Hey Universe

There is no end.

2009-10-05T09:23:00.000-07:00

Me: I don't know what I'll do when you're not here anymore.

Her: Well, first of all, honey, if anything does happen after, I'll be there. I don't know if it does, but if it does, I'll be around. And even if I'm not, you have my DNA. That's a scientific fact. So I'll always be with you. Forever. And you never have to be afraid.

Me: Okay.

I asked for a sign and. . . .

2009-04-23T09:10:00.000-07:00

today I learned how to draw a bat. And a popsicle and a Studebaker and a few other things. And one of the biggest frustrations I've had my whole life -- I can't draw -- parted curtains to reveal the prize -- I haven't learned how to draw. And more than that, I never accepted that things are achieved in tiny pieces: an arc, then a ball, some dots and wingtips, and voila, you can fly and shoot sonar from your head and sleep upside down. And even if it's just little line drawings of bunnies and cakes and bats, I am so thankful I can watch my hand move across the page and result in something that doesn't let me descend the ladder into the neverending River Styx of shame and perceived inability where I so like to splash about.

Did I mention I can draw a bunny now too? And when I can draw everything -- and I mean everything -- then I'll put a little something up here for you.

Thanks, Joy.

Love The Idiots, Hate The Idiocy

2009-04-22T07:01:00.000-07:00

So there was this. Then there was this (and hundreds more like it, yay, parody!). And that begat this. And that last this (that would be www.giantgayrepellentumbrella.com) is being read, as of its creation yesterday, by lots of hilarious people with hilarious comments that are beautifully poking fun at the idiocy of the National Organization for Marriage. But of course, there's a screaming troll or two in the bunch, saying lots of unprintable words about gay people while assuming to have a higher moral code.

NOM has shifted the argument against gay marriage away from the concept that gay marriage will somehow annihilate straight marriage in its wake, perhaps because there has yet to be one credible straight divorced couple who will step forward and tell that sorry tale. Now NOM is trying to make the case that gay marriage is impinging on the freedoms of religious folks. Like the freedom to turn away a gay couple seeking IVF even though you're a doctor who took the Hippocratic Oath. Or the freedom to burn a copy of Heather Has Two Mommies on the lawn of your child's public school. Or whatever. So gay marriage isn't impinging on the freedoms of religious folks per se, just non-introspective, non-thinking religious folks who can't engage in any internal rhetoric beyond parroting whatever it is they are told to think, and can't see their own bigotry.

And religious folks who like to say ********er on a website. It is interesting to me that the people who discuss the issue of gay marriage on websites that are pro or neutral on the topic are, by and large, the cursingest, most foul mouthed homphobes out there. I don't see a whole lot of "love the sinner but hate the sin," or "separate but equal" -- both weak arguments but at least earnest in following some kind of internal moral code. Sure, these are the trolls, but there are only trolls.

So, religious folks, I'm not against religion. But the YesOn8s of the world are making you look pretty bad, when they rant about pouring gasoline on gays but affiliate themselves with your family values and such. I'll do my best to love the idiot and hate the idiocy. (And the hypocrisy). Maybe you can educate the idiots, or make sure they know burning people alive, let alone denying them equal rights under the law, is not a family value. I have a family, and that's not my value.

Let the Cranes Fly

2009-04-21T07:35:00.000-07:00

In this week's PostSecret the very first postcard asks for a sign. My first impulse was to somehow be the sign for this person. I can only hope the card or something else sets into motion the events that furnish them with their sign. But maybe that won't happen. We don't get the answers on our timetable (unless you are Paul).

When D and I got married we decided to fold 1,000 origami paper cranes and have them included among the reception decorations, a traditional Japanese symbol of patience and trust in a marriage. We were engaged just before 9/11, and we also appreciated the symbolism of peace and renewal. They were in the flower arrangements, hanging from branches, perched atop the cake. Guests took home what they wanted, and we took home the remainder.

A few of them were scattered around our apartment but the rest sat in several shopping bags in a closet. And sat and sat. One bag became our cat's napping spot and were crushed into misshapen, brightly patterned horrors. These became the ass cranes, having suffered such indignities beneath the cat's fat tush.

After including some of them in thank you notes and holding a proper funeral and burial for the ass cranes, we didn't want the rest of the cranes to meet the same ass-tacular fate.

So, in the early evening on 9/11/02, rolling with the peace theme, we decided to let them fly. We got on the subway with our shopping bags, and left the cranes all over New York City for people to find. We left them on subway seats and platforms and newsstands and lampposts, on car hoods and restaurant tables and in parks.

I wonder still what happened to them. I wonder who threw one away, who took one home, who ignored. If somebody found a little gold and pink paper crane with a slightly crushed nose and was amused by it, or helped by it. I wonder who took it as a sign.

So hey Universe, let the PostSecret person get their sign. And since I can't give it to them, howzabout letting me provide somebody's sign. I definitely owe. I'll mull over another random act of signs and this time see how to track them as they fly.

Is The Ether Made Better For Our Asking?

2009-04-20T06:32:00.000-07:00

After a morning of mistakes I'm wondering if all this yawping into outer space is anything like talking to your plants. Is the ether made better for our asking? Prayer, desperation, favors -- it feels like a river of pleading. Yet the synchronicities, the strange coincidences and the out and out results must say more than "We're listening, yo." What could the symbiosis be? How is the ether made better for our asking?

I'm self-medicating with Cat Power and thinking about a musician we met a few months ago. His story will come along eventually when it's done with dinner, when it's done brewing. He told us the only thing he could do was play music, that he didn't know how to do anything else. He seemed to feel a certain failing in this, like who would want to listen? I said, you know, you're a minister and we're the congregation. So play and know we're all better for it. We need you.

He thanked me. Hell if I know where that came from.

The Brokeness of Us

2009-04-17T05:01:00.000-07:00

We were at Newark Airport. It will never be Liberty International Airport to me. While I like that it is smaller and more navigable than other New York area airports, it has not been liberated from anything, any more than fries became free.

Everything that could have gone wrong did and it was entirely on me. Our dream vacation in Mexico, in January, had itself fallen out of the sky and out of the hearts of generous friends who invited us to join then. In the mushy cold and brokeness of us just-after Christmas, it was like winning the lottery.

Now we were on line for our airport security check, two days later than we were supposed to be. My passport had been mangled in one corner and we were refused entry on our original flight. We then spent two days living at the Newark Marriot and hunting for silver linings for our son (indoor swimming pool! dinner in bed!) while my husband and I procured a new passport for me by smiling our way through tens of tenuous bureaucratic conversations. We got a new flight. We were finally going.

And then we were directed to a different line on the security check. And it was the same line as the airport workers. So after about 30 airport workers were directed to cut us in line, missing our flight was becoming a real possibility. We could not get into the other line, where now every other passenger was being directed. So I cut the line, and got through security, to the consternation of the airport workers I cut. I was pissed, and I was a jerk.

When I got through security, my boarding pass was gone. I don't know if I misplaced it, or what, but it was gone. I sat down on a bench and began a howling, keening, unstoppable cry. 7 TSA workers standing nearby turned in unison to get a look at the crazy crying woman, determined I wasn't a threat, and turned back away to continue their conversation.

I sat there, having destroyed our vacation again, I thought, and was dimly aware that my husband and son were now standing next to me. My son asked my husband why I was crying. My husband tried to explain, and after deciphering my snuffling explanation about the boarding pass, left us together on the bench to go see what he could do.

I kept crying. Because I can never do anything right. Because nobody will help me. Because the world is a stupid place with never-ending lines that never get you to the beach.

"Mommy, you're crying. Mommy, don't do that."

A pause. My hair was stuck to my face with tears.

"It's ok, Mommy, I will help you, I will help you."

The Buddha climbed on the bench and took my hand in his. I looked over at him mostly because of the shock of his touch.

"I'll help you, Mommy."

He wiped my tears off my face with his other hand. I stopped crying and put my hand on his cheek. I looked to my left and saw a TSA worker, a woman of about 60, had stopped what she was doing and was leaning up against an X-ray machine, watching us and smiling, and crying. The Buddha didn't say anything else, just pet my hair and wiped off my tears.

