Showing posts with label California. Show all posts
Showing posts with label California. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 07, 2010
When you forgive (reprise...)
I wrote this post before I ever had any idea I would be a divorced person myself. It's haunting to reread it knowing my own children are now dealing with the complexities of being children of divorce. How quickly things change.
Friday, July 04, 2008
Out of 9 years, we've had 6 Fourths in Ohio
and of those 6, only 3 have not involved rain. One year the storm was so blinding, the jam-packed Sharon Woods park evacuated right before fireworks as lightening flashed and thunder cracked directly overhead (like, you know, no time to count one-one-thousand, two-one-thousand). I've never seen such scurrying except when watching rats flee light in a subway tunnel in France. We barely got to the sanctuary of our metal cars without being electrocuted. Yes, of course Jon was in California that year. I drove half a mile and pulled over for the most torrential downpour I'd ever experienced in my southern-Californian-desert-conditions-in-the-summer life.
Last year, the rain stayed away until it was time to start the neighborhood fireworks show. The poor 14 year old who had invested his life's savings (which at that age was about $250 bucks) into the contraband from South Carolina had only set off four of the eye-blinding, smoke creating crackers when the rains got serious and wiped out the audience.
So this morning, when I'm really looking forward to the swim party at our friends' house so I can wear my much beloved, "signs of summer" tank top, I look out on a bleak grey morning, sopping wet deck chairs, beadlets of mist slicking the pavement and abundant lawn which we just mowed and will need to mow again once the sun decides to return with its usual lazer beam intensity that sucks the grass to the sky in 2 inch spurts every couple hours.
No badminton. No croquet. No swimming. Just "if it rains, we will move the party indoors." Yeah, when did we ever put that on an invitation to anything in California?
Is it any wonder people flee Ohio in the summer? Jake's in Florida. Good call.
Happy Fourth, otherwise.
Last year, the rain stayed away until it was time to start the neighborhood fireworks show. The poor 14 year old who had invested his life's savings (which at that age was about $250 bucks) into the contraband from South Carolina had only set off four of the eye-blinding, smoke creating crackers when the rains got serious and wiped out the audience.
So this morning, when I'm really looking forward to the swim party at our friends' house so I can wear my much beloved, "signs of summer" tank top, I look out on a bleak grey morning, sopping wet deck chairs, beadlets of mist slicking the pavement and abundant lawn which we just mowed and will need to mow again once the sun decides to return with its usual lazer beam intensity that sucks the grass to the sky in 2 inch spurts every couple hours.
No badminton. No croquet. No swimming. Just "if it rains, we will move the party indoors." Yeah, when did we ever put that on an invitation to anything in California?
Is it any wonder people flee Ohio in the summer? Jake's in Florida. Good call.
Happy Fourth, otherwise.
Monday, May 05, 2008
Smoking
When I finally got to Watsonville, where my mom lives, I let down. The anxiety of LA, the press of mid-life issues faded. I had time to myself. One of my rituals when I'm in California is to get alone, just me and a beach.
So my second morning at my mom's, I borrowed her old stick shift and drove to Manresa State Beach. I flipped on 1970s rock on the radio, rolled down the driver's side window, and drove like I used to when I was 16: down windy roads, steering easily, shifting confidently. It was unbelievably wonderful to drive like that. "Freebird" was playing and I laughed about it. Such an old standard that I usually would turn off. I didn't that day.
I switched stations as I swung into my parking space and Linkin Park sang: "And the shadow of the day, will embrace the world in grey... and the sun will set for you."
And because Linkin Park sang it, it was so: overcast and cold (which is just how I like the coastline sometimes when it fits my mood). I wore a brown sweater over a light blue turtleneck. I parked in the lot that overlooked the ocean. I strolled down the ramp to the wet sand below and stopped to watch the dozens of sand piper babies and their mothers scatter across the shore.
But I had come to the beach with a purpose so I set out to make it happen.
Several years ago, Claire, an online friend, gave me a pack of cigarettes as a joke sort of. Being one of the most drug resistant teens to ever have walked the face of the earth, cigarettes were never on my radar for experimentation. But midlife peer pressure exerted itself on me. Her gift became this taunt, this tease. Will you ever smoke me? the cigarettes nagged. And somehow, that invitation became a fantasy: I imagined myself smoking on the beach all alone some day in the future. Living in Ohio, that opportunity never came. And to be honest, I don't think I had the internal nerve to carry it out anyway.
But as I packed my clothes for the trip, my hand accidentally knocked against the little red and brown pack in my underwear drawer. On a whim, I tossed it into my suitcase with a book of matches... just in case.
By the time I got to Watsonville, I knew I had to, wanted to smoke, even though I wasn't quite sure why.
I can hardly express how weird it is that I would want to smoke, to light up, to put a cigarette to my mouth. I've been such a non-smoker, don't like how it smells on clothes or people's breath, always want the non-smoking section in a restaurant, saw smoking as something rebels or weak people did, etc.
But this was different.
It felt like one of those Sue Monk Kidd moments. She's the one who wrote Dance of the Dissident Daughter and is all about feminist spirituality. She cobbled together a spirituality of touch stone events and rituals that are personally meaningful to her using items like seashells, statuettes of the goddess Nike, candles and driftwood. I haven't related to that at all as I'm such a pragmatist at heart (not contemplative).
But I swear - that day - smoking on the beach was my spiritual act—a claiming of me for me—a refusal to allow conventions and fear to dictate my life. I smoked so that I could stare down the pride of non-smoking and the anxiety that goes with smoking. I smoked because it seemed like it might feel good to do it. I smoked because no one would expect me to. I smoked so I could simply have the experience and write about it authentically. I smoked because, dammit, I wanted to.
So of course, the lofty intention of smoking was immediately humbled when the first cigarette broke in two between my fingers. Six matches flared and went out before I even got them near a cigarette; my fumbling fingers knocked the book of matches to a wet sandy floor, nearly ruining their ability to ignite. It took me repeated attempts to protect the little match flame from the strong breeze that came from the north across my back before it singed the tobacco at the end. I tried to inhale but couldn't coordinate the flame, my cupped hand and my breathing over the course of the next three matches.
Persistence paid off, however, and I finally managed to draw the flame into the end of my very first cigarette and it lit—a soft orange glow. I turned around on the driftwood log to face the enormous grey-green ocean, rolling softly with waves. I sucked in the smoke; didn't inhale for a bit. I just got used to dragging smoke into my mouth, holding it, and blowing it out (like a pipe smoker might). I watched the ocean and then I'd watch my exhaled smoke float away in curlicues. My mouth felt tingly and tarry.
