Artist Date 99: Like a Motherfucker

January 7, 2015January 7, 2015 LesleyPearlLeave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yes.

I’ll Be Your Mirror

October 1, 2014 LesleyPearlLeave a comment

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

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

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

Except that I continued to do nothing.

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

This was highly unusual.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Until a couple of weeks ago.

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

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

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

And then we talked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rising Up Into Warrior

March 23, 2014 LesleyPearlLeave a comment

Drawings -- icedteaandlemonade.blogspot.com — Drawings — icedteaandlemonade.blogspot.com

When I was a child, my mother did yoga.

I have a vivid image of her in black tights and leotard, trotting off to our swim club – where lessons took place in the “party room,” in front of the fireplace. She took a towel with her. It was 1976. There were no yoga mats. She boasted that the teacher said she was doing well as she often fell asleep at the end, during Savasana – corpse pose.

I do not do yoga.

I have written about it before. That I wear this like a badge of honor. That I am the massage therapist who does not do yoga. Who wears red lipstick, tailored clothing and heels. Ever the contrarian.

Until last Thursday, at 6:30 a.m., when I am.

My friend Jeanette is to my left and a little bit forward, so I can watch her out of the corner of my eye. She is tall to my short. She knows what the poses are as they are called out.

I know many of them too. It is untrue that I have never done yoga. I have dabbled, and not liked it.

Sometimes because I wanted a more vigorous workout. Sometimes because I felt intimidated.

Mostly, because it made me cry.

My last attempt at yoga was in Seattle. One of my last efforts to bring my then-husband and I together.

He had found a studio on the top of Queen Anne Hill that he liked. Small – with just enough room for six mats. The students were fairly consistent each week, and none of them looked like “Western Yogis.” Most came to heal a physical or emotional wound. He liked the teacher. And he thought I would too.

I did.

But every session I found myself on the verge of tears, wondering when class would end.

The poses were not terribly difficult. But we held them for what seemed like forever.

I felt my chest rip open – my beating heart vulnerable and exposed. Too much. I told her that. She said it was good. Everyone said it was good. That I needed more of it.

It did not feel good. And while always one to push myself toward more growth, I did not feel like I needed more of it.

So it is a surprise to find myself here on the first day of spring, in the front row of a hot studio, not quite heated to Bikram temperatures, but more than warm.

I committed to it during a Weight Watchers meeting I was leading. We were talking about accountability. Partnering. And stepping outside of our comfort zones. Jeanette mentioned her class at Om on the Range. I blurted out, “I will meet you there.”

It is snowing outside. Big, fluffy flakes. It is March 20 and the room smells like men’s body odor, which is different from women’s.

The room is darkish. At times, even darker. The music changes. At moments verging on electronic dance.

We begin the session with a collective OM. I feel the words resound in my ears and bounce off the walls around us. I think of my synagogue in Seattle – the meditation congregation, Bet Alef. Rabbi Olivier began each Friday night service with several collective ShalOMs.

The instructor’s name is Veronica. I have shared my yoga trepidation with her before class, as I was the first to arrive.

She gets it.

The movements are faster, fluid — Vinyasa. It feels better to me. And I can mostly follow along. Veronica makes adjustments to my body. Uncurling my toes. Instructing me to bring my feet closer together. To lean into the edge of my foot for balance.

My mat gets wet from sweat and I run a towel along it to keep from slipping.

And it all becomes too much. Too hot. Too fast. Too challenging.

I am too open.

I drop into child’s pose and sob quietly. Tears mixed with sweat. Damn it. My broken heart has seeped through the steely concentration of my mind and body. And I allow myself to weep.

I stay in this position for what feels like a long time. I remember Jeanette telling me about a man who lied on the floor with his legs on the wall for the entire hour. I feel permission to do whatever it is that I have to do. That I can stay in child’s pose for the entire session if I feel like it.

Veronica puts per fingers on my tailbone and gently pushes it towards my feet, curving down to the earth. It feels good to be touched just a little.

But I do not stay in child’s pose for the whole session. I rise up again, into Warrior. Warrior II. Warrior III.