I sat there with my son, who has all the good stuff within him, and calmed myself down. My husband got me a new boarding pass. Eventually we got to Mexico, and that was really nice, too.

About the Noise

2009-04-16T09:04:00.000-07:00

Hey Universe,

I keep asking you for silence. I understand there would have to be some kind of foxy force majeure at work to actually make that happen here where I live, 15 feet from a major highway and bordered on one side by a New York City local truck route. That the trucks are local does not make them somehow more charming or organic, it merely means they originate or terminate here in Brooklyn.

It seems to more I ask for silence the more noise I get. Today the street outside my front window is being repaved and there is a generator running that has emitted a constant tone that has not stopped once for a breath once since about nine p.m. last night. It sounds very similar to the shabbas airhorn that sounds every Friday evening at the shul two blocks from here, the call to prayer. But a never ending call to prayer, without vibrato, like an earnest folk singer's end note, held too long, trying to keep the crowd there long past when interest has faded.

So there's a never ending call to prayer going on outside my window and I keep asking for the noise to stop. And according to the neglected piano here to my left, it's a high C.

I'm going to go answer the call to prayer now, even though it won't make the call stop. The call will keep on calling, endlessly, asking us to step in and take part, and I'll find something new to ask for, since the answer for now is clear.

Hey Universe

2009-04-15T19:37:00.000-07:00

Hey Universe,

I've been like an old white wall for the last six months. Blank but marred, scuffed up, getting by on the appearance of having once been shiny and new. Not one word to put in here or out there with you has crossed my brain.

I've been a good listener. I've always been a good listener, a good observer, a creepy starer, looking for details -- with my public relations clients, it's key differentiators. How are you different. How are you special. How do you matter.

The trajectory of my life, the whole shmegegge, is like the bastard lovechild of William Faulkner and Jackie Collins with a bit of Goodbye Columbus thrown in there for flavor. How on earth could I have nothing to write about? My own life has stunned me still. No dad, tragic and troubled family with enough heart warmth to restart a failed sun but tape and string where there should be bones.

I'm afraid one wrong word could kill them all, wipe out my tribe, so I say something crazy, then shut up, say something offensive, then shut up. Sit very still, say the crazy things to the other family I've assembled on the side who thank God thinks the great majority of what comes out of my mouth is alright.

I am very grateful, Universe, for all the good and I'm grateful for all the bad. I'm grateful for my addled brain and I'm grateful for the people I loved who died. I'm grateful to live in this incredible country where everything can go ragged and putrid and you have the opportunity to open your mouth and fight for it. I'm disgusted, today, watching the teabaggers (but thank you so much for the nom de stupide) who see an iota of their entitlement slip away and suddenly think secession is patriotic.

And here's where that crazy trajectory comes in. One of the people leading the teabag movement assaulted me years ago. Seriously, who is writing this stuff?

What I'm grateful for right at this moment:

I am grateful for the husband who is smarter than anyone else I've met yet and has the same dank humor and righteous indignation that I do, who hates hypocrisy and somehow loves sloppy strange me.

I'm grateful for my American best friend, in many ways the love of my life, the stranger whose eyes met mine across a room, who by God gets it gets it gets it.

I'm grateful for the British best friend, the keeper of our history, the earth mama philosopher, who I don't give enough to and I expect it to bite me in the ass one day.

I'm grateful for the beautiful child put in my care and I'll just say it here and spit between my fingers as I type- he is the smartest, the tallest, the wackiest, the brightest, the most incredible by far, and his mama -- your mama, Buddha -- would reach across time for him.

So hey Universe. Let the synchronicities continue. Let the nonsense pour out me. Let seekers sift through it until they find something to hang on to. Or not. Let me talk and talk and talk and not hold back for fear of what it will do to them, or me, or you, what anyone will analyze or refute or pass along.

Universe, open up, I want back in.

New Home!

2008-11-17T09:18:00.000-08:00

Clearly the place needs some sprucing up, but I've moved in and started unpacking. More soon.

Changes

2008-09-04T06:43:00.000-07:00

I received yesterday a lovely and generous response from Judy Blume, who did feel the name of this blog should be changed so as not to confuse her readers. I agree, and I feel ready to put this experiment further into the world with a new name. I will be shutting down for awhile while I migrate to the new blog. There will be a virtual shingle in this space to easily make the jump.

Cheers!

Jen

More Medicine

2008-09-02T06:03:00.000-07:00

I can't entirely wrap my head around what happened to The Kid last week. I'm glad he's alive and safe and everyone who loves him feels the same. I'll get into more soon.

In the meantime, more medicine, per The Buddha and TGD:

Medicine:

A handy little primer on the chakra centers of the body and what they mean to your health.

Music:

A song about walking away from the things that are killing you:

Books:

From Leaves of Grass:

Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touched from;
The scent of these arm-pits is aroma finer than prayer,
This head is more than churches or bibles or creeds.

Sesame Street:

Dr. Horrible has NOTHING on this --

Neil Patrick Harris as The Shoe Fairy

Later,

Jen

Let Him Win

2008-08-29T06:08:00.000-07:00

For the first time in my life, it does not seem naive to want goodness in our leader, our politics and our nation.

Have a good long weekend.

Answers From My Buddha

2008-08-27T19:07:00.000-07:00

I am normally very reticent to blog anything about my son, who I'll call The Buddha (his dad calls him that sometimes, it's not a reference to Five Corners). I'm pretty reticent for him to have any kind of virtual life, because, at the age of three, he has no control over it. However, he spoke the truth yesterday, so I'm writing it here.

My friend The Goddess Devi has been having some troubles of late. Most goddesses, and literary heroes for that matter, have to go on an involved series of adventures or a quest in order to become the king of their own lives. They have to fight their way out of their father's head, or figure a way in and out of Hades. They have to suck all the blood out of the demon Raktabija. In The Goddess Devi's case, they have to go live with their parents while they await, have, and recuperate from surgery, and life goes into a numbing stasis that breeds uncertainty, doubt, and an increasing suspicion that doom lives in Toronto.

So The Buddha and I were playing with his toy trains yesterday afternoon, and since he has a talent for knowing what's bothering people and animals, I said to him "Buddha's name here, is there anything I can do to help The Goddess Devi that I haven't thought of?" And without looking up from the wooden tracks he said "Um, give her medicine, and music, and books, and Sesame Street. That's all anyone ever needs."

TGD, an email package is on the way. Buddha, thank you for being the Universe, and for being you.

Enlighten Up!

2008-08-18T07:59:00.000-07:00

I so want to see this.

Are You There, Margaret?

2008-08-15T07:18:00.000-07:00

I'm taking the day off from blogging to write Judy Blume and ask her permission to continue with this title. If she says no, I'll change it. Maybe I can pitch her Are You There God, It's Me, Margaret -- The Musical while I'm at it.

EDIT: This is something I actually said to a friend in a theater company, off the cuff, just kidding, and for about ten minutes she really considered it. Who doesn't want as much Judy Blume as possible?

Have a great weekend!

Universe, Thanks For The New Talent. Yick.

2008-08-14T06:19:00.000-07:00

My mom is empathic, but it's in a way that I've always been able to accept, because she's my mom. Like when I was in Woodstock on vacation a few years ago and got a sudden toothache, and called her two days later and mentioned I'd had a tooth pulled and her response was "The second tooth from the back on the lower left?" Yes, Mom. .

My mom has been doing stuff like that my whole life, and because it's my mom and we're very connected anyway, and also because it's a little annoying in that way only your mom can be because she seems to know EVERYTHING, it never struck me as all that strange.

Except now. Athena is ill and I went to see her a few days ago. It was a bit like that scene in "Be Kind, Rewind," where every time Jack Black walks by the television the static goes in waves because he's magnetized. I went near her, I felt sick, she felt better. I walked away, I felt better, she felt worse. I'm assuming she got her appetite back yesterday afternoon, because I was ravenously hungry for no good reason.

If nothing else, it's an eye-opener about how 'one' we all really are. And Mom, I'll never make fun of you again. This kind of sucks, in the coolest possible way. Love you, Mom.