Exhilarating. I liked it. I crossed my arms, let the cigarette hang off my fingers like I'd been chain smoking for twenty years and took in the whole world. I could see the distant horizon as I blew smoke at it.
The next drag, I drew smoke into my lungs and that burned a bit and felt suffocating. So I went back to just sucking the smoke into my mouth, then holding it a moment and finally blowing it out. I loved to watch it float away.
My whole body unwound. The tension, drained. I rested, for the first time all week. I sat, staring, relaxing, thinking private thoughts and being unaccountably happy... while I smoked. I felt a quiet power—a secret I shared with myself... a breaking with the little legalisms of my past. I did not die.
Once I finished my cigarette, I took a really long walk and watched the sand pipers run up and down the shore. I passed two hot 20-something surfers, zipped up in wetsuits. The iceplant on the hills popped with yellow-orange and light purple flowers glowing against the green. The surf didn't roar, but raced quietly on and off the shore in a low hiss. The clouds burst into a shower so I worked my way back toward where my car was parked, not caring that I was getting wet. I lit a second cigarette, easily this time, and smoked it slowly all the way back. Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale... wisps wafting away in the rain.
I have now officially smoked two cigarettes by myself on the beach. Unforgettable, matched only by the strange, emotional week. Seemed to be the right symbol of who I am about now. For the rest of the day, any time my fingers were near my face, I could smell the lingering tobacco scent and it made me smile.
Bruce Springsteen says that sometimes we need to break our own narrative to find out what would happen, to surprise ourselves. That is exactly what smoking represented for me - a break with the good girl, the predictable, transparent, orderly Julie. I don't plan to smoke as a habit. But I needed to that day, for whatever reason, to make a mess of me. And it was good. I may smoke again; I may not. Who knows?
So my second morning at my mom's, I borrowed her old stick shift and drove to Manresa State Beach. I flipped on 1970s rock on the radio, rolled down the driver's side window, and drove like I used to when I was 16: down windy roads, steering easily, shifting confidently. It was unbelievably wonderful to drive like that. "Freebird" was playing and I laughed about it. Such an old standard that I usually would turn off. I didn't that day.
I switched stations as I swung into my parking space and Linkin Park sang: "And the shadow of the day, will embrace the world in grey... and the sun will set for you."
And because Linkin Park sang it, it was so: overcast and cold (which is just how I like the coastline sometimes when it fits my mood). I wore a brown sweater over a light blue turtleneck. I parked in the lot that overlooked the ocean. I strolled down the ramp to the wet sand below and stopped to watch the dozens of sand piper babies and their mothers scatter across the shore.
But I had come to the beach with a purpose so I set out to make it happen.
Several years ago, Claire, an online friend, gave me a pack of cigarettes as a joke sort of. Being one of the most drug resistant teens to ever have walked the face of the earth, cigarettes were never on my radar for experimentation. But midlife peer pressure exerted itself on me. Her gift became this taunt, this tease. Will you ever smoke me? the cigarettes nagged. And somehow, that invitation became a fantasy: I imagined myself smoking on the beach all alone some day in the future. Living in Ohio, that opportunity never came. And to be honest, I don't think I had the internal nerve to carry it out anyway.
But as I packed my clothes for the trip, my hand accidentally knocked against the little red and brown pack in my underwear drawer. On a whim, I tossed it into my suitcase with a book of matches... just in case.
By the time I got to Watsonville, I knew I had to, wanted to smoke, even though I wasn't quite sure why.
I can hardly express how weird it is that I would want to smoke, to light up, to put a cigarette to my mouth. I've been such a non-smoker, don't like how it smells on clothes or people's breath, always want the non-smoking section in a restaurant, saw smoking as something rebels or weak people did, etc.
But this was different.
It felt like one of those Sue Monk Kidd moments. She's the one who wrote Dance of the Dissident Daughter and is all about feminist spirituality. She cobbled together a spirituality of touch stone events and rituals that are personally meaningful to her using items like seashells, statuettes of the goddess Nike, candles and driftwood. I haven't related to that at all as I'm such a pragmatist at heart (not contemplative).
But I swear - that day - smoking on the beach was my spiritual act—a claiming of me for me—a refusal to allow conventions and fear to dictate my life. I smoked so that I could stare down the pride of non-smoking and the anxiety that goes with smoking. I smoked because it seemed like it might feel good to do it. I smoked because no one would expect me to. I smoked so I could simply have the experience and write about it authentically. I smoked because, dammit, I wanted to.
So of course, the lofty intention of smoking was immediately humbled when the first cigarette broke in two between my fingers. Six matches flared and went out before I even got them near a cigarette; my fumbling fingers knocked the book of matches to a wet sandy floor, nearly ruining their ability to ignite. It took me repeated attempts to protect the little match flame from the strong breeze that came from the north across my back before it singed the tobacco at the end. I tried to inhale but couldn't coordinate the flame, my cupped hand and my breathing over the course of the next three matches.
Persistence paid off, however, and I finally managed to draw the flame into the end of my very first cigarette and it lit—a soft orange glow. I turned around on the driftwood log to face the enormous grey-green ocean, rolling softly with waves. I sucked in the smoke; didn't inhale for a bit. I just got used to dragging smoke into my mouth, holding it, and blowing it out (like a pipe smoker might). I watched the ocean and then I'd watch my exhaled smoke float away in curlicues. My mouth felt tingly and tarry.
Exhilarating. I liked it. I crossed my arms, let the cigarette hang off my fingers like I'd been chain smoking for twenty years and took in the whole world. I could see the distant horizon as I blew smoke at it.
The next drag, I drew smoke into my lungs and that burned a bit and felt suffocating. So I went back to just sucking the smoke into my mouth, then holding it a moment and finally blowing it out. I loved to watch it float away.
My whole body unwound. The tension, drained. I rested, for the first time all week. I sat, staring, relaxing, thinking private thoughts and being unaccountably happy... while I smoked. I felt a quiet power—a secret I shared with myself... a breaking with the little legalisms of my past. I did not die.
Once I finished my cigarette, I took a really long walk and watched the sand pipers run up and down the shore. I passed two hot 20-something surfers, zipped up in wetsuits. The iceplant on the hills popped with yellow-orange and light purple flowers glowing against the green. The surf didn't roar, but raced quietly on and off the shore in a low hiss. The clouds burst into a shower so I worked my way back toward where my car was parked, not caring that I was getting wet. I lit a second cigarette, easily this time, and smoked it slowly all the way back. Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale... wisps wafting away in the rain.