We end class with a collective OM. Jeanette high-fives me. Veronica reminds me I have a week of unlimited classes. I slip a schedule into my bag. A calendar of possibilities. A reminder. I can do anything for an hour. I will rise up again.

Surrender In A Box

February 26, 2014 LesleyPearlLeave a comment

My friend Cynthia has a God Can. “Because God can,” she says.

I’m not quite that optimistic.

I keep a God Box, instead – wooden and carved. From Poland, I think. My friend Patsy gave it to my ex and I as a wedding gift, stuffed with cards on which our guests might write their wishes for us.

I’ve used it as my God Box for a while now. Long before my ex and I called it quits.

We moved the wishes into the bottom of a cherry-wood box holding black and white photographs of our big day. Another gift from another friend. I think I tossed the wishes in the recycle bin when I left Seattle a year and a half ago, but I’m not entirely certain.

Over the years I’ve stuffed the God Box with dreams, wishes and, perhaps most importantly, people and situations over which I have no control. Which is pretty much everything and everyone…but in this case, those that caused me pain, anxiety, obsession.

Slips of paper and folded-over sticky notes with names. Occasionally a few details.

My birth mother – she would have jumped into my skin if I would have let her. In the early days of our reunion, she would call so often I didn’t have a chance to call back.

My mad crush in marriage – the one who bought me a whole smoked-salmon on my 39^th birthday and nodded knowingly to seemingly every word I said. My guru – the man who held space for everything that poured out of me. Who saw me, was charmed by me, and knew how to hold a boundary.

I desperately wanted to keep each of them. For each to fall into his or her proper place in my life. That was my prayer. To hold them near. Available. But without the pain of longing and attachment.

All that has come to pass... — All that has come to pass…

The Southern Svengali. The man/boy who swept me off of my feet when my birth mom was dying in Charleston. My divorce buddy – the one who spent long, intimate hours on the phone with me every night but insisted he did not have romantic feelings for me.

Orders to the universe. For my condo, my apartment, my office. Notes for a workshop I have yet to conduct. Questions. Who would drive back with me from Seattle to Chicago? A dollar bill. A prayer for prosperity.

I opened up the god box the other day and put a new slip of paper in it.

The name of a man 700 miles away. Last week I told him I could no longer ponder the possibilities of a romantic relationship with him. That he wasn’t available enough to me. And I was no longer available for the knot in my stomach I called uncertainty.

That pain moved from my stomach to my heart. I miss him. I miss my heart leaping each time he calls or messages or just comments on my Facebook status – as if to say, “I see you. I am here.”

What remains...God's work. — What remains…God’s work.

I wonder, will we be friends like we promised? (I hope so. We adore one another.) But how? How will he fall into his proper place in my life?While the box was open, I took out the mess of slips inside and read them. I saw that most of these things had come to pass. Had worked themselves out without my doing much of anything, other than writing words on slips of paper and stuffing them into a box. And occasionally twisting, which I’ve learned is not essential to the process.

Most. But some remained. Unresolved. Insistent questions about how I will support myself. When, where and with whom I will have my next relationship, romantic encounter, date, sex, kiss. Words cut out from a magazine, “dreams do come true…” I left them in the box, along with the newest addition.

I’m not sure what to do with those that have come to pass. Do I keep them as a reminder that things change — with or without me? That new loves, losses and worries displace the old ones. That more often than not, I receive some sort of version of what I want? Or do I burn them — as a prayer and an offering?

Meanwhile, there is a little more space in my God Box — room for my work, money and romantic possibilities to grow. Room for God to work on them. Room for me to act as if I believe that God is working on them — which is me doing my work. Writing rather than worrying. Right now.

Artist Date 57: California, Coming Home

January 17, 2014 LesleyPearlLeave a comment

My friend Sherrod was the first artist I knew personally who made money at her craft. Which meant she covered her expenses and then some.

I remember seeing her painting on Liberty Street, where I lived in San Francisco. Victorian houses in oil. She was prolific. One night, as the sun began to go down, I invited her in for dinner. It was the first time she met my then-boyfriend/now ex-husband. Being somewhat filter-less, she named him “Pretty Boy” on the spot.

