i’ve been watching that show parenthood on hulu lately, and i’ve been crying at every episode. i’ve been writing lately about my mother, and how much she hurts and hurt me and how i hate her, even though i don’t, but there are significant parts of me that still do, and i don’t know how to reconcile them yet, or at all. and so there’s the writing that has to be done, because there’s nothing else to do about it. i haven’t been able to exorcise this stuff out of me.
i was in my creative writing class last semester and we were workshopping a book of my poetry, and the second poem, the one that follows the martyr poem is about me. and my mom. and her telling me about her online affair with a 19 year old. when i myself was eighteen. and her telling me they met through an online chatroom about leather … fetishes i assume is the right word there. you can read the poem. but the ‘funny’ thing about it was in workshop the teacher asked the class who they thought the woman was in the poem, because it certainly couldn’t be the mom, even though that’s who it seems to be; that no one’s mom would talk like that. that it simply couldn’t be. true.
and at the end of the class i said as much. i said it was a mom, my mom. and everyone was silent for that beat too long when something awkward has been said, and you don’t know how to react. much like in the poem itself.
and so, how does it end? does forgetting happen, or numbing, or leaving or reconciling. surely, i know this isn’t the worst motherly behavior. surely i know people who have had trauma greater than mine. but. to acknowledge it as trauma … isn’t enough. it's not full enough, or un-cliche enough. it doesn’t lessen it, or make it better, or take it away.
i was in my senior year of college, only a few months away from institutionalization, though i didn’t know it at the time. i only knew i was drinking in class by then. in film class though. experimental film. the only way to watch bunuel, of course. i was taking a class called trauma and literature. we read books about domestic violence, the holocaust, slavery. and i remember. mostly i remember this one book about domestic violence where the man slams a kitchen drawer on his blonde wife’s fingers, severing them, and we hear and see through her eyes that moment of necessitated numbness when she doesn’t feel anything because she can’t. because it’s too massive to feel anything at all. and so she’s intrinsically protected by her body and all of human decendency, and i know that moment. that suspension before the agony. i lived that suspension. and i don’t know how to land those moments. how to lay them down, how to put them to rest.
and so i watch television that makes me weep, and i ache in a place that is unchartable. and i wait for something to change. for change to overcome me like long awaited sleep. for it to catch up to me and allow me to let go of my breath and trust that maybe for once, and yet maybe for the millionth time, i can be safe in whatever’s happening, drawer or no drawer – i have to believe that something. will change. mainly because it must.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
a year in verbs.
It’s sort of amazing. I have the most divine sense of productiveness and accomplishment and wonder and gratitude. “I did it; We did it” were the 1st words out of my mouth this morning. And I/we did do it.
I wrote many poems, I read many poems, I discussed many poems. I meditated. I led a meditation. I participated in a seder. I mixed neutral black. I painted wood planks, and paper and canvas. I used power tools. I auditioned for live modeling. I made new friends and firmed up old ones. I took care of myself and dropped a class that didn’t work for me. I spoke in class. I learned to speak less openly opinionated in class.
I was disappointed by a bad review and I was supported thru that. I was in the vagina monologues. I talked to people and I felt respectful of my need for quietude and solitude. I allowed my writing to surprise me and change. I wrote a poem a day for a while. I learned how I write best. I listened to the experience of others and took the advice of my advisor. I did it. We did it.
I likely wouldn’t have made it on my own, or not nearly as successfully, or evenly, despite still the trial of it. It was hard. It was a trial, and there were errors and there were successes. I walked hobbled thru a breakup in this time. I volunteered to read in public. I was pushed and friendily coaxed to read in public after the disheartening review.
This was an accomplishment. This was the very definition of one, if I knew the definition.
I relied on the knowledge and experience of a former student/current poet who walked me out of the “what the f*ck am I doing here” moments. I took myself to the movies.