I have now officially smoked two cigarettes by myself on the beach. Unforgettable, matched only by the strange, emotional week. Seemed to be the right symbol of who I am about now. For the rest of the day, any time my fingers were near my face, I could smell the lingering tobacco scent and it made me smile.
Bruce Springsteen says that sometimes we need to break our own narrative to find out what would happen, to surprise ourselves. That is exactly what smoking represented for me - a break with the good girl, the predictable, transparent, orderly Julie. I don't plan to smoke as a habit. But I needed to that day, for whatever reason, to make a mess of me. And it was good. I may smoke again; I may not. Who knows?
Saturday, May 03, 2008
When yin and yang are whack
Once I kissed my father good-bye, I hopped in the car for one of my favorite activities in the world: driving up the 101 ("Ventura Highway" of America fame). The ocean erupts on your left as you hit Oxnard and north. The beaches on the way to Santa Barbara are almost close enough to reach out the driver's side window to run your fingers through the surf.
Because California loves me, the sun shone and the clouds skipped town.
I made a quick phone call to my best friend from high school whose home I would stay in that night to give her my ETA. Dana answered, on her way to drinking mimosas with a friend who needed help preparing papers for a custody battle—midlife mess erupting on the phone.
"Aren't you glad your marriage and family life are sane?" I sighed.
Dana paused. "My life is not sane, Julie. We'll talk when you get here."
Thud.
I clicked "end" on my cell, preparing myself for news I immediately knew and didn't want to know.
A little historical context would be helpful right about now. When I was 16, Dana slept over the night my parents announced that my dad would move out. She and I were laughing and talking in my bedroom when my mom called me to the kitchen.
In the too-brightly-lit space, my brother and sister draped themselves over a couple of orange chairs and my mom fiddled with the pink saucepan she'd been given for a wedding gift 17 years earlier. My dad stood awkwardly in front of the sliding glass door, which showed me his back. He made a simple statement: he'd gotten one of those awful apartments with the incessant fruit fly problem over near the Topanga mall. He'd move out in the morning.
No conversation. No discussion. I walked back to my bedroom, a different person than when I'd left it: child of separation. Dana and I didn't laugh. The night was wrecked.
Of all the people in my life today, only a handful knew my parents as a married couple. Dana is one of them. She watched my family, so good, so wholesome, so together, completely fall apart. Her own mother picked up the pieces of my emotional life by serving me plates of the best spaghetti ever made and letting me drink big glasses of wine, even though I was only 16. Dana likes to tell me, "I've never forgiven your parents."
So there I was heading north aware that Dana's news would be of the particularly awful kind. Her daughters in high school and college were facing the very unforgivables I had lived already, at the same ages. And all I could do for any of them was show up, pour wine, and tell Dana that I wouldn't ever forgive her husband for what he'd done to her, either.
In the strange universe of yin and yang, we'd swapped places. Midlife takes no prisoners, apparently.
Because California loves me, the sun shone and the clouds skipped town.
I made a quick phone call to my best friend from high school whose home I would stay in that night to give her my ETA. Dana answered, on her way to drinking mimosas with a friend who needed help preparing papers for a custody battle—midlife mess erupting on the phone.
"Aren't you glad your marriage and family life are sane?" I sighed.
Dana paused. "My life is not sane, Julie. We'll talk when you get here."
Thud.
I clicked "end" on my cell, preparing myself for news I immediately knew and didn't want to know.
A little historical context would be helpful right about now. When I was 16, Dana slept over the night my parents announced that my dad would move out. She and I were laughing and talking in my bedroom when my mom called me to the kitchen.
In the too-brightly-lit space, my brother and sister draped themselves over a couple of orange chairs and my mom fiddled with the pink saucepan she'd been given for a wedding gift 17 years earlier. My dad stood awkwardly in front of the sliding glass door, which showed me his back. He made a simple statement: he'd gotten one of those awful apartments with the incessant fruit fly problem over near the Topanga mall. He'd move out in the morning.
No conversation. No discussion. I walked back to my bedroom, a different person than when I'd left it: child of separation. Dana and I didn't laugh. The night was wrecked.
Of all the people in my life today, only a handful knew my parents as a married couple. Dana is one of them. She watched my family, so good, so wholesome, so together, completely fall apart. Her own mother picked up the pieces of my emotional life by serving me plates of the best spaghetti ever made and letting me drink big glasses of wine, even though I was only 16. Dana likes to tell me, "I've never forgiven your parents."
So there I was heading north aware that Dana's news would be of the particularly awful kind. Her daughters in high school and college were facing the very unforgivables I had lived already, at the same ages. And all I could do for any of them was show up, pour wine, and tell Dana that I wouldn't ever forgive her husband for what he'd done to her, either.
In the strange universe of yin and yang, we'd swapped places. Midlife takes no prisoners, apparently.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
When you forgive....
I remember when my parents got divorced, people used to tell me, "Time will heal your pain." I hated that rhetoric. Why should my dad and his new wife get away with wrecking our family by virtue of time's ability to heal, to make us forget, to help us move on? So I vowed that time would not heal, that I would not forget, that, in fact, the pain would last.
I knew then that a vow like that was supposed to be dangerous to my own soul. I wasn't quite sure why, though. It just seemed like the universe was letting my parents get away with selfishness, 1970s style, and since the law, religion, and our tennis club friends all seemed perfectly content to overlook my pain when they moved along and accepted the devastation to our family, I decided to take it on myself to mete out justice. I did it by holding onto resentment and an unwillingness to ever forget that my dad, his new wife and my mother made terrible choices.
I didn't know then that these adults were choosing a path for their lives and I was merely collateral damage. No one told me I didn't have to adopt a posture of judgment and anger as a way to cope. It would have been startling to have someone suggest to me that I could simply focus on the pain they caused and work to create a better life for myself, without also focusing on how to make them pay. In fact, I felt I'd be betraying the moral fiber of the universe to love them, to find likable qualities in my dad or his wife, to forgive my mom for her abandonment. So I held them all at this "I love you, but that's in spite of..." arm's length distance.
To move on without judgment—that just didn't seem like the right thing to do. I would be aiding and abetting the cosmos in its indifference to what was clearly unjust! I didn't want to accept the idea of yin-yang, of pain leading to growth, or good and bad coexisting. I didn't want to believe that good could come from evil.
I've been more about linear progress, getting it right, not making mistakes, paying big attention to your impact on your loved ones, and so on. The idea that you could "move on" from making such powerful mistakes deeply troubled me... so I didn't.
