Inside the Animal Kingdom

Asking for love feels needy, desperate, and embarrassing, especially for someone bonded to self-reliance. But when my dog repeatedly hits me with his dainty little paw begging for a scratch, I think, ‘How sweet. He knows how to ask for what he wants.’ And I think, ‘I could learn from him.’ And when he keeps tapping me, never sated, slapping my hand every time I try to type on my laptop, I end up yelling at him and saying, “I’m working!”

A dog can teach you lots of things. Like the fine line between expressing your needs and desires, and becoming a demanding pain in the ass.

Throughout the years, I’ve encountered men who would praise me for being undemanding.

“I can take you to a party where you know no one, and you don’t hang all over me,” one short-term boyfriend told me. I took this as a compliment until I realized that I was basically being commended for being invisible.

I’ve decided that I don’t like playing the role of ‘The Girl Who Needs Nothing.’ But transitioning from a lifetime of being low maintenance to actually expressing wants and desires is no easy task. Fear sashays in. Fear of being labeled as needy, and thus undesirable. Fear of the request not being granted. And the favorite of psychologists – fear of getting what you want.

Beyond that, if you’ve buried your needs and desires for longer than you can remember, you lose sight of what they are. You even lose sight of self.

“You don’t know who you are?” a puzzled friend asks.

“Well, I have a hint, but I’ve inhabited so many identities as a means of being adaptable and flexible that I’ve lost connection with the real me,” I reply.

“Huh?”

In order to know what you want, you have to be connected to who you really are. To those who have never been a chameleon, this challenge is hard to comprehend. But when you’ve lived as a chameleon for ages, able to inhabit any persona to function in any situation, eventually you have to ask, which role is the real you? Does the real you even exist anymore? And while adaptability has assured your survival, what part of you – other than the shell – has survived?

As I attempt to write this, my dog stands by the side of my bed barking, determined to recruit me as his playmate. In his wisdom, he knows that every day he must engage in fun to maintain his sanity, to romp with other dogs or to have a mighty tug-o-war with a dishtowel from which he emerges victorious. Okay, maybe he doesn’t know this, but he absolutely requests it. So now I know it.

And in following my dog’s lead, I see that the best way to find my way back to me is to play, to see what constitutes for me uncalculated joy. As I gather this knowledge, I see what I choose for my life rather than what I agree to in order to please others. I find me.

The canine education doesn’t end there. My dog, the king of finding comfort, paces and burrows, rearranges, and eventually lies down. Content. He finds subtle differences in the lay of a blanket or the temperature of the floor. In observing him, I recognize how good he is at taking care of himself, of meeting his own needs, and when he can’t, in asking for help.

I always saw independence as one of the most admirable traits anyone could develop, that the ability to sustain self equaled desirability. But after traveling the relationship road for a couple decades, I see how people enjoy being needed by their mates, how women and men who directly ask for what they want offer a gift to their partners.

So with this in mind, I’m ready to say good-bye to the chameleon. I imagine I’ll remain adaptable, but I’ll strive to hang onto self more powerfully in the process. And hopefully learn to ask for what I want. It’s time to speak up rather than roll around on my own back trying to scratch the itch.

Tags: independence, dog, relationships

Keeping Tabs

Hopelessly idealistic, I never feared cultural differences in a relationship. I believed the rhetoric that ‘we’re all the same,’ so when I found myself in a two-year, long distance romance with a Russian whom I had met overseas, I never questioned that we could make a marriage work. After all, we’d spent extended time with each other in both countries and had weathered it well.

One day my husband told me that he found the expression “I owe you one” so American, that Russians would never say such a thing. He pointed out that Americans keep a running tally sheet.

As much as I wanted to refute his observation, to say it was just colloquial speech, I knew he was right. Americans, in my experience, don’t like to feel indebted. If someone lends us a hand – a ride to the airport, a day of moving assistance, childcare, whatever – we want to repay the favor to even the tally. If we were the one to provide assistance first, we know we won’t feel awkward asking for aid when our turn comes. And while I never consciously think this way, I can’t deny that if I end up in the giving column repeatedly, I start to feel uncomfortable with a friend.

In 1980s Communist Russia, day-to-day life functioned on neighbor helping neighbor and family members operating as a unit, even when separated by thousands of miles. My husband told me that when his oldest sister came across some boys’ shoes for sale, she snatched them up immediately even though she only had a teenage daughter. It was hard to find shoes and her younger sister had two boys. While her sister’s family lived days away by train, the older sister knew it would somehow be easier to get the shoes to them than for her sister to find some locally. Necessity bred this kind of bond beyond familial love.

Stories like this were common. As a college student in Moscow, my husband had only two friends with cars. Both were regularly called upon by a wide circle of acquaintances to make airport runs a good hour outside the city. There was never any indication that either found the requests extraordinary or that they expected any means of repayment. This was simply how life functioned. But as the American, when I came to visit I wanted to repay the friend who had collected me from the airport, and I felt at odds until I found a way. I couldn’t slide into the Russian way of thinking.

One of the advantages of marrying outside your culture is the unique perspective an outsider can offer. After my husband pointed out the American tendency, I tried to keep the tally sheet out of our marriage, to erase my cultural upbringing, but I don’t think I ever fully succeeded. While what ended our marriage resided beyond this one issue, my ears still perk up when I hear, “I owe you one,” and I wonder how often relationships – romantic and not – fall victim to this principle.

As my son gets older, I ask more of him around the house. And in his typical teenage perspective, he often feels very put out. He’s entirely unaware of the tally card, noting left and right what he’s done to help and completely overlooking how much of my day revolves around facilitating his life. As it should. I am the parent.

But in not wanting to breed a selfish child, I point out what I do for him, and without intent introduce the concept of the tally sheet. And I don’t know how to feel about that. Being part of a family – and in a relationship – requires give and take. I just wish we weren’t so aware of keeping track.

Ironically, now that my ex and all his transplanted Russian friends have lived in the U.S. for roughly fifteen years, their bonds of friendship have weakened. They still gather and come to each other’s rescue, but if one friend ends up in the need category for too long, the talk begins. Gone are the days when they were an indestructible unit, when they’d throw all their clothes into one giant pile and head off to the laundry only to return home and hold up a pair of clean underwear and ask, “Whose are these?” And if they didn’t know, they never really cared.

In a land where we need one another – yet don’t rely upon each other the way my ex and his friends once did – I wonder how to quiet the mathematical calculator in our minds. Or should we? Does this tally sheet really indicate we’re less caring in our relationships? Or does it just show that everything in life requires balance, that we use this as a way of monitoring friendships to keep them healthy?

I believe I’m as much there for my friends as those Russians I spent a summer observing through the ins and outs of their lives. And while Americans might say, “I owe you one,” – and mean it – what counts is that we continue to show up for our friends and allow them to show up for us, scorecard and all.

Tags: relationships, cultural differences, thirteen

Unbreakable Bonds

Not one to sit back and wait for life to happen, I take the reins and whip the horse…gently. Along the way, I like others by my side, so I come up with an activity and elicit companions to join in. Sometimes I offer up a dinner party of a thoughtfully constructed guest list. Other times I pick up a couple of tickets to an event and place a call to extend an invite.

Very often I get responses like, “Oh, that sounds great, but I can’t plan that far ahead,” or, “It’s too last minute. I’m tired and don’t feel like heading out.” It’s as if I am trying to make plans with Goldilocks.

Word from those who have transplanted to Los Angeles is that it is a tough city in which to cultivate friendships. People are busy, exhausted by entertainment industry work schedules, too spread out, hidden in their cars, overwhelmed by the traffic, burdened by family and children, overextended, or simply waiting for a better offer.

Some days I take the ‘not this time’ in stride and just put out more invitations. On others, my insecurity punches me in the stomach as I convince myself that if I were further up the food chain, I’d have people lining up at my door for the simple pleasure of drinking water from my tap.

But when I can collect a group under one roof, pour wine and offer experimental dishes of assorted tastes arranged for the colors they embody, it’s worth all the frustrating phone calls and dead-end emails. On the night when friends and acquaintances gather, I have created community.

As I observe my guests talking and eating, I slide into an alternate reality where time slows. I inhale the shared laughter and sway in rhythm to the music that overtakes the room like a perfectly designed soundtrack. To me, this communal moment is the heart of life.

And I wonder if others need these gatherings the way I do, if my longing for community stems from a disjointed and erratic childhood, if I’m always looking for the familial connection I never felt I had.

Through very unscientific methods, I’ve discovered that those who often feel alien on the planet felt alien in their own childhood homes having inhabited the role of the outsider taking notes from the periphery. As the misplaced child, we shook our heads side to side wondering how we ended up where we did. By the time we moved out on our own, we wondered what that had all been about.

You either dissect it for the rest of your life or become a stand up comedian. Or both.

Or you look at your past as the launching ground that got you to the present. You recognize that it served a magical purpose that turned you into a therapist or an artist, a dedicated athlete or a writer.

