Alone Again…Naturally

November 8, 2014 LesleyPearlLeave a comment

A few weeks ago, over dinner, a woman I know asked me who traveled with me to Italy.

“No one,” I answered. “Myself.”

Silence.

Like the silence I heard when I was a we, and responded to the question “Do you have children?” with a simple “No.” The quiet, uncomfortable space while they waited for some sort of explanation. Something to make them feel more comfortable with the answer that made them uncomfortable.

The same silence that often greets me when responding to the question, “Are you seeing anyone?” with “No.” The same quiet waiting, for “But I was…” or “Well there is this guy I just met.” Or my friend Patsy’s genius answer, “I am seeing a lot of different men.”

For a while I acquiesced…talking about my not-quite-relationships. My Divorce Buddy. The Southern Svengali. The friendships, flirtations and occasional dalliances that made me feel like I had something going on. The relationships that ended seemingly before they even started. I think it made us both feel better.

This time was different. I felt no need to explain my solo voyage. In fact, I was downright chuffed (to turn a British phrase), pleased with myself and the situation I consciously and happily put myself in – alone for 17 days in Italy.

A few days later, I was asked the same question about travel mates. And I watched as the woman’s smile wrinkled into a pained frown. “You were alone…on your birthday?” The same question my mother asked me before I left. The same question I had asked myself.

“Yes! It was awesome!”

I told her about my 15-hour layover in Paris. About walking along the Seine, seeing Notre Dame and the Eiffel Tower, laughing out loud, asking no one in particular, “Who goes to Paris for dinner on their birthday?” and replying, “I do.”

I told her about being present to the moment. About the real birthday present – of not wanting anything to be other than it was. Not wishing for a man or a friend. Not wishing I had worn something different, eaten something different, stayed in a different apartment.

She looked confused.

I’ve been thinking about why this trip was different. Why I was different.

I have traveled by myself before – on press trips and volunteer projects and meeting up with friends on the other end. But only truly “alone” once before – in the few days before and after participating in a volunteer project in the south of France.

I had longed to travel alone. It represented who I wanted to be. Adventurous. Glamorous. Strong. A world traveler. And yet, when I arrived in Paris alone in 2006 I only felt sad, scared and alone.

My answer, or at least part of it, came in an email from my friend Melinda. In it, she mentioned going to a play reading – by herself – completely spur of the moment.

“It kind of reminded me of your Artist Dates.”

Artist Date. Balm to my soul. Savior of my heart and mind. The simple suggestion by Julia Cameron in the book The Artist’s Way of a once a week “walkabout” to fill one’s creative coffers.

I took on the challenge nearly two years ago. Newly divorced and painfully licking the wounds of my first forays “back out there.” I had heard others talk about feeling free, having great sex, or at the very least, a lot of it, following the dissolution of their marriages. My efforts and experiences only left me feeling scared, desperate and crazy.

In a moment of grace, I turned away from convention, from the promises of partnership, and toward myself through weekly Artist Dates. To the opera. To the Art Institute. To ethnic grocery stores and new neighborhoods. To theatre and concerts. Alone.

Reading Melinda’s email, it occurred to me that perhaps all of this “structured aloneness” had prepared me for this – a seeming marathon of solitude.

Arriving in Rome alone last month, I felt the same anxious fear that had accompanied me to Paris. But this time I didn’t try to act cool. I didn’t try to pretend I was a local or that I even knew where I was.

I held a map in my hand, asked a lot of questions and opened myself to the possibility of getting lost, or worse, of looking stupid.

I challenged myself to not take cabs. To depend on trains, buses and trams.

On my feet. On myself. And the time-tested kindness of strangers.

Strangers who reminded me I was never really alone. Leonardo, the 19-year-old man/boy, who saved me from boarding the wrong bus – twice – in Arezzo.

With Leonardo, who saved me from going to God-Knows-Where. Twice!

Delilah, another volunteer at Altrocioccolato – the fair trade chocolate festival in Umbria where I began my journey – who sent me to her brother, his wife and cousin in Florence for Aperitivo – the Italian version of happy hour, but with a much better buffet, and a drive through the city.