This was a triumph of perseverance and self-care. And the magic is that I can now acknowledge that I have these qualities, that I can exercise generosity and consideration toward myself, which is what coming to school was/is for me in the 1st place. This whole adventure and experience is an opportunity to show myself that I have respect for my desires, my artistic tuggings. That I haven’t dismissed these pulls is a demonstrative powerhouse of triumph for me and my path of integrity.
The/my path in front of me is no more clear as to outcome, destination, or result than it was when I began, but as this magnum list of rewards, transformations, and accomplishment suggests, the outcome isn’t nearly as important as the rewards garnered along the way. Along, beside, because of this path I have chosen, the make-up of me is changing. The way I engage the world is shifting, and confidence, humility, respect for others are firming up. I did know that the path was the end in itself, and I’m tickled, awed, and delightedly expectant at the bounty it has already provided. Amen.
May 4th, 2011.
I wrote many poems, I read many poems, I discussed many poems. I meditated. I led a meditation. I participated in a seder. I mixed neutral black. I painted wood planks, and paper and canvas. I used power tools. I auditioned for live modeling. I made new friends and firmed up old ones. I took care of myself and dropped a class that didn’t work for me. I spoke in class. I learned to speak less openly opinionated in class.
I was disappointed by a bad review and I was supported thru that. I was in the vagina monologues. I talked to people and I felt respectful of my need for quietude and solitude. I allowed my writing to surprise me and change. I wrote a poem a day for a while. I learned how I write best. I listened to the experience of others and took the advice of my advisor. I did it. We did it.
I likely wouldn’t have made it on my own, or not nearly as successfully, or evenly, despite still the trial of it. It was hard. It was a trial, and there were errors and there were successes. I walked hobbled thru a breakup in this time. I volunteered to read in public. I was pushed and friendily coaxed to read in public after the disheartening review.
This was an accomplishment. This was the very definition of one, if I knew the definition.
I relied on the knowledge and experience of a former student/current poet who walked me out of the “what the f*ck am I doing here” moments. I took myself to the movies.
This was a triumph of perseverance and self-care. And the magic is that I can now acknowledge that I have these qualities, that I can exercise generosity and consideration toward myself, which is what coming to school was/is for me in the 1st place. This whole adventure and experience is an opportunity to show myself that I have respect for my desires, my artistic tuggings. That I haven’t dismissed these pulls is a demonstrative powerhouse of triumph for me and my path of integrity.
The/my path in front of me is no more clear as to outcome, destination, or result than it was when I began, but as this magnum list of rewards, transformations, and accomplishment suggests, the outcome isn’t nearly as important as the rewards garnered along the way. Along, beside, because of this path I have chosen, the make-up of me is changing. The way I engage the world is shifting, and confidence, humility, respect for others are firming up. I did know that the path was the end in itself, and I’m tickled, awed, and delightedly expectant at the bounty it has already provided. Amen.
May 4th, 2011.
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
The Pan Story
I was walking home yesterday afternoon, when it occurred to me.
I love to cook eggs. I’d been cooking eggs every morning, in the same pan, for three years. It was a black pan with a red bottom, as I liked to envision my future kitchen being kind to black pans with red bottoms. But this pan, had seen better days. The surface of the pan was shredding, and each morning more bits of egg would cling to more bits of iron, and surely I was eating more iron than was found in the eggs alone. And each morning, as I was earnestly scraping bits of egg from between the threads of raised, raw metal, I would tell myself I needed to get a new pan.
But I didn’t. Each day, I would cook eggs in the thoroughly aggravating way, with the thoroughly aggravating pan. And even took to microwaving the eggs so I wouldn’t have to deal with the pan. The pan with the red bottom. The pan that had been the first real piece I’d bought when I moved into my last apartment. My first apartment to myself in several years. And so I kept this damned pan, cursing it, and each day putting it back in the cupboard. After all, I am a student, living on student loans; I couldn’t really afford a pan right now. Plus my car was stolen a little while ago, so I couldn’t really get to the store that would sell the kind of pan I wanted anyway. And so on…
Until. One morning. I’d had enough. I put the pan in the garbage can.
