. And showing me how it still can be. How I can be.

Carly, the co-producer of the series, is the last to read. It is the story I heard last week. But this time I can hold on to the words. At least some of them. The part about love and how you will do anything for it. To taste it. To experience it. To feel it if only for a moment.

Yes. That is how I feel. How I have been ashamed to feel. The message I can discern from the noise and static surrounding me post-divorce is “You don’t need it.” “You shouldn’t want it.” “You need to learn to be alone.”

I know how to be alone.

I go to the opera alone. Dance performances alone. Art shows alone.

I live alone.

I work and dance and write. I have a large and diverse cast of characters I call friends.

I love my life.

And yes, I want love. That kind of love.

Hearing Carly’s words I feel somehow lighter. Less burdened by my desires. Free to let go of this misplaced shame.

I tell her so after the show. That I am grateful for permission to want love. She is visibly moved.

I remind her we have met and she admits she didn’t realize I live in Chicago. “So you ‘do this’?’ Write? Tell stories,” she asks.

“Yes,” I say.

She smiles and tell me she is putting together a story-telling series of all women, and asks if I would be interested in reading my work.

I smile back and give her the only appropriate answer – “I would love to.”

Artist Date 52: Exactly Where I Am Supposed To Be

December 17, 2013 LesleyPearlLeave a comment

This time last year I was on my knees. Literally.

It was my first holiday season divorced and living back in Chicago, alone. My girlfriend called me out on my obsession with the man I like to call the Southern Svengali — the one I kissed for two nights while in Charleston in late October. She said she could not hear about it, or him, anymore.

My non-relationship was affecting my relationships.

I felt desperate and scared. I called a friend who advised me to get on my knees and ask God to remove my obsession him every day.

I did. But I needed something more.

I remembered the comfort I had found in the structured creativity of Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, and decided to pull it out again — a hopeful, albeit artsy, roadmap out of myself.

This time, in addition to taking on the weekly reading and writing assignments, I committed to the weekly Artist Date – the weekly hour or so block of time, alone, to fill my creative coffers – and to a weekly blog about it for a year. Fifty-two Artist Dates. Fifty-two blogs.

Thursday is Artist Date 52.

I am sitting in a Starbucks on Michigan Avenue killing time before Hubbard Street Dance Chicago. It is 6 p.m. and I have been downtown since 11. I am tired. I am questioning the wisdom in staying here as opposed to driving home at 2 p.m. when I was finished with my work and returning later.

Until I get the text which lets me know I am exactly where I should me. It is from my friend Matt. He is at a coffee shop around the corner, also killing time, before his couple’s therapy session where he will ask his wife for a divorce.

I tell him where I am. Within moments he is standing over me and then we are hugging each other tightly. Teary.

I remember when he told me that he and his wife were separating, more than a year ago. I still lived in Seattle, but was visiting Chicago – smack dab in the middle of my own divorce.

Matt is appropriately anxious. I reflect back to him how thoughtful he has been through this entire process – never rash. We hold hands and we pray together, in the middle of Starbucks. It doesn’t seem strange.

He leaves. And shortly after, I do too, pulling my wool long-underwear back on over my tights. It is December and the temperatures are already in the teens.

I love Chicago at night. Especially during the holidays. Michigan Avenue twinkles with white lights, and skaters glide around in circles on the tiny patch of ice in Millenium Park.

I walk up “the hill” that is Randolph Street to the Harris Theater. My body has once again adjusted to the flat Midwest and takes note of the incline.

I pick up my ticket at will-call and make a beeline for the bathroom, peeling off my long underwear. Winter in Chicago is a lot of work.

My friend Lori is coming out. We embrace and talk excitedly about her ceramics show. Lori is a genius potter. We met her at Lil Street Art Center, where I was stumbling through a beginners’ class. Lori taught me how to glaze.

She asks if I will come back to Lil Street. I am not certain as I have committed my creative energies to my writing and my dance – at least for now.

She asks if I remember Kevin from the clay studio and reminds me he is a member of Hubbard Street. I do remember. It is one of the reasons I am here.

We part company and I run into a woman I have danced with. She is enrolled in Level three West African Dance. I am in Level two. Later, I see Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

The world seems small and I am a citizen of it. Or, at the very least, a citizen of Chicago.

The woman in the seat next to mine is alone. As is the woman next to her. We make easy conversation. She is a Weight Watchers member. I am a Weight Watchers leader. She is looking for a massage therapist. I am a massage therapist. She is a widow. I am a divorcee.