Who organized a dinner party – which became my birthday party, complete with candles, singing and gifts – among her English-speaking friends when I arrived in Rome a few days later.

Roman Birthday Party. Delilah, the hostess, is in black.

Seems my Artist Dates, my time alone, prepared me to be alone. For long walks, shopping at flea markets and eating fatty pork sandwiches while sitting on the edge of a fountain in Campo De Fiore.

It also prepared me to be with people – with ideas and experiences to share.

But mostly it prepared me for my life, the one I dreamed of not so many years ago in Paris— Adventurous. Glamorous. Strong. A world traveler.

Artist Date 90: Full

October 31, 2014October 31, 2014 LesleyPearl4 Comments

Outside Mercato Sant'Ambrogio. — Outside Mercato Sant’Ambrogio.

There’s an empty space in front of me where a wine glass used to be. It was there just a few minutes before I got up. But now it’s gone.

It’s a God thing. I’m sure of it.

It is 10 a.m. and I am at a wine shop – the first stop on a walking food and wine tour of Florence – Artist Date 90.

I was the first to arrive on the piazza, to meet our guide Ishmael. I refrain from any The Old Man and The Sea references.

He is from Latin America, but has made Florence – or more accurately, its environs – his home for more than 30 years. He is bearded and handsome and gentle. As is the case with so many men here, I cannot tell for certain whether he is straight or gay. I decide not to worry about it.

We wait for 10 others to join us. They come in groups of twos, like animals on Noah’s Ark. I feel wildly liberated, untethered and free.

We walk a few blocks to a wine shop, where a long table is set up with stools, glasses and a variety of bruschetta.

I have not had a drink in nearly seven years. It is strange to be here.

And yet, this used to be my life. Conversations about the dwindling availability of cork, comparing plastic versus screw top. Stainless steel versus oak. I was living just an hour from the Napa Valley and spent a considerable amount of time there – tasting, learning, drinking.

I fancied myself fancy because I knew just a little bit. Until the day when a stranger said to me, “Wine aficionado is just a fancy name for a drunk.” I was incensed. But in regards to me, he was right.

About half-way through the tasting Ishmael notices I do not have a glass. He asks if I would like one. I shake my head, smile and say no.

“Are you sure,” he asks. I am very sure.

At the wine shop...I focused on the bruschetta. — At the wine shop…I focused on the bruschetta.

We stop at a food cart – like the ones in Portland, San Francisco and New York, like the one made famous by a pre-teen’s Tweeting in the movie Chef. Except there are no hipsters here. Only work men. And instead of hawking clever cupcakes or Asian-Latin fusion, this one sells tripe. Just tripe.

Ishmael asks if any of us would like to try it. I raise my hand, along with the Greek painter from Lawrence, Kansas, and a few minutes later receive a white plastic container, along with a plastic fork and a hunk of bread.

I am a bit nervous, but tell myself “when in Rome”…or Florence. But, like Mikey in the 1970s Chex cereal commercial, I like it! It is well-spiced, like a fiery, paper-thin calamari.

I ask the woman from New York traveling with her mother to take a photograph of me eating it, my MAC “Kiss Me Quick” lipstick staining the plastic fork – lest anyone question my story.

2014-10-15 11.07.22 — Not many ladies eating tripe off a food cart…

I was a picky eater growing up. My mother would serve me a silver-dollar size piece of steak that I would cut up, cover in ketchup and move around the plate for a quarter of an hour until my father, exasperated, would say, “Make her a grilled cheese sandwich.” I lived on grilled cheese, hot dogs and Spaghetti-Os until I was about 14.

We wander over to Mercato Sant’Ambrogio. Outside vendors are selling grapes, carrots, herbs, mushrooms – truffles. I recall the chef I briefly dated kissing me in his kitchen, and asking when I would be in Italy.

October.

“Mmm…truffle season…except you cannot afford them.”

I should have told him to fuck off. Or how he was so certain what I could and could not afford. But I said nothing.