The next day I took it out. Washed it, ripping up another sponge, and used it.
A few weeks later, I put it in the garbage can again, and took the garbage out to the building’s dumpster. The pan was no longer useful to me. Or to anyone really. It was now, after years of good service, not suited to my needs.
Two days later, I was walking home and out front of the apartment building next to mine, someone had put a box of moving-out items: mugs, magazines, candles, and… a pan. The pan wasn’t what I wanted it to be – medium sized Teflon with a red bottom – but it was exactly what I needed. A pan, with a smooth cooking surface, in reasonable condition. I took it home.
And so, I remembered the pan story as I was walking home yesterday afternoon. Not long ago, I’d ended a relationship that was not working for me. I had been waffling on that decision lately, agonizing over whether I had done the right thing. Wasn’t “good enough” good enough? Why isn’t “good enough” good enough for me? Can’t it have been?
And so, I remembered the pan story. If my Higher Power, or the Universe, is able to put a pan perfect for my use directly in my path just when I needed it, isn’t that same power able to provide me with a relationship that is mutually wonderful just when I’ll need it? I realized then, that perhaps, Yes. Perhaps relationships, as with kitchenware, are under G-d’s domain, and I can let it go, leave it be, and continue to walk in my life until I come across the relationship-sized box.
(P.S. My goal by the end of the week is to buy myself a new, red-bottomed, Teflon pan.)
I love to cook eggs. I’d been cooking eggs every morning, in the same pan, for three years. It was a black pan with a red bottom, as I liked to envision my future kitchen being kind to black pans with red bottoms. But this pan, had seen better days. The surface of the pan was shredding, and each morning more bits of egg would cling to more bits of iron, and surely I was eating more iron than was found in the eggs alone. And each morning, as I was earnestly scraping bits of egg from between the threads of raised, raw metal, I would tell myself I needed to get a new pan.
But I didn’t. Each day, I would cook eggs in the thoroughly aggravating way, with the thoroughly aggravating pan. And even took to microwaving the eggs so I wouldn’t have to deal with the pan. The pan with the red bottom. The pan that had been the first real piece I’d bought when I moved into my last apartment. My first apartment to myself in several years. And so I kept this damned pan, cursing it, and each day putting it back in the cupboard. After all, I am a student, living on student loans; I couldn’t really afford a pan right now. Plus my car was stolen a little while ago, so I couldn’t really get to the store that would sell the kind of pan I wanted anyway. And so on…
Until. One morning. I’d had enough. I put the pan in the garbage can.
The next day I took it out. Washed it, ripping up another sponge, and used it.
A few weeks later, I put it in the garbage can again, and took the garbage out to the building’s dumpster. The pan was no longer useful to me. Or to anyone really. It was now, after years of good service, not suited to my needs.
Two days later, I was walking home and out front of the apartment building next to mine, someone had put a box of moving-out items: mugs, magazines, candles, and… a pan. The pan wasn’t what I wanted it to be – medium sized Teflon with a red bottom – but it was exactly what I needed. A pan, with a smooth cooking surface, in reasonable condition. I took it home.
And so, I remembered the pan story as I was walking home yesterday afternoon. Not long ago, I’d ended a relationship that was not working for me. I had been waffling on that decision lately, agonizing over whether I had done the right thing. Wasn’t “good enough” good enough? Why isn’t “good enough” good enough for me? Can’t it have been?
And so, I remembered the pan story. If my Higher Power, or the Universe, is able to put a pan perfect for my use directly in my path just when I needed it, isn’t that same power able to provide me with a relationship that is mutually wonderful just when I’ll need it? I realized then, that perhaps, Yes. Perhaps relationships, as with kitchenware, are under G-d’s domain, and I can let it go, leave it be, and continue to walk in my life until I come across the relationship-sized box.
(P.S. My goal by the end of the week is to buy myself a new, red-bottomed, Teflon pan.)