She tells me she lost her husband four years ago, and she tears up. For the second time today I am clear that I am exactly where I am supposed to be. Right down to my seat: BB10.

The performance, One Thousand Pieces by Alejandro Cerrudo, is inspired by Marc Chagall’s America Windows – the installation I visit every time I am at the Art Institute, my favorite. I shared it with Matt a few months ago when we met downtown for a member’s-only café re-opening. It was summer and we sat in the courtyard noting who was checking the other out. It seems a long time ago.

One Thousand Pieces, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago

It is my first time seeing Hubbard Street Dance. The dancers’ bodies are strong. Gorgeous. Not sinewy, like ballet bodies. I think my legs approximate the same shape as theirs, albeit less toned and I feel at the same time cocky and ashamed admitting this to myself.

The stage is glossed and looks like water. I am looking for Kevin. My eyes occasionally roll back into my head. This almost always happens to me at performances. The lights go down and my sleepy kicks in. Except for last year when I saw Alvin Ailey Dance Theatre – twice.

My seats were good – dress circle one night, main floor the other. My experience was dramatically altered by looking straight at the dancers as opposed to peering down at them. I vowed then I would always buy good seats for dance. These seats are good – the Harris Theatre is small and there are no “bad seats.” But not good enough.

And then it is over.

The performance, but not my Artist Dates. They “work.” Like being on my knees works. Not so much in desperation (although I am certain I will find myself there again many times in this life), but in prayer – the antidote to it. Exactly where I am supposed to be.

Pajamas of One’s Own, With Apologies to Virginia Woolf

November 30, 2013 LesleyPearlLeave a comment

I threw away my ex-husband’s pajama bottoms.

I know…why did I have them in the first place?

The night before I left Seattle, I asked if I might take them with me. The thin cotton ones, navy, with a drawstring. Somewhere there is a matching top. Somewhere.

I turned my ex on to men’s pajamas years ago, as I had been turned on by the man I dated before him. Mornings I would pad around his house in Berkeley, wearing his pjs while he made us French-press coffee. I liked to wear his overalls too.

He often remarked that I should get my own – of both. That year for Hanukkah, I bought him a pair of silk pajamas. Inside the card I wrote, “A room of one’s own. Pajamas of one’s own. I promise I won’t touch these.” Then I opened his gift to me – my own pair of overalls.

We laughed. A sort-of modern twist on O. Henry’s Christmas tale, The Gift of the Magi. Except neither of us had to give something away something we loved, to give something to someone we loved.

I stopped wearing men’s pj bottoms some time ago and had taken to wearing short, boy-short underwear and a wife beater – which was fine when it was just the two of us. But I was about to go on the road, traveling with my divorce buddy – a man – and staying with friends along the way. And when I arrived in Chicago, I would be living with a male friend of mine, temporarily.

Modesty, not something I usually subscribe to, grabbed hold of me, and I asked my ex if I could take his bottoms.

He looked at me sorts of sideways and said yes.

I have slept in them every night since. Loosely tied and rolled down twice at the waist so I don’t trip on them. They remind me of the pants my friend Tim’s roommate wore when he returned from Thailand, when he cranked the heat to 80 degrees and blasted the soundtrack to The King and I nonstop.

My mom attempted to buy me a new pair when I visited her in Tennessee in the spring. We picked some up at Target, just bottoms, but I didn’t like how they fit. Too much bunchy elastic at the waist. So she returned them for me. But we agreed I had to stop sleeping in my ex’s. My best girlfriend Julie and I had the same conversation when I stayed with her this summer.

I’m sure I would have had this conversation many times over if I had shared this with anyone else. But I didn’t. I was too ashamed. I knew it was kind of odd. Palpably and painfully so, pulling them on after sleeping with someone else.

Ten days ago, I threw them out. Crumpled them into the kitchen garbage bin, covering them with food scraps so I couldn’t pull them back out – fearful of a George Castanza-éclair-at-the-top-of-the-trash lapse.

A few days later I began sleeping for the first time in more than a year and a half. Really sleeping. Through the night, uninterrupted, for more than six hours. Waking up with the alarm, and longing for more.

Not long after I found myself crush-less, and for the first time in my life, not looking to conjure up a love interest.

I told a friend of mine I didn’t want to talk about the boy I slept with – the one with whom I pulled on the pajamas in question. The one who isn’t the one, but still takes up some residency in my head and in my heart from time to time. I told her that talking about him wasn’t helpful. In fact, it was painful. So I’d rather not do it.