I think he would enjoy this culinary tour of Florence. And then decide not to think about him at all, but instead the cured meats, cheeses and olives that a butcher is serving us with toothpicks off of a polystyrene tray. From the North, the South, Tuscany. Aged six weeks, six months, 16 months.

We sit down on long benches and sample orecchiette with finely chopped broccoli, spaghetti with pancetta, olive oil and parmesan, pomodoro. Once this was simply a place for market vendors to have a meal. Today it is a restaurant.

I am generally not one to get too excited about pasta. Until now. It is silky and warm on my tongue, along my cheek. I taste every ingredient. Minutes old. I am silent. I am, as my friend Stan says, “having a relationship with my food.”

Yes...I left a little bit. — Yes…I left a little bit.

We end with gelato from one of Ishmael’s favorite shops – Il Procopio. I pair carmelized figs with cream, almonds and pine nuts with the shop’s namesake of pistachios and orange peel.

I have eaten gelato every day since arriving in Italy more than a week ago, congratulating myself on always ordering a piccolo. But today, grinning and completely conscious, I order a medio — and congratulate myself that it is not a grande. It’s a God thing. I’m sure of it.

2014-10-15 12.45.56 — Il Procopio. Firenze, Tuscany. Enough said.

Happy On My Birthday

October 24, 2014 LesleyPearl6 Comments

I walked out on my 21^st birthday party.

A little past midnight, noticing no one had noticed it was now officially my birthday, I stood up and drunkenly announced, “You’re all fuckers. Good night.”

I still cringe thinking about it.

Ten years later, I didn’t behave much better. I spent my birthday in Paris. Yet all I could do was lament about dinner at the restaurant that had been suggested – Chez Chartier. Loud, boisterous. A place where working-class families had fed their families since 1896. Where surly waiters leave your tab written on paper tablecloths and patrons climb ladders to reach the mezzanine dining room. A Parisian institution.

I didn’t think the meal was very good.

My birthday has always been fraught with anxiety. Anxiety created by expectations. Of others. Of myself. Of experiences.

Never mind my friends gather to honor my being here on the planet – some driving more than an hour to join the festivities. Never mind I spend the morning in Amsterdam and the afternoon at the top of the Eiffel Tower. Somehow, in my mind, each celebration missed the mark of being “special enough.”

Until this year..when I turned 45 and decided to spend my birthday alone. Dinner in Paris, breakfast in Rome.

It was the end of a 17-day trip to Italy. A trip where I had gifted myself with hand-stitched Roman sandals in Assisi, and aubergine leather gloves in Florence.

Where I stopped inside a boutique in Rome to inquire about a coat in the window and left wearing it. A short, smart, cream-colored trench with a ruffle. I slipped on a size small – both surprised and delighted to find it fit considering I had eaten gelato every day since my arrival – and looked at myself in the mirror.

I liked it. The coat. My reflection. I didn’t need it, and yet, the words “I’ll take it,” tumbled out of my mouth.

And where 30 minutes later, on Piazza Navona, I questioned what I “deserved,” and if I could justify “more.” Where I pulled a leather bag over my shoulder and across my body — like the one my tour guides Ishmael and Paul wore and which I had twice admired – but left it behind because it felt “too decadent.”

Never mind my mother had sent me a check as an early birthday gift. Never mind a client had given me a several-hundred dollar tip, instructing me to use it for something wonderful in Italy. Never mind I had enough for it.

I went to dinner where I ate pizza with impossibly thin crust, covered with four kinds of cheeses, arugula and bresaola…but I was still thinking about the bag. Strolling back towards the piazza I called out to the universe, “If I am supposed to have this bag, give me a sign.”

I received it, but not until after the salesman wrote up my purchase. When he placed the leather satchel inside of a green fabric bag, wrapped it with string and tied a bow.

I smiled recalling my Aunt Ellie taking me shopping at Jacobson’s – a tony department store in a tony suburb of Detroit – when I was 10-years-old. When I was doughy and awkward and wore a bad Dorothy Hamill haircut.

After purchasing trousers, a sweater, and a bag shaped like a roller skate, she asked that each item be placed in one of the store’s signature silver boxes, embossed with a J, and wrapped in shiny ribbon.