The night of the Gilbert-Lamott evening at UCLA, I found myself jarred loose from my usual thought processes. I had already spent half the day in panicked arousal. Now I found myself unraveling my past while sitting in the place where my identity had been formed, for better or worse.
As a college student, I spent plenty of energy adjusting to the new reality that my family home no longer existed for me, that Christmas vacations would be spent on a pull-out couch at my mom's apartment where she lived with her boyfriend. I rarely, if ever, saw either my brother or sister (who lived with my dad). I spent summers in my apartments, not at home visiting high school friends or hanging around my siblings. In many ways, my college years were characterized by an unacknowledged loneliness. I had loads of friends, I participated in Campus Crusade, I belonged to a sorority. But at the end of the day, I had lost my family and had forgiven no one.
Sitting alone, writing in my little blue notebook, these memories swamped me. So unexpected. My young adult self walked right into my pencil and journaled herself onto paper.
The next morning, I went out to breakfast with an online girlfriend. We talked about midlife and marriage, painful choices and taking ownership of one's soul, one's life. Her honesty in revealing her journey to me led me to find new compassion for my dad (something I have not allowed myself to ever feel). I wondered what it might have felt like to be my dad, making choices or allowing them to be made for him. I thought about how he violated his own self-image in having an affair... what it must have taken for him to reconstruct a self he could be proud of and how I've been unwilling to let him ever do that.
I imagined each of my parents not wanting to create a mess in our lives, yet making a huge one as they fumbled forward into their truths and lies, not aware of what the long term consequences would be to us, but certain that the status quo had to be upended; that no matter what, they both were going to reclaim happiness and companionship because They. Had. To.
I joined Campus Crusade in the usual way: within minutes, I was sharing the Four Spiritual Laws with unbelievers. I had determined in college that I'd do it all differently, all rightly, all better. My Bible study leaders taught us about sin. I wanted truth. They tried to get me to see my own sin. All I could see were the sins of others against me.
It would have been incredibly helpful, in looking back, if someone had simply mentioned that Jesus died not just for my sins (sins I couldn't see, identify or feel), but that he died for the sins against - for those sins committed against victims. It would have been even more helpful if I hadn't been admonished to forgive my parents, but had rather been told how important my pain was to God, how proud God was of me for caring that much about truth, justice and suffering... and had then shown me a way to use that pain to create a more just and compassionate world (not just a tiny, in-grown sense of personal revenge-as-justice that I had adopted).
I don't blame anyone for this oversight. It's taken me twenty-five years to tease apart all the threads that make me who I am today.
Later in the afternoon after I said goodbye to Westwood, I drove to my dad's to watch UCLA beat Xavier in the NCAA basketball tournament. My dad and I have always connected around sports. We rarely ever get time alone together. We sat, side-by-side on the couch, hardly sure of who to root for; after all, it was like watching me play me, since I'm an alumnus of both schools. I wanted UCLA to win theoretically, but I was attached to the Xavier seniors who we've watched play here in Cinci. When Xavier lost, I felt I had lost too, even though my team, the one I was rooting for, had won.
My life has been a similar emotional tug of war. I love my parents, both of them. I'm proud of them for all kinds of accomplishments and gifts they've given to me, for the ways they have created stability in spite of the chaos of those earlier years. But I also really loved my family of origin, that original formulation of the five of us that I lost, forever. It's been hard to know which team to root for - the first family that holds my dearest childhood memories, or this new, reconstituted one, born in pain and violation.
After twenty-eight years, after all this time, while sitting with my dad in the home he and his wife have made together, I finally let it go. I'm going to accept, love and root for the family I have. I started that afternoon.
I knew then that a vow like that was supposed to be dangerous to my own soul. I wasn't quite sure why, though. It just seemed like the universe was letting my parents get away with selfishness, 1970s style, and since the law, religion, and our tennis club friends all seemed perfectly content to overlook my pain when they moved along and accepted the devastation to our family, I decided to take it on myself to mete out justice. I did it by holding onto resentment and an unwillingness to ever forget that my dad, his new wife and my mother made terrible choices.
I didn't know then that these adults were choosing a path for their lives and I was merely collateral damage. No one told me I didn't have to adopt a posture of judgment and anger as a way to cope. It would have been startling to have someone suggest to me that I could simply focus on the pain they caused and work to create a better life for myself, without also focusing on how to make them pay. In fact, I felt I'd be betraying the moral fiber of the universe to love them, to find likable qualities in my dad or his wife, to forgive my mom for her abandonment. So I held them all at this "I love you, but that's in spite of..." arm's length distance.
To move on without judgment—that just didn't seem like the right thing to do. I would be aiding and abetting the cosmos in its indifference to what was clearly unjust! I didn't want to accept the idea of yin-yang, of pain leading to growth, or good and bad coexisting. I didn't want to believe that good could come from evil.
I've been more about linear progress, getting it right, not making mistakes, paying big attention to your impact on your loved ones, and so on. The idea that you could "move on" from making such powerful mistakes deeply troubled me... so I didn't.
The night of the Gilbert-Lamott evening at UCLA, I found myself jarred loose from my usual thought processes. I had already spent half the day in panicked arousal. Now I found myself unraveling my past while sitting in the place where my identity had been formed, for better or worse.
As a college student, I spent plenty of energy adjusting to the new reality that my family home no longer existed for me, that Christmas vacations would be spent on a pull-out couch at my mom's apartment where she lived with her boyfriend. I rarely, if ever, saw either my brother or sister (who lived with my dad). I spent summers in my apartments, not at home visiting high school friends or hanging around my siblings. In many ways, my college years were characterized by an unacknowledged loneliness. I had loads of friends, I participated in Campus Crusade, I belonged to a sorority. But at the end of the day, I had lost my family and had forgiven no one.
Sitting alone, writing in my little blue notebook, these memories swamped me. So unexpected. My young adult self walked right into my pencil and journaled herself onto paper.
The next morning, I went out to breakfast with an online girlfriend. We talked about midlife and marriage, painful choices and taking ownership of one's soul, one's life. Her honesty in revealing her journey to me led me to find new compassion for my dad (something I have not allowed myself to ever feel). I wondered what it might have felt like to be my dad, making choices or allowing them to be made for him. I thought about how he violated his own self-image in having an affair... what it must have taken for him to reconstruct a self he could be proud of and how I've been unwilling to let him ever do that.
I imagined each of my parents not wanting to create a mess in our lives, yet making a huge one as they fumbled forward into their truths and lies, not aware of what the long term consequences would be to us, but certain that the status quo had to be upended; that no matter what, they both were going to reclaim happiness and companionship because They. Had. To.