It’s easy to wish we could rewrite the past, to cast ourselves into arenas that we imagine as the perfect fit, to erase any pain and hurt. But certainly it’s more valuable to identify the unique traits we developed from our unique circumstances, to embrace our role as survivors of pasts and childhoods that we claim we would never have chosen.

Sometimes I wish my childhood had offered me delicious memories of shared love and laughter and unbreakable bonds with siblings, rather than fostering the hungry observer fixated on understanding human behavior. But had I found my place of belonging, I may never have developed the eye and ear that serve me in my art. And without the powerful longing for connection, I never would have become queen of the dinner party. Self-crowned.

Tags: dinner party, community, childhood, Goldilocks

Sacred Accidents

I close my eyes and type as fast as I can to invite flow and to purge. In opening my eyes, I see a land of green squiggles and red underlines, the decorative commentary of Microsoft Word. My eyes instantly leap to these adornments, granting the mistakes greater significance than when my fingers correctly connected with the keys.

And I imagine that my fingers have intervened and are speaking directly to me, spewing the words that want to be heard, voicing my true desires. The drunk dialing equivalent for the literary set.

A word waves from the page, one of my fingers’ inversions: sacred. I had intended to type scared. And I pause to consider if scared can be sacred.

In the 90s nearly every book I picked up had a title about leaving or falling, of something that would get me out of where I was, a fantasy of departure or relocation. Dreams of Leaving, Falling Out of Time, names like these. I remember nothing of the books beyond their titles. The content was inconsequential.

Staying put has always been my challenge. A gnawing sensation below the skin tells me, ‘Not here, not now.’ And in this state, it’s hard to focus, hard not to wonder, ‘Why can’t I find the life and place that call to me?’

If you walk in the inner circle and smile at your peers, if your home feels like the place that has always called to you, you can’t imagine what it’s like to never feel home. Despite living in this dwelling longer than any other in my life, despite my saying with a smirk, “I’ll be here forever,” I feel like a temporary resident, as if someday the right spot on the planet will present itself to me and I’ll sigh and smile, and say, “Yes, now I understand. I wasn’t crazy all those years of disquiet. I wasn’t home yet.”

My son told me that the reason he was so grumpy on a recent trip was because he hates to travel, that he struggles with change and adjustment. He illustrated his point by confessing to initially hating the new furniture in his room – the furniture he’d selected – because of its newness. He missed the old furniture he’d grown to despise, missed its familiarity. And in moving one piece of the old furniture back into his room to ease the transition, he knew he was taking care of himself.

Looking at his need for stability and my need for movement, I figure we must have something to teach each other.

I strive to be a good role model, yet lately in my unstructured days with no new additions to my resume and no obvious forward momentum in career, I fear I’m setting a bad example. I worry my son might not fully understand my actions of abandoning a solid career for the unknown. But in the quiet when I feel calm, I imagine I’m teaching him to take a chance, to believe in change, to believe in moving outside your comfort zone.

And in return, he teaches me. His mere existence shows me that I might need the grounding influence of being a parent, that without the responsibility of my son I could be off spinning out of control.

Scared and sacred. The words echo in my mind.

As a family, we nudge each other into new territory. I push him to move a bit more and he forces me to settle in a bit better. And while we couldn’t have picked this, I sense it’s no accident that we are paired together.

Hurry Up and Slow Down

As I drive home, the blank and colorless traffic signals for the last three blocks could have tipped me off to a problem, but they didn’t. Not in a grand way. Traffic lights go out all the time. It’s hardly noteworthy.

When I pull up to my building, flicking at my garage door opener to no response, I still don’t react. It often takes two or three presses to activate the aging device. But when I get a full view of the lightless garage through the mesh gate, an eerie quiet slides over the scene like a horror film moment. Electricity to the entire neighborhood is out.

The technology gods are at it again, roughhousing in the heavens, knocking out my utilities, forcing me to slow down and take notice.

I pull my car into the exterior guest spot, and climb the outside stairs to the building’s side entrance. Opening the door, I see the windowless hallways are pitch-black, the back-up emergency lights clearly not backing up anything.

I walk to the front of the building, to the stairway graced with windows, climb to the third floor, and think, “Two weeks ago no water. Now, no power. Coincidence? I think not.”

We all dance with spirituality in our own way.

Months ago I was speaking to my decidedly non-spiritual friend via our cell phones when suddenly – yet certainly not surprisingly – our conversation abruptly ended. My friend was at her gym peddling away on a stationary bike where I know she’s not supposed to use her cell phone, so when she didn’t call back, I figured another exercise enthusiast had sat down beside her and snarled, prompting her to end the call.

Hours later when she never called back, I picked up the phone. “What happened to you?” I asked.

“When we got disconnected, I took it as a sign that we shouldn’t talk longer at that moment,” she explained.

“This is how you find spirituality?” I asked. “By way of your cell phone?”


As I find my way into my unpowered home, I decide to take this latest environmental intervention as a sign for me to slow down. I can gamble with the life of my laptop battery and power it on to write or take a break and turn from technology.

I reach for a book. A printed book. Of the paper kind.

I often feel as if I’m cheating to step away from my own work and enjoy someone else’s, forgetting that if we never did this, there’d be little point in any of us creating. But conditioned to plow forward, I find giving myself permission to not progress challenging.

Thirty minutes later, I’m startled from my calm when the power returns in an energetic poof! My dog leaps from the sound of technology surging to life all around him, and he starts trembling as if the apocalypse is moments away. No matter how I try to reassure and comfort him, he shakes and shakes. How can I explain electricity to my Chihuahua when I can’t even explain it to myself?

And suddenly I have no excuse to keep me from work. But the characters in the book on my lap call to me, plead to tell me more of their story. They promise me I will have time to tell my own, that sometimes the best way to move forward is to stay still. And because I have been forcing and pushing and tensing and straining, I decide to listen. After all, these characters may know something I don’t.

Tags: reading, writing, electricity, spirituality

Down the Rabbit Hole

From time to time, I wander through my computer-housed address book to remind myself of friends who have drifted into the creases of my mind. I fire off an email to say ‘hi’ or to set up plans.

But sometimes I hit upon an unknown name. Henry? Who the hell is Henry? No address, no email. Just a first name and a phone number.

Faced with this mystery man, I force myself to admit that I’ve been participating in far too much disconnected dating over the past few years, mostly courtesy of online introductions.

I started out as the typical Internet dating newbie, sheepishly typing out phrases like, ‘I never thought I’d be doing this…’ or ‘I’m just giving this a try…’ or ‘Just looking around…’ And I was polite, responding to every letter that came my way.

‘I’m sorry. I’m just not comfortable with the age difference,’ I wrote to the gentleman in the sixty plus category when I had just nudged across the border to forty. When he took offense, I offered up my single mother since she was closer to his age. That ended our communication quickly.

Over time, I grew frustrated.

To the one who explained he was on a strict schedule where he sat down to work at 6 p.m. and continued to work until dawn and slept most of the day, I explained, ‘I need to have some overlapping wakeful hours with my mate.’ He thought that our differing schedules would allow me plenty of undisturbed hours to write. I thought we’d never actually see each other while conscious.

Finally, I became unyielding.

‘I’m sorry. I fear death by traffic,’ I wrote to the man who lived more than sixty miles south of me, reachable only by the 405 Freeway, a freeway often referred to as ‘the parking lot’ amongst Los Angeles dwellers.

After four years of on and off Internet explorations – and still seeing many of the same faces I saw when I first embarked, which definitely qualifies as discouraging (which I’m sure is how others feel when they see my smirking mug) – I recognize that I’ve changed, transformed much like the rotting piece of fruit neglected in the bottom drawer of a refrigerator.

In analyzing my demise, I tally what I warmly refer to as…

“My First 13 Stages of Online Dating (with notable repeats)”…

1. Shame
2. Optimism and enthusiasm
3. Mini-affair disguised as possible relationship
4. Disappointment
5. Self-delusional pep talk and another attempt
6. Mini-affair
7. Disgust
8. Proclamation that I will never online date again
9. Dry spell and self-assured ‘this-time-it-will-be-different’ return via a new site
10. Mini-affair
11. Proclamation that I will never online date again
12. Dry spell and sheepish return to dating site
13. Major disappointment in form of bad dates, bad responses, no responses, any of the above

Peppered through all these phases are more dreadful dates than I care to admit, including the one who commented that he heard chewing sounds when I ate (I subsequently polled my friends who assured me the noise I make while eating falls into acceptable levels), the one who confessed suicidal tendencies over our first cup of coffee (I was only hung up on him on and off for three years), the one who expressed disappointment that I wasn’t taller (I seduced him via one extremely suggestive follow-up email), the one who was open to a relationship as long as we confined it to one night per week, and the one who sent me a lengthy caustic email following a date where I told him I didn’t think it would work between us.