“Everything is better gift wrapped,” she informed me. Opening the packages at home an hour or so later, I knew she was right.

Thirty-five years later, she still is.

And yet, a few days later, I once again questioned my right to gift wrap my life. This time, to end my travels with a 15-hour layover in Paris. Just long enough to have dinner and to spend the night — on my birthday.

It had sounded like a wonderful idea when I booked the ticket, but as the days grew near it only sounded like a lot of traveling, a lot of navigating, a lot of work for one night.

I ignored that seemingly practical voice and went anyway – roaming the streets of Paris for the third time in this lifetime.

Crossing the Seine in my cream-colored trench, my leather bag strapped across my body, I saw the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame – all lit up. Just like me. I could feel it. I giggled out loud wondering, “Who stops in Paris for 15 hours just for dinner on their birthday?”

I do.

I ate a pistachio macaron on the streets before dinner, and later, mussels and pommes frites. And for perhaps the first time in my life, I could not imagine anything making the moment better.

I didn’t wish for a man or a friend. For a different meal. For anyone to sing me happy birthday.

I was delighted by my own company. That I had given myself everything I had wanted most. And in doing so, rather than hoping someone else might, I was happy on my birthday.

Looking for Ladybugs

October 10, 2014 LesleyPearl3 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why Yes, I Am A Tourist

October 5, 2014 LesleyPearl1 Comment

First gelato in Rome... — First gelato in Rome…

I used to have this thing about being a tourist.

I never wanted to ask for directions. Carry a map. I didn’t even want to do anything “touristy” – including going to the top of the Eiffel Tower. (Thank goodness it was rainy and cold and there was no line, so I submitted. And, of course, it was fabulous!)

Instead I got lost in the neighborhoods of Puerta Vallarta – where a kind stranger took pity on my ex and me, intuitively knowing we couldn’t possibly be in the right place and asked us where we were trying to go.

Somehow I associated it all with white Reeboks. A fanny pack and speaking very loudly.

The last time I traveled alone – and by alone I mean not meeting a friend or traveling together as a group, which means Dublin and Rwanda don’t count – I went to France.

I was participating in a volunteer project, but I started off with a few days on my own in Paris. Intent on playing the part of the Parisian.

That night I wandered the streets of the City of Lights, slightly drunk – alone. I was scolded for smoking in the non-smoking section of an outdoor café. (Who knew there was one? In Paris!) And I called my then-husband sobbing. I had wanted to travel alone. And suddenly I felt very alone. I didn’t like it.

The days that followed weren’t much better. That is, until the day I left for Avignon to join my volunteer team, when I was able to remember a single word of French and use it, thus communicating with an old woman at the train station. “Plutar.” She lit up. “Plutar! Plutar!” Yes, yes, I was going to Avignon too – later.

So I was a little bit nervous about coming to Italy alone. Even though I chose it.

I know traveling alone can be lonely. And scary. There is no one to get lost with. And it has been my experience that getting lost together is far less scary than getting lost alone. And yet, at the end of my first day in Rome, I haven’t gotten lost. And I don’t feel lonely. Or alone.

Perhaps because I’ve asked a lot of questions. Of the teenage boys on the train from the airport. “Why did so many kids get on all at once at this stop? Is there school on Sunday?” (Nope. Game and comic festival.) Of the man behind the counter at the newsstand. “Can I buy a ticket for Tram 8 here?” (Yes.)

And of a woman on the platform in the middle of the street. “Is this the right stop for Tram 8 going towards the city center?” (Yes. And she even reminded me when we got to the third stop, my stop. I had mentioned it to her.)

I asked my host where I might eat and he suggested the very same place as a friend of mine in the United States had. And then I asked him to show me on a map how to get there.

I ambled. I rambled. I looked for street names on buildings and found them on about one-third. I held out my map and “stood in it” like Joey did in London on Friends.

