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.

Artist Date 44: You Are Really More West African

October 24, 2013 LesleyPearlLeave a comment

Mary is coming toward me but I can’t place her. In fact, I don’t yet recall that this is her name.

I scan through my mental Rolodex as quickly as I can trying to match a face, a name, an experience. I come up blank other than to know that she is familiar, and we are at my synagogue, so I figure I must know her from here.

One of the many children I met in Kigali...introduced by Mary. — One of many children I met in Kigali, introduced by Mary.

She puts her arms around me and asks how I am. I tell her I am well and she says that I look it. Her response is genuine. Like she has taken a few minutes to take me in. All of me. Like she’s seen me before. And she has. Even though I cannot remember where.

She begins talking about the speakers I am here to hear. Dr. Naasson Munyandamutsa and his wife Donatilla Mukumana. That she has been traveling with them. Out West, where Naasson received the Barbara Chester Award from the Hopi Foundation, for his work with torture victims. And now here, to Evanston. To my synagogue. My more head-y than usual Artist Date – Number 44.

Finally, I humbly admit I cannot remember her name. It is Mary. I tell her mine is Lesley. She hadn’t remembered either. Just my face. She has seen my face.

In Rwanda. Her name shakes something loose. The pieces fall into place.

Mary is one of the founders of WE-ACTx – an organization supporting women and children with HIV and AIDS in Rwanda. We met in the summer of 2012 when I traveled there with my Rabbi and members of my synagogue, the Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation.

On the ground, we filled prescription packets, painted walls, built a library. But mostly, we witnessed. The people. Their lives. The help they required. And the heroic, albeit shoe-string, assistance that was being provided.

It was an antidote, a balm, to the crazy, or at the very least, unsettled, that was my life at that time.

Smack dab in the middle of my divorce. Neither in nor out. I was living in Seattle, with my soon-to-be ex-husband, sleeping on the fold-out couch in the office. I had decided I would decide in Kigali where to go next. If I would stay in Seattle. Move back to Chicago. Or San Francisco.

Or go somewhere else entirely – like Kigali. Where it was suggested more than once, by residents, by ex-patriots and by several of those on my trip, that perhaps I should consider staying.

All of this comes flooding back to me as Mary is speaking to me.

Patrick. His greeting to me each time we met: "Liora, you should stay." — Patrick’s greeting each time we met: “Liora, you should stay.”

The bindi I wore every day – the jeweled accoutrement pasted between my eyes that I had taken to wearing. The mark of a married women in Indian culture. My own private, not-even-conscious, barrier between me and the world. A secret “Don’t-even-fucking-think-of-it.” Even though it was all I was fucking thinking about. Fucking. Because I wasn’t.

The name I claimed – Liora, my Hebrew name. It means “my light.” There were two Lesley—s on the trip and it just seemed easier. For everyone except my Rabbi, who knew me as Lesley.

The words, “It’s ok. It was a long time coming,” that flew out of my mouth regularly. Every time I spoke of my impending divorce, which was a lot. It was my story, as we each told our stories to one another – 12 of us over 12 or so days in sub-Saharan Africa.

It seems a lifetime ago.

Nights under my mosquito net talking with my roommate – who, just a few months later, would begin walking through her own divorce – talking about the day. Blogging by the light of my computer after she had gone to bed.

Dancing with a professional troupe in a “cultural village” (read: Tourist Destination) near the Ugandan border. Dancing on the hot concrete at the WE-ACTx compound and on the lawn outside of the hotel in the evening – a party thrown just for us, complete with a DJ, BBQ, and a movie – Gorillas in the Mist – shown on a screen outside, just like in Chicago during summertime in the parks.

I am jostled back into today as Mary introduces Naasson and Donatilla.

They are sitting at a table, each with a laptop computer in front of them. His, a MAC Airbook. Hers, an HP, like mine.

They talk about their work with rape. With depression and suicide. Their voices are sweet, slightly lilting. Easy on the ear. Their faces express nothing of the pain of their work. Of what they, and those around them, have experienced. It is typical for people from this part of Africa, and they speak to it – the shrouded emotional life of Rwandans.

There are only five psychiatrists in all of Rwanda.

I lean over to my Rabbi. “It’s a good thing I didn’t stay there, “I whisper, remembering he was one of the ones who encouraged me to consider staying – perhaps his own “road-not-traveled.”

“Yes, you are more West African,” he whispers back. We laugh. Even though I don’t quite know what it means. But I like it.