I’ve blocked out many more. The heart and mind can only take so much. I admit I displayed poor judgment in many of the abovementioned examples, but hey, I’m only human.

Or I was.

I finally arrived at Stage 14 of online dating – The Evil Transformation.

I send the perky first email, which may lead to a couple back and forths. Sometimes a red flag sneaks in. Sometimes I get an impulse, an uncomfortable sensation.

And I disappear.

If we’ve met, I find a gentle way out. If we haven’t, I vanish. Without a word. Without warning. I disappear over little things. After a restorative night’s sleep when I awake with clarity realizing that I’m communicating with a guy I suspect I have nothing in common with, where there’s no attraction, no geographic opportunity to successfully achieve a relationship. I vanish due to common sense and due to no sense. I vanish in disgust and despair. I vanish because I can, with no repercussions, aside from witnessing my own decline in common decency.

I can’t help it. Really. I‘ve been pushed over the edge by too many false starts, too many false promises, too many misses. It all can make a relatively normal person go nuts.

Nonetheless, I apologize. I didn’t mean to become one of them.

“One minute he was sending me ten emails a day. The next, he was gone. No explanation,” numerous friends have told me in variations of these words as I nod my head with understanding.

I hear the unexplained disappearance is the second most common complaint about Internet dating, trumped only by lying and the misleading photo, which I consider to be the same thing. Some justify the behavior as being part of the game, that the Internet is the Wild West. But by saying that, we just make room for a decline in civility.

And the thing is, as much as I can joke about the misconnections, poke fun at others’ behavior which is really a way of poking fun at myself as well, I see how this journey has hardened me, has made me feel a little less hopeful for connection. I see how when I slip from optimism to disappointment, I add a layer of armor to better protect me the next time around. Yet in adorning this armor, I also grow less sensitive to others’ feelings. I let my hurt justify my bad behavior.

I don’t want to be that person anymore. I’d rather slide through this life with irony and grace, maintaining a sense of decency. I'd rather be laughing. And if I ever – shoot me first – return to online dating, I pledge to better behavior, to not disappear, and to tell you about all my bad dates.

Tags: Internet Dating, disappearance

Graduation

Today I broke up with my housekeeper. It was inevitable. We’ve had our problems in the past, and while I tried to address them with direct communication – pointing out the neglected areas of my home, and gently offering rags to spare the life of my paper towels – things never improved.

After struggling for weeks with the decision to end the relationship, I decide the time has come. When she arrives, before I reconsider or lose my nerve, I leap in.

“Hi, Veronica. How are you?” I say, more manically than intended.

“Fine, miss.” (She refuses to call me by my first name, a subservience that adds to my unease.)

“Uh, today is going to be the last day I have you clean,” I say. “I can’t really afford you.” (Which is true, but for the perfect relationship, I’d make an exception.)

Blank stare and delayed response. “Excuse me, miss. I don’t understand.”

“Today is the last day I will have you clean,” I repeat.

“Sorry? I don’t understand.”

It’s tough enough to blurt out break-up words once, but now I have to say them three times, and my discomfort grows alongside my understanding of why it’s been so difficult to get Veronica to meet my cleaning needs. She doesn’t understand me when I speak, her English appearing stronger than it really is. When she’d greet my requests in the past with a smile and say, ‘Okay,’ she in fact never understood what I was saying.

And this miscommunication reminds me of the night my ex-husband and I decided to get married, the night I nearly spoiled his proposal due to another of many language barriers that has impacted my life.

In facing his expiring tourist visa to the United States from the then Soviet Union, he mentions how maybe it’s time for him to go home. But after six straight months together and two years of a long distance relationship, we understand the significance of his getting on a plane. We understand how that would be the same as ending our relationship, something neither of us wants.

“I can’t even work here,” he explains, acknowledging how his visitor status has made him feel helpless.

“I would do anything to have you stay,” I say.

“Do you want to get married?” he asks.

“Why, do you?” I respond, thinking we’re still in the problem-solving mode.

“What do you mean, ‘why?’” he asks, uncomfortable puzzlement spreading across his face.

And suddenly I’m blushing, aware I’ve massacred what for most couples is the romantic tale they tell their grandchildren. With a little more back and forth, we clarify the conversation, decide to get married, and place a long distance phone call to Siberia to share the news with his mother.

I figure if I remedied that miscommunication, I can clear things up with Veronica.

“I’m sorry. Today is the last day I will have you clean here. I’m not working. It’s expensive for me. I won’t be here when you go. Can you please leave your key on the counter?” my voice rambles, picking up speed, fueled by nerves.

She looks around, finally getting it, and seems a little sad. We barely have any relationship. She hasn’t worked for me long, but I feel guilty as if I blindsided a lover who had no idea my feelings were fading.

I quickly disappear into my bedroom. And I think how I should have known that one of our issues was a language barrier, how when she neglected to use the rags I handed her after seeing her plow through nearly two full rolls of paper towels with each visit, she wasn’t simply defying me and asserting her personal preference. Having never seen the rags again, I had wondered what she had done with them, but I was too timid to ask. I now assume she took them home, thinking they were a tacky gift.

Once it’s over, once I tell Veronica that we’re through, I feel incredible relief. I no longer have to tolerate her half-hearted cleaning and her constant cellphone chatter. I can almost imagine enjoying the added cleaning I must assume. And I think of the monthly saving of $130 as money earned, a chance to be frivolous in other areas of my life.

The thoughts are all a bit crazy, and I sense they come courtesy of the adrenaline rush from ending a relationship before it buried me. And while I see this as progress, a sign of growth that may indicate I’m ready to graduate to a relationship of a more tender and heart-felt kind, I still race from my home to avoid any more contact with Veronica.

And as I do, the woman who didn't understand 'rags' says, "Thank you for the opportunity to work for you." In hearing her flawless English, it was my turn not to understand.

Tags: break ups, proposal, housekeeper

Pass the Memories

The last time I walked into The Forum in Los Angeles – Inglewood, actually – I was still in my teens. Nearly all the concerts I attended before heading off to college were hosted at The Forum, along with Lakers’ games and other random events.

Decades later as I drive through the crowded LA streets, Yahoo! directions guiding me, I comment to my son and his two friends, “Coming here when I was your age, it seemed so far.” The streets were unfamiliar back then, neighborhoods away, an unusual distance before one could drive. But tonight, I realize it’s only a matter of a few miles.

We snake into the parking lot, find a spot, climb from the car. I force the boys to pose for a few commemorative photos, and then we move quickly past other fans and line up to enter. The sexes divide into two distinct lines for prodding by security personnel. And just like the sexism of bathrooms where it should be easily noted that women need more stalls to move through a line in a timely fashion, the single line for each gender screams inequity as men cruise through, their pockets quickly patted down, while women’s purses require unloading, jiggling, and painstaking examination.

The three boys wait for me on the other side of safe as I impatiently wait my turn to be inspected. Just like the boys, I’m eager to get inside.

The trip to The Forum has been on my calendar for months, ever since I battled online for four tickets to see the Red Hot Chili Peppers, a gift to my son and self for his thirteenth birthday.

“Do you miss when I was young and cute?” my son asks when seeing our two-year-old neighbor strut through our communal garage, a straw cowboy hat upon his little head with a royal blue star on the front.

With complete sincerity I tell my son that I love where he is now, that we enjoy so many of the same things, can share more with each other with genuine enthusiasm rather than with the feigned joy so many parents plaster upon their faces when playing toddler board games or attending G rated movies. We love it for them, but we don’t necessarily love it for ourselves.

But tonight isn’t just about doing something for my kid.

The Forum is noisy and crowded with none of the slick newness of the Staples Center, the cross-town rival that has snatched up many of the most popular performances coming to Los Angeles. As I navigate to our seats, I see myself at thirteen coming here with my fourteen-year-old date, a boy I met at tennis camp, accompanied by my date’s older sister and – I search to remember, a friend of hers? – to see Chicago, how that date was our one and only as I found myself talking more to the sister than to the boy. And I flash on the time I came to see Queen and went backstage afterwards, courtesy of my friend’s father, a high-level music executive, to peer at a hyped-up and sweaty Freddie Mercury scurrying about greeting friends and strangers. And Yes on New Year’s Eve escorted only by my high school date where when the lights went out, he lit up a joint and offered me some.

I turn to my son and his friends. They can’t possibly imagine the flood of memories coming at me.

I buy the boys T-shirts, $35 a piece, the night an enormous outlaying of cash with $20 for parking on top of $320 for four tickets. How did we ever go to concerts as teenagers? I could only imagine asking my parents for money on that scale, parents who weren’t raised on rock and roll and couldn’t possibly understand the grand importance of being there, being a part, creating a memory that would never fade.

The Red Hot Chili Peppers. The hometown boys bred in the tiny local clubs of the 80s where the cover charge was around $5. A time when I had friends who took their turns on stage in other home-grown bands. A time when going out for music felt so personal.