I got lost. I got found. Or maybe I just got turned around. But I didn’t panic. And along the way I heard music in Piazza Santa Maria Trastevere and enjoyed my first gelato of the trip – yogurt, pistachio-hazelnut-chocolate and single-sourced cocoa. And just before handing me the cup, the server lopped on an extra spatula full…just because.

I took things slowly. I found my way to the river, crossed over and made my way to Piazza Campo De Fiore. Yes, given the time I can read a map. I also found the famed Grom gelato – there’s an outpost shop in Manhattan – but decided to save it for another day. However that didn’t keep me from checking out the flavors at another shop and tasting the ginseng and one with candied fruit when invited to.

I finished with dinner at Ai Spaghettari – where my host and my friend had suggested and I had the carbonara, also suggested, along with melon and prosciutto and a macchiato.

All around me were Italians glued to the soccer match on television, and a fair number of Americans plotting their next move. And I was one of them.

Artist Date 86: On a Scooter, With a Boy in Front and Chocolate in my Pocket

August 26, 2014 LesleyPearlLeave a comment

Final moments in St. Victor la Coste, France. I hiked up to this crumbling castle every day.

I leave for Italy in 39 days.

I only recently bought my plane ticket, and just last week decided exactly where I will spend the days following my volunteer work in Umbria. I have not booked a single night at a hotel, pensione, hostel or airbnb.

This is highly unusual for me.

By now I would have secured a room for all of my nights, and outlined a rough itinerary of my days – making certain I knew when each museum closed. I learned this from my friend Tim, who saved the Louvre for his last day in Paris, not realizing it closed on Tuesdays. He has lovely pictures of the outside.

I would have purchased my train tickets and made copies of my passport. My travel books would be dog-eared and yellowed with highlighter.

I have done none of this. I’m not sure why.

And so I find myself tucked into a big chair in the back of the Book Cellar, pouring over travel guides – more out of necessity than anything. Fodors. Rough Guide. Lonely Planet. Thick books on the whole of Italy. Thinner versions on Rome, Florence and Tuscany. Artist Date 86.

I recall my first travels overseas – press trips to Germany and Israel. I was in my 20s and had dreamed of traveling abroad. Everything was handled for me. Flights. Hotel. Itinerary. And yet, I sat at San Francisco International Airport before each trip – terrified.

Flying out of SFO in 1999 to Spain – my first overseas trip with my then boyfriend, now ex-husband — felt wholly different. I wasn’t alone.

One Saturday morning we somewhat impulsively bid on Priceline tickets to Madrid. By afternoon, we were sprawled out on the floor of Borders Books – leaving a few hours later with copies of Frommers – Europe on $100 a day and Madrid, Barcelona and Seville.

We traveled overseas together several times over the next few years – me carefully crafting an itinerary each time. Yet, a part of me longed to travel alone, as so many of my friends had done after college.

And at 37, I do it.

At the time, I feel too old to throw a rucksack on my back, sleep in hostels and shower in train stations. I find a trip volunteering in the south of France, building walls as part of an architectural restoration project.

I spend a few days in Paris by myself when I arrive. It does not feel glamorous and exciting as I had imagined. It feels scary and lonely. I wander the streets alone, slightly drunk and call my then husband — crying. A few days later I join my team in Avignon. Surrounded by volunteers from around the word, ranging in age from 21 to 73, I feel joyous and free. I have found my place, my role. I am the friendly American who drinks too much and gives massages.

Building walls in the South of France. 2006.

Eight years later, (I will turn 45 in Italy) I do not drink anymore. I do not have a husband anymore. These things that I leaned into ceased to serve me long ago. This time, this trip, I must lean into myself. My hesitation in planning suddenly makes sense. I am afraid.

And yet, I have a plan, a purpose – I am again joining volunteers from around the globe. This time, at the Altrocioccolato Festival – known as the “other chocolate festival” – outside of Perugia. This time, my alone time is on the back-end of the trip – and I will have a better sense of place. This time I have people, “waiting” for me in church basements. People who also used to drink too much but don’t anymore – people like me.

My friend Pam says I will go to Italy and meet a boy on a scooter and never come home. She tells me that I am brave. That she doesn’t know anyone else our age doing what I am doing – traveling, alone. I do not feel brave.