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Metal and Red
(fiction class 'group' story - each person to write a story referencing kevin bacon - yes, 6 degrees of kevin bacon - and yes, just kevin, or just bacon could be used) ;) enjoy!
Kevin stood nonplussed over the warm fleshy body and watched transfixed as the blood pooled underneath Mr. T.’s shaved scalp, darkening the red rug. The metal picture frame tumbled end over end, image back image back, from his hand in a suspended eerie slow motion. It was the clatter of the metal as it bounced off the plush onto the hardwood that jolted Kevin out of his reverie.
He blinked his amber eyes, and looked up and around Mr. T.’s sparse law office, which felt no more or less impersonal than it always did. Sleek, sharp -- corporate -- lines and manicured dark woods. The kind of office that was too stoic to concern itself with the personalities it harbored, a structured tabula rasa which housed any new executive with the same masculine malaise, and remained unaffected by the dramatic disturbance it now witnessed.
The only scrap of deviation from this elegant vacuity was the ruby rug that had been delivered earlier that day. The chicano and Black man wore blue jeans, and buttoned-down short-sleeved shirts embellished with a patch expressing their first name, and printed on the back with their company’s. Mr. T. had peeked out of the corner of his eye to note two things. Firstly, to ensure the delivery men didn’t scrape the metallic and black leather chairs across the richly-oiled floor, and secondly to observe that the young black man reminded him vaguely of a photo he’d seen of his nephew in the holiday newsletter his mother sent each year to the seven children and the spreading branches of half, step, and full grandchildren.
Mr. T., unlike his office, had had to learn to be remote and unemotional, to be the aggressive shark instead of the Black black sheep prosecuting the White white-collars. Such voracity allowed little room for compassion, or appreciation of the subtle or often passionate gifts of human relationships. The last woman he’d involved himself with was during his first year of law school, almost twenty years before. Ruby, he almost smiled nostalgically.
This brief and rare reminiscence therefore seemed apropos when later that evening Mr. T. rose to approach the same young Black man who had been in his office just hours before. And as he crossed onto the red carpet, he realized it wasn’t the newsletter photo this man resembled—it was his own mirror, twenty years before. The broad and proud nostrils, the heavy eyebrows that masked seclusion but could blaze scorn.
Mr. T’s final coherent vision before clutching the striking and sudden pain in his wide chest was the name patch on the man’s chest. It read, Kevin.
December 2, 2010
Kevin stood nonplussed over the warm fleshy body and watched transfixed as the blood pooled underneath Mr. T.’s shaved scalp, darkening the red rug. The metal picture frame tumbled end over end, image back image back, from his hand in a suspended eerie slow motion. It was the clatter of the metal as it bounced off the plush onto the hardwood that jolted Kevin out of his reverie.
He blinked his amber eyes, and looked up and around Mr. T.’s sparse law office, which felt no more or less impersonal than it always did. Sleek, sharp -- corporate -- lines and manicured dark woods. The kind of office that was too stoic to concern itself with the personalities it harbored, a structured tabula rasa which housed any new executive with the same masculine malaise, and remained unaffected by the dramatic disturbance it now witnessed.
The only scrap of deviation from this elegant vacuity was the ruby rug that had been delivered earlier that day. The chicano and Black man wore blue jeans, and buttoned-down short-sleeved shirts embellished with a patch expressing their first name, and printed on the back with their company’s. Mr. T. had peeked out of the corner of his eye to note two things. Firstly, to ensure the delivery men didn’t scrape the metallic and black leather chairs across the richly-oiled floor, and secondly to observe that the young black man reminded him vaguely of a photo he’d seen of his nephew in the holiday newsletter his mother sent each year to the seven children and the spreading branches of half, step, and full grandchildren.
Mr. T., unlike his office, had had to learn to be remote and unemotional, to be the aggressive shark instead of the Black black sheep prosecuting the White white-collars. Such voracity allowed little room for compassion, or appreciation of the subtle or often passionate gifts of human relationships. The last woman he’d involved himself with was during his first year of law school, almost twenty years before. Ruby, he almost smiled nostalgically.