And then I said no to being fixed up with a man who was recently divorced. I believe my exact words were, “Are you out of your mind?” I know the desperate crazy that is his life right now and I don’t want to be a part of it.

My words surprised me. But they felt like ridiculously good, albeit not-so-sexy, self-care too. Like sleeping. Like throwing away pajamas that belonged to my ex-husband.

I’ve returned to sleeping in the short, boy-shorts, but am on the lookout for a new pair of loose, drawstring bottoms. The kind that feel lived in, or have the potential to, and that are not flannel. Pajamas devoid of history. Pajamas of one’s own.

Artist Date 49: Content In My Role As Second Tenor

November 26, 2013 LesleyPearl2 Comments

I am a second tenor.

rain 2 — Lake Street Underpass, by Errol Jacobson

So says Steven, who I met on Thursday at the Palette and Chisel, at the opening before the opening of my friend Errol’s art show, “City” – Artist Date 49.

Steven is a member of the Chicago Gay Men’s Chorus – the beneficiary organization of 20 percent of tonight’s sales. He is introduced to me by the Kent, the Executive Director, who is introduced to me by Stephanie, Errol’s partner.

We are chatting when he gets the nod that it is show time. He grabs my hand and says, “Come on, let’s go.”

“I don’t sing.” I protest, remembering my friend Teresa insisting the same when she was asked to audition for Beach Blanket Babylon in San Francisco. “Can’t you just belt something out?” So she did – the theme song to the Flintstones. She didn’t make it past the first verse.

“Of course you do,” Steven says. “You are a second tenor.”

He does not push further, but instead, joins his colleagues at the piano.

When he finishes, I ask him how he knows I am a second tenor. “Easy.” Everyone who claims to not sing is a second tenor. It is an easy range to sing, he explains. And there are lots of them – second tenors – so it is easy to be one among many.

I love the idea of me – a straight, Jewish girl who can’t carry a tune – surrounded by gay men singing Christmas carols. It seems somehow “right,” although certainly not congruent to the notion of “one among many.” I have weaseled my way into more unlikely settings. But I am pretty certain he was jesting.

He reminds me of the chorus’ upcoming holiday shows, and invites me to come watch open rehearsals on Sunday afternoons – both potential Artist Dates (Stephanie mentioned my practice to Steven and Kent when she introduced us) – then warmly takes my hand in his and bids me adieu.

Tonight is actually the second Artist Date Stephanie has “invited” me to– the first being her and Errol’s home in Bucktown, which was highlighted in a garden walk this past summer. I am humbled and touched by her interest.

However, I notice that tonight, unlike most of my previous Artist Dates, stirs up very little in terms of thoughts, emotions and memory. I am decidedly – without having made a decision – present.

I notice the chicken satay and Vietnamese spring rolls. The brownies and fruit pastries from Alliance Bakery. All of which I avoid.

The mild flirtation from the bartender who tells me I look like a character from a show on A&E. “But much better looking,” he says. I smile and tell him I do not have a television.

Errol’s paintings. So much rain. Like tiny kaleidoscopes sliding down windshields. It is wet outside tonight. And cold. Winter is coming.

I am drawn to the saturated colors of “Backlit,” “Shadows” and “Days End.” Purples and Yellows. And I tell him so.

My friend Dina asks if I recognize where “Backlit” is painted. I do not.

It is Paris.

She can tell from the roofline, she explains, using a fancy term I don’t know to describe the classically Parisian use of attics.

Dina lived in Paris 30 or so years ago. I always imagined I would live there. Or New York. Or that I still might. They feel familiar to me – they always have. And I’ve never been lost in either one.

Yet, right now in this moment, I feel no desire to be anywhere but Chicago. In spite of its cold, dark, rainy-ness.

I am driving my friend Leslie home and I mention that the man I asked out for coffee via Facebook has not responded. It has been more than two days and I am surprised by his lack of contact. It seems out of character. Mostly because I think he is a man, and not a boy. I am a little disappointed, but nothing more. I’ve made no investment. The crush diminishes.

“And then there were none,” I tell her.

And for once, I don’t mind.

Up until now, life without some sort of love interest felt sad. Somehow lacking. The crush, the flirtation, gave me a sense of hope. Of possibilities.

But I don’t feel sad right now. Absent is the familiar pain stemming from the fear that I will be alone.

Frankly, I am a little stunned. I am afraid to give this experience a voice. That I will jinx it.

All I know is, right now, my life feels full. With friends. With art. With possibilities. And I am, blessedly, not particularly troubled by what I lack. And by moments too far ahead.