And I remember what I’ve been told, that bravery isn’t the absence of fear, it is walking through it anyway.

Or perhaps flying through it – direct from Chicago to Rome on Alitalia. Or riding a scooter through it – an Italian boy in front, and chocolate in my pocket.

Artist Date 77: Rekindling the Romance

May 26, 2014 LesleyPearlLeave a comment

I am writing my morning pages – one of two “core practices” in The Artist’s Way, my unofficial roadmap through the past two years of transition – the daily purging of random thoughts taking up real estate in my head. It is Saturday, the end of the week, and I realize I have not planned an Artist Date (The Artist’s Way other core practice) for myself.

A part of me rejoices in my loosening the vice grip I seem to have on everything. A part of me laments.

Am I entering the transition from passionate love to either compassionate love or break up? The six-month mark in a relationship when partners finally rouse themselves from bed and can think of something other than sex and one another.

If it is, I’ve had a hell of a run – 77 weeks of Artist Dates and only recently have I become somewhat bored, lazy with the idea of planning a solo excursion for myself.

Trouble is, I am the type that loves to be in love – the first six-months girl, as evidenced by my blogs. The Southern Svengali. Mr. 700 Miles. My Divorce Buddy. Ridiculously romantic stories with heartbreaking endings.

My lament is about wanting to hold on to my ridiculously romantic story with myself – with my Artist’s Dates.

——————–

Italy – quite possibly the sexiest, most romantic place on the planet – calls like a siren.

I Google “volunteer, Italy” and in minutes am poring over possibilities.

I have volunteered overseas twice before – in the South of France and in Rwanda (the trip that gave form to this blog). Traveling this way gives me a deeper sense of people, place and purpose. It is cost effective. And I meet other unaccompanied adventurers I might not otherwise know.

I find “my trip” through Volunteers for Peace – two weeks with the Milano Film Festival. Only seven volunteers are accepted, and a letter of motivation is required.

I get writing.

I send my short essay to my friend, Melinda for feedback. She likes most of it, and gently offers, “Is this an opportunity to introduce yourself as a creative, fun, movie-loving, gelato-eating event coordinator who is a world traveler and wants to visit Italy without referencing your divorce?”

Yes, it is. And so I do – removing the reference to my divorce from the essay before hitting “send.”

——————–

And so this morning, noodling over my morning pages, I settle on a trip to the library or bookstore, to pour over travel books. Artist Date 77.

I think about Powell’s and flash on a date I treated my ex to when he completed his first year of residency – a bike tour of Chicago, highlighting book stores, record stores and pastry shops.

Recalling what I have done for someone else but am not doing for myself lights a fire in my belly.

It is warm and stuffy in the library – a small, neighborhood branch. I am surprised how many people are inside, considering outside holds the promise of the spring we Chicagoans have been waiting on. Most of them appear to be studying – determined.

I find the Italy section in the stacks and am disappointed to not find a single travel book. No Fodors, Frommers, Lonely Planet.

I pull La Bella Figura: A Field Guide to the Italian Mind, Traveling in Italy with Henry James, and D.H. Lawrence and Italy from the stacks. I finger through the first, I am somewhat amused but it is not what I want to read. I am distracted by the underlining and highlighting that mars the second. I put them back, hold on to D.H. Lawrence and check out – unsatisfied.

At the Book Cellar I grab three titles and settle into a somewhat comfy chair wedged in the corner of the shop.

I am quickly overwhelmed. My plan is to travel on after the Film Festival (I am already assuming I am going.). But where? Venice? Rome? Florence?

The Amalfi Coast? Sicily?

Too many choices. Too much for a single trip. Too much to consider.

This was supposed to be fun. It isn’t.

I close the books and return them to the shelves – still unsatisfied.

Perhaps it is enough to know they are there when I am ready – tomorrow, next week, next month. When I know more, like if I am in fact going. (I will receive notice in three to five business days.) Or if I am going somewhere else. Like to Reykjavic for its film festival, or Portugal to help restore a traditional, community bread oven – other possibilities.