Peace,

Jen

Post 100

2008-08-13T09:09:00.000-07:00

"When a question is posed ceremoniously, the universe responds."

--Chinese Proverb. Came across it noodling around online today.

Here we are at the 100th post, and I've been blogging here for just over a year. Since I promised to not only pose questions to the Universe, but also post the results, here are a few.

The blog was a good idea.

He's gone, but he's been right here the whole time, and I know it now.

Sometimes poetry actually helps.

Jenny just moved to Italy.

And I am now singing and doing yoga and jewelry-making, all the things I wanted to do and couldn't figure out how to do them. I've managed to drop the veil of the 'how' and just 'do,' and that took alot of help.

What has thrilled me most is other people asking to post here. It is a growing group belief, or at least hope, that throwing a bottle with a message in it can change something. You can call that speaking your piece, or speaking your peace, or the law of attraction, or prayer, or whatever else you want. What has thrilled me is what people want -- health, peace, purpose, understanding, an end to conflict, for themselves and for others. To put it in the ground.

I've moved into the thinking of our generation's only brilliant popular philosopher to date, Yoda, who said it best. Do, or do not. There is no try.

I've learned only one thing, really, and that's that all of the questions I could ever ask here have already been answered. It's a matter of who said it in the way I can hear it. I'm working on improving my hearing, so the method matters less.

Be well, thank you for reading,

Jen

Guest Post From Mr. E

2008-08-08T09:10:00.000-07:00

Here goes:

"A friend of mine just moved home. At least back to his home town. He got a job supposedly in his field, but finds himself dong all the grunt work and none of the things he went to school or trained for many years to do. He's pretty miserable about it because what was supposed to be a creative position has turned into a job plugging numbers and doing exactly what his boss wants with no input from his part.

On the social front, he's tried to connect with his old friends since moving back, but they've moved on with their lives over the year and a half he was out of town. They've gotten married, had kids, moved away, or have settled into a conservative lifestyle that has no room for him. He's working a lot and has no time to meet girls, so he languishes coming home late from work tired and playing video games to fill the time before he crashes out on his couch.

He's tried looking for a less demanding job, and he's tried to reach out to his old friends which are his only connection to the town( His parents moved out years ago) but he's sinking into a distinct depression and frustration.

He wants to throw everything away, move again, start over, but I keep telling him that if he can't make the changes in himself where he is, he won't make the changes whereever he moves. He may be in the same situation with even less connection.

I want him to get his job situation fixed, and figure out his social situation. I want his old friends to be more open and recognize that he's back. 'd like him to be able to find the friends he needs and to be able to build a happy life He's one of my best friends, and on the phone sometimes he sounds like he's losing it with depression. If I lived closer, I would help, but I'm not able to.I'm asking the universe to help him out. "

Go, Universe, Go!

God 2.0 and TMI

2008-07-08T10:28:00.000-07:00

I just took my first look at #21 in awhile, where I reference not being to listen to the Garbage song #1 Crush without thinking of my friend Owen. As I was reading it, I was listening to the little radio station on Fred Flare, where I'd been looking for an alarm clock. As I'm reading #21, #1 Crush came on the radio. It's 1 of maybe 60 songs on the whole thing. So, thank you God 2.0, or thank you coincidence. Either one works.

I'm getting down with my kumbaya roots (raised by wolves dressed like hippies, that's the short version) and asking for world peace today, which is a little like asking for the fabric of the whole world to be ripped to shreds and rewoven with a tighter and softer hand to it, maybe out of the undyed wool of very cheerful sheep. But I want war to end, I want everyone to go to bed with a full belly, I want torture and rape as a war weapon to stop, I want people to stop getting killed over land or God or ideas. It's what I want, and it's not well thought out or remotely logical, but I'm pretty okay with the fact that I'm basically hurtling emotions with curly hair. I have to be okay with that; I have to wake up with me every day, and I'm done changing.

I'm always asking for the little things, hoping they'll add up to the big things. Now here's a big thing. I hope it helps all the little things.

Love --

Guest Post: Response to Universe, I Need A Raise

2008-06-25T10:00:00.000-07:00

From my beloved R. I'd say she needs her own blog, but then I wouldn't get these awesome guest posts:

In reading your post, my dear friend, I was reminded of a different online conversation I had recently with a different friend, and my answer to youtoday is adapted from one I wrote to him, but I think it is still apropos ofyour mood.

I recently came across this quote from Rilke:"Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in avery foreign tongue. . .And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then you will gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer."

I give you this quote today- on this day, when the dark ceiling of thesleepless night just behind you still looms large- because I have the sense from your post that you are at a place in your life where you, perhaps, feel that you should have answers, or at least more answers than you haveactually thus far found. That you have reached this place ofhands-thrown-in-the-air because, despite all the decisions you have made inorder to have those answers, you are now somewhat disappointed that thereare still things you don't know.

So I wanted to tell you that I have noticed, among my peers who have children in particular, that most people seem to feel that there is some mechanism by which they should have crossed over into a zone of having onlyanswers. Perhaps this is because, once you have a child, you feel some certain responsibility to actually have them. I don't know. Or even if you don't have children, there seems to be some line, some place-shift in the environment that should have happened, around 32, where we stopped being kids, and realized we became, for better or for worse, the adults we alwaysknew were waiting for us.

And yet, for my part- even at 36 and well past that imaginary demarcation line- I can't quite silence my inner teenager and ask "Why *should*?" and"Who says?" Perhaps because I recently learned in the hardest way possible that not all answers are right, but it seems to me now that in some ways,the questions have really never been so good. I was never so sure as when I was 18, but I have never had more wonder about the workings of the world, and sometimes my own heart, as I do now. If you embrace it like that, you may just find that it isn't so much about the answers you don't have, but rather about the questions the foundation of prior answers has allowed youto beget.

I say all this now because I found this quote in the midst of one of my darkest periods, and when I did I realized not only that the darkness was simply a form of a question, but that I had found my epitaph. Live the questions. In fact, my own personal belief is that questions, dark or light, are our tie to life. And that only in the moments before death, will all the answers be revealed to us. Only then will we be free to let go, and fall from the earth, because our souls are satisfied that we *know*-whatever it is that our lives where shaped to find out.

So as you move through whatever struggle you are facing today, and whatever compromises you may be making- with your kitchen, your job, and what have you- I just wanted you to know that you are already living an extraordinary life. You have already found many answers, you will seek many more, and- as you have on occasion already- you will have glimpses of transcendence. Today is one day, and if you are giving up your hopes and dreams, remember that it is likely only in order to make way for the new ones that await you. Don't let the answers you think you have block the questions that will help you get there.

Universe, We're All Beautiful. Show Us.

2008-06-24T13:27:00.000-07:00

Well, I have a wonderful neighbor named Sharon who survived cancer and over a year of painful treatments. One of the things that got her through it was subscribing to every fashion magazine in exsistence and letting her eyes wander over the lipsticks and hairstyles and other things of no consequence, just to look at something pretty, just to be somewhere else. She is in remission but still has all these subscriptions, and when she's done looking at the magazines, she leaves them on my doorstep.

Now, I'm a speed reader, plus your average issue of Lucky is more or less a photo montage with about 500 words in the entire magazine, all of which are at a sixth grade reading level or below. It takes me twenty minutes to finish one, but those twenty minutes are candy-colored mindless bliss compared to the rest of my life, and it's an old unbreakable habit for someone who started reading Seventeen at age 11.

This month's In Style, which Sharon dropped off last night, is mostly about finding your personal style. One of the articles had interviews with various fashion designers on the subject. Remember, fashion designers meet all kinds of women, but they meet many women in the upper echelons of the 'rich-beautiful-thin' bracket.

So I was especially stunned to read this quote from one of the designers: "I don't know one woman who likes her body. Not a single one."

Ladies. Universe. I know there are bigger problems. But we're in the society we're in, and it happens to be one where our bodies block the exits and don't let us walk out the door into the world for some dancing in the streets. So think about this. Not one woman likes her body the way it is. Isn't that horrendous? All those people whose bodies you've wished you had -- not happy either. It's a giant trap.