I like it because I “study” West African dance. Spending Sunday mornings barefoot, moving in lines across a wood floor, supported and surrounded by a posse of drummers and other dancers. Leaping. Learning to shake my hips like a not-locked-up-up-tight American woman.

My heart seemingly bursting through my skin.

I don’t know anything about West Africans – other than what I experience from my dance teacher and some of the drummers. But I know that I am emotionally “raw.” And not just now. That I am “wild” in comparison to Rwandans. And to many Americans.

I like the idea of a place where people live like this. A land of “misfit toys,” like in the animated holiday special, Rudolph’s Shiny New Year. Where everyone’s heart is seemingly bursting through their skin. Spilling out with love. With pain. With life.

Artist Date 42: Dressed, Safely Shrouded

October 11, 2013 LesleyPearlLeave a comment

I think I need a headdress.

Feathered, painted and beaded. Like the one I’m standing in front of at the Chicago Art Institute – Artist’s Date 42. According to the description, it is meant to express a sense of beauty, while spiritually protecting the wearer, providing potency in battle, diplomacy and/or courtship.

I could use that – spiritual protection and potency. Especially in courtship. I feel like I’m fumbling all over the place in this suddenly, or not so suddenly, single world.

Perhaps a wig would suffice. Cover up my naked head. My naked heart.

My cousin Andrew told me I should consider wearing them. Over dinner a few weeks ago at a trendy, too loud, see-and-be-seen, restaurant, he leaned in and said, very seriously, “I’ve been giving it some thought…I think you should wear wigs.”

I laughed, but he was dead serious, waxing the possibilities of an Uma Thurman Pulp Fiction bob. I showed him a photograph of me wearing a large Foxy Brown afro wig many years ago in Oakland. I told him I wished my hair grew like that. How I longed to wear a wig but worried about offending people – lest those whose hair grows that way think it is a joke, this seriously small white girl sporting a do belonging to someone else.

We made a date to go wig shopping but never quite made it.

I had forgotten about it until now.

And really, I probably shouldn’t be thinking about it now. Or even be here at all. My friend Julie arrives from Detroit in a few hours. Her visit comes on the heels of my friend Ernie’s visit from Seattle, which came on the heels of my trip to Dublin, and precedes my trip to Minneapolis – for my cousin Andrew’s wedding – by just days.

And yet, I am here. Stealing away for an hour or so, by myself, with no intention any more noble than to see with different eyes, hear with different ears, feel with a different heart. To leave here a little better than I arrived. To fill my mind with something other than “me, me, me.” It is a relief.

My plan was to visit the African Art. But I am stopped in my tracks in the Native American section. Thinking about wigs. About my cousin. About my other cousin – Diane.

I visited her in Albuquerque when I was 17. The trip, my first time traveling alone – to see Diane in New Mexico and Andrew in Los Angeles – was a high-school graduation gift from my parents.

I bought suede fringed boots, the kind with no hard sole, on that trip. They snaked up my legs, stopping just beneath my knees and tied with crisscrossing leather cord. Burnout style. And also, a wooden box, the top decorated with a sand painting of Father Sky – it says so in pencil, written on the underside, good for storing treasures.

Diane bought me a miniature wedding vase, a smaller version of the kind I would drink from at my own wedding 15 years later.

It seems like forever ago. As does my trip to see Diane. Except the memories of my marriage feel sneakier – unexpected – and not as purely sweet as those of my trip to New Mexico.

So I keep on moving, rather than sitting (or like my friend Sheila likes to say “bathing”) in the feelings. I look at pipes, teepee covers and silver jewelry, eventually moving on to the African Art section – something without connection to the past. Something entirely my own. Sort of.

Unless you consider it is my ex who bought me a gift certificate to the Old Town School of Music and Dance, where I study West African dance. Or that I found myself in Rwanda right in the middle of our divorce.

And yet, Africa is mine. It always was. A dream since I was a child. He just helped get me there.

The collection is small.

A few voluminous robes – the kind I have seen my instructor Idy dance in, constantly moving the sleeves in gorgeous gestures to keep from getting the fabric caught up in his feet. A couple of headdresses and costumes, one depicting the ideal mature woman in the 17^th century – prominent nose, jutting chin, and large breasts.

I think of my own breasts. Small. No longer pendulous. Faded scars run from breast fold to areola – subtle reminders of my reduction surgery. A different beauty ideal.

I am struck by the words tacked to the wall.