Perhaps all that really matters is I took action to rekindle this romance – the only one I have any control over. I recall our couple’s therapist, Robert insisting that even if only one of us is doing the work, the relationship will change.

Today I did the work…and wait for the change.

Artist Date 69: Spicy. Trouble.

March 30, 2014March 30, 2014 LesleyPearlLeave a comment

It smells warm inside Savory Spice Shop on Lincoln Avenue. Artist Date 69. And while I know intellectually that warm is not a smell, it feels like it. Spicy. BBQ rubs. One is called Pearl Street Plank. I take a photograph of it.

I am afraid I am going to get into trouble.

I am often afraid of getting into trouble. Like the time Julie and I smoked cigarettes inside the multiplex at a midnight showing of The Crying Game.

The movie had been out for a while and we were the only ones in the theatre. Julie lit up. I was aghast. “What? Are you afraid we are going to get into trouble?” she asked. A little bit mocking. Well, yes…I was. Just like when we smoked cigarettes in seventh grade on Shabbat.

Julie was raised in an Orthodox Jewish household. On Saturdays, my mother would drop me there for the day. Sometimes we watched movies on the Betamax (Meatballs was our favorite.) – her father’s concession.

Irv was a wise man who understood that raising his girls in an observant home, but not in an observant neighborhood, was tricky. Their customs were “other” than those of the secular Jews surrounding them. So while Julie could not go to movies and dances on Friday night and Saturday, she was allowed to watch movies, regardless of the prohibition against using electronics on the Sabbath. And also to go for long walks. Walks that often involved McDonalds’ French fries and Virginia Slims Menthol 100s.

Julie was brazen. I was convinced we were going to get caught and get into trouble. We didn’t. But that sense that I might have to explain myself has never entirely left me. Even today at the Savory Spice Shop.

I know some stores prohibit photography. I know I could ask if it is ok. But I don’t. Instead I snap and hope no one will question me. It is this sort of internal gyration that causes me anxiety. The kind I could easily avoid.

An employee says to let her know if I have any questions, and invites me to sample and to brush any excess onto the floor. She adds that my boots are “magnificent,” and we talk for a solid five minutes about the quest to merge fashion and function. I am reminded, part of the joy of a funky aesthetic is people want to talk to you. Want to talk to me.

She makes no comment about my photography.

I finger baking spices and books on pickling. But the spices from far away call me like a siren. Exotic. Other. Like I always wanted to be. I try to conjure up the smells of the market in Kigali, in Argles, in Jerusalem, but I cannot. I only know I was there.

I smell red peppercorns from the Szechuan Province. Green ones from Mysore. Dried Kaffir Lime Leaves. Asafetida from Iran, also known as Devil’s Dung and Stinking Gum. The label says it smells like garlic gone bad. To me, it smells like sulfur. Eggs.

There are Grains of Paradise from West Africa and Pinchito from Southern Spain. Preserved Lemon and Pomegranate Molasses. Marrakech Moroccan Spice and Berbere Ethiopian Seasoning.

I think about cooking and wonder what I would make. My repertoire has become small as a single woman. Often times, it just doesn’t seem worth it. So I stick to egg-white omelets, soups and salads. Black beans, kale and squash. An occasional piece of fish roasted with fennel and oranges and olives.

I think about travel. The recent loud and incessant call to go away – somewhere big. Somewhere sexy. Sometime this year – my 45^th come October. Italy or India.

Today I do not have to decide.

Instead, I allow myself the pleasure of revisiting Africa. Spain. And France.

Israel. Germany. Amsterdam.

Ireland and Mexico.

To return to each marketplace I visited – photographing beans drying in the sun. Salted fish. Unskinned rabbit hanging from a hook.

To the suburban movie theatre and the safety of Julie’s home. To her basement where her papa fed us Oreo cookies with a finger pressed to his lips as if to say, “shh…don’t tell.”

I think about the real trouble I caused in my travels. The kind I should have been worried about but wasn’t. In Berlin. Avignon. Puerto Vallarta. Today I know better.

Today there are no secrets. Nothing to hide. Nothing to get me into trouble.