Ladies. Universe. I know this is not that simple, and even less simple for anyone whose body and mind are particularly locked in a struggle with eachother, whether that is an eating disorder, fear of being attractive, an absolute belief you are ugly, or just your average battle with your weight.

Let's operate from the assumption that you are beautiful right now, as you are, as you showed up, as you have become. You are beautiful. You are beautiful. I know you are. And I am too. What happens next?

Universe, your turn.

Wow

2008-06-23T07:07:00.000-07:00

God wrote back (see comment 3)! At least, one of the faces of God. Still waiting on you, Morrissey.

Universe, I Need A Raise

2008-06-20T05:29:00.000-07:00

Please know, dear blogosphere, that I've had a really strong cup of coffee.

I told my husband this morning that last night I gave up. I was up with our son for about an hour in the middle of the night helping him settle down after a nightmare. Drew (The Husband) thought when I said "I gave up" that I had somehow lost my parenting marbles at 3 in the morning and plunged Will (The Son)'s head into a hot fudge sundae and then built a ball pit in our bathroom.

"It's OK that you gave up. It was late and whatever you needed to do to get him to sleep, I support you."

"Oh, no," I said, "That was fine. I meant I gave up on all my hopes and dreams last night."

Short pause as he pours coffee, then "Ah. Way to go, Job."

And I did by the way actually lie in bed last night (after having helped my son rank the twenty-five different angles at which his feet could possibly be tucked under his blanket) and say, out loud, "Universe, I give up. I give up. I give up."

I'm not sad or depressed or despondent. I think life is pretty awesome. The people in my life are exceptional. Drew and I are happy. My son floats around on a tiny little motor-powered cloud and emits sunshine and I have to keep my mouth shut about how fabulous he is 90 percent of the time I'm thinking it so I don't sound nuts and so the women (or men, whatever works) in his life in the future have half a chance.

However, there's a lot of half-fixed stuff in my life that I thought I was going to complete through sheer willpower, or chutzpah, or by singing a song from Mary Poppins (and I do the most awesome Julie Andrews accent, which is all the better when it comes out of a Jewish-Puerto Rican person like myself). My apartment is half-nice, but then you open the door to our bedroom and the zombies fall out. Our kitchen cabinets are about to FALL OFF THE WALL (it's kooky) and we don't have the money to fix them. We're halfway out of an enormous debt. My current job is cool, but I'm still really broke, and it's not what I want to do for the rest of my life. I don't blog enough and I haven't finshed a big project for my dad's business that I promised him I would do. I got all the plants in on our deck but the deck itself looks like the opening credits of "Sanford and Son". My husband is sick right now, and just lost a big client, and I feel like we're blankly staring into the future, blinking occassionally, not really knowing how to pull it off.

I'm out of optimism. I need it all to come together already. I've spent ten years saying it will, and some of it plain hasn't and just might not. I need a clean, completed house, I need a rollicking career. I need, it seems like, a hundred thousand dollars to politely climb up my yoga pants leg and into my pocket. And Universe, you know me, I'll pay this jazz back tenfold, but really, I give up.

Help, please. You know where to find me. Still love you, Universe.

Jen

Guest Post: Faith With No Fear, Please

2008-06-18T09:45:00.000-07:00

A guest post from the lovely and talented JP! With an addendum, no less! Because I should have posted this like a month ago and lost the original email! Yay!:

"I have been thinking hard about what I would ask for from the universe. I have been surprised because the answer does not automatically come.

"In giving it so much thought I have made an alarming discovery. I am smart. I have a wonderful husband, a delightful dog, remarkably talented and supportive friends, I am close to finishing my master's degree (something I have wanted for a long time), The people in my inner circle are, for the most part, happy, healthy and free, and yet, I am often at a loss for faith.

"I realized that I don't know what to ask the universe for because I don't feel like I deserve to ask for anything. Isn't that just the worst thing you have ever heard? I am so lucky in my life and yet I am so scared of the future. I want so much and yet I worry that I haven't earned the right to ask for any of it. Somewhere along the way I learned that life is supposed to be difficult and challenging and that blood, sweat and tears is the only way to get results. I have spent a lot of my adult life not trying because if you never try you can't really fail.

"So here it is.

"I want to ask the Universe for faith in my own future.

"I don't want to be scared of what comes next because I don't want to find myself too scared to pursue my dreams fully. I want children. I want to make a living doing what I love. I don't want to make compromises that give me excuses for settling for less. I don't want to look back in ten years and have regrets about what I did with my time. And most importantly, I don't want to waste any more time worrying that I might not achieve all of the things I just listed.

"So there you go, my friend with the ear of the universe...... faith with no fear please."

And the addendum:

While reading your return to the blogoverse, I dug up my "ask the universe" piece to re-send you. I have attached it below..... BUT interestingly.... in the world of sort-of-success-stories, I think it would be prudent to also include that the following things have happened to me since I came to California three weeks ago (now the proud holder of a masters degree)..... I received a letter from the chair of the Brooklyn College Theatre Department telling me that I have been recommended by the department to be an Adjunct Lecturer in Theatre for the fall semester... AND it looks like I will be teaching two or three workshop classes in period acting styles for a summer theatre program for teens run out of Queensborough Community College when I get back to NYC in July. Way to go Universe!

---
Exclamation point mine. I love you, JP.

Peace,

Jen

Universe, Meet the Dharma Punx

2008-06-12T15:07:00.000-07:00

If it so moves you, go here and pick one.

--Jen

Interverse, Keep Listening

2008-06-11T09:35:00.000-07:00

I have a very large and swirling essay taking shape that may take awhile to work out so my posts are going to be short right now.

There was a horrible story over the weekend here in Brooklyn that made the national press. A three year old boy was apparently so horribly abused by his guardians that they killed him. It also seems that people in the neighborhood were aware of the abuse and did not report it. My son is three. My first thought was, I would have taken in this child.

My husband and I have spoken in vague terms over the years about becoming foster parents somewhere down the line. We've now agreed to find out what that would entail and if we could make it work. If we can't, we will then find out what form our desire to personally affect children's lives in a positive and nourishing way would take.

Here's what I want, Interverse.

I want to have a direct effect, through direct action, on changing the horror out there in the world. One tiny piece. Whatever I can handle. Give me the thing I can change, whether it is an action I can take or a person I can love. I'll know it when I see it.

And if you can work it, I'd like to see the horrible stories in the news affect others this way too. I'm tired of hearing people sigh and gasp over things that are horrible; I'm tired of reading blog rants that make the ranter feel like an activist when all they've actually done is relieve themselves of their rage.

Action. Action. Action.

Be well,

Jen

Do You Really Want To Live Forever. . .

2008-06-10T13:12:00.000-07:00

It's simmering outside here and my son is home sick from school. So I'm linking today to this nice bit of synchroncity and thoughtfulness from Peter Shankman's blog:

An Open Letter To The Two Kids On The M11 Bus This Morning

I especially like that the piece contains shout-outs to both karma and Marlon Wayans, not to mention an Alphaville reference. This is much of what I wish I'd known at 18, had I been willing or able to hear it. Go find an 18 year old and show this to them, even if they roll their eyes at you, and ask who the hell Alphaville is.

--Jen

Hey Universe, et al

2008-06-09T18:10:00.000-07:00

I walked out of this dark, warm friendly place about two and a half months ago into the glaring sun and tried to figure out exactly what I wanted when I came back here. I didn't. But I missed writing, and thank you to the people who wrote me to say the writing was missed.

Blogs are puzzling. You either chronicle your every waking moment, or comment snidely on someone else's every waking moment. Or you write about a broad obsession (food) or a narrow one (your adventures in becoming an expert in making, I don't know, vegan sausage, that then becomes a crazy trend in your tiny town and suddenly there's a 200 person waitlist to get into the monthly tempeh-casing-stuffing meet-up being held on your back porch). The word "I" makes many appearances. You only have to have opinions, or be a smarty-pants about something in an effort to be read by all the lesser smarty-pantses.