But tonight, when the lights go down, an arena erupts in cheers. The three boys beside me leap to their feet, eager, anticipating. The smell of marijuana soon wafts through the room, but not in the cloud-creating quantities of my teen days. Tonight you can actually identify the location of the smoker. The aroma adds to my nostalgia as I inhale deeply, wanting more, wanting that connection.

I turn to see the boys with their arms slung around each other’s shoulders, swaying to a slower song, and I think, “I’m passing the torch.” Tonight the memory belongs to them. At thirteen, this moment won’t fade into an unremembered event only vaguely called up with a photograph. By thirteen, the memories stick, a piece of past never feeling so far away.

And when Flea, the bass player, comes to the mike and says, “You can’t imagine what it’s like to be someone who grew up in LA, driving to The Forum, knowing you’re going to perform there.”

But I can imagine. I can imagine how incredible that feels, how it symbolizes a completed journey even if there’s much more to come, even if other milestones have appeared more impressive. This one is personal. And suddenly I feel an inexplicable connection to the band as if they’re truly my peers rather than celebrated rock stars, a connection of overlapping childhood memories. I imagine that since their dreams have been realized perhaps mine be can, too. Rather than envy, I feel optimism. I feel the pursuit of a passion, to remember to chase a dream even if you can’t clearly see a destination.

Since the concert, I’ve been walking around with one corner of my mouth upturned, an unconscious smile creeping onto my face. I’ve been sparked to life, remembering what makes me want to pull myself from bed in the morning. I imagine that someday, in some context, I can feel like Flea and breathe in my dream realized, can nod and say, ‘This is what I was looking for and I didn’t even know it.’

Not only did the Chili Peppers give me a great evening and a great memory to share with my son, they gave me hope. Suddenly the price of the evening seems like a bargain.

Tags: Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Forum, concert, memory

Water, Water Everywhere

I wake up and stumble into my bathroom, sleep in my eyes, teeth coated with morning residue, and turn on the faucet to discover a trickle of water that disappears into nothingness. Grungy and sweaty, I feel a surge of panic. I need a shower, a cleansing, the morning ritual that launches my day.

I see why they say the next war will be fought for water.

Today isn’t a camping trip of planned dirtiness. It isn’t the carefully timed water shut off with twenty-four hours notice that our building requires. This is the mystery of, “Where the hell is our water?”

After a little investigation courtesy of the telephone – another relationship I count on without question – I discover that the fault doesn’t lie with a negligent property management company and an unpaid bill but rather a burst pipe at the end of my street that has left the entire block of homes dry.

And when the Department of Water and Power explains, “We’re on it and won’t leave until it is fixed” but they can’t say when that might be, I envision a life of not knowing where or when you can find clean water, a life of being unsure whether the liquid pooled in front of you offers relief or disease.

I have the luxury of walking to the kitchen and brushing my teeth courtesy of the three-gallon Sparkletts bottle perched on my counter. I can take that water, splash it on a wash cloth, add a little soap, and pass myself off as clean. I can do this until the delivery trucks stop driving or the money runs dry.

I know my water is coming back. I feel calm. There is nothing like loss to teach you gratitude.

When all is stable, when basic needs are met, the usual result is not contentment but an invitation to dissatisfaction. Wants see an opportunity to speak up, to demand recognition, to creep into your subconscious and plant themselves in a corner to prod and harass.

And I question, ‘What in my life is want and what in my life is need?’

In looking at need, we default to food and water. To shelter and sufficient clothing. We need sleep. And when we get to the end of that list and feel the urge to add more, we feel greedy as we envision the impoverished, the homeless, children dodging bombs, and all the other ills we can call up at will.

But are we wrong to list more, to include, let’s say, purpose as a need? Love? Community? In the hierarchy of survival, why does the physical trump the emotional? To keep the body alive without care for the heart and soul is a mighty compromise.

In a land of abundance, it seems as if we should be able to do both, but despite all my resources I’ve been struggling a lot lately, unsure of my place, unsure of my future, feeling isolated and without community. And this has shamed me. A lot. Left me feeling both ungrateful and undeserving.

But as I travel and read and listen and observe, I realize I'm not unique in my feelings. I realize how many crave love and community they can’t find.

In growing up in a neighborhood where children gathered in the streets eager to play, in attending college where dorms offered up constant playmates of a different variety, I never imagined life could be so isolating. I never knew understanding one’s place and purpose would be so challenging.

Emotional pain still carries a stigma in this society. We roll our eyes at those secure in their physical wellbeing if they moan about anything lacking in their lives. We admonish ourselves for wanting too much, for needing too much.

And maybe we should, but maybe we should also feel okay with admitting the challenges.

My hairdresser recently showed me a stone he keeps in his pocket. “A gratitude stone. I touch it and it reminds me to be grateful.”

In a land of abundance, sometimes we need reminders to prompt gratitude. I’d like to say that I will never again take water or love or friendship for granted, but I know that’s not the case. I am not unlike my hairdresser. He turns to a stone and I turn to a showerless morning to remind me of how much I have to be thankful for on an average day.

Tags: water, gratitude

Shifting Gears

‘I’m bored.’

For two days, this phrase leaks from my son’s nearly teenaged mouth more times than in all his previous twelve and 7/8’s years combined. I list all he can do sprawled across the backseat as we motor from Los Angeles to Zion National Park, Utah – via a stop in Las Vegas where I also hear, ‘I’m bored’ in the hotel room as we recharge car-cramped bodies – and I think, “Is this it? Is this the arrival of the trying teen years that has been promised since my son’s birth?”

I nudged us towards nature for our last adventure of summer, eager for my son to see different scenery, a different lifestyle, to consider worlds away from freeways and media saturation, with both of us untethered to the computer. But as he grumbles past stunning scenery of towering red cliffs and vast open landscapes that he dismisses as “just boring desert,” pining to be back in the commercial chaos of Vegas where money leaked from my pockets, my disappointment and annoyance build, and I fantasize about shipping him home and venturing onward alone. After all, this is my vacation, too.

“We live pretty unplugged,” a new acquaintance tells me as we sit in her Springdale, Utah home beside our mutual friend, a home designed with views of red sandstone and rock from every room, kids free to roam the entwined small town life, the entrance to Zion National Park just a hop up the road. And I think how opposite I live, how completely ‘plugged’ in I am, how every ill seems to sneak into my ear canal and whisper its woe. How I listen and feel powerless and wonder how the human species can be so cruel.

And suddenly being unplugged sounds so nice even though in the past I thought such a life seemed irresponsible and selfish. But in this setting it appears calm and reasonable and a fine way to achieve sanity.

I said to my son, “Imagine living here,” when we arrived in Springdale and drove down the quiet main road dotted with an occasional home, a few hotels, and small shops and diners. Looking out the window he responded, “It seems like people only live this way in the movies,” and he sneered with disinterest.

I first came to Springdale and Zion in 1992 to visit a couple I’d met on the 1988 Soviet-American Peace Walk through the Ukraine, the walk that introduced me to my son’s father. Returning fourteen years later, a son in tow and greeting my now married friends and their two sons, we couldn’t help but compare lives.

“What a luxury to be able to pick you friends,” my friend tells me. “Here you’re given who there is and you learn to like each other.”

“Kind of like an arranged marriage,” I say, but she doesn’t hear me because some neighbor kid charges through the room looking for the peers hanging out somewhere.

And within one day of arriving, my son runs with these kids and I no longer hear ‘bored.’ Instead my son confesses that he’s a little jealous because all the kids in this town know each other so well, know each other’s siblings and parents and homes.

Within one day.

Before my son’s turnaround, before he asks to stay an extra day despite my offer to return to Vegas early, I was ready to call this our last roadtrip together forever, battered by his teenage lack of enthusiasm. At my peak of anger and frustration, weary from shouldering all the responsibility for the trip and my son’s complaining entitlement, I suddenly wanted a stern dad to appear in the car beside me telling my son to quit moaning and be appreciative, spewing some 50’s slogan that kept kids in their place.

And when my son grew uncomfortable and disinterested on our first hike as we waded upriver nestled by high rock walls, protecting us from sun and civilization, I imagined myself as that stern father not yielding to the child’s request to turn back but forcing him to keep moving as the adult desired and in order to make a man of the son.

But I’m not that stern man, and I can’t enjoy myself if my company is miserable. So I agree to turn around. And when I do, my son asks if I’m sad and I say, “A little because I was really enjoying it.”

And despite my fantasy that I’d earned the right to bypass the tough teen years with all my parental preventative medicine of open discussion and interests shared, I realize that I’m just like every parent who has greeted thirteen. There is no free pass.

But then there’s the teenage turnaround.

Day three. We venture up a trail, and faced with a cliff and a narrow path and a metal chain to grab for security, I must decide whether or not to go to the end. I must decide whether thirteen is when I trust my son’s feet and judgment to steady him along the trail. I must shift from protective parent to trusting parent.