It is as it was promised to me, that I would find contentment where I am right now. Content in my role as a second tenor. One among many. Easy.

Artist Date 48: I Think The Fish Guy Likes Me

November 15, 2013November 15, 2013 LesleyPearl1 Comment

There is something decidedly unappealing about gazing into the center of a slab of beef.

Perhaps pork is better.

William "For Sunday's Dinner." — William Michael Harnett. “For Sunday’s Dinner.”

It didn’t bother me to see hocks of pork bolted to a wooden bar, then sliced paper-thin, and served to me, when I was in Spain. Neither did the whole chickens and rabbits hanging from hooks in the market, which I took photographs of, then framed and hung in my kitchen.

I am at the Art Institute Chicago for the member lecture and preview of “Art & Appetite: American Painting, Culture and Cuisine.” Artist Date 48. It is dark and warm in the auditorium. A slide of a still life – fruit and meat – is projected on-screen. And then another, a fish.

They are not beautiful. They do, however, evoke a flood of food memories.

Like the time I received a whole, smoked salmon.

It was my 39^th birthday and I threw a big potluck soiree.

The man/boy I was crushing on – but could, and would, do nothing about as I was married – was the first to RSVP, saying he would bring Tang. I laughed. Knowing him, it might have been true.

Except it wasn’t.

The night of the party, he arrived with a box in his right hand – carrying it like a tray, high above his shoulder. His name was on the side in black magic marker. This was something he had ordered.

Inside was an entire smoked salmon. Head. Tail. Everything. Glistening. Beautiful. Although not Jewish himself, he seemed to intuitively know the way to a Jewish girl’s heart was through cured fish.

“He likes me,” I thought, beaming.

The next morning I made scrambled eggs with onions and the leftover smoked salmon. One of my girlfriends had come to town from Los Angeles to celebrate. Over coffee, I said the words out loud.

“I think he likes me.”

She disagreed, insisting the fish was about him and how he wanted to be perceived. That it meant nothing about me. I didn’t persist. It didn’t matter. I was married.

I hadn’t thought about the fish story in a while. Or the fish guy, which my friends and I affectionately called him from then on. He moved away while I was still married — to fish.

Memory wrapped in food. It seems nearly impossible to separate the two. I am reminded of this all week while leading Weight Watchers meetings and trying to encourage a conversation about what makes Thanksgiving memorable – besides food.

Norman Rockwell. "Freedom From Want." — Norman Rockwell. “Freedom From Want.”

For the most part, the members are having none of it. They want to talk about macaroni and cheese. Stuffing. Pumpkin pie and cranberries from a can. One woman mentions waking her daughters late in the evening, dressing them, and taking them shopping at midnight. I would have loved that, I think. She is creating tradition.

I think about living in California and riding my bike Thanksgiving morning – before the feast at Tim’s house. I think about the printed menus Tim placed at each seat, like Martha Stewart. About roasted root vegetables and pumpkin gnocchi.

I think about the year I got married and leaving for my honeymoon on Thanksgiving Day. Eating breakfast with Tim and his roommate, Steven at the International House of Pancakes near the airport.

I do not mention any of this. It is their meeting.

The exhibit moves from still life to real life. There are rationing cookbooks. Bright Spots For Wartime Meals – a Jello cookbook. The words, “Armed with a can opener, I become the artist-cook, the master, the creative chef,” from the Can Opener Cookbook, are stenciled on the wall.

They remind me of a story I once heard about the “original foodie,” M.F.K. Fisher. Suspicious that her celebrity kept those about her in silence, she once made a meal entirely from canned foods. When her guests swooned, confirming her intuitions, she informed them of the origins of their dinner.

There is a menu for a meal honoring Fisher, created by Alice Waters, owner of Chez Panisse. She is the Berkeley, California chef known for purple hats, and for bringing seasonal, local ingredients – cooked simply, cooked well – back into fashion, beginning in the early 1970s.

And there is a menu from Chez Panisse, celebrating Bastille Day in 1976, as well.

I ate there just once. On my birthday. I do not recall which year. I saved the menus – prix fixe, with gorgeous drawings of figs on the cover – for a long time, imagining I would frame them and hang them in my kitchen one day, along with my food photographs. I never did.

Strangely, I do not recall what I ate. I remember our server. And the cost of the meal for two – $300.

Driving home in the first snow of the season, I chew on Brazil nuts – 30 grams of them weighed out and tucked in a small plastic container. Just a snack. I am full on memory.