I started this blog with one intent: to trick myself into doing something (writing) that I feel guilty about not doing enough by setting a constraint (make a wish every day! piece of cake!). As tends to happen when you are me (just wait til you are me, you'll be glad I gave you these instructions), the simple trick unfolded into an endless moibus strip. Because now I don't just want to write every day to appease my sense of guilt*. I want to write my way out of a corner and into the everything. I want to write my way into understanding what we want as individuals, as members of the American family and as a planet. I want to be one window into understanding the meaning of life and what our purpose can be -- and I know there are already many windows out there, but it looks to me like many more are needed.

My hope, Universe, is to become one more window into you. And to write the word "I" alot less. And for this to eventually be what I do all day long.

I know this is vague, but like everybody else, I'm struggling to find the words to describe the mystery. In the meantime, send a postcard. A care package would be nice too. If you sent me a query for the universe and don't see it here, resend it. My computer died and is being revived in Memphis, TN. Hopefully it will get to visit Graceland when it's feeling better. If you want something and think God 2.0 might hear you if you yawp it out in cyberspace, send that here too.

With love for everyone, everything,

Jen

-----

*And I could cop out here and say it's Jewish guilt, which for me would be more like culutral quarter-Jewish guilt, but really it's not. It's the guilt of a native New Yorker, the guilt of not having as much ambition as everyone else who came here to get themselves on every square of the Monopoly board. As a result you berate yourself about not having the ambition, or you fake the ambition, or you move to the suburbs. EOM.

Universe, Please Bitchslap The Stupid

2008-03-19T07:31:00.000-07:00

An extra request from The Husband. In general, having stupidity met with a neverending backhand sounds like a good idea, but I love the specificity (although I cannot pronounce 'specificity') of asking the Mighty Nothingness to collar four idiots who perpetrated an idiotic crime, and one that is plain embarassing to fellow humans.

Boston, we still love ya. I'm WELL aware that NYC has its share of people who do dumb things (see: former Governor Spitzer, for one). And sure, was it smart to wear the Yankee cap into the bar? No. But was it about a thousand times stupider to beat someone to a pulp because he likes a sports team you don't like, according to his hat? Yes, a thousand times stupider. And assault-ier, and crime-ier, and hopefully jail-time-ier.

EDIT: And one more thing. On the long list of How To Fight Fair, kicking someone in the head while he lies on the ground is at the absolute bottom. Cowards.

From The Husband:

When you have a moment, would you please ask the Universe to identify to the Boston PD the four idiots in the article below? Not because they are Boston fans, but because this sort of thing needs to stop and maybe an arrest and actual time served might do SOMETHING to deter others. Crap like fanatics and mob mentality actually makes me nauseous.

Today's Sports Idiocy, courtesy of Pregame.com .

Red Sox Fans Send Yankee Fan to Hospital
by RJ_Bell on 03/09/2008 9:03 AM

(from the web) Cambridge - The official start to the 2008 baseball season is about a month away, but the age-old rivalry between the Yankees and Red Sox is already getting ugly.
A group of men some with Irish accents beat up a 23-year-old Cambridge man and sent him to the hospital after they spotted him sporting a Yankees baseball cap.

Witnesses told police the group of apparent diehard Red Sox fans beat up the victims after an argument inside a Central Square bar. The group then ran away on Mass. Ave. towards Harvard Square.

The Yankees fan was transported to the hospital March 2 at 1:41 a.m. for medical treatment for head injuries, including swelling over his entire face and several facial cuts, according to police reports.

The victims sobbing girlfriend told police the couple went to the Cantab Lounge at 738 Mass. Ave. midnight Saturday. The couple was inside the bar for a while when a large group of people came up to them and started arguing with the victim because he was wearing a New York Yankees baseball cap, according to police reports.

The couple left the bar without further confrontation, but the group allegedly followed them outside on the street as they walked home, according to reports.

Then the mob of Red Sox fans allegedly threw the victim to the ground and repeatedly kicked him. The girlfriend and a couple of women who were with the suspects unsuccessfully tried to pull the Red Sox fans off the victim, according to police reports.

The victim told police he could not clearly remember what happened and only recalled getting into an argument about his baseball cap, leaving the bar and lying on the ground while the men kicked him in the head.

The attackers are described as four white men. One of the men was last seen wearing a blue and white striped shirt.

The Yawp Gets Returned

2008-03-19T05:25:00.000-07:00

A beautiful gift came into my email inbox this morning. It is a gift to PB from a fellow traveler, a gift to you, and certainly a gift to me because I'm still fighting a bad cold and can't get my whoses and whatsis together enought to write anything intelligent, plus the cold medicine makes me feel like I'm typing with my elbows. It is a rumination from my beloved RR, and reminded me that in additional to all the other logical magic she brings to me on a regular basis, she's a knockout of a writer.

The open call still stands, folks, and it has resulted in at least one other guest post that I'm hoping will be ready to go up by tomorrow. Be well.

-----

From MBRR:

Having been in PB's shoes, or at least similar places of flux, at various times in my life, I can understand what she is going through. Closing your eyes and taking a giant leap of faith to change your life always has repercussions, but unfortunately they aren't always the one's we think they will be when our feet first leave the ground. When those repercussions turn out to be not what you planned, it can make you want to shake your fist at the universe. Come on, universe! You want to say, I did the hard part already! I made the decision. I landed here. Now it is your turn to bring serendipity to my side. Consciousness and mindfulness, rather than acquiescence to the status quo brought me this far, now I should be rewarded for my bravery. Shouldn't I?

I have been contemplating this question in particular for the last several days because I too recently made a decision to take my life in a certain direction, one that I felt was right in my gut. Yet I have been faced with the harsh reality that the universe has more or less taken my decision and thrown it back in my face. For 3 days I have been railing inside- my thoughts black and spiteful and unproductive. Ef you, universe- and Ef your mother, too! I have been eaten by the unfairness of it all. Everyone, and I mean everyone I know agreed that the decision to do a PhD was the right one for me. People who have known me a long time said they always thought that I would, and wondered why it took me so long to figure it out. People at my job said absolutely. It is the right path for you. Academics told me I was a virtual shoe-in, what with my experience, grades, and knowledge. I was a rare candidate, indeed. Universities would probably throw money at me and beg me to come study. And so I was sure. My gut told me it was the right way to go. And I had external validation and support for my decision. What other signs could there have been, or could I have read? And yet, here I am. 3 out of 4 applications rejected. One more pending and not a shoe-in or a sure thing by any means.

And so while I wait for magic #4, I have been forced to deal with the question that I really never thought would come up. What will I do if I don't get in? Some people have suggested that I wait and re-apply next year. This seems to be how the game of graduate school gets played these days. And re-applying may be a test from the universe about how loud my gut was really speaking to me. If it is the right path, the universe seems to be saying, you can wait. And yet, I can't. Maybe others can, but I cannot. I went through a huge amount of personal upheaval to arrive at this decision, and I am just about worn out. Doing the PhD was to be the new path, the one I chose after almost 2 years of hard soul searching and heart wrenching decisions of all kinds. It was to be the answer I tore the rest of my life apart looking to find. Now I just don't have the stamina to wait another year, and go through another round of applications, to have it come out wrong all over again. I just don't think I have it in me.

Nevertheless, once I decided that the PhD was the path I wanted, I came to see it as not just the answer to what I would do, but the answer in some way to who I am. For the last year, since I decided that it is what I would do, I have held the decision and the idea of it close to my chest, and defended it as a part of my identity- the true identity I had been growing into for all these years. My chance to become the woman I always knew I could be. And in the waiting, I have gone into some dark places. Each rejection a personal affront, and my life hanging before me like a butterfly inside a cocoon, doomed to be forever unrealized.

Today though, I realized something for the first time. Whether I do or whether I don't get accepted, a PhD is not who I am. I am not the sum total of the knowledge I possess, the opportunities I have been given, the rejections I have received. I am also not how I look on paper; I am not the deficiencies on my resume, nor the antithesis to those who have gotten what I wanted. I am not the praise I have been given, nor the shock of others who were also convinced I would get in. I am greater than all these things, and all these moments. And I am enough. As I am, with all the knowledge, and experience, and education I already have. I am enough. Somewhere in the universe there is a place for me to pursue and create the life of the butterfly I am capable of becoming. Even if it doesn't turn out to be where and as I, and my gut, thought it should be. All I can do is trust that the universe knows better than I what my fate should be.