“Dress is among the most personal forms of visual expression, creating a buffer and a bridge between the private and the public self…Special forms of luxury dress…may (also) signal particular standing within a community or a moment of transition from one role to another.”

I think about the Native American headdress. Of my own dress. My friend Tori says I dress differently since my divorce. Sexier. It was not my intention, but I believe she is right.

Across the room is a timeline of events, highlighting key moments in both African and world history. I snap photographs so I can remember them.

1884: European nations meet for the Berlin West Africa Conference, initiating the European scramble to colonize Africa. By 1900 only Ethiopia and Liberia remain independent.

1957: The nation of Ghana gains independence from British colonial rule, launching a continent-side decolonization movement.

1980: Zimbabwe gains independence from Great Britain; it is the last European colony to do so.

1990-94: Civil war in Rwanda leads to genocide.

I remember my friend Geri’s map-of-the-world shower curtain – so old, Rhodesia was still on it.

I think about my own map. My timeline. My dress. My independence. Messy. Uncertain. Liberating. But unlike Rhodesia, I got to keep my name.

Artist Date 38: Creating Community…It’s Not About the Shoes

September 6, 2013 LesleyPearlLeave a comment

I don’t know if I filled my creative coffers this week. By my spiritual and social ones are brimming over. And that will have to do this week for Artist Date 38.

Overlooking Lake Michigan, at Dawes Park.

Rosh Hashanah – the Jewish New Year. 5774. I’m at Dawes Park in Evanston for the ritual of tashlich – where we empty bread from our pockets into a body of moving water. Some think of it as casting away one’s sins. I prefer a gentler interpretation. That I am simply cleaning out the residue of the last year. Whatever is stale. Has been sitting around in the corners of my consciousness slowly growing a somewhat furry mold.

I’ve stuffed a package of naan bread in my bag. It’s been in my freezer since November. A friend brought it to a party I had, to go with the curried lentil soup I was making. I’m not much of a bread eater, so I tucked it away for just such an occasion.

Another woman has matzo. I could have brought that two. I buy too much every year.

It is my third High Holiday season with the Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation, so I know where we meet. But this year is different. I not only know the place, but I know many of the people here too.

My friend Phil is here with his family. He introduced me to this congregation – specifically the Rabbi — a number of years ago, when I was feeling particularly wayward and spiritually lost.

Since that time I have developed a close relationship with Rabbi Brant and Cantor Howard. They are tuning up for this short, mostly musical, service that precedes the tossing of the bread. Jeff is tuning up as well. We met a couple of years ago at a Shabbat morning service I attended just once.

He seemed to sense I was new and somewhat hesitant, and warmly welcomed me in. I have had several encounters with him since them. Perhaps my favorite being when he sidled up to me during last year’s High Holiday services.

He said he read my blog postings from Rwanda and that he liked my writing. I thanked him and told him I used to write professionally. “It shows,” he said. And was gone.

Moments before I had silently cried out to G-d, asking what the plan is, what it is I was meant to do. I recall looking up toward the heavens, smiling and saying, “got it.”

Mary Jo is here. Brant introduced us several years ago when I completed my conversion to Judaism. She joined him and Howard as my witnesses, and was there in that same role when I received my get, my Jewish divorce.

I am now on her permanent invite list for Passover, and the breaking of the fast on Yom Kippur.

I feel a tap on my shoulder. It is Rachel. She is a Weight Watchers member I know.

Monica is here with her family. We met at Shabbat services at the lakefront a couple of years ago. Michael is here too. He blows the shofar every year at High Holiday services. He introduces me to his daughters who are following in the family tradition.

I see Hannah. She used to wear her head shaved like mine but now she has a mass of ringlets. She tells me that she’s bought a condo and that she broke up with her boyfriend. She introduces me to her friend Kelly and we agree we must get together.

A woman I have never met before approaches me. Her name is Sheila. She likes my shoes and takes a photograph of them.

Yes, they are “the shoes.” The shoes that have seemingly come to identify me. My orange Fly London peep-toe wedges.

The first summer I owned them, people literally chased me down Michigan Avenue to find out what they were and where I got them. It was fun, talking with all sorts of people I wouldn’t otherwise meet. And today is no exception.

Walking to the water, a tall woman with a mess of dark curls puts her foot next to mine. “Nice shoes,” she says. She is wearing the same ones in pewter.