Artist Date 45: The (Sometimes) Kindness of Strangers

October 27, 2013 LesleyPearl3 Comments

This woman is wearing a knit hat, striped in colors of the Rastafarian flag. It was a gift from a woman in Australia, while she was in Australia. A woman who fed this woman lunch and beers but accepted no payment. Her listening to the stories she was regaled with was payment enough.

Plus, she would need it while camping in the outback.

She flew to Australia following the demise of a relationship. Seems it is what she does. Camping in the Outback. Hiking in Wales. Meditating on a mountain outside of Tokyo.

She is standing on a small stage in Rogers Park talking about it. Coming clean, as it were.

Artist Date 45.

My friend Clover will also be reading and performing a piece . It is about her mother. About art school and being a performer. About helping a man across the street who has fallen and everyone around him just keeps moving as if this hasn’t happened and the universe calls upon her to play the part of his angel.

There is a third. Eric. Who will talk about his need to go to a place where his father had been. The father he didn’t know. And then he did. But who he never really knew. And is now dead.

But right now I’m watching Jennifer. I know her name because I looked it up in the program, which is black and white. Folded but not stapled. And reads, “The Kindness of Strangers: A Festival of Storytelling.”

And then, “A 3-week rotating mix of more than 30 storytellers weaving tales of connecting, or not, with strangers.” The words encircled by drawings, like a globe – buildings, a boat and a lighthouse, water.

I want to be this woman with a knit hat and a beer-stained hiking map, marked up by pub patrons who laugh each time she says the word “garbage.” This woman who takes off on serious adventures – by herself – when love goes south. When the re-bound from the break up proves not to be the antidote to her pain. Who is standing on this tiny stage telling her story.

I want to be that brave. To travel alone. Even though I’ve done it – albeit briefly — and my experience is that solo travel is most satisfying when it is connected to purpose. And people. Like my volunteer trips to Rwanda and the South of France.

I want a rebound. Even though it has been suggested I don’t date. Even though I have probably been divorced too long for anything to be called a rebound. And my short-lived dalliances, both emotional and physical, have been painful to the extreme.

Even though my experience of being alone this past year has brought me closer to myself. My craft. My writing. The very thing that might put me on stage.

Clover. Very likely telling a story. Just not on stage.

I am comparing my insides to someones outsides once again. Devaluing my own experience when confronted with someone seemingly doing what I think I’d like to do. What I think I should do.

I well up listening to her. While the details are different, I recognize the story as my own.

I see pieces of my story in Eric’s too. Reconnecting with a parent who was physically absent for so many years. His through desertion. Mine through adoption. Losing them again. And what is left. For him, a ring. For me, a pair of opera glasses and a too-big mink coat, her name embroidered on the inside, hanging in my closet.

But I do not see myself in Clover’s story.

I’m not even looking, let alone comparing. It is not that I am not interested. I am. I am teary, ass-glued-to-the-seat, riveted.

Maybe it is because I know her story. Her stories. She has trusted me with them over the years.

Her mother selling her art work, without her consent, as payment to her therapist. Lying down in the street in downtown Chicago when the light is turned red. A classroom performance piece. The ants that crossed in front of her mattress, on the floor, in the basement of her mother’s friend’s house, in the toniest part of upstate New York.

And I have trusted her with mine. They are less the same. But our feelings, and our responses, match perfectly. This is where we found our “me too’s.”

Like I am just now doing with Jennifer. With Eric. Connecting with strangers – who may or may not become more than that. (Turns out, I have danced with Eric’s girlfriend on and off for years. I’m pretty sure I’ll see both of them again.) The place of beginning.

A Birthday Story: Celebrating What Is

October 21, 2013 LesleyPearlLeave a comment

It is four something in the morning. I woke up at the same ungodly hour yesterday – my 44^th birthday.

I have always loved birthdays.

My birthday didn't begin with laughter...it ended with it. — My birthday didn’t begin with laughter…it ended with it.

I’m a big celebrator in general. Ask any of my Weight Watchers members. I love to clap and give out Bravo! Stickers for behavior changes. Those subtle little miracles.

“Where else do you go that they clap for you?” I ask.

Well, 12-Step meetings. But I don’t bring that up as it isn’t germane.

Birthdays are like that. It seems the whole world is clapping, rooting for you, that day. Mostly.

This year I awoke feeling a little less clap-y. A little less celebratory.

I’d been aware of a low-grade sadness tugging at me for a few days. Aware this was my first birthday since my birth mother died.

We found one another in October of my 40^th year.