So what is it that has tossed around for me about PB's post? I guess it was that I wanted to say to her, let go a little. Desperation won't help, but money is the same color no matter where it comes from. Take a job waiting tables if you have to. Sign up with every temp agency you can find. In desperate times, any job can be the job, until the right one comes. In the meantime, remember that the money that feeds you, isn't who you are. And just to show that I know all this is easier said than done, I once worked folding shirts and greeting customers at The Gap, even though I had a master's degree and 5 years professional experience in my back pocket. I needed money badly, and I couldn't face receiving unemployment. After a month, I left the shirts to start the job that, 7 years later, is my career.

Finally, for both PB and myself, the mantra I have been trying to hold onto in a very uncertain time is a quote from Rilke. "...And for the rest, let life happen to you. Believe me: life is right, in any case."For PB and myself, I sincerely hope we both get what we want, but even if we don't, none of us is only our wishes or desires, realized or not. We exist outside of wanting. And we are enough.

Universe, Please Make Me a Cup of Tea

2008-03-17T08:13:00.000-07:00

I'm taking the day off, fighting off a cold after much excitement the weekend of my son's third birthday. Be well. I'll try to post tomorrow.

A Yawp For PB

2008-03-14T08:40:00.000-07:00

In response for my open call to get on the bullhorn, my friend PB asked me to give the Universe a yawp for her.

PB is an awesome chick, a cool girl in the grrrrrl sense, a deep thinker, a friend to broken animals and a Dharma Punk. She has been a good friend to me and my husband, and particularly to my three year old son, who she calls The Dude.

PB followed Love and Her Heart down the Right Coast to from New York to Florida early this year but, so far, Money hasn't gotten on board for the ride.

As she put it to me: "Please ask the universe to help me find work, so I can help others and myself .. . Everything has been so wonderful in my world for the last few months that maybe its not fair for me to ask for more, but I need a job. It's starting to mess with my self worth and confidence."

And let me note that it's absolutely fair to ask for more. It's fair to be whole and well and working and living. When one person gets to the top, they can help the other people making the climb. (PB, I hope that imagery appeals to your Macchu Pichu climbing self and doesn't register too high on the schmalz-ometer).

So, Universe, please give PB what she wants and what will benefit so many other people -- a job. A job as a yoga instructor would be ideal, but any job that she will be served by and will allow her to serve others would be fine. She'll know it when she sees it, but as you know, circumstances are getting more dire as the days go on. Please untie her from the train tracks and get her new life moving forward, especially she has taken such a big and brave leap to get said new life in the first place.

Guest Post: What We Put In The Ground

2008-03-13T05:57:00.000-07:00

Today’s post is excerpted from a recent email I received from my friend E, a fantastic writer and a fantastic person. It was inspired in part by a recent entry here. While I am like a puppy faced with a truckload of bones when it comes to praise (more please, no, really, more), I am posting this with her permission mainly because I find it so touching and beautifully written. Identifying and other details have been removed. Thank you, E.

---------

Yesterday while stretching after a particularly strenuous run I realized that my neck, which had not been troubling me during the run, was totally aching. It came when I tried to lower my head to the ground, bending forwards, to place my hands there and ease open the muscles in the backs of my legs.

The fact is that earlier this year, I learned that the bones in my neck were not stacking up in the way that they should. Like some kind of nearly-toppling tower, they were too unsteady to do their job. To help, my neck muscles were in a state of spasm, trying to keep things upright. Good intentions, bad results. So when the pain started while I was bending over, I at least knew what it was: my neck muscles, trying, as usual, to keep my head on.

When I first got the diagnosis, I called my husband. “I can’t hold my head up,” I said. “You couldn’t invent a better condition for me at this moment.” His mother died a year ago while we sat beside her in the house that she raised him in, the house that we now live in. We lost her at the end of a period during which we watched and heard lung cancer make its way up to her neck. For the entirety of her illness and the period that followed, when I watched my husband’s heart break, I did not feel I could hold my head up at all.

Yesterday, when I tried to lower myself towards the floor of this room, in this apartment where a woman I loved very much raised two children that I love very much, one of whom I married, I realized that my neck was working too hard, working against me as I tried to place my hands on the ground.

I thought of the entry you had done about this, about why we place our hands on the ground and what it means. I thought that it is terribly important how we get to the ground. I was bending over but my neck was craning out, like a not very intelligent ostrich. I could not let it hang.

I stood up again, and did the kind of thing that I have a body memory of from being in first grade, kindergarten, having kind teachers and a rubbery little self. I rolled my spine one vertebrae at a time down and when my head wanted to turtle its way out I thought no, just let it go.

When I got to place my hands on the ground, all of me was there. My head had come along for the ride, too. I was alone in the house that we’d been fighting to bring back to life after this impossible year, and had my hands on the ground giving something back. It was quite beautiful and it was a moment that you helped to create with your writing, which was with me as I leaned over and let go.

The Email I Sent This Morning

2008-03-12T05:23:00.000-07:00

to everyone I know. This signifies my official coming out as a God-is-Love-la-la-la-hippie to some people in my life -- I'm sure they suspected anyhow. What's written below applies to you all, too. I'm getting on the bullhorn and asking for requests.

----

Hey Folks,

As you may know, I started a blog back in August 2007, called Are You There God, It's Me, Blogging (http://areyoutheregoditsmeblogging.blogspot.com/). And yes, I do have plans to get in touch with Judy Blume. You can get a good idea of what it's about from the opening entry: http://areyoutheregoditsmeblogging.blogspot.com/2007/08/question-1-universe-please-help-me.html .

The basic idea is that every day (that's in Jen time, so it's more like every so often) I ask the Universe for something, and blog the results. It's been a really interesting tool for getting me to write every day, and to consider those pesky little questions like The Meaning of Life.

I'm writing you now because frankly, I need material, and I'm also very interested in having this blog go beyond me and whether I need need the line at the bank to be short on a given day. I'd like you, or your friends, or your friends of friends, and eventually total strangers, to write in their requests for me to query the Universe on their behalf. I will repost this email as today's entry, and requests can be made to the comments section.

I don't believe I have any kind of super powers. I do have some hippie leanings toward the power of collective thought and prayer. At minimum, it will be interesting to see what happens, which is what this blog has been about from the beginning.

Thanks for your help!

Love,

Jen

Today is Some Day

2008-03-11T05:16:00.000-07:00

I woke up with the clear thought in my head that "Today is the day." For what, I don't know. Possibly for my state's governor to step down admidst a sex ring scandal.

I have to say this doesn't surprise me all that much. I'm a Democrat but couldn't bring myself to vote for him. He has a holier-than-thou, Elliot Ness, I'm the good guy and you are the bad guys approach. I've always thought that's just the personality type of the Attorney General, the position formerly held by Spitzer and Guliani, who had the same outlook before becoming America's Mayor. People so hot to damn others, people that mighty, tend to fall.

If you've been waiting for a day to change, to do better, to accept the truth, to go get a donut, go do it today. Today is the day.

What We Want

2008-03-10T05:48:00.000-07:00

I'm exhausted and yet I can seemingly keep going. That's all the miracle I need for today.

I've been thinking about what I've been asking for here, and what others have been asking for. This blog was born out of strange twins of grief and hope, a plain human need to will the buds open when everything is bone cold and withered.

Looking at this blog so far as the most informal of surveys, I'd say we need to know the sick can get well, the odds can be overcome, the dead still love us even if we can never again slip our hand into theirs, unthinkingly, as we take their presence for granted. We need to know we can survive our personal horrors, and that the world can survive all the horrors that people visit on eachother. We need to know that what seems impossible, on any given day, can happen, from our own effort and from powers beyond us, because we are deserving and somehow loved. We need to know that when we ask for help, the universe is listening and the universe will grant it.