She tells me she is tossing out the year of rehabbing her broken wrist. It is healed. I do not tell her what I am tossing. Instead, I tell her I like our shoes so much that I have two pairs. That the second I bought before my divorce was final, when my then-husband kindly said, “Do what you need to before we separate our monies.”

I bought a new lightweight massage table, a Torah commentary, and the peep-toe wedges in mustard. We laugh at my choices.

I wish her a sweet New Year and peel off to throw my bread, my karmic residue. There are so many things I could get rid of. The litany that I repeat every year – self-doubt, unkindness, judgment of myself and others. I recall that last year I tossed away my identity as a wife.

It was a Monday. I knew divorce papers were signed on Mondays in the county where we filed. I had a sinking feeling at that moment that I was officially divorced. A call to my mediator later in the day confirmed it.

Today I am casting away what my friend Lisa likes to call “an old idea.” I am embarrassed to admit that I have continued to hold on to it. Actually, I’m not sure I was consciously aware that I had it, but a series of recent events has cast a glaring light upon it and I can no longer turn away.

I point myself east, tear off a piece of naan and whisper to myself, “I let go of the idea that I am only desirable for sex.”

It is windy and the naan flies back at me. I turn west off of the dock where the waters are still. I repeat the words.

I’ve got a lot of naan so I say it a couple of more times, ripping and tossing. Ripping and tossing.

When I am done, I am approached by a woman. She asks me about the shoes. She is radiant and I tell her so. She tells me about her job search. Her cancer.

I suddenly remember that people used to tell me things about themselves all of the time. Friends and family, and random, almost strangers too. Cab drivers especially. I realize people are talking to me in this way again.

It’s not the shoes. Because I wore the same ones last year…I am different. My heart has healed just enough to let some of my light shine out. I am open and there is room for others. They sense it and come in.

A Year After the Day Before Everything Was About to Change

July 20, 2013 LesleyPearl3 Comments

Wandering in Brussels with my friend, Tim. I love putting the camera in front of faces and seeing what is captured. — With Tim, in Brussels

A year ago today I was in Brussels.

I didn’t know that everything was about to change. Or maybe I did know. The universe did. Perhaps that’s why I was blessed with an extra day there, even though it didn’t feel like a blessing at the time.

I’d spent the past two days in what I’d come to call “Paris Small.” One of them, with my old roommate Tim, who flew in from Dublin for just one night – just to be with me. We rented an IKEA-decorated studio, a few blocks from the train station. Its red wooden shutters opened onto the square. It was perfect.

That day, we Skyped with Tim’s boyfriend Martin, who was living in Yorkshire. We got our heads shaved. Ate Belgian Waffles covered in powdered sugar, walking and talking until the sky turned navy.

I spent the next night alone. I called my friend, Michael, my divorce pal in the States, before going to sleep. Just as I did most nights back at home. Ever since my ex asked me for a divorce and he and his wife also decided to separate.

The next morning, a year ago today, I arrived at the airport and learned that my plane had been grounded due to a cracked windshield. I stood in line for more than two hours before reaching the counter to re-book my flight – surrounded by people loudly sighing and complaining.

I made friends with a gay boy from Missouri. I watched the family in front of me – husband and wife, and almost grown kids. They seemed nonplussed. Almost enjoying the time. As we approached the counter together, I commented on how happy they seemed.

“What else can we do?” the father responded.

Happy, even though they had missed the Chicago portion of their vacation. Would miss their connection to San Francisco. And were just hoping to recoup their time in Los Angeles. Happy.

They wrote a list of suggestions for how I might want to spend my extra time in Brussels.

We wished each other well, and parted ways. Me, with a voucher for a hotel room across the street, and a boarding pass for a different flight tomorrow. No longer direct, I would fly to Frankfurt – the first airport I landed in overseas, nearly 20 years ago – before arriving in Chicago.

I took the train back to the City Centre after checking in to the hotel and retraced my steps down the cobblestone streets. Enjoying another waffle. Purchasing pale nougat studded with almonds and dried orange pieces to bring home as gifts.

I walked to a park overlooking the city and read in the cool sunshine. I browsed a museum gift shop, as I arrived too late to see the exhibit. And then I took the train back to the hotel, stopping in the airport to buy a phone card, hoping to speak with Michael again.

I tried phoning him from my room, and then realized I hadn’t put enough money on the card. I stuffed it in my wallet and went to the lobby to take advantage of the free WiFi.

I noticed it was my friend J’s birthday while trolling Facebook. I sent him good wishes, which he was on the other end to receive. It was still afternoon in New York.