I joined Campus Crusade in the usual way: within minutes, I was sharing the Four Spiritual Laws with unbelievers. I had determined in college that I'd do it all differently, all rightly, all better. My Bible study leaders taught us about sin. I wanted truth. They tried to get me to see my own sin. All I could see were the sins of others against me.
It would have been incredibly helpful, in looking back, if someone had simply mentioned that Jesus died not just for my sins (sins I couldn't see, identify or feel), but that he died for the sins against - for those sins committed against victims. It would have been even more helpful if I hadn't been admonished to forgive my parents, but had rather been told how important my pain was to God, how proud God was of me for caring that much about truth, justice and suffering... and had then shown me a way to use that pain to create a more just and compassionate world (not just a tiny, in-grown sense of personal revenge-as-justice that I had adopted).
I don't blame anyone for this oversight. It's taken me twenty-five years to tease apart all the threads that make me who I am today.
Later in the afternoon after I said goodbye to Westwood, I drove to my dad's to watch UCLA beat Xavier in the NCAA basketball tournament. My dad and I have always connected around sports. We rarely ever get time alone together. We sat, side-by-side on the couch, hardly sure of who to root for; after all, it was like watching me play me, since I'm an alumnus of both schools. I wanted UCLA to win theoretically, but I was attached to the Xavier seniors who we've watched play here in Cinci. When Xavier lost, I felt I had lost too, even though my team, the one I was rooting for, had won.
My life has been a similar emotional tug of war. I love my parents, both of them. I'm proud of them for all kinds of accomplishments and gifts they've given to me, for the ways they have created stability in spite of the chaos of those earlier years. But I also really loved my family of origin, that original formulation of the five of us that I lost, forever. It's been hard to know which team to root for - the first family that holds my dearest childhood memories, or this new, reconstituted one, born in pain and violation.
After twenty-eight years, after all this time, while sitting with my dad in the home he and his wife have made together, I finally let it go. I'm going to accept, love and root for the family I have. I started that afternoon.
Monday, April 21, 2008
Anne Lamott and Elizabeth Gilbert
Good writers use a schtick that we readers indulge with laughs and attention. It's called craft: the narrative arcs and little moments of insight woven between honest revelations, good vocabulary, a sense of humor and posturing which all work together to create best sellers. As a friend once said to me, we want "telling on myself honesty" but we probably don't want the gritty, underneath kind of soul-exhibitionism that looks more like stripping in one of those awful little dressing rooms with the carnival-style mirrors and fluorescent bulbs that make even the sexiest clothes look frumpy on a cover girl.
There are just some truths that are best left private. Evenso, humorous self-disclosure is the creative non-fiction niche. Gilbert and Lamott: pros.
The problem for me is that sometimes I get bored with writing - with my writing, with the writing of others. It's like I see the writing tricks and feel this huge urge to grab a sharpie marker and write in the margins, "Ha! Fraud! Writing trick! You can't dupe me."
I had some of these feelings the night I listened to Anne Lamott and Elizabeth Gilbert. Don't get me wrong. They're excellent writers, both, and equally compelling speakers. Lamott was "tears streaming down your cheeks" funny and Gilbert was insightful, gently humorous and genuinely warm. I spent half the night wanting her to cuddle me.
Yet, sometimes in the name of honesty, I feel misled. There's a seduction at the heart of writing and speaking. It's the thrill of audience, the sense of being a god in your little universe of words. That means you can shape the person in the middle of your narrative into whoever serves that ravenously hungry entity called "humanity" (or less romantically: readers).
Both Gilbert and Lamott are known for their soul-baring writing styles. They spare no aspect of their lives from scrutiny, including painful divorce, self-flagellation for their spiritual deficiencies and even the art of masturbation. But of the two, Lamott surprisingly came across as the more forced, the more conscious of taking the audience for a ride. There were times I didn't fully trust her.
Elizabeth introduced Anne and then Anne read from one of her books. Anne's a wonderful writer and we laughed, nodded and sighed at the right moments. Elizabeth's introduction of Anne was deferential, humorous and honoring. She filled it with genuine affection and insight, and positioned herself as someone who couldn't have been successful without Anne's previous writings about the spiritual life with a sense of humor. The irony, of course, is that Elizabeth is wildly more successful from one book than Anne is with several.
Weirdly, Elizabeth's deference led Anne to hog most of the night. As I exited the huge Royce Hall with hundreds of other women filling the aisles, I overheard several commenting that they didn't understand why Anne spoke so much more than Liz. Well, the truth is, Anne simply didn't yield the mike! It almost seemed that Anne was desperate to ride a little of the wake off of Liz's celebrity.
I noticed that Anne relied a lot on self-deprecation for humor as is the typical manner of co-dependents and ex-addicts. She gave the impression that she didn't fundamentally like people. She deliberately maintained this "I've not grown much" spirituality as a way of staying in synch with her audience. But it had the opposite effect on me.
It felt phony!
Meanwhile, Elizabeth came across utterly differently. For instance, someone from the audience asked if either of them had discovered that through their struggles, they had come to gain some wisdom to share or some gifts to share with others after having doubted themselves and their spiritual health, etc. Elizabeth answered that it is startling for her to feel that she's grown, that there are gifts in her hands (she held them up) for others, but that it still humbles her and she is in awe of it. Anne came back with, "No." She never has anything to give away, never knows it, doesn't feel she has anything of growth to offer anyone.
Now some people may have thought that a wonderfully honest comment. But I found it self-interested and posturing. How can Anne not have grown ever? How is it that she is spouting her insights but thinks she never has anything to say that helps people? Why write books? Why undercut Elizabeth's genuine self-evaluation with this "I'm a more honest, and raw kind of person than her" statement? It bugged me.
Elizabeth, meanwhile, deferred, classy.
The event was entertaining, enjoyable, the place to be in LA that night. Women buzzed, came dressed up in sandals and colors, big earrings and warmly hooked to each other as girlfriends so often are. I loved observing the whole space.
My take-home from the actual talks had more to do with my personal writing than any of their specific content. My soul searching had begun. What does it mean to share your life, you spiritual self, your broken-down person in the dirt versus the revised version of self that is slowly emerging? What does that look like in writing for me? Before the event began, I had purchased a little blue notebook from a drug store. I sat on the cold hard steps leading up to Royce Hall, took my pencil in hand and scratched letters on the pages.
Halting, stilted, hidden words. I couldn't coax them to come out and play like they usually do. The panic attacks for my physical safety morphed into emotional panic: Could I write what I was really thinking and feeling without it ever being "found out"? What a thought! What a thought for a writer of autobiographical essays!