With all our electric light, we're still this little group of people in the darkness praying that the sun will come up over the hill again, that we'll get through the winter, that the crops will come in.

I don't know what it means that we live in a relatively physically stable society with our souls still fighting for survival this way. I also don't know, at this moment, if this is all just me.

Call and Response

2008-03-07T06:06:00.000-08:00

I haven't posted for a few days because I felt like I'd run out of hope in my personal life, and it's difficult to write here when I'm not in a whoo, lookee, swirling stars of love, kind of frame of mind.

Then J from ArtConstellation, the aforementioned 'J' in the J&S story, wrote to let me know that two hours after I posted their story, S received a call for a job interview, his first since graduating from grad school (I think). Shortly after, he got the job, which means they can get an apartment together, an important step toward her going back to Italy. I am beyond thrilled for them and wish them nothing but happiness. I am also thankful to J for letting me know, because my amputated hope got some much needed surgery and is now going through physical therapy and rehab.

I don't begin to believe I have superpowers. I am beginning to believe, as Steve told me recently, that literally anything is possible. And I wholeheartedly believe a whole group of us having hope, wanting good, wanting love to prevail, begins to push things in that direction. So thanks to all of you reading.

J asked me to ask the universe for a miracle for Lora -- you can read her story here. Universe, please help Lora to survive and become well. Her story has already affected many people and she is a positive, loving person.

As long as I'm at it, Universe, we've had a whole bunch of conversations about my friend Ruby, who is also fighting cancer like a saber tooth tiger, so let's just say thank you for helping her stay alive and survive this long, and keep up the good work.

Last, my friend Athena called me last week and asked that I pray for a family in her town who had been in a terrible car accident. I am remiss in not putting this here for her sooner, and saddened to hear that some of the family did not survive. Athena, I love you, and I ask the Universe to protect, heal, and take care of the Howdens.

One of the highlights of my week last week was listening to Athena's two-year-old daughter play harmonica over the phone and then hold it up to phone for me to play it, an ocean away. This week I reconnected with an old friend, took care of my health, resolved some family issues, ran back and forth across a football field with my son. When I look at those moments, it seems there is little more I could ever need. And looking over this post, I see that all we really need is to still be breathing and anything after that continues to be possible.

Because at the end of the day I am a big hippie who really does believe in the power of love

2008-03-04T05:50:00.000-08:00

For brave, brilliant and strong J, who I've come to know through the brave, brilliant and strong Jessieh. (Neither of them would probably describe themselves that way, so I'll do it for them, in honor of the people out there describing me that way when I feel like I cannot pick up my foot to take one more step.)

Universe, this one is for J and S, two people I really don't know at all, but who seem to be fighting a giant raging ocean just to hold eachother's hands. You know, Universe, how hard J is fighting in general. When two people can love and support eachother, every thing beneath their feet that lay fallow can bloom. It can be so much easier to take the first steps of loving yourself when you see the love another has for you.

So Universe, dude, come on. They have nothing left to prove. Let's pick up the world like it was just a paper map sitting on my dining room table, and touch the East Coast of the United States to Rome in a kiss. Let those two points stay connected, forever. Let them find a way for J to stay in Italy for good, and let the good times finally finally finally start to roll.

Don't Mess With Mr. Strut

2008-03-03T05:00:00.000-08:00

While I am back -- and better than ever -- and have lots to write about after my impromptu vacation from this blog and thinking about anything of any worth, well, I'm not going to today. And that's because I'm too delighted by this AP story that came out this morning and the fact that one of the Universe's main priorities is Mick Jagger. I also like that the Hell's Angels are open to signs from the heavens, or at least from the ocean.

From the AP:

BBC: Hell's Angels Sought to Kill Jagger
('LONDON (AP) -- Rolling Stones singer Mick Jagger escaped an assassination plot hatched in 1969 by the Hells Angels, a new British Broadcasting Corp. documentary has claimed. By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: March 3, 2008
Filed at 7:36 a.m. ET

LONDON (AP) -- Rolling Stones singer Mick Jagger escaped an assassination plot hatched in 1969 by the Hells Angels, a new British Broadcasting Corp. documentary has claimed.
A program to be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Monday says the rock star was the target of the plot following a purported dispute with the motorcycle gang over concert security.

Jagger had vowed not to use Hells Angel members as bouncers following the death in December 1969 of an 18-year-old fan at a notorious free performance at Altamont Speedway in Northern California.

In return, gang members hatched a plan to kill Jagger at his holiday home in Long Island, New York, the BBC claimed.

''The Hells Angels were so angered by Jagger's treatment of them that they decided to kill him,'' Tom Mangold, the presenter of the program, was quoted as telling Britain's Sunday Telegraph newspaper.

He said the plan was disclosed during an interview with Mark Young, a former FBI officer, for the BBC's ''The FBI at 100'' documentary.

Mangold said the men tried to reach Jagger by sea. ''The boat was hit by a storm and all of the men were thrown overboard,'' he was quoted as saying. They all survived but made no other attempt on his life, Mangold said.

It was not clear whether Jagger was ever informed of the alleged plot against him.
LD Communications, Jagger's publicists in Britain, did not immediately return calls requesting comment.

The Hells Angels have always denied any connection with the Altamont Speedway killing.

Universe, Help Dig Us Out of This Mess

2008-02-22T05:52:00.000-08:00

I have lots of Deep Thoughts, little time, a doctor's appointment and a mess of snow to get through to get there (5 seemingly unexpected inches in Brooklyn today, enough to make the subways groan and my old Dalmatian whinny).

Between the sudden snowfall, Clinton's perposterous plagarism comments about Barack Obama and allegations of impropriety against McCain, I spent my entire morning shower cringing and wincing as each news report came on my little waterproof radio.

So, Universe, while we Americans too often act as if we have God on IM, I am making my plea this morning our presidential candidates to cut the crap, tell the truth, and most importantly for the truly best person to win. Probably impossible, but I frequently want the impossible, and sometimes I even get it.

To: Universe, Bees, Rats, et al, By Request

2008-02-21T06:14:00.000-08:00

For two friends, by request, the first two lines are taken from the request.

Ask the universe, ask the trees,
and the bees, and the rats in the subway.
Help and hope, seem far away now, faith
as well. A time when all of this made sense
or good copy -- the calendar is resolutely stuck
at today, this day, the pages won't tritely fall away.

And so I ask -- let these two lives be elevated,
like an elevated train, a thing on swooping girders
with sky and tract houses, trees and factory signs
for factories long gone, all around it, a thing that
has come to seem like it only belongs in
a dark tunnel, waiting for the platform,

and the platform after that and that and that.
Let these two lives have beautiful views, somewhere
they want to go, someplace
they want to come home, someone
who welcomes them back, spilling over
with quiet to hear of the days' adventures.

###

Universe, please let the resolution come. They've suffered long enough. What I want here is not important, other than that I want them both to be fulfilled, and whole, and out of pain, whether that is together or apart.

Hey Universe

2008-02-20T05:17:00.000-08:00

Anything you can do to get me and my beloved RR here and make the journey a good one will be duly appreciated.

I was thinking about why I want to go. I am a survivor of violence. Many women I love are survivors of violence. Rape is being perpetrated as a war tactic around the world, which is as sickening to me as anyone blowing themselves up, it just doesn't get the same press.

But the real and selfish reason I support all womens' rights to a world without violence is my son. A world where everybody counts, and everyone has basic human rights is a world I want him to live in, and a viewpoint I want him to have. And I know how much more wonderful his life will be if he regards women as equal, and not lesser. I want to be the mom who models that for him, through action, and through deed.

Guest Post -- Please Do Your Bit

2008-02-19T09:24:00.000-08:00

Reposted with permission from my friend YF's journal (names removed). Please pray, plea, ask, and holler as desired:

As some of you know, I'm not too close with much of my family. The one exception is my sister and her three girls. If I know anything about unconditional love, I've learned it from her.