He told me he would be spending his birthday eating crab legs with his girlfriend. I told him I was on my way home from Rwanda. That I was grounded in Brussels. That I was divorcing. And that I was moving back to Chicago.

I threw up on him. And then I went to dinner.

When I left Seattle nearly a month earlier, I didn’t know where I would settle. Now I had a plan.

I arrived in Chicago the next afternoon. (I was fortunate, for those who were able to re-book on the original flight remained grounded in Brussels for another day.) I informed my friends I was now going by Liora – my Hebrew name – as that was what I was called in Rwanda, the result of having two Lesleys on the trip.

I had dinner with Michael. And after, we stood under a street lamp, holding on to one another for what felt like forever. I didn’t want to let go. I told him I would see him in a month.

My friend Emily picked me up at the airport that evening. She remembered what re-entry was like after spending time in Africa. We had dinner. She took me grocery shopping. And then she dropped me off at home.

The cats greeted me at the door. My then soon-to-be-ex-husband was noticeably absent. I felt painfully alone as I rolled my hard orange suitcase into the house.

I saw Michael sooner than anticipated. At my request, he flew to Seattle, helped me pack my car and drive home. We stayed with friends of mine in Missoula and Bozeman. I shot a gun for the first and only time somewhere between the two cities.

2012-08-31 10.30.32 — Hiking in the Badlands.

We camped along the Missouri River, under a blue moon, at Teddy Roosevelt National Park. Hiked the Badlands the next day, and stopped somewhere outside of Fargo that night, sharing a room at The Bison Inn.

We stayed with my college roommates on our final stop in Minneapolis. They stuffed us with homemade treats. Michael replaced the radiator in my 2000 Honda Civic. It failed just as we were entering the city. My job was to hand him the tools he called for.

We arrived home the day before Labor Day, around 11 p.m. I dropped him off at home in his questionable neighborhood, sobbing on the front lawn.

July 19, 2012. I didn’t know everything was about to change. That, in many ways, it would be the last day of my “previous life.” How could I? And yet, how could I not?

I believe my brain was protecting me from that which I could not yet conceive of.

My divorce was final a little more than 10 months ago. I live alone for the first time in my life. I buried my birth mother in the spring.

I felt new lips over mine for the first time in many, many years. And I watched my heart crack open. Then again. And again.

A couple of weeks ago, I initiated the process of separating our monies. When that is complete, only our condominium, which we rent out, will bind us – financially.

I applied for a job today. The first in more than 11 years. I’m excited. Fingers crossed.

This morning, two women commented that I sounded really good. A third asked for my blog address. Later, my friend Jess asked if I could have imagined how much I would have healed by now. It struck me as funny, as I didn’t feel particularly healed. I decided to trust her perspective, and that of the three other women.

I wrote J a birthday greeting. I wished him what I wish for everyone I love – joy and the causes of joy. And then I wished him something special – something just for him: a nice piece of liver for dinner.

He knew exactly what it meant. And suggested a watermelon instead. I laughed out loud.

It is comforting to know not everything has changed since July 19, 2012. To know that some things have survived. Friendship. Love. Shared memories and private jokes. And most of all, me.

Artist’s Date 20: When God Fills the Space, a Trip to the Island of Lost Souls

May 18, 2013May 30, 2013 LesleyPearl1 Comment

“You look familiar. Are you famous?”

This is an auspicious beginning to any date – even an Artist’s Date, one that I take by myself.

I assure Eric, the salesperson at Blackbird Gallery and Framing, that I am not.

“I love this,” he continues, gesturing to my bindi. “All of this,” he adds, waving his hands in small circles around his face. “You are beautiful.”

I like this man. Of course, he is gay.

In my hand is a cardboard tube. I’ve made a handle out of packing tape so I could carry it from Nashville to Knoxville to Atlanta and home to Chicago. Inside are two posters.

I bought them at Hatch Show Print in Nashville – America’s oldest working print shop – where letterpress posters summoned me through glass. Where nary a square inch of wall isn’t covered with iconic images of Johnny Cash, Patsy Cline and the Grand Ole Opry.

A smattering of them are for sale, among them “Luana. Danse Savage” and “Island of Lost Souls with the Panther Woman.” As soon as I spotted them, I knew they were mine.