We go on.

And after we make it to the end and look out on the view, we start back, and my son says to me, “Usually you say you’re proud of me, but this time I’m proud of you.” And I imagine he thinks I was scared and that I’d been brave, but what he doesn’t understand is that any fear I’d had had been for him.

When we meet my friend and her kids a couple hours later, she tells me someone died in the park that day. A twenty-nine-year-old woman went off the top of Angel’s Landing and fell 1200 feet as she and her husband prepared to take a celebratory photo near the edge.

“People come here thinking it’s Disneyland,” my friend tells me sadly.

And I think of my son’s feet on the trail and how I trusted him and how hard that was. And I think of how difficult the trip has been, all the transitions, all the near fights, the harsh words I swallowed and the harsh words that spilled out. I think of how angry I’d been with my son for acting his age rather than meeting me at my own.

On our last day I push my son to go a bit further than he wants. It’s hot, but an easy climb. No drop offs. Nothing too steep. Just sun and red dust and the promise of an emerald pool at the end.

We arrive at the top, hot and sweaty. And as we make our final descent in Zion, my son thanks me for bringing him. I don’t clarify whether he means on this particular hike or the trip in general. It doesn’t really matter.

Finally I see that this vacation wasn’t about fun and escape. My son and I tested each other and learned how much change lies ahead for both of us. Ultimately we both found a way to shift gears, but without pushing each other, we never could have done it.

Next week I welcome thirteen with my son. I’ll be sure to wear my seat belt.

Tags: Zion, thirteen, vacation

A Bedtime Tale

The boy could sleep anywhere except in silence. This presented his father with a grand dilemma for how could he keep the presence of sound so that his child could sleep while at the same time allowing himself to drift off?

In search of a solution, the father bought sound machines and multi-CD players, but nothing soothed the boy like the sound of his father’s flute.

“Play for me, Papa,” he demanded, and before his father had hit five minutes, the boy’s eyes grew heavy and he found a spot to call his bed.

Soon the father could go nowhere without his flute for fear his son would tire yet have no means to achieve sleep. His friends started calling him the Pied Piper and he countered with, “Perhaps. But I have only a following of one.”

The bond between father and son grew stronger and stronger, yet eventually the love felt like a prison, for one could not venture off from the other. And while both desired moments of independence, the body’s need for sleep always pulled them back together.

“We must break this habit,” the father told his son as tears filled the boy’s eyes. And they tried, but nothing could take the place of the father’s flute. No recording. No stand-in.

“Just another year,” the boy pleaded, and the loving father nodded.

And when the anniversary of that request arrived, the father gathered his friends as witnesses. “A party,” he called it, “to celebrate a bond of love and the loosening of that bond so that my son can find his own way.”

After cake and ice cream and a sharing of stories around the room, the father reached for his flute. The boy climbed upon his lap, and as the father began to play, his arms encircling his son, the boy closed his eyes and leaned against his father’s shoulder and fell asleep to the music for the last time.

The next several nights were torture for both father and son as the boy thrashed in bed searching for sleep.

“What have I created?” the father asked his friends. “How did I let this go on for so long?”

But they had no answer.

The following night as the father hid away from his sleepless son, he heard a sound, a sound of music coming through the crack below his son’s door. The boy, in finding his own way, was singing to himself, a self-made lullaby.

Dumped

My dog has slept on the floor the past two nights, and I’m feeling oddly rejected. I didn’t kick him off the bed. He chose the floor over his previously protected spot next to me.

“Is he mad at you?” a friend asks.

“I don’t know. He saw the suitcases so he knows I’m going away.”

My dog usually holds a grudge over my departures but not preemptively. He’s never been one to anticipate. But after two nights of sleeping alone, I can’t help but think he’s trying to tell me something. Like, maybe, ‘Get a boyfriend!’

Ah, if only it were that easy, I want to tell him. But maybe my dog already knows and is trying to help the process along by getting out of the way. I’d never imagined his being that selfless and considerate.

In the lonely periods, I admit I turn to my dog to lap up his admiration. And maybe it’s pathetic and maybe it’s a healthy sign of the survival instinct. But now that he’s decided I must look elsewhere for love, I’m a bit at a loss.

He and I have gone on field trips together, a kill-two-birds-with-one-stone tactic. My Chihuahua gets a walk and I get to sightsee. We’ve made small talk along the Venice boardwalk. We’ve run on the grassy bluff in nearby Santa Monica. We’ve visited the dog park, but the small dog pen is usually the equivalent of a women’s tea party, and I find myself longingly looking through the fence to the wide-open pasture where the shepherds, huskies, large mutts, and men romp. In a loving act of self-sacrifice, I remain in the safe zone as my eleven-pounder paces the perimeter watching the other small dogs play. (I do wish he’d at least try for a little action since if I’m not going to get any.)

In first bringing home my puppy, I thought he might assume the role of man magnet until I realized that women are expected to play that part all by themselves. Unsuspecting women might fall for the lure of a puppy, but men fall for – I need not finish the sentence.

Mostly, my dog has gotten between me and my dates. Speck – eager for all the lovin’ – flirts and jumps on laps and only will retire to his spot across the room when he realizes he’s come in second. And on the occasions when I have an overnight guest, he lobbies hard to remain on the bed through the night. Only with real determination do I succeed in banishing him to the floor, so he must be pretty desperate to see a smile on my face if he’s now moved himself there voluntarily.

I want to believe that my dog is onto something. Not wanting to disappoint him, I figure I must come up with a new game plan in my love search, however at this point I’m stumped. But if Speck’s willing to relocate to the floor to make room for my mate, I figure I better at least do my part and keep trying. And maybe as a reward for my attempts, Speck will take me back. At least for a little while.

Tags: Chihuahua, love

What's In a Smile

For the past week life hasn’t been talking to me. In this state, I become dramatically introverted, moving through space with a wax-like expression on my face. Most unnerving is that no one seems to notice. ‘Time to flex those facial muscles,’ I tell myself, to give those I encounter a fighting chance of deciphering my mood. But mostly, today I need something mystical to fly in and nudge me along.

Two weeks ago I’d overlooked a dental cleaning appointment and was forced to reschedule for today.

“Unfortunately, Pam isn’t available,” the receptionist explains. “How about Hank?”

“Hank? I don’t know him.”

“He’s new. Just been here a little while.”

As long as he's not a sadist, I don’t much care. Or a chatterbox. I’ve never understood the hygienist who fills your mouth with fingers and instruments and then asks you the meaning of life. I mean, even if you know, how are you supposed to answer?

Once, after suffering through a particularly painful session with Sally, both a lecturer about the perils of insufficient dental hygiene and a talkative little mouse who gave me explicit details about her children, I vowed to launch a campaign for a Zen-like dental atmosphere. No small talk. No Barry Manilow over the speakers. Move in the soothing green walls, a delicately placed bamboo plant, and barely audible instrumental tracks designed as white noise.

But had I gotten my wish, I wouldn’t have gotten Hank.

Before settling me into the chair, Hank asks about my weekend, and in telling him that I went to a reunion performance of a bunch of punk-era bands, I don’t get a blank stare in return. This is my kind of dental associate.

The initial exam. The finger moving around my gums, exploring ever so delicately. And something about Hank’s touch, the way he holds my chin with his hand, is oddly erotic. Clearly it’s been too long, and I think to myself, ‘Damn, I’m sick.’

But I discover I’m not alone in my insanity.

Hank: Do you have any kids?
DeeZee: Yeah, one son. Almost 13.
H: One was enough? (and we both laugh while I mutter, uh huh.)

Moving onto recreation…

H: Any trips planned?
DZ: Heading away this weekend.
H: Just the two of you? (I grunt, uh huh, the cleaning well underway at this point.) Not married?
DZ: No.
H: Been dating? (this from Hank the hygienist!)
DZ: It’s been a dry summer (I choke out sheepishly.)
H: For the past two years, all my friends have been getting married. Guess I didn’t get the memo (he laughs.) I’ve been officially single for a year now (and without missing a beat…) So, what’s your type?

Has your dental hygienist ever flirted with you? Mid cleaning, gums retracted, vacuum tube sucking the saliva from your mouth? If I had tried I couldn’t have imagined a more unlikely setting for a seduction, but I’ve also never had a male hygienist before, and let me tell you, this conversation definitely beats all previous small talk I’ve been forced into in a dental chair.

DZ: Uh, can’t really say, in that I never seem to end up with my type. Guess I’m experimental (I sense THAT got his attention!)

I can’t get a look at Hank because my mouth is full of his fingers and he’s over my shoulder and this is definitely the weirdest situation I’ve ever been in. And not being sure what’s going on, along with Hank’s fingers and that horrid metal scraping tool in my mouth, I find my head spinning, but not in that creepy-get-me-out-of-here way but more along the lines of I-certainly-didn’t-expect-this.