This brief and rare reminiscence therefore seemed apropos when later that evening Mr. T. rose to approach the same young Black man who had been in his office just hours before. And as he crossed onto the red carpet, he realized it wasn’t the newsletter photo this man resembled—it was his own mirror, twenty years before. The broad and proud nostrils, the heavy eyebrows that masked seclusion but could blaze scorn.
Mr. T’s final coherent vision before clutching the striking and sudden pain in his wide chest was the name patch on the man’s chest. It read, Kevin.
December 2, 2010
Friday, July 23, 2010
My Fair Shagitz*
*non-Jewish male
I've recently begun dating a WASP.
I've recently begun dating a WASP.
This new adventure has swept me into a world quite unlike the one I've known. Stranded in his finely decorated Marina-district apartment, I ventured out one afternoon for food. Nearly delirious with hunger already, it was a like a cruel version of "Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink." Passing chic cup-cakeries, high-end boutiques, and hip one-name eateries, I finally fell into a crepery for a very affordable lunch.
To be clear, I did not grow up financially deprived either. A product of a middle/upper-middle class environment, I enjoyed sleep-away camp, the mostly latest Barbies, and family vacations to Cape Cod. But, nonetheless, my recent exposure to opulence has me questioning what the ramifications and place of class are in a relationship.
The film "My Fair Lady" ends with the newly glitzified Eliza visiting her old, poverty line neighborhood. With her newly acquired fine linens and regal accent, she is treated as an 'other' by the same peers with whom she shared bawdy camaraderie and upward classism at the beginning of the story. And so, she returns to the upper-class community she now more closely resembles.
As my first date with Mr. Marina unfolds at a golf tournament dinner party, I am not of these people with their orange tans and glittering fingers. As I stand in my new $200 of-the-moment shoes, erect with posture (and posturing), I have an Eliza moment. I am not steeped in the heritage of yachts and hedge funds, but nor am I unaware or uninformed of their habits - I too can laugh demurely, smile pleasantly, and choose the shrimp fork.
The rub is, I really like this guy. He can laugh at his Polo-clad style, and I can rib him about how most of the world is unfamiliar with the halls of a private boarding school. By the same token, I can laugh at my "Tarot for Beginners" book, and he can rib me about my Jersey accent peeking through.
By all accounts (pun intended), we are not a match. So how does this work? And...can it? The very structure of our upbringing is starkly different. (I still pick up pennies, whether it's the Jew or the human in me, I don't know.) There is a sense of hesitancy as again we go out to eat at a place with cloth napkins and wine lists. An inbred fear of scarcity, my familiar internal voice that creens, "This is wrong! Don't take too much! There's not enough [xyz] in the world!" And, too, I find myself gently acknowledging a twinge of inadequacy.
I had a nightmare the other night about meeting his family - they were all laughing to a joke told in a language I couldn't understand, a language he'd learned from the nanny who helped raise him. Sometimes my psyche is not very subtle.
And so, I ask again, Can you bridge the gap between people raised in starkly different classes, who have lived by different codes of money, responsibility, and normalcy? Can I be humble enough to believe in my value as a woman, no matter my tax bracket? Can our honesty about our fears and humor about our differences add color and dimension instead of shame and division?
So far, my answers are, "I am having fun" and "We shall see." And to pair my $200 shoes with my $20 thrift-store dress.
Monday, June 14, 2010
Moving: An Ode to Cole Street
Katie and I are both moving in August. I wrote a poem in February ("Acquiring Things") about finally adhering myself to my apartment, to San Francisco, to solidity - in the form of putting up a single curtain. If you've seen my place, you'd know that it is certainly mine: black&white checkered linoleum in the kitchen & bathroom; sand colored walls and dark woods in the living room; a chocolate velvet couch with fuzzy pillows of pale blue and cream; a kitchen of country greens, hand sewn chair covers, and a garden trellis with fake ivy hanging from the ceiling; and finally my bedroom saturated in deep crimson walls and black and white accents.