To break through, I had to literally tell myself I could take a match to the little sheets of paper once they were written if I felt the need. Even as I had that thought, another one crashed into it to invalidate it: "If you never want anyone to know what you really think, don't write it down. Written words come back to haunt you and ruin your life."
What an odd thought to have while totally alone with a tiny notebook 3000 miles from home! I had hidden thoughts and feelings that didn't surface in my day-to-day life in Ohio yet with isolation, physical vulnerability and the up-close memories of the "me" that went to college, I suddenly felt exposed, in danger emotionally because I found my mind rearranging some of its assumptions.
So I bungled my way forward, overwriting, under-writing, hesitating and then gushing. The personal writing I did before the event acted as backdrop to these pros who make their living investigating the self and then translating it into entertainment. I listened at both levels: the primary one that entertained and that meta-level that taught me about what kind of writer I want to be.
In the days that followed, a different kind of personally dangerous deconstruction developed. Some of that journey I'll share here over the course of this week... and some of it went up with a match.
There are just some truths that are best left private. Evenso, humorous self-disclosure is the creative non-fiction niche. Gilbert and Lamott: pros.
The problem for me is that sometimes I get bored with writing - with my writing, with the writing of others. It's like I see the writing tricks and feel this huge urge to grab a sharpie marker and write in the margins, "Ha! Fraud! Writing trick! You can't dupe me."
I had some of these feelings the night I listened to Anne Lamott and Elizabeth Gilbert. Don't get me wrong. They're excellent writers, both, and equally compelling speakers. Lamott was "tears streaming down your cheeks" funny and Gilbert was insightful, gently humorous and genuinely warm. I spent half the night wanting her to cuddle me.
Yet, sometimes in the name of honesty, I feel misled. There's a seduction at the heart of writing and speaking. It's the thrill of audience, the sense of being a god in your little universe of words. That means you can shape the person in the middle of your narrative into whoever serves that ravenously hungry entity called "humanity" (or less romantically: readers).
Both Gilbert and Lamott are known for their soul-baring writing styles. They spare no aspect of their lives from scrutiny, including painful divorce, self-flagellation for their spiritual deficiencies and even the art of masturbation. But of the two, Lamott surprisingly came across as the more forced, the more conscious of taking the audience for a ride. There were times I didn't fully trust her.
Elizabeth introduced Anne and then Anne read from one of her books. Anne's a wonderful writer and we laughed, nodded and sighed at the right moments. Elizabeth's introduction of Anne was deferential, humorous and honoring. She filled it with genuine affection and insight, and positioned herself as someone who couldn't have been successful without Anne's previous writings about the spiritual life with a sense of humor. The irony, of course, is that Elizabeth is wildly more successful from one book than Anne is with several.
Weirdly, Elizabeth's deference led Anne to hog most of the night. As I exited the huge Royce Hall with hundreds of other women filling the aisles, I overheard several commenting that they didn't understand why Anne spoke so much more than Liz. Well, the truth is, Anne simply didn't yield the mike! It almost seemed that Anne was desperate to ride a little of the wake off of Liz's celebrity.
I noticed that Anne relied a lot on self-deprecation for humor as is the typical manner of co-dependents and ex-addicts. She gave the impression that she didn't fundamentally like people. She deliberately maintained this "I've not grown much" spirituality as a way of staying in synch with her audience. But it had the opposite effect on me.
It felt phony!
Meanwhile, Elizabeth came across utterly differently. For instance, someone from the audience asked if either of them had discovered that through their struggles, they had come to gain some wisdom to share or some gifts to share with others after having doubted themselves and their spiritual health, etc. Elizabeth answered that it is startling for her to feel that she's grown, that there are gifts in her hands (she held them up) for others, but that it still humbles her and she is in awe of it. Anne came back with, "No." She never has anything to give away, never knows it, doesn't feel she has anything of growth to offer anyone.
Now some people may have thought that a wonderfully honest comment. But I found it self-interested and posturing. How can Anne not have grown ever? How is it that she is spouting her insights but thinks she never has anything to say that helps people? Why write books? Why undercut Elizabeth's genuine self-evaluation with this "I'm a more honest, and raw kind of person than her" statement? It bugged me.
Elizabeth, meanwhile, deferred, classy.
The event was entertaining, enjoyable, the place to be in LA that night. Women buzzed, came dressed up in sandals and colors, big earrings and warmly hooked to each other as girlfriends so often are. I loved observing the whole space.
My take-home from the actual talks had more to do with my personal writing than any of their specific content. My soul searching had begun. What does it mean to share your life, you spiritual self, your broken-down person in the dirt versus the revised version of self that is slowly emerging? What does that look like in writing for me? Before the event began, I had purchased a little blue notebook from a drug store. I sat on the cold hard steps leading up to Royce Hall, took my pencil in hand and scratched letters on the pages.
Halting, stilted, hidden words. I couldn't coax them to come out and play like they usually do. The panic attacks for my physical safety morphed into emotional panic: Could I write what I was really thinking and feeling without it ever being "found out"? What a thought! What a thought for a writer of autobiographical essays!
To break through, I had to literally tell myself I could take a match to the little sheets of paper once they were written if I felt the need. Even as I had that thought, another one crashed into it to invalidate it: "If you never want anyone to know what you really think, don't write it down. Written words come back to haunt you and ruin your life."
What an odd thought to have while totally alone with a tiny notebook 3000 miles from home! I had hidden thoughts and feelings that didn't surface in my day-to-day life in Ohio yet with isolation, physical vulnerability and the up-close memories of the "me" that went to college, I suddenly felt exposed, in danger emotionally because I found my mind rearranging some of its assumptions.
So I bungled my way forward, overwriting, under-writing, hesitating and then gushing. The personal writing I did before the event acted as backdrop to these pros who make their living investigating the self and then translating it into entertainment. I listened at both levels: the primary one that entertained and that meta-level that taught me about what kind of writer I want to be.
In the days that followed, a different kind of personally dangerous deconstruction developed. Some of that journey I'll share here over the course of this week... and some of it went up with a match.
Friday, April 18, 2008
Panicked
I got off the plane in Los Angeles and clutched my purse and laptop. It's home, but it's also hostile. I feel less safe in LAX than I do in any other airport in the world, including Kinshasa where we were told they do actually sometimes steal your suitcase.