Hank presses on…

H: So do you date older or younger?

And I keep wondering when my nice, silver-haired dentist is going to waltz into the room and bust us because I can’t believe how overt this whole conversation is getting. I repeat to Hank that it’s been a dry summer, but regardless, I am done with older. “Not since my teen years,” I explain, undoubtedly upping the ante.

H: So, you mean your age or younger?
DZ: Yeah.
H: What was the youngest?

I want to be funny and point out that that’s kind of a moving target, but subtle humor cannot be achieved mid-cleaning where one must be very precise with language, squeaking out a few words post saliva suck before the scraping renews.

DZ: Last minimal entanglement was 27.
H: Why minimal?
DZ: Uh, we were too different. He was really conservative.

It’s definitely the abridged version. If Hank wants the finer details of my last failed romance, he’s going to have to buy me a drink or at least give me a mouthwash break.

H: And how old are you?

Boom! Just like that. My answer sounds old, and I think, ‘What was he hoping to hear?’ I also worry that I may have axed out Hank in this exchange – what if he’s not even 27? – so I add how I tried having dinner with a 23-year-old but that it didn’t go well because he kept referring to his friends turning 21 and going out for their first legal drunk, and he’s talking about something he did the previous week. And I sound frenetic and odd and would love for the scraping to resume so I’d be forced to shut up.

I fear our conversation has taken a weird – er, weirder – turn and I’m actually sad as I see Hank slipping away. But I also can’t figure out how appropriate it is to want to date the guy who’s cleaning my teeth – doesn’t that break some kind of code? – and I wonder if he really could have asked me out with all the other dental bees buzzing around. But, hey, I wasn’t imagining the flirting, I don’t think, unless male dental hygienists are just really friendly.

Beyond the oddness of it all, this is the least painful teeth cleaning I’ve ever had, and when the polishing is done and the little green bib is removed, I say so. “I didn’t jump once.” And he replies, “I’m good,” and I say, “Either that or my teeth are still real dirty,” and we both laugh.

Hank tells me he’ll be right back, that he’s going to get my toothbrush and all, and he returns with three color choices – blue, red, and aqua-green. I reach for the greenish hued without hesitation, and Hank says, “I knew you were going to take that one,” and I say, “Really?” And he says, “Yeah, cuz you’re not conservative,” adding, “which is a good thing.”

I let that linger. I figure he hasn’t given up on me completely. He escorts me to see the dentist in the next room. As I take a seat, Hank puts out his hand. “Nice meeting you.” “Yeah,” I reply.

And he’s gone.

As much as I’d like to find a way to talk with Hank outside the confines of the dental office, I know that this isn’t about that. Hank was my angel in odd clothing today, a reminder that somewhere someone can make me laugh and squirm a little – metal probe aside – and with that ounce of hope injected into my day, I can’t help but smile with my now sparkling pearly whites.


(names changed to protect the oh so guilty.)

Tags: dental hygienist, angels

Just Maybe...

I climb on one of those childhood merry-go-rounds, the kind you find in an old fashioned playground where metal made scorching hot from the sun ruled, metal that burned your hands where you grabbed on and the back of your legs as you squatted down.

And I spin fast and fast as a team of children run, propelling the spinning machine in motion. I lose myself in the spin, the blur going by. Unable to focus, I see more deeply, within and beyond.

I lean back tempting my body to fall, clutching the hot metal bars with outstretched arms, eyes pointed to the sky. And I start to read the clouds for the messages, convinced a language lives there beyond shapes and colors. I figure if I can learn to read the clouds, I can learn the untold secrets of our life.

The children watch me, the grown-up in silent play. They study my body language and I see them and invite them to stop their running and climb upon the spinning merry-go-round. Together we lie down on our backs, our legs outstretched, feet touching in the center, our bodies like spokes of a bicycle wheel.

All the children look to the clouds and I ask them, “What do the clouds say?” and one by one they start shouting out their answers.

And I strain to hear, the wind somehow blocking sound from getting to my ears. But I don’t mind because I see the children shouting and I know they can read the clouds, can speak the language, and it’s more important for them than for me. They have more time to teach the world of the clouds. I was just to bring them here.

Send in the Experts

Growing up I never saw a parent hold a hammer or screwdriver or stand over a running toilet fidgeting, saying, “Hmmm,” trying to fix it. The level of handy-ness in our home was my mom reaching for the phone to call a repairman.

In such an environment, I was trained to believe that each problem has its own personal guru assigned to come to the rescue. Only in fleeing home and landing in a college dorm did I see how others navigated everyday malfunctions, that regular civilians could face a gurgling toilet, adjust a few levers, and, Voila!, silence and functionality. I envied my dorm mates’ self-reliance and soon became gadget friendly, proud of what I could fix with my own hands and deductive reasoning.

Moving into my first solo post-college dwelling, a grungy yet charming beachside shed managed by a landlord with no interest in fixing anything, I was on my own. When the toilet ran and ran and refused to flush or refused to stop flushing, depending upon how you look at it, my mom nonchalantly told me to call a plumber. And I actually got angry because I hate that I was born into a home that taught me I couldn’t do-it-myself.

In an act of defiance, I lifted the lid of the tank and saw some broken piece before me. Bypassing a plumber, I went straight to the source and called the hardware store and described the problem. The man on the line told me it was an easy fix, that all I needed was a new ballcock for my tank.

“A what?” I asked.

“Ballcock,” the hardware store man repeated. At that moment I understood why women traditionally stay out of hardware stores. I hopped in my car and drove, sympathizing with men sent to buy tampons.

Years later, I now know my way around a toilet, an odd way to phrase what I’ve learned. I haven’t called a plumber in years, saving both time and money. I also now wield a hammer and screwdriver impressively, can tutor friends through computer woes, assemble furniture, spackle, prime, and paint, and connect electronics. None of this is going to earn me handyman status, but I’m doing pretty well given my early training.

However, my default is still set to believe in experts. Seeing a glitch in the system – traffic signals so poorly aligned that cars remain at a standstill cycle after cycle of changing lights, wars building with no one negotiating a peace, escalating gas prices – I automatically assume a pro is shirking responsibility. And like my mom, I want to reach for the phone.

But what do you do when the experts turn their backs on the solution?

The other night I saw the film, ‘Who Killed The Electric Car?’ During the 90s, I didn’t pay attention to the electric vehicles as they hummed around my city. At best, they were a novelty, a curiosity, and their charging stations occupied prime parking spots.

But now, enlightened by the scandal revealed in ‘Who Killed The Electric Car?’, I kick myself. I wish I’d been better informed. I wish I’d sought to inform myself. And as I watch politicians jockey for position in front of TV cameras to deliver sound bites on energy policy, I cringe.

If these experts are voting on our energy bills and deciding to drill in the Arctic or send soldiers to war to protect oil supplies or divert research and development funds to the hydrogen cell, they should all be escorted off stage and forced to watch ‘Who Killed The Electric Car?’ They should know what we walked away from in abandoning this functioning technology. We all should. And then armed with this information, we should march on Congress or our state capitals. We should gather outside car dealerships and refuse to leave until something is done. Left to the experts, things have gotten ugly.

It’s time for each of us to recognize our ability to affect policy and demand action, to stop believing others hold the solution. We can start with energy policy or any of our personal pet peeves and passions, for we all have expert up our sleeve. We just haven’t been properly raised to see it. It was pretty empowering to enter that hardware store and ask for a ballcock with a straight face. If I could do that, imagine what we all can accomplish.

Tags: Who Killed the Electric Car?, energy policy, experts

Keep It Smart

My father thinks I’m stubborn. He comes to that conclusion whenever I don’t agree with him. That is his sole criteria.

I won’t accept stubborn, but I will own rebellious. And lately, I’ve been turning my rebellion on exercise because I hate the place exercise now occupies. I hate that in coffee house chatter I hear endless comparisons of Yoga and Pilates and Boot Camp and the Barre Method. I hate that exercise has become a pawn of the beauty culture rather than a result of health concerns, that exercise is now the equivalent of a fashion accessory.

As a child I was a hardcore athlete, a tomboy of my era when few girls pursued athletics. For me it was all about the love of sport, the game, the play, the movement through space, the power of training and work and determination.

Just when I was at my peak, approaching seventeen as a tournament tennis player, my body rebelled. Within three days, I couldn’t lift my arm. Pain radiated down my neck and back. Plagued by headaches, I iced and heated, rested and massaged. I visited orthopedists, acupuncturists, chiropractors. My body was poked and adjusted, injected and manipulated. But it wouldn’t give. My body had had enough.

“I’m sorry I used that extreme grip for my serve. If I return to a more traditional one, can I have my shoulder back?” I negotiated.

But my body remained silent, answering only with continued pain.

Aimless, robbed of my athlete identity, and in constant agony, I became a sloth. Arriving home each day from school, I parked myself in front of the TV, ambled through my homework, and ate ice cream straight from the container.