Yes, this place is me, through and through. Country, edgy, cozy all beyond the entrance of one door. However, there are ways that I have not allowed it to become whole - no curtains, no desk, no art space. Missing are the pieces that would create a home. Those that indicate security, stasis, and an ability to work, to sink and spread into the environment.
So, finally, one evening in February, a year and a half after I'd moved in, I screwed one curtain onto one window in my living room. It was a big deal. If I were to leave, I would have to pause, to remove slowly, not rush off in the middle of the night, as I've been apt to do. I would have to sink in and spread out with the idea and the mechanics of moving.
Moving is a big deal. "Home" is a key foundation block of the human psyche, and to move it is disruptive. Last year, I used to drive by a house that was being lifted off its foundation in order to pour a new one. I watched each week as the scaffolding was laid out, as the framing went up, as the house was wrapped in pulleys and levers and care, and finally, as it was hoisted out of the ground, wood wedged underneath to create a temporary support structure.
Although I never saw the house laid back to the ground, I will assume it followed the course it had been preparing for months: it gently settled down onto its now firm, concrete footing. Safe, and stronger than ever.
As Katie and I float somewhere above where we were, but not where we will be, I ask your help to provide a temporary support structure. And when I land, firmly planted, I will put up curtains, because it's time to be safe - so that I can be bold.
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Choose Your Own Adventure
I awoke this morning with the words "Choose your own adventure" echoing in my head. You remember the Choose Your Own Adventure books from the 80s? You would come to a point in the chapter when the character is presented with two or three options on how to proceed. To follow your choice you turn to either page 31 or page 36. And depending on which page you turn to, your destiny, or the character's, will change. Perhaps page 31 was a positive destiny landing in fruit tree-lined palace entrance; perhaps it was "and then you tumble into a dungeon and are eaten by a hemoglobin-starved goblin
As a pre-teen, I was not prepared for an ending I didn't "like," and am here to admit -- I cheated. I would turn to page 31, read the next few paragraphs, and if I didn't like what it said, I would go back and choose the other adventure, creating the destiny for myself and my reading experience that I wanted, instead of accepting what was presented to me
My life emerged to much the same pattern. Whether it is the Libra in me, weighing the pros and cons, and sitting at the crossroad brow furrowed with pro and cons lists strewn around me, and thusly moving nowhere. Whether it is the result of the pattern my life and its series of disastrous choices, I hate making decisions without knowing how they will turn out. Give me the few pages of each choice, and I'll make my decision then.
Unfortunately, life is not in the habit of handing me the answers.
Therefore, I have come to learn to rationally consider my choices, but, in the end, to simply take a leap. Whichever road. Any decision, any action, will give me a different result than sitting, chewing my nails, and wondering what's past the bend.
Life does let me go back, in part. If the decision leads me to a result I don't want, I can return to the intersection and sally forth to the other destiny with newly acquired clarity about my desires, needs, and values. Sometimes I don't know it's the road I don't want to go down until I've actually gone down it.
As I've been making decisions around the course of my life lately, I've had to remember very clearly that each path has merit, but to choose one, ANY one is better than standing still. This is very hard for me. I want to know the outcome, I want the answers, and I will pout and stagnate if you don't let me know that I will be okay if I take this road. What I've learned is that either way, I will be okay. That I must choose one adventure. Today, I choose things like, moving to the East Bay instead of back to New Jersey. I choose to attend grad school instead of plodding along in a safe, but uninspiring, job. Today, I choose things like finishing the five-foot flower painting, because no matter how it turns out, it will be done, and I get a sense of accomplishment.
I awoke this morning with those words, "Choose your own adventure," in my head. I am the agent of my own change, and I can, today, trust that my decisions will lead me toward a positive ending, even if it's simply learning that there's a goblin down that way.
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