Eric unrolls them onto a large table and places weighted felt bags at each corner so they lie flat. They are made of heavy cotton paper, printed in single color ink. Luana is deep purple – women dancing in short fringed skirts, with cuffs around their ankles. Island of Lost Souls with the Panther Woman is forest green – a vamped-out, busty broad holding a wild cat on a leash.

Island of Lost Souls. I feel like I took up residency there about a year ago. I often times still feel wayward. Uncertain. Acutely aware that little in my life has stood on terra firma for some time now.

Marriage dissolved. Another move cross-country, this time bringing little with me that feels like home. At the time it felt liberating – packing the 13-year-old Honda Civic and leaving the rest behind. Only later did it register as frighteningly impulsive and potentially foolish.

And yet, my ex doesn’t seem to feel any less lost than I – living in the house where we once lived together, sleeping in the bed we used to sleep in together, surrounded by “our things.” Perhaps I got the better end of the deal. Spiritually, at least.

I like the panther on the poster. And the va-va-voom dress the woman is wearing. A sexy new take on Cat Woman. The possibility of living as a super hero.

Luana reminds me of Sunday afternoon dance class at the Old Town School of Folk Music. Of the serendipity and just plain good luck I had to dance with a troupe in Rwanda this past summer. The dancers’ surprise and delight that the muzungo (white person) could follow.

Luana seems the opposite end of the Island of Lost Souls. Yet I am both of them at once.

The posters are big. Big enough to make a dent on my big, blank canvas of a wall – painted eggshell by my landlord. The colors, the same as those in the fabric hanging on the adjacent wall – a few meters cut and carried from the Rwandan market.

They are not what I had envisioned here.

I had imagined my friend Slade’s sketch of me. Shaved head, bindi, a whitish aura around me – he is not the first to comment on it. I look a little bit African American, a little bit Hare Krishna. Thin, wispy, spiritual. I love it. I love how he captured me. But the piece is small, and it lives in his sketchbook.

I had imagined a map. Or a series of maps, playing off the unintentional travel theme of the room. Snowshoes on one side of the entry way, license plates from California, Washington and Illinois on the other. Stacked suitcases turned on their side make a table. There’s the Rwandan fabric, and a painting I bought from my friend Scotty of a woman leaving her home, leaving her tribe. It’s called, “You Can Take it With You.”

I am amazed at how the space is filled when I let go of my ideas and make room for God.

Eric and I lay frame corners on the edges of the posters. Painted wood. Maple. Birch. No. Not quite. I place a sample of metallic sage on one, metallic plum on the other. A marriage is made.

Eric places a card on top of the posters. It shows the differences between three types of glass. Three price points. I submit to the middle grade. Less reflection. Less distortion. UV protected.

We talk about spacers and decide I can do without.

Eric crunches numbers and square inches. I look at paintings and photographs on the walls. The artists are young, accomplished – as evidenced by their bios. Talented. I feel woefully far behind in my craft. As if I’ve been losing time for some time. On that Island of Lost Souls for far longer than I realized.

He produces a framing estimate that shocks me. Even with my $61 Yelp! coupon credit it is much more than I anticipated. I consider leaving and sticking a tack into Luana and the Island.

I think about all the things I left behind so that I could create something new. Something shiny.

I hand over my credit card and put down a deposit, hoping the second half will show up on next month’s bill.

I tell Eric about the posters. About dancing in Africa in the middle of a divorce, leaving the Island of Lost Souls for a spiritual sojourn. He tells me about his photography work. We talk about my return to writing.

Perched up on a three-legged stool, I realize I am flirting. It doesn’t matter that he is gay. I feel light. Like myself. Or who I used to be. I enjoy our easy rat-a-tat-tat repartee.

I ask him his sign. Sagittarius, he says and I laugh. I should have known. I tell him I love Sagittarians. I do not tell him that the book Love, Sex and Astrology says that Libra and Sagittarius meet at half past 7 and are in bed by 8.

I keep this to myself, along with stories of all the Sagittarians I have loved – my first real boyfriend in college. My one-time drinking partner. My religious studies professor – the object of my unrequited desire for so many years. Unfinished business.

Instead, I tell him I am a Libra. He tells me I seem strong. Resilient. I smile and nod.

“Sometimes,” I say.

After nearly an hour with Eric, I leave with a pink receipt and a card for his next open studio.

As I cross the threshold on the way out, a couple walks in with a large piece of art for framing. So large it requires both sets of hands. Divine timing. God filling the space I am leaving.

A Wandering Jewess

My Journey Back To Self

Tag: Rwanda