That year Pretty Boy bought me a copy of one of Sherrod’s pieces for my birthday.

It was a view of Dolores Park, from above it, and downtown San Francisco in the distance. Done in watercolors. Light. Almost cartoonish. Nothing like her other work which was darker and moody.

Pretty Boy put it in a white-wood frame he found in the alley and hung it over our bed. It followed us from San Francisco to Oakland, Chicago and Seattle – where I left it – a little piece of our first shared home.

I get emails from Sherrod now and again, telling me about her shows in the Bay Area. But I hadn’t really thought about her work much until now, standing at the Art Institute of Chicago. I am at the “Dreams & Echoes: Drawings and Sculpture in the David and Celia Hilliard Collection” exhibit – Artist Date 57.

My friend Jack suggested it.

I like the sketches in the process of becoming – Degas’ “Grand Arabesque,” Matisse’s “Still Life with Apples.” The ripe, sexy suggestiveness of Rodin’s “Leda and the Swan,” Povis de Chavannes’ “Sleeping Woman.” The eerie, ethereal quartet in Toorop’s “A Mysterious Hand Leads to Another Path.” But I don’t quite see how it all hangs together.

2014-01-16 15.35.01 — Francis Towne’s “Naples”

Francis Towne’s “Naples: A Group of Buildings Seen from an Adjacent Hillside.” An accurate, albeit not terribly inspired, title. It is from 1781, done in pen and black ink, with a brush, and black and gray wash over traces of graphite. Italy. But all I see is Dolores Park.

I am wistful and happy at the same time – remembering this place I used to call home, where the sun wasn’t a stranger in January and, rumor had it, Tracy Chapman lived on my street. This place where I met and married Pretty Boy.

It is the second time I’ve rubbed up against California today.

“Nevada Falls, Yosemite Valley, California,” painted in 1920 by Marguerite Thompson Zorach. The dreamy, translucent watercolors whisper to me of Sherrod’s Dolores Park.

2014-01-16 15.26.12 — Marguerite Thompson Zorach’s “Nevada Falls”

I know the view. I’ve seen it many time,s driving down from Badger Pass to the Yosemite Valley floor, coming through the tunnel carved into granite. Surprising and spectacular. I’ve hiked a part of it, along with Vernal Falls and the John Muir Trail, forming a loop. I was with Pretty Boy and our friend Tim –my first foray into camping.

We stayed in Curry Village in a canvas tent cabin with a wood platform and a single light bulb. Tim threw baby carrots to the squirrels, although the signs all around instructed him not to. Hilarious – until one scurried into our tent.

We bought water and painted wood disks strung on elastic at the adjacent store. “Camp beads,” I exclaimed, handing a strand to Pretty Boy. Not unlike the ones he had given me off his own neck on our first date.

I got boot bang on the trail descending and had to rip off my toenail. And once back at Curry Village, I jumped into the Merced River, and then sat on a rock, drying and shivering in the sun.

After that trip I graduated to a real tent, the lightweight kind I could use to backpack in for a few days.

2014-01-16 15.18.59 — Marc Chagall’s “Das Haus”

“Das Haus.” The Marc Chagall woodcut jumps from the wall. All four woodcuts, displayed in a row, do. But it is Chagall who paints my heart. Lead glasses my heart. Woodcuts my heart.

A house erupting from a man’s shoulders. According to the placard, it was produced following Chagall’s exile from Belarus. “…the work can be seen as an image of the artist metaphorically carrying his home with him.” Like the movie, Up. Like the painting in my living room, “You Can Take It With You,” that I bought from my friend Scotty before leaving Chicago in 2011.

I return to the placard at the exhibit’s entryway. It ends, “Even with its diversity of artists and time periods, the Hilliard collection possesses a remarkable consistency in sensibility: these works are unified by their ability to transport the viewer to other eras, other worlds.”

Chagall’s house. My stories. Towne’s Naples. My California.

Artist Date 54: Sew, Here I Am Again

December 31, 2013 LesleyPearl1 Comment

I am afraid of fabric stores.