Once I walked past Wolfgang Puck's cafe and caught my first glimpse of a palm tree through the tall sunny windows, I felt better. I picked up my red bag, headed to the rental car station and snagged a set of keys to a white PT Cruiser. I did do the LA walk-around where you surreptitiously glance in the back windows of your car for lurking rapists before climbing into the front seat. The car was cool. I hopped in, stripped off my sweater down to the cami and drove.
I know LA. I love knowing it.
I exited at Wilshire Blvd. and turned right heading toward UCLA. My hotel, the Claremont, was (and still is) situated on Tiverton, right in Westwood. It's an old place without TVs or parking. I knew that going in. Its advantage to my stay: walking distance from UCLA and 60 bucks a night.
I liked the look of the place from the outside. I pulled up, hauled my bags out of the back, dragged them up the sidewalk steps and then up an entire flight of stairs (apparently no elevators either!) and dumped them in my clean, spare room.
My next mission: parking. Finding parking in Westwood is a test of the gods. You have to know which one is in charge of that day. Otherwise, forget about it. But my real concern this time had to do with finding parking that would allow me to drive to the UCLA event that night and return my car to a safe, lighted parking space that was within an easy walk from the hotel.
No such place exists. The paid parking was around the corner, on a hill, with no attendant and no re-entry. That left street parking which is, as I said, a crap shoot or a miracle depending on who you tell your parking stories to. As I sat in my car, halfway up the curb deciding where to put this rented vehicle, twinge. Like shots of tequila through my veins.
I glanced in my rear view mirror. Street sign: 2 hour parking between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. It was now 3:30. Perfect. Parking until morning. I suppressed the surge of panic, hauled that puppy into reverse and did my parallel parking thing, which being from LA means I'm a beast at it.
I walked back to the hotel, working my way into what would become a paranoid thought obsession: How will I get home from the Anne Lamott/Elizabeth Gilbert event tonight without getting assaulted, raped, shot, burgled, jumped, spit at, or flipped off?
It didn't help that I began this cycle of panic in the old hotel. My little second story room had windows that were open with tiny little latches. The door had one twist lock in the handle and that's it. No deadbolt, no little chain. Thousands of dollars of electronics, my all-by-myself body and a lock I could pick with a bobbypin!
The room went hot and airless.
I paced and panted. Every bad decision about safety I had ever made came back to me in waves - the times I jogged in college right by the rapists hiding in bushes at 1 in the morning with my 5' 2" roommate without blinking; the time I got into a car with an Italian guy at midnight in Zurich because I didn't have a hotel lined up, then he felt up my knee, so I heroically jumped into another car with another guy, and still wound up in the red light district alone; the alley in France I walked down as a shortcut to the movies where a North African male hand grabbed me in the wrong place, and my friend and I leaped three feet in the air, screamed and fled... I could, unfortunately, go on.
Now at 46, those memories, 25 years of news stories, this squalid half-locked room all bundled themselves together to beat and cripple me. I wrenched open my laptop and logged onto the Grand Wilshire hotel website. For $300 per night: parking! two blocks away! rooms with triple locks!
Full.
An anvil smashed my chest. I had hit full panic mode, the kind where every nerve ending thrashes my skin and my thoughts turn irrational but the whole time I'm in awe of their rationality. I couldn't imagine any way to safely make it through the next 24 hours.
I called Jon. The hotel can't exist if people get raped and burgled. You can always call a cab after the event. You will be fine. I dropped to my knees, accepted Jon into my life and adopted his Gospel message. But I still felt sick to my stomach.
After we hung up, a strange sound wafted to me from behind the barely locked door. Ce qu'il y a ici est... French? Outside my door? I could not believe my bon chance!
This hotel must be on the list of cheap places to stay for Europeans who come to America. No French person would ever steal my iPod! They won't fight wars! They love the Dali Lama! They drink wine till they have a cigarette, not so they can jump unsuspecting middle-aged women! I'm saved!
My breathing returned to normal. My stomach, not so much. I still had to figure out how I'd get home from the event. I inquired at the desk which held a barrel chested man who would be watching the front double bolted glass door all night. Is this a, um, safe neighborhood to walk in at, say, oh, 10:30 p.m. all by myself after an event at UCLA? I squeaked.
Funny how I walked it as a nubile 20-something without ever thinking twice. At 46, really, what do I have to recommend me?
He replied: Safe enough. But why go through all that? You can just get the UCLA escort service to walk you back to our hotel.
Salvation! Choirs of angels burst through the clouds... Well actually, they didn't. And this is where it gets interesting.
I heard him with my ears, I believed him with my head, but my body said, "No way. There's a flaw in this plan. You will surely die, after you've surely been burgled, and raped." For the next 24 hours, even after I had been safely escorted home by a nice Vietnamese ROTC student, every nerve-ending continued to fire, zing, and say "You're in danger!" In fact, I didn't eat well for nearly half my ten day trip. My body didn't recover or forget or believe.
I sat, parked, in the "let the trucks go by" lane of the San Marcos pass, shaking, though it was two days later.
Jon says it's midlife: the sense of vulnerability, mortality, danger sensed and narrowly averted, the weird out-of-context alone feelings that overtook me.
On many more levels than one it turns out. A foreshadowing of internal work to come.
Once I walked past Wolfgang Puck's cafe and caught my first glimpse of a palm tree through the tall sunny windows, I felt better. I picked up my red bag, headed to the rental car station and snagged a set of keys to a white PT Cruiser. I did do the LA walk-around where you surreptitiously glance in the back windows of your car for lurking rapists before climbing into the front seat. The car was cool. I hopped in, stripped off my sweater down to the cami and drove.
I know LA. I love knowing it.
I exited at Wilshire Blvd. and turned right heading toward UCLA. My hotel, the Claremont, was (and still is) situated on Tiverton, right in Westwood. It's an old place without TVs or parking. I knew that going in. Its advantage to my stay: walking distance from UCLA and 60 bucks a night.
I liked the look of the place from the outside. I pulled up, hauled my bags out of the back, dragged them up the sidewalk steps and then up an entire flight of stairs (apparently no elevators either!) and dumped them in my clean, spare room.
My next mission: parking. Finding parking in Westwood is a test of the gods. You have to know which one is in charge of that day. Otherwise, forget about it. But my real concern this time had to do with finding parking that would allow me to drive to the UCLA event that night and return my car to a safe, lighted parking space that was within an easy walk from the hotel.
No such place exists. The paid parking was around the corner, on a hill, with no attendant and no re-entry. That left street parking which is, as I said, a crap shoot or a miracle depending on who you tell your parking stories to. As I sat in my car, halfway up the curb deciding where to put this rented vehicle, twinge. Like shots of tequila through my veins.