Their lives have been joyful but full of hardship. My sister's husband took off when the oldest girl was 12. Among other things, he took every penny in every account and left them with huge debt. My sister learned, the hard way, to be self sufficient while raising three girls on her own. She has done an amazing job. The girls are smart, loyal, responsible, and fun.

The youngest is applying for college now. With her grades and activities she'll be able to take her pick of schools. She's even on the short list for Harvard.

The middle girl is an athlete with brains. She's studying bioengineering at Case Western Reserve . . . on scholarship.

The oldest has a year left at Kent State, her college largely paid for by scholarships too. She stayed near home so she could keep working every weekend. She has worked constantly since she was 12, first babysitting, and then taking any and every afterschool and weekend job she could find. You'd think all the work, having to forgo all the things regular teenagers get to do, would have made her angry teenage nightmare, but I have never met a young woman with more grace and generosity.

Next year my sister will have three kids in college. That, combined with her recent breast cancer diagnosis, means it's going to be tighter than ever for the next couple of years, so the girls are working on more scholarship applications. The oldest made the the finals for another scholarship and needs votes to win.

Sadly the voting is over, so I can't ask all of you to stuff the ballot box on her behalf, but I think I'll consider this a plea to the universe that she wins. This family needs a break.

All I Need to Hear, All I Need to Say

2008-02-18T07:59:00.000-08:00

Happy Presidents Day.

An Answer

2008-02-15T06:57:00.000-08:00

I had a conversation with a dreamwalker two weeks ago. In the course of our conversation, he reminded me of something that I've come across before in several different religious traditions and healing practices. That is simply, after conducting a ritual, such as a healing ritual, you are to place your hands on the ground (or floor) and send whatever negative energy you have picked up back into Mother Earth, asking her to clean it and make it positive energy again. This has a practical aspect for the healer, to keep from absorbing the illness or other negative energy they are seeking to remove. It is also a wonderful general concept, that the bad can be turned back into good, renewed and reborn into something positive in our lives.

So often my question is "What do I do?". I think the first answer is always this.

More is happening in my life, so rapidly, than I seem to be able to write, and yet all is wonderfully calm. I hope you are all well.

Have a wonderful weekend.

Make Me A Better Communicator, Please and Thank You

2008-02-14T10:24:00.000-08:00

This may sounds N-V-T-S nuts from a blogger who works in communications. But when I think of all the things I want most, I really just want to talk to my friends more, and that's the thing I push to the bottom of the to-do list most of the time.

At any rate, I'm listening to ska and avoiding a big writing project, and I'll try to get deeper and wider and brighter and lighter tomorrow. I'll also try to can it with the Cure quotes. Happy Valentine's Day.

Universe, make everything a Cure song.

2008-02-13T06:56:00.000-08:00

On my way to the local diner to pick up my morning tea, I had Sarah Silverman's "The Porn Song" stuck in my head. I'm not including the link here, because I have a modicum of respect for the people who raised me, and they read this blog. I can't explain my feelings on Silverman -- she lives in a realm that metaphors fear to enter.

When I went into the diner, the Cure's "Pictures of You" was playing and it blissfully swept The Silverman out with little happy guitar brooms of melancholy.

So, Universe, can you make everything like the good song that gets the stuck song out of your head. Can we just push the crap out by something as simple as changing the channel, or walking into the place where the right one is already on?

When Iris Sleeps Over

2008-02-11T05:54:00.000-08:00

What a book she'll write.

I've always been one to ask for answers like some people skip ahead to the last page of a novel when they've barely started. I want the answers almost before the questions are asked -- this has made me so many shades of fun in most of my relationships. So it makes sense that I'm a tarot reader.

My deck depicts Greek myths (a longtime fascination of mine) and in a way can show the reader where they are in the 'story' of their own life. Over here is Temperance, which has always been my root card, and, while it is not my complete story anymore, it will always be at the root of who I am.

In this deck, Temperance has the traditional meaning of seeking or striving for emotional balance. It depicts stasis and fear of change or intensity as much as it does peace and harmony. The actual character here is Iris, a sort of girl Hermes. She's Hera's messenger and the only female messenger that I know of in Greek myth; she's the woman who delivers the word.

I have this exact picture tatooed on my back, without the wings, and got it about twelve years ago in the middle of a blizzard at Huggy Bear's old Brooklyn studio. Afterwards my friend Steve and I had cookies and orange juice with the Bear himself as he showed us his scrapbook. He was a super nice man, who legally changed his name to Huggy Bear because he was, well, a huggy bear. The whole experience was a little like donating blood at a hospital run by the Hell's Angels.

After having this wingless messenger in my heart and on my back all these years, I'm ready to get the wings. In ink, and in metaphor. But the other thing is, after spending so much energy searching for answers, partially to avoid the pain of actually living a life to get to those answers, I see that I already have them, and if I look deep enough, I already know. To my deep surprise, I don't need the cards anymore. And I don't need to pour that little cup of water back and forth for all eternity, trying to get the balance just right. I can stand in the rushing river now. I can let it go.

When It's Surmountable

2008-02-08T06:26:00.000-08:00

I'm very lucky in that I have a job I like. However I want to do something completely different -- and no, it's not the fish-slapping dance. I found out this year that I want to design jewelry. I am slowly building the skills to be able to do that -- learning to render, learning to silversmith, designing and so on. I am also trying to suspend my disbelief that this is an insane idea. I have two great things in my favor: a husband who is completely supportive, and friends and family who draw monsters and make fertility sculptures out of broken furniture FOR A LIVING so boy am I in the best possible company for this kind of career transition.

The third thing I now have, courtesy of my lovely Tante, is the passenger records of my maternal great-great grandparents and seven of their nine children, ranging in age from 18 to an infant (the last two, including my great-grandmother, were born here) when they came through Ellis Island from Russia in 1898.

In addition to the sheer loveliness of having all of their original names on record (some of them were Americanized to the point of being unrecognizable), I have a reminder that will carry me through the next year and half -- that my great-great grandmother was the exact age I will be this year, 37, when she came here with basically nothing, survived the trip and started over in a new world, with seven children depending on her.

I would wish for her strength but I know I already have it, so I can only say bless you my wonderful ancestors. Everything I could ever want in this new world is entirely possible.

Salutations to the Guru. Over and Out.

2008-02-06T10:27:00.000-08:00

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the founder of Transcendental Meditation and guru to the Beatles, among others, died yesterday on February 5th. While I'm sure someone else has figured this out, I have not yet noticed any mentions in the news that he died the day after Across The Universe Day, when NASA beamed the famed Beatles song into space via satellite antenna in celebration of the 40th anniversary of the song's release. The song's chorus includes the mantra "Jai guru deva om" which, according to my beloved and overused Wikipedia "is a sentence fragment whose words could have many meanings, but roughly translate to "salutations to the guru", then the mystic syllable om". While Maharishi was a controversial figure for many reasons, he did believe that TM, a form of meditation using mantras, could help heal the world and bring peace.

So. . . salutations to the guru and the mystical 'om' were beamed quite literally across the universe, to unknown effect, and then he died.

Salutations to the guru. Om.

When It's Very Simple

2008-02-04T11:24:00.000-08:00

When you have a stomach flu, it's hard to ask for anything other than the removal of said stomach flu. So there you have it.

When There Seem To Be No Answers

2008-01-28T06:48:00.000-08:00

Universe, I humbly beg you today to please bring a peaceful and quick resolution to the violence in Kenya. It is a beautiful country with beautiful people. It is falling prey to political rivalry and ethnic hatred. In another sense, it is falling victim to blame and anger over difficult circumstances.

My dad found his soul there when he travelled through Africa in the late 70s. He worked as an assitant engineer on a research steamship. Sometimes when he docked in various places and could take leave, the ship's captain would warn him that this or that little town was a good place to go if you wanted to die. I hate to think that Kenya is now a good place to go if you want to die. I hate to think that my dad and I will not make it there together in his lifetime.

It is very frustrating to think there is nothing I can do. I wonder sometimes if this is part of the real reason environmentalism is becoming the biggest issue of our time -- the individual can actually or seemingly affect change through every day choices. It's much easier to focus on what kind of lightbulb I use than how to keep people from killing eachother.

When