I am aware that this is a somewhat unusual fear. Sharks. Spiders. Speaking in front of large groups. Of course. But fabric stores…

And yet, I love them. Floor to ceiling bolts of brightly colored cloth, every pattern imaginable. Zebra skin. Tiny elephants. Frida Kahlo faces.

Shiny scissors of every size and price range. Silky ribbon and trim. Envelopes stuffed with patterns – what I imagine to be the Holy Grail of well-fitting clothing.

Trouble is, I can’t sew. And I am terrified that I wear this deficiency like a scarlet letter. An indelible ink tattoo on my forehead which reads, “She doesn’t know what she is doing.”

I’ve tried. In high school, when I had designs on a career in fashion design. I knew this skill was non-negotiable. My mother’s friend offered to teach me. Together, we made a skirt out of a blue-green burlap-y material. I was pretty delighted, and I wore it a lot. But I still couldn’t sew a button-hole, make pleats or even thread a bobbin on my own.

About 20 years later I took a sewing class in Berkeley, at the shop next to the cleaner who washed and folded my massage sheets each week. Up the hidden staircase at the back of the store to the loft above it, I sat with six other women on Tuesday afternoons for four weeks. And when it was over, I walked out with a very expensive kimono – which I wore for years, until it became greasy from the oil I slathered on my body every morning and no amount of cleaning could take it out. And no closer to knowing how to sew.

I visited a fabric store on Queen Anne Avenue in Seattle a couple of years ago. I was embarking on The Artist’s Way for the first time and took myself there on one of my tentative, first Artist Dates. I felt intimidated and scared, hoping, praying no one would ask me if I needed any help. No one said a word to me.

When I returned to Chicago, I stated my intention to make curtains using ironing tape on Facebook. My friend James was horrified. He sent me a private message saying “Please,don’t,” and offered to sew for me. He did. Mustard-colored with sprigs of white blossom hang in my living and dining rooms, one set tied back with bow ties, the other with scarves. Cartoonish leaves in grey, orange and green cover my bedroom window.

All of this comes rushing back to me as I walk into The Needle Shop, Artist Date 54 – a crazy mingling of curiosity, desire and fear.

Hanging in the windows are bolts of the happiest, most whimsical fabrics I’ve ever seen. I promised myself I would go in “one day.” Ever since it opened up across from the Trader Joes where I shop no less than twice a week. Today is “one day.”

It is small inside. There is nowhere to hide. I take photographs of the bolts. If anyone asks, I will say I am thinking of making pillows and want to see the fabric in my living environment.

This is not untrue. My friend Julia said she will show me how. And that she can help me shop for a starter machine so I can really learn – through practice and repetition.

No one asks. Instead, a sales clerks encourages me to take swatches, pre-cut and pinned to the bolts, along with tags of price per yard.

Brown cotton with turquoise doves and cream-colored plants. White with graphic grey and yellow flowers. Green with turquoise ginkgo.

I wander over to the bin of patterns. They are “high end.” Nothing like the McCalls and Simplicity patterns strewn around my ex-mother-in-law’s sewing room. (Although they have these too.) Sassy 1950’s style tap pants and bras. Messenger bags. Wrap dresses.

The fantasy returns. I will learn to sew. I will make my own clothes. I will have trousers that fit like they were made for me. Because they were made for me. I will make couture. I will make curtains and pillows. I will surround myself with gorgeous, happy, sumptuous fabrics.

I sit down in a stadium folding chair with a sewing book written by a cool-looking, hipster chick. I am immediately overwhelmed and quickly put the book back on the shelf.

I pick up a card listing sewing classes. Easy alterations. Roman shade. Ragland sleeve top. Sewing 101. “We show you how your machine works.”

Yes. But first I need a machine.

Not today though.

Today, this “one day,” I leave with a fistful of fabric scraps and the notion that there may be something here for me – a reason I continue to find myself in fabric stores nearly 30 years after my first visit.

Perhaps I am bound for a fourth or fifth-act career, in fashion. Perhaps I will just learn to hem my own trousers. At not-quite 5’3”, petites are still too long.