Seven months and fifteen pounds later, I woke up in a foreign shell. Thanks to the prompting of an accidental encounter with the book Long Run Solution, I began to run. A lot. I started at four miles as only an obsessive competitor would. Within two months, I was up to between seven and eleven miles per day and was running on my high school’s cross-country team. Three days per week I added a morning training run before school. I was possessed.

Within six months I was hobbling around on aching knees. I clearly have no relationship with moderation.

The world of sport has changed dramatically since my youth. The term ‘tomboy’ has virtually faded away, at least in referring to an athletically inclined girl, as women and girls now participate widely. So this is all good, right? Hmmm.

In the adult world, the emphasis of exercise is on appearance over health. Accomplishments aren’t measured by mile times or pounds of weights but by pant sizes and pounds on scales.

I see this broadening of exercise as an odd ‘dumbing down’ of the modern woman. It’s one thing to choose to exercise for whatever your reasons are, but how many would put in the disproportionate time – and then talk about it incessantly afterwards – if it weren’t for the outrageous emphasis on beauty and appearance in today’s society? Through the mass marketing of exercise and the elusive perfect body, women are encouraged to focus on the shape of their thighs and the fluctuations of their weight with far greater passion than art or music or literature or anything. If we got the same praise and attention for books read as we do for our form, would we all be racing to libraries?

Exercise and sport are a good thing. My participation in athletics gave me structure and confidence as a youth. The fact that playing sports is now easily available and socially acceptable for girls and women is wonderful, but the obsession with which many women now focus on exercise makes me avoid every conversation on the topic that I can. Call me rebellious, but I prefer the solitary run with no one to talk to, where I can sweat and think and tell no one about it.

Tags: exercise, beauty, mass marketing

Reset, Restart, and Repeat

I’m tired. Tired of hearing about all that is bad, tired of reading about how sad people are. Tired of anger and hating and hurting. Tired of whining and tired of tirades.

In this state, my voice quiets, and my rant goes on vacation. I invite all to join, only I’m not sure who will come because it seems as if the world has become addicted to misery, as if the world feels better when it’s fighting. And I no longer want to participate, not at this time.

Is this the emergence of peace or of my intolerance?

Everyone can find a reason to be sad. Hell, I do it, but lately it seems as if this has become our collective unconscious. Shared complaints, downturns, sorrow. We bond over the bad rather than over the good. How rarely do I get a call from someone lit up with good news. Do I just run in a sad crowd or are people more comfortable sharing bad news, as if sharing the good is the equivalent of boasting? Or is it that with so much tragedy in the world, we just feel guilty feeling happy?

Or have we forgotten how?

While we’re all entitled to our bumps and bruises and occasional tantrums, we seem to have lost the art of appreciation. As a result of the marketing to America – lives paraded before us that we’ll never have – we have evolved to a species drowning in unfulfilled desire. The more we have, the more we want. And we support each other in our cravings rather than knocking each other up the side of our heads and saying, “Get over it!”

And this is becoming a complaint, but it doesn’t want to. It wants to be a celebration.

I propose a challenge. Organize a dinner party and have everyone come with a positive tale. Share stimulating clippings or funny anecdotes or a fantastic piece of art. Encourage conversation around the best things in your lives rather than the worst. Make something together. Invite me. And flex this weakened muscle regularly until it becomes habit.

I bet it will take work because frustration has become our most common dinner companion. But in all the whining, we give sorrow a welcome entrée into our homes and our lives. There is a big difference between being aware and active and wallowing in that which we cannot change. Take it from an expert, someone who knows something about wallowing.

In taking life seriously, I thought I was being noble, respecting the world’s ills, showing proper reverence. But now I question that practice. I hardly think I've helped those in pain by joining them.

So, in the spirit of summer, I'm taking a vacation from worry. I figure that if you’re lucky enough to be graced with a life absent of evils, it’s your duty to appreciate it. And while I’m lounging on the beach or taking a hike, I’ll try to reset my thinking patterns. Hopefully happiness can get a solid foothold and then spread because I'd like to launch a worldwide epidemic right now.

Lead By Example

In the current climate of broadening warfare, it’s hard not to comment. It’s hard not to feel overwhelming sadness. It’s hard not to be angry.

I seldom watch any TV news, but today I saw images of what’s happened thus far in Lebanon and the resulting protests Israel’s actions have launched. If I can believe what I read, Israel initially had sympathy when Hezbollah crossed its border. For a nanosecond. Just like the U.S. after 9/11, Israel squandered a momentary advantage.

How can democracies claim to own the best form of government if we resort to overblown killing that overshadows the provocation? Whatever happened to ‘Lead by Example’?

I’m sure if I lived in a country that was threatened daily, I would have a short fuse. I’m sure I would feel insurmountable anger. I’m sure I would be convinced that retaliation and a demonstration of strength are necessary to show we won’t be extinguished. But how we feel need not govern how we act.

How can a country possibly hope to improve its standing in a hostile region by handing over ammunition for hatred to its enemies? Morality aside, is this really smart politics? And now, Israel presents its supporters with a dilemma: how can you stand behind a country whose actions you find inexcusable?

I feel as if I’m watching children fight on a playground where the defense boils down to, “He started it!”

When is this world going to grow up? Until someone is willing to break the cycle and engage a new way of thinking, this violence and hatred will never end.

A True Story

After a long silence, my body is making demands. It began with a request for exercise, and then in a confusing example of self-interest, it started asking for less food.

Now a bit trimmer, it feels like it owns the room.

“I want a friend,” it asks, protesting my recent lifestyle of solitude, as if I can so simply comply.

“But we're doing so well alone,” I counter, a bit annoyed with Body’s sudden demands. “Why mess it up now with complications?”

But Body just snorts as if my words are too stupid to acknowledge. Body wants more.

It’s my fault. I broke the calm by speaking to a man, a man with whom there was just enough history to spark Memory. The voice – the carefully placed laugh, the gentle-toned question, a genuine, ‘Ah, that’s so sweet,’ to my reply – sprung Body from its passive state that allows me hours on my couch with books and laptop.

It feels risky to disturb the peace by suddenly looking outside for pleasure. Looking is always the problem. Interactions I can handle. They are alive, active. But looking is just Desire, and Desire isn’t very smart. Desire has bad judgment. Desire can take you down dark alleys at foolish times.

But Body no longer has patience, so in pushing Desire in my face, I must counter with Reason, though Reason is dull. No one likes to hang with Reason. Reason gets invited to fewer parties.

In an attempt to please Body, I stop at a bar for a cold beer on my way home. The place is packed, social, friendly. Bodies crashing into bodies. Casual conversation is easy and expected. But in coming, I forgot to bring Interest. When you take Interest and Desire with you to a bar, you make greater effort and a bit more eye contact. But by not stopping home to pick up Interest, I lack the proper companion to launch conversation.

I park Body on a cushioned bench by the window where I can look out at the sidewalk smokers and in at the potion drinkers. Without Interest, I sit and sip my beer. After a quarter of a glass, Boredom speaks, “Can we go home now?”

“But I didn’t give Body what it wants,” I reply.

“You gave it cold beer on a hot night. It can’t be so greedy.”

So Boredom accompanied by Reason walk me to my car. Luckily, Disappointment doesn’t climb into the passenger seat. Instead, Calm sits down and says, “Well, that was interesting. You saw what it was like to go back out in the world with a bit of Intent.”

“Intent!” I cry. “I left Intent in the bar.”

“Intent will find its way home,” Calm reassures.

Calm is very smart. In trying to please Body, I will remember to bring Calm with me.

“What about me?!” Mind speaks up.

“Ach, you’ve been getting all the attention,” Body jumps in. “Don’t be so Greedy.”

“Hey, I resent that,” Greedy chimes in. “You always use me as an example of what not to be. I have good qualities, too.”

“Name one,” says Calm in a nearly silent voice.

“I spark Need.”

“Need does fine on its own,” Body says dismissively.

But I feel I must speak. “Need sometimes needs help,” I say, nudging into the conversation. “Need’s been patient and has been ignored. And, Body, if it weren’t for Greedy, I may not have stopped for beer after an already pleasant night out.”

Body and Calm suddenly feel sheepish, even judgmental.

“We’re sorry, Need,” they say in unison. “You, too, Greedy. We forgot we all have a purpose.”

The ride home is silent. Not bad, just silent.

But one little adventure isn’t enough for Body. Body wants results not just attempts, so Body gets more demanding. It starts reading the paper looking for events to attend, using its secret weapon on me.

“Doesn’t this look interesting?” Curiosity says, pointing to a live music event at a local museum. “Or this?” citing a bookstore anniversary party.

“Maybe,” I reply.

“’Maybe’ isn’t enough,” Greedy jumps in.

“Okay. Tonight. I promise. We’ll go somewhere.”

“You better bring me!” says Intent.

“And me,” says Interest.

“But most of all, me,” whispers Calm.