I glanced in my rear view mirror. Street sign: 2 hour parking between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. It was now 3:30. Perfect. Parking until morning. I suppressed the surge of panic, hauled that puppy into reverse and did my parallel parking thing, which being from LA means I'm a beast at it.
I walked back to the hotel, working my way into what would become a paranoid thought obsession: How will I get home from the Anne Lamott/Elizabeth Gilbert event tonight without getting assaulted, raped, shot, burgled, jumped, spit at, or flipped off?
It didn't help that I began this cycle of panic in the old hotel. My little second story room had windows that were open with tiny little latches. The door had one twist lock in the handle and that's it. No deadbolt, no little chain. Thousands of dollars of electronics, my all-by-myself body and a lock I could pick with a bobbypin!
The room went hot and airless.
I paced and panted. Every bad decision about safety I had ever made came back to me in waves - the times I jogged in college right by the rapists hiding in bushes at 1 in the morning with my 5' 2" roommate without blinking; the time I got into a car with an Italian guy at midnight in Zurich because I didn't have a hotel lined up, then he felt up my knee, so I heroically jumped into another car with another guy, and still wound up in the red light district alone; the alley in France I walked down as a shortcut to the movies where a North African male hand grabbed me in the wrong place, and my friend and I leaped three feet in the air, screamed and fled... I could, unfortunately, go on.
Now at 46, those memories, 25 years of news stories, this squalid half-locked room all bundled themselves together to beat and cripple me. I wrenched open my laptop and logged onto the Grand Wilshire hotel website. For $300 per night: parking! two blocks away! rooms with triple locks!
Full.
An anvil smashed my chest. I had hit full panic mode, the kind where every nerve ending thrashes my skin and my thoughts turn irrational but the whole time I'm in awe of their rationality. I couldn't imagine any way to safely make it through the next 24 hours.
I called Jon. The hotel can't exist if people get raped and burgled. You can always call a cab after the event. You will be fine. I dropped to my knees, accepted Jon into my life and adopted his Gospel message. But I still felt sick to my stomach.
After we hung up, a strange sound wafted to me from behind the barely locked door. Ce qu'il y a ici est... French? Outside my door? I could not believe my bon chance!
This hotel must be on the list of cheap places to stay for Europeans who come to America. No French person would ever steal my iPod! They won't fight wars! They love the Dali Lama! They drink wine till they have a cigarette, not so they can jump unsuspecting middle-aged women! I'm saved!
My breathing returned to normal. My stomach, not so much. I still had to figure out how I'd get home from the event. I inquired at the desk which held a barrel chested man who would be watching the front double bolted glass door all night. Is this a, um, safe neighborhood to walk in at, say, oh, 10:30 p.m. all by myself after an event at UCLA? I squeaked.
Funny how I walked it as a nubile 20-something without ever thinking twice. At 46, really, what do I have to recommend me?
He replied: Safe enough. But why go through all that? You can just get the UCLA escort service to walk you back to our hotel.
Salvation! Choirs of angels burst through the clouds... Well actually, they didn't. And this is where it gets interesting.
I heard him with my ears, I believed him with my head, but my body said, "No way. There's a flaw in this plan. You will surely die, after you've surely been burgled, and raped." For the next 24 hours, even after I had been safely escorted home by a nice Vietnamese ROTC student, every nerve-ending continued to fire, zing, and say "You're in danger!" In fact, I didn't eat well for nearly half my ten day trip. My body didn't recover or forget or believe.
I sat, parked, in the "let the trucks go by" lane of the San Marcos pass, shaking, though it was two days later.
Jon says it's midlife: the sense of vulnerability, mortality, danger sensed and narrowly averted, the weird out-of-context alone feelings that overtook me.
On many more levels than one it turns out. A foreshadowing of internal work to come.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Midlife Mess
Must be the forties.
I went to California because my mom invited me to celebrate her 70th birthday. I imagined a trip filled with sunshine; friends; good food; UCLA; dinner with my dad; time with my sister, aunt and mother; and a solid dose of the California crunchies (healthy food, tan bodies, beaches and surfers, tattoo parlors next to drug stores, recycling bins on street corners and traffic).
A friend wrote in an email that I was on an "epic journey" and I smirked. Yeah, right. Ten days in my home state. What's epic about that?
Apparently everything.
I want to write about that trip, about the various impressions and emotions that broke over my head like the egg-mayonnaise-avocado shampoo concoction of the 1970s. I've got journal notes and emails to comb through.
Stay tuned. There's more coming.
I went to California because my mom invited me to celebrate her 70th birthday. I imagined a trip filled with sunshine; friends; good food; UCLA; dinner with my dad; time with my sister, aunt and mother; and a solid dose of the California crunchies (healthy food, tan bodies, beaches and surfers, tattoo parlors next to drug stores, recycling bins on street corners and traffic).
A friend wrote in an email that I was on an "epic journey" and I smirked. Yeah, right. Ten days in my home state. What's epic about that?
Apparently everything.
I want to write about that trip, about the various impressions and emotions that broke over my head like the egg-mayonnaise-avocado shampoo concoction of the 1970s. I've got journal notes and emails to comb through.
Stay tuned. There's more coming.
Monday, April 07, 2008
Good vibrations in CA
(This photo includes: My mom and me - bottom row, and my theological aunt and sister, celebrating my mom's 70th birthday.)
Clearly I didn't post a single photo while on my ten day sojourn through California. I actually (gasp) took time off of writing on my blogs. In fact, I took so much time off (ten days!) that when I returned to my office last night and looked at my desk, I saw a stack of (what is that?) mail (!) and had to think for a minute to figure out what it was and why it was there on my desk?!
California took on a whole different cast this trip. One might dub it: "The week of mid-life crisis, California style." I spent most of the time hashing through mid-life issues with friends, family and self. Crazy what that granola, a little sunshine and salt air does for the soul. Spring cleaning of the self.
Anne Lamott and Elizabeth Gilbert entertained and illuminated. More on them when I can scrounge my notepad from the abyss that is my suitcase. For now, I thought I'd just post a little visual journal of my time away. Enjoy. (Click on the photos for larger versions.)
(San Francisco skyline from 18th Street at Delores Park)
(Valrhona Chocolate to be squirted inside the Pain au Chocolate at Tartine's - the world's "better than France" French bakery, I swear.)
(Santa Cruz Nieces with the green BMW their dad is working on... Who wouldn't want that car... or those girls?)
(4 1/2 yr. old nephew who wants a surfboard for his 5th birthday.)
(Manresa Beach and me.)
(This VW captures most of what I love about California.)
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