Artist Date 65: A Revelation

March 8, 2014 LesleyPearlLeave a comment

I just “shhh…d” the women next to me.

I feel like somebody’s cranky grandmother, but I can’t help myself.

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. From Revelations. Photo: Paul Kolnik

This is my religion. The dancers and choreographers, my gods. And it requires my complete attention.

It feels like blasphemy as I type the words, but it is true. The stirring between my legs. It rises up my spine like Kundalini energy uncoiling, to my heart – which leaps, and spreads as a flush across my chest and face. What is usually reserved for sexual liaison – either alone or with a partner – comes to me in dance. Really good dance.

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater is really good dance.

This is my seventh time seeing the company, which may sound like a lot –until compared to Sheila, who I met during the pre-performance cocktail reception. She and her husband have seen Ailey every year since the company’s inception in 1958. It is, perhaps, their religion too.

The first time I saw Ailey I was 24. I watched, rapt. My former lover — the sexiest man I had ever known – at my side. We spent a month together. Twenty-nine days more than I expected. This was our only “real date.”

The second time I saw Ailey I was in the middle of an alcoholic relapse, although I didn’t know it at the time. Following yet another month-long stint without drinking, an effort to prove myself “not alcoholic,” I conveniently forgot all the reasons I had put down the drink and picked it up again that night.

I saw the company three more times. Each of them sober. In Chicago. Once, with my then-husband, the other two with girlfriends.

This is my first time seeing Ailey alone – Artist Date 65.

It feels significant.

Significant because I have treated myself to good seats. Dress Circle. Row AA.

I have learned I cannot watch dance from the cheap seats – looking down on it from up above. I have to see it straight on. As I do most things.

I’ve admittedly been spoiled. Much like the first time I flew overseas, when the German Consulate paid for my Business Class ticket on Lufthansa. It is hard to go back.

It is the same with men.

Significant because there is a cocktail reception before the show and I don’t drink, have a wing man, or a purpose for mingling other than “just because.”

Ever fiber in my body says arrive late, skip the schmooze and head straight for my seat. But I resist. I have been taught courage is not a lack of fear. It is feeling it and moving forward anyway. I am strangely curious to see what will happen.

I meet a gaggle of girls in their 30s. They have never seen Ailey.

We talk about their work. City politics. Chicago neighborhoods.

We talk about my Artist Date. My blog. Boys.

I meet the “since-1958 Ailey fans,” and their daughter – a dancer.

I navigate the plush stairs and the too-small type on my ticket on my way to my seat. My dance instructor calls out my name. We embrace and all at once, Chicago feels like a town. My sense of connectedness expands.

The theatre darkens. The dancers emerge.

“Night Creature.” From 1974. I have seen it before. Like “Revelations,” Ailey’s signature piece that closes every show. I remember the polka-dot light patterns on the floor.

It is both familiar and fresh. I feel the leap in my heart. And a knot in my stomach.

The women to my left are whispering – non-stop.

I pray for patience. For tolerance. I pray they will stop. Useless. I turn and put my finger to my lips. “Shhh.” It is quiet.

At intermission, I feel a hand on my shoulder. It is one of the women I “shhh-d.” She offers apologies, which I quickly and easily accept.

Two Dancers -- Khara and I. — Two Dancers — Khara and I.

“Do you dance?” she asks.

I tell her I do. She says that she used to, and everything melts between us. We are connected. We are the same.

Until she tells me about her dance history.

Although not a dance major, she danced seven days a week as an undergraduate student at Washington University, filling her free hours with courses in ballet, modern, and jazz. I reflect on my four years at Michigan State University – smoking pot and drinking with the big boys.

I do not feel like a dancer.

My five-plus years in West African dance classes – beginning at the age of 39 – feel small in comparison. Amateurish. Perhaps they are.

I ask her to take a picture with me for my blog. “Two dancers,” she announces, as if reading my mind.

I choose to believe her. To allow my status to be independent of her experience. Of Sheila’s.

It is a “Revelation.”

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.

A Wandering Jewess

My Journey Back To Self

Tag: Travel