Or maybe it is nothing more than my Libran birthright, which calls me to surround myself with beauty. The swatches in my bag, a talisman – guiding me.

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.

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

November 10, 2013 LesleyPearl1 Comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But I don’t.

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

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

I am so lonely. She holds me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Cotton is the Proper Gift for a Was-A-Versary

October 14, 2013 LesleyPearlLeave a comment

Today is my wedding anniversary.

Twelve years ago today... — Twelve years ago today…

Except I’m no longer married.

What do you call an anniversary that is no longer?

Was-a-versary? Once-upon-a-time-a-versary? Just plain shitty?

Are there traditional gifts for it like for a wedding anniversary? Paper for the first year?

Yes, of course. Divorce papers.

And cotton for the second? According to the wedding website, The Nest, cotton represents durability and the ability to adapt.

Yes. This is so. Even on days when I feel really fragile.

I don’t remember this day last year. The first. Perhaps it was just too painful and my brain protected me, blocking it out. Like it does, I am told, with the pain of childbirth – this “amnesia” being necessary for the perpetuation of the species.

The amnesia has cleared. And this year I am more than present for the pain.

It hit me out of nowhere, or so it seemed – arriving Wednesday and continuing to linger like a low-grade cold that lasts all winter long.

I arrived home from my cousin’s wedding, the second in less than 30 days, and was riding my bike when I felt a rush of energy shoot through my body. It centered in my heart and moved out to my extremities. Coursing, over and again. Sharp heat.

I pedaled as hard as I could – trying to force flush this poison from my system. It didn’t budge.

My eyes welled up behind my oversized Old Navy sunglasses. My nose flared and felt hot. But I couldn’t quite squeak out a cry.

I needed more than a cry. I needed a wail.

This is the feeling I used to drink over.

I should have seen it coming. The weddings. The short-lived sex with a boy 12 years my junior. It was great fun, but as so often has been the case in my history, over practically before it began. Over before I was done.

Tim, Master Cake Maker. — Tim — Friend, former roommate and wedding-cake baker.

He told me up front he was in no place for a relationship. But “a little sex won’t kill me,” he said. Funny, I told him it might kill me. I knew that somehow my heart would hurt, but I couldn’t help myself.

And then I cut a cord that tethered my ex and I together. I told him I could not be his best friend.

Our divorce was about as amicable as they get. We lived together through it all. Used a mediator. Never went to court. The whole thing was done in less than six months.

The night before I left Seattle we sat on his bed waxing nostalgic – remembering him calling me and asking me out for the first time, and me asking “Why?”

He said I was pretty and I had cool shoes. And then he looked in my eyes and told me I was still pretty. That I still had cool shoes. The next morning, I was gone before he woke.

We were close for a while. And then we weren’t. I began to heal. I leaned into the people about me. Into my art, my writing, my dance. He noticed the change in me. In the dwindling frequency of our conversations and commented on it.

“I guess you need space,” he remarked. I did. But I was so afraid of losing him in my life that I asked for it in a wishy-washy sort of way. Backpedaling often.

When he said it again, a week or so ago, I replied in the affirmative. This time with a little more backbone, adding, “I cannot be your best friend.” He immediately, expectedly, retreated.

On Wednesday, home from my travels, and the whirlwind that has been my life for the past few weeks, I felt the culmination of the days and of my experiences. Grief. Sadness. It crashed over me like a wave, and all I could do was feel the incredible force of it.

It reminded me of body surfing in Punta Mita with my ex – the Pacific Ocean as warm as bath water. I got caught by a rip tide and was thrust down into the sand beneath me, head first. Terrifying. I began to flail, unsure which way was up. Until I remembered what I had been taught.

Don’t fight. Stay still. That my body would naturally float to the surface. And it did.

I never told my ex, or anyone else, about the experience. Until now.

I’ve been back in the ocean many times since then. The experience remains with me. A shadow. A teaching. A reminder, like all of my experiences – especially the most recent ones –I am durable. Adaptable. Like cotton.

A Wandering Jewess

My Journey Back To Self

Tag: Seattle