Ours was not always an easy relationship. Some days I think she would have jumped in my skin if she could have, while I took a more tentative approach to our relationship. Timing. Expectations. Boundaries. Those were our lessons. And we were one another’s teachers.

She sent me flowers when I turned 40. A card the following year. And then phone calls the next two. She wasn’t well and it was difficult for her to get out – both physically and emotionally. This year there would be no flowers, no card, no call. I felt sad.

Like I did when her name was read at the memorial service on Yom Kippur. Like I did when I returned from Ireland last month and felt like calling and for the first time realized I couldn’t. I find myself surprised by the sadness, although I’m not sure why. It makes perfect sense – at least on a cellular level.

So there was that.

And there was the aloneness of being not-so-suddenly, but-still, single.

My ex was a great gift giver.

Birthday and anniversary mornings I would find a card on the bed, slipped into place when I got up to shower. A gift would come later. Usually something I had spied and mentioned in passing months earlier. Something I had forgotten about until I saw it again. A hand-carved wooden jewelry box. Strands of smoky quartz and hand-colored pearls.

2013-10-20 20.19.35 — Kristin. Who reminds me of the love in my life when I cannot see it.

He gave me a watch when I turned 42 – my last birthday with him. I had been wearing the same Seiko tank since I was 14, gift from my Aunt Betty. She had lost hers. Found it. And gave the original to me.

I replaced the band and battery several dozen times over the years. Until the crystal broke and a jeweler told me it couldn’t be fixed.

I didn’t like the watch he bought me. I don’t know if I would have liked anything he bought me at that time. He had recently asked me for a divorce – and then recanted the next day – but it was there. The truth about our relationship. It was over. We just hadn’t cut the cord yet.

He was hurt and offended that I didn’t like his gift, but offered to take me shopping so I could pick out something else, anyway. I couldn’t do it. I kept the watch. I am still wearing it.

When I woke up early yesterday, I noticed the absence of a card. Of a body in my bed. Specifically, my ex’s. I do not crave him being there – but I was used to it. To him, for so long.

I rolled off my mattress and dropped to my knees in child’s pose – both a stretch and a prayer. “modeh ani lefanecha. Thank you G-d for returning my soul to me.” I asked for several obsessions to be removed. And then, still on my knees, I opened Facebook on my phone. The messages had already begun to pour in. Old neighbors. Acquaintances from grade school. Family – by origin and by choice. From Africa. And from just down the street.

I wrote. Meditated. Showered and went to work. Weight Watchers. It felt life affirming. As did dance class. I made lunch and took myself shopping at my favorite resale shop. I bought a grey wool coat that ties at the waist. It fits as if it were made for me.

I talked to a few friends on the phone. Around five a girlfriend picked me up and we went to do what we do to make sure we don’t drink today.

I used to make a big “to do” out of my birthday. Or at least try to. Those expectations often left me feeling sad and frustrated. I was unclear why. But today was delightfully ordinary.

It ended with cheap eats at a large, bright Pakistani restaurant on Devon Avenue. The kind with a menu posted on a TV screen. Where you wait in line to order food and pick it up on a tray. Where you eat with plastic utensils.

Where I feel conspicuously white.

There were eight of us. Among them, my divorce buddy – the man I walked lock step with through the dissolution of our marriages. And then watched my friendship with him dissolve. I hadn’t invited him. But there he was. I was delighted.

“Of course he’s here,” Kristin said. “He loves you.”

I decided to believe her. And to believe in all the love around the table. JB’s. Tom’s. Matt’s.

Rebecca’s. Brian’s. Kristin’s.

And to focus on it. To focus on who was there, instead of who wasn’t. The calls, texts, cards and Facebook greetings I did receive. Instead of those I didn’t. (Well, mostly.)

We took pictures and ate fried bits of goodness – both sweet and savory. Drank lassis and tea with evaporated milk.

I came home and ate the last of my sweets. I felt a little overly-sugared. Overly stimulated.

And I fell into bed. Alone. Sated. Full.

Artist Date 40: Dublin, A Fillling Station

September 27, 2013 LesleyPearlLeave a comment

I am not as healed as I thought I was. I hate that.

It is September 16. One year to the day since my divorce was finalized in the state of Washington

I arrive in Dublin for Tim and Martin’s wedding. Everything is new. Everything is the potential Artist Date.

Full-fat yogurt in glass jars with rhubarb layered on top. Breakfast at the airport Spar.

A bus ride to Trinity College followed by a taxi to Tim’s house. The driver’s brogue so thick I make out only about a third of what he says. Among it, “Is your liver ready for your visit?”