Destination: two-year anniversary party for the nearby art bookstore and gallery. The black and white postcard invite reads, ‘In dog years we’ve been here a lot longer.’

A hot muggy night. I dress for the weather. Short skirt. A top of thin straps and material. Body-hugging. Flip flops for an easy walk.

I hesitate as I exit my home, not sure if I really want to venture out, not sure if out there is better than in here. But Body nudges me, “You promised.”

And I had. So I go.

I arrive. The room populated with a few lured to early arrival by free entry before 9 p.m. and an open bar. I take a quick spin through the room lined with first editions protected in plastic covers. Books and periodicals celebrating assorted artists, designers, musicians – anyone who has contributed to the creative landscape through the years – cozy up with the collectibles. A room divider displays the night’s offering of art prints by a guy working through his romantic woes. On one, hand scrawled letters read, ‘Today I Lost The Love Of My Life, What Did You Do?’

I grab a vodka and cranberry, the drink the sweating bartenders are pouring in the-room-that-has-no-moving-air, and walk towards an open door seeking breeze, but I’m quickly fumigated by a team of chain smokers.

The band is setting up, and I notice that they’re teenagers and I can’t tell if that makes me feel old or feel young. A little of both, actually. And then I pass him, a guy I could set my eye on. Satchel over shoulder, slightly shaggy hair, rectangular glasses, casual dress. A sense of art hovers around him. Our eyes meet. He smiles. I smile back. And he continues to move through the room. Observing. Surveying. But it was a moment. I know it. Body knows it.

I move to a counter-high ledge between me and the teenage band battling with amps and cords and instruments as the store’s owner prods them, “Ten minutes. You gotta start in ten minutes. And you’ve got twenty to play. Twenty.”

“Twenty?” mutters the lead guitarist as if it’s an insult, a boy of shoulder-length splayed blond dreadlocks colored with turquoise and green.

I fidget and play with a fountain pen and watch a two-year-old child crawl along the counter destroying the center divide of native desert plants as parents look on with amusement.

He stands across the divide, playing with the strap of his satchel. He doesn’t see me seeing him. I go back to my fountain pen willing the music to start. Patience enters and nuzzles up against me. “I know it’s hot, but just hang in there.” I listen as I wipe the sweat off my forehead. He walks over, towards me, to me, near me. “This is why we came,” Body whispers in my ear.

“Nice woodwork in here,” he says, and before I know it, we’ve made it through the obligatory entrée words, and in my mind, I’m agreeing with Body. It’s been a long time, but I remember what mutual attraction feels like. I recognize Intent in another. I can’t help but leap forward as Anticipation joins the conversation.

A photographer, web designer, graphic artist. I like the combo. I like his ease. I like that he came to me. He tells me of the home he owns cross-town and the trips he takes to a retreat he owns in the desert. Solvent. Good. Finally.

And I tell him of my visit to that desert town, how when hiking I felt vulnerable in the quiet as if danger could hide behind tumbleweed.

“Were you alone?” he asks. And I hesitate as Fear saddles up beside me.

“Well, my son was with me,” I say as I look for a disappointed reaction in his eyes but find none.

“How old?”

“Twelve now, but he was about ten at the time.” And we clear that hurdle and Fear leaves for fresh air.

My new friend recommends we do the same, move closer to the door. He asks the bartender for another beer, asks if I want something, but I decline. The room grows crowded and we’re forced away from the hint-of-air back towards the band. And somewhere out of nowhere, no prompt remembered, my new friend says, “I have a two-year-old. He’s with my partner back east for two months.” I’m sure he continued talking, giving me details, but Mind is waving arms wildly, screaming, “Partner? Is he gay? Partner!” as if my friend had just confessed to a horrendous felony rather than simply misleading me.

Hope slumps. Interest fades. Calm feels emboldened. “This is what I’m here for.”

“She’s a successful artist,” my friend continues, “and had to go away for work, but my work’s keeping me here.”

And I actually don’t care anymore. Don’t care that it’s she and not he. In this context, they're interchangeable. Interest turns to Small Talk. We go outside to escape the heat and the unimpressive sounds of the teen band. I’m ready to leave, Disappointment having joined the party.

We stand on the sidewalk, and I can’t help but notice how Friend is looking over my body. “It’s nice to get out and meet people. It’s lonely with the family gone,” he adds. “So, do you do yoga?” he asks in a curiously timed non sequitur. “I mean, how do you stay in such good shape?”

I don’t even want to answer. Does my exercise routine matter or is this all about his partner being away and his loneliness and his wanting to meet new people?

I walk to my car after wishing him a fun remainder of his evening. Strength glides in to hold my hand. Good Sense puts a hand upon my shoulder. I want to call myself stupid, but I wasn’t. I didn’t imagine his attention, his focus. Our meeting was just like any other that leads somewhere, somewhere beyond a sidewalk and a discussion of how having a kid changes life.

“You did the right thing, leaving when you did,” Good Sense congratulates.

And I nod, slowly, still lost in where I was, wondering how something that had felt so close was so profoundly far away.


Today Body gives me a break, a sympathetic gesture after seeing how its demands jolted my spirit last night. In exchange, I smile and I mean it, and I promise Body that I won’t return to my shell, that I’ll embrace Daring and let them both push me out the door again.

Extra Time

Wednesday nights. Weekly. A room full of writers.

The instructions are clear – “Never stop writing. Don’t think. Don’t lift pen from paper. If you get stuck, write about being stuck.”

We don’t know precisely how long we have for the second exercise. We write and write, and the time ticks by. Our internal clocks, masters of habit, accustomed to a fifteen to twenty minute limit, automatically pace us.

But the buzzer doesn’t ring. We grow agitated, restless, edgy. The energy in the room deflates. Pens stop moving. Fidgeting gets more pronounced. Assorted writers stand and stretch and head off to the bathroom, bumping by one writer scribbling away, determined to stay inside the exercise.

I keep writing. Or attempt to, but the movements in the room and my internal metronome distract me.

And I write, “I’m running out of thought and wish I knew how much longer we had. How fitting. I bet we all wish we knew how much longer we had…”

“…Sometimes I imagine how I would live if I knew my time limit…”

“…Here I am again, aware of the sounds of movement in the room, the pens that have stopped. I’m back to wanting to know how much time, and why we don’t know – was that by design or by inadvertent omission? How would it make a difference if I knew how to pace myself?”

A fine question, indeed.

How would it make a difference if you knew how much time you had? A lack of knowledge by design or by inadvertent omission? Turns out writing class isn’t so different from life.

Finally, after thirty minutes, the buzzer goes off.

“Uh, I don’t know if this goes against your teaching methods,” one student tentatively starts, “but is it okay to know if it’s going to be a long or short write?” Nods and grunts of agreement fill the room.

“Sure. Okay,” the teacher replies. “I’ll let you know from now on.”

Even though I nod along with the others, even though I’ve written the above words, why does it matter how long we have to write? We are a room of writers. If we finish one piece, we can jump to another. We don’t need permission to write. In this case we only need permission to stop.

And that is the ideal view, the enlightened view, the view I’d like to march or lounge with through life. Only I know it’s not that simple. We depend on time for our structure, for our limits and our freedom. We use time to figure out how deeply we can go or how concise we must be. In both writing and life.

How we react to the quantity of time surprises us. The brief affair that takes us deeper than the lengthy relationship. The death sentence that liberates and allows the dying to live more fully. The precision of language that a short piece requires.

Short can be good.

Planning for the future puts on the handcuffs. The practical side dominates and dreams fall away. With six months to live, I’d cram in all possible play and adventure. I’d leave nothing unsaid. I’d be completely free.

But as much as we love the beautifully crafted vignette, its brevity and precision, we never get invested in the same way as the novel that takes us through the lengthy journey.

So long is also good.

My grandparents lived into their nineties and were married for seventy-one years. I will never know that kind of longevity with another, a truly unique experience that writers attempt to capture but are unable to place in our core. Without living through the love, lust, boredom, disappointment, acceptance, renewal of love, respect, and peace, we’re just spectators. Oh yeah, and the bickering. My grandparents exchanged pokes through countless petty arguments, but I never saw two people look upon each other with more pride. The reward of endurance.

Like the finished novel.

So how to reconcile the relationship with time and with not knowing how long we have?

I play with both, some days tapping out a vignette and on others addressing the novel. Some days I imagine a long life stretched before me and sometimes I picture a short sprint, and I choose my behavior accordingly. By mixing it up, I can experience it all, or at least have a taste.

But despite the exercise, I crave the crystal ball. I want to know how long I have. I want the chance to tie up loose ends, to say the meaningful words, to get my characters home.

But unlike writing class, in life there is no teacher who can answer, “How long?” Whether by accident or design, our amount of time is a mystery. And I hope in the future if I find myself with extra time, I won’t sit back and wait for the buzzer. I’ll keep writing and living, right till the end.