A shower. Tim shows me how to turn it on. It is not intuitive to my jet-lagged American mind. He shows me how the heat booster works.

So much shiny newness. Other-ness. And yet…my mind and my mouth reverts to my divorce like a rubber band. Anger toward my ex-husband I didn’t know was there. Anger that the dissolution of my marriage is so much a part of my story, my identity – still. In journalistic terms, it is “what I lead with.”

By design the Artist Date is an individual endeavor, although I’ve played fast and loose with that dictate. But it is in my alone moments here, in Dublin, where I find my grounding, my feet under me, and I am able to open myself to everything outside of me. I discover this on my third day here, when I peel off for a few hours on my own – Artist Date 40.

The Thai storefront where I eat noodles out of a cardboard container with chopsticks, sitting on a bench on the sidewalk with locals.

St. Stephen’s Green. I stumble on to it. I feel like I have wandered into Central Park from the Upper East Side. Or am perhaps along the Seine, as here too artists line up their wares.

It is sunny and mild. Long legs stretched out on the grass. Suits eating sandwiches on wooden benches. I snap photographs of the geese wandering outside of the pond before they change their mind and retreat to the water.

Break dancers on Grafton Street. A large circle forms around a gaggle of boys dressed in yellow. Each takes a turn in the center. I want to jump in with them. Spin on my head. Be a part of the dance. Or at the very least, clap. But I am filming them – a step removed from full presence.

I meet Steven in front of the bank at the corner of Grafton and Nassau Streets, eager to share my finds. I take him for Pad Thai and to St. Stephen’s Green, stopping first in front of a band set up on the street. There is a cajon, a xylophone, an accordion. A saxophone that sounds like a snake charmer. I grab Steven’s hand and we break into spontaneous dance in the street – swing style.

I haven’t danced with Steven since my wedding in 2001. My shirt is rising up at the waist, exposing my belly. The cajon player is looking at me. Is he looking at my belly? Or my ear-to-ear grin? Someone is filming us. Another couple joins in. I feel deliriously in love with the world. With myself. That I am the kind of woman who breaks into spontaneous dance on the streets of Dublin.

Next day we visit Kilmainham Gaol, Ireland’s most “famous” jail, and the National Museum of Ireland – History and Decorative Arts. We hop on and hop off a red double-decker bus. We are quintessential tourists – sans fanny pack and white sneakers.

Inside Kilmainham we receive explicit directions not to wander off from our guide and group, lest we get lost.

We peer into cells, stand in others. We learn about its political prisoners. Its leaders. Women in the fight for independence. And how, during the potato famine, some vied for a spot in this overcrowded, infected, squalid place – five to a cell with one bowl of watery soup a day – because it was better than life on the streets.

We wander into a furniture exhibit at the History and Decorative Arts Museum. It is cool and retro. 1950s. I remember Steven’s desire to make furniture. I tell him about my ex-boyfriend J – how his first foray into woodworking resulted in a Mission-style bed and side table. He is a creative genius.

I visit the collection of Adolph Mahr – an Irish Jew who immigrated to San Francisco in his teens and became a pillar in the fine arts community. I witness the unfolding of Eileen Gray’s career – home furnishings artisan come environmental designer.

Eileen Gray, at the beginning of her career. — Eileen Gray.

That evening, I sit next to Helen, Martin’s cousin from Sheffield, at a cocktail crawl – sans cocktail. I tell her about the gaol. The Jewish collector and the designer.

It reminds me of a conversation I had a few months ago. Thick in the newness of my Artist Dates, telling a man I just met about the biography I was reading. The small theatre production I had just seen. The couture exhibit at the History Museum.

I felt smart. Interesting. Artistic. That I was the woman I had always hoped to be. Or am at least becoming.

I feel that way again tonight.

I have something else to discuss, following so many days of talk about relationships.

I am more than my marriage. My divorce. My flirtations.

I already know this. I remember it in the stillness of being alone – where I can bring the outside in. A filling station.

Artist Date 39: Story of O (pen)

September 15, 2013September 15, 2013 LesleyPearlLeave a comment

This Yom Kippur, this Day of Atonement (or At One Ment, depending on your school of thought), my Rabbi spoke about being open, and staying open – vulnerable. To change. To transformation.

This is a story about open.

I am anxious to write it. It is so tender, so personal. And yet…I have given voice to seemingly every other experience in this year following my divorce. Specifically regarding the season of suggested “not dating,” and the process of creatively romancing myself on a weekly basis vis a vis, the Artist Date.

I am standing in front of a wall of condoms. It is 11:30 a.m. I need supplies.

I pulled into the Pleasure Chest on the way home from leading a Weight Watchers meeting – Artist Date 39.

I took a lover last week.

We are in wildly different places in our lives. Not surprisingly, we want and need wildly different things. And we are wildly attracted to one another.

He’s younger than I – which is brand new to me. He captured my attention with a flirty quip in regards to my Artist Dates. Something like “I’m not sure what these entail…but I qualify as an artist (I think), and I am free tomorrow.” (Insert flush across my cheeks, across my chest, here.)

But I wasn’t. Or the next day. Or the next.

Until Rosh Hashanah night – the same date my divorce was final last year, on the Hebrew calendar – when the gods saw fit for me to tell a new story.

The days leading up were ripe with sexy texts and suggestive emails. And our nights together made good on what had been promised in words.

Yummy. Naughty. Playful. And then, Over.

“We can’t do this,” we agreed. That while decidedly delicious, an ongoing entanglement couldn’t meet either of our more pressing needs. And might even cause us harm.

Usually I would be devastated by such a fleeting romance. But I’m not. I see it all as a gorgeous transition. A little poke (no pun intended) from the universe that I have opened myself up just a little bit more. To sex. To love. To possibilities.

That’s not to say that I don’t miss the attention, being pursued, and getting to know someone new. Yes, he is in fact, another artist. Darling. Smart and sweet. But not “the one.” At least not now.

This is new to me too. Not trying to make him “the one.”

I used to insist, “this time is different.” Until my friend Teresa gently pointed out, “It’s always different…and it never is.” She was right. It was the same story over and over. Me believing that he, whomever he was at that moment, had the power to make me beautiful, desirable, whole.

My young artist didn’t make me those things. He merely held up the mirror.

Being an addict, I (of course) want more. But I am not acting on those desires. I am respecting our decision. Respecting him. Respecting me. Respecting us. And trusting there will be more, with someone (s) else.

And so, I find myself standing in front of this wall of condoms, not for “us,” but for the future.

There are the usual suspects. Trojans. Kimono. Durex. Latex and non-latex. Flavored. Ribbed. Knobbed. And some I don’t know. Plaid boxes. Sir Richard’s. Sounds fancy.

I am certain any will do. But for some reason, I decide to call in the experts. I walk over to the glass counter. On the other side is a woman with a mess of red curls, funky glasses and a great big smile. Her name is Sara.

I tell her I need some help. That I haven’t bought condoms in a while. That I recently took my first lover since my divorce. The first man I’ve been with, other than my ex, in 15 years.

“Congratulations,” she says. “On the divorce. And the lover.”

She comes around the glass and we walk over to the wall together, where she educates me on the finer points of my choices. I am reminded of the years I spent at wine tastings, discussing the subtleties of nose and terroir. Sara approaches our conversation with the same mix of knowledge, passion and joy.

This is what she tells me:

Latex isn’t what it used to be. It no longer smells like Goodyear Tires when the foil is ripped open.

Stay away from the Trojans. Too thick.

Pleasure dots are nice for both. There’s a little pouch on the underside that creates friction.

One brand is nice. Doesn’t taste bad.

“I’d stick with these,” she says, gesturing to Skyn, Kimono, One and Sir Richard’s. “Or you might want to consider a sampler pack. Includes a couple of dental dams and latex gloves.”

She leaves me to shop and reminds me she is available if I have any questions.

So many choices. I remember coming home from Rwanda last summer, standing in front of the yogurt selections at Whole Foods and bursting into tears – overwhelmed by the abundance. I feel a little bit the same way.

I pull down a couple of boxes and choose a variety pack from Sir Richard’s – purple and grey plaid. Made in Boulder. For each condom purchased, one is donated in a developing country. A little altruism with my orgasm. Nice. I also grab a small box of non-latex Skyn. I don’t have a latex allergy but, someone else might.

I take a quick spin through the aisles before I leave. DVDs. Vibrators. Strap Ons. Lube. I grab a bottle of Sliquid and meet Sarah at the register.

She excuses herself from the couple she is assisting with harnesses.

She nods approvingly at my choices, runs my credit card through, and slips a flyer listing free workshops in the bag. All of them have passed.

Before I leave, she tells me that she divorced more than 15 years ago, and more than made it through. “I learned how to advocate for myself sexually,” she adds. “It’s been great.”

I believe her. Both on the advocating and on the great. I’ve already opened myself to it.

A Wandering Jewess

My Journey Back To Self

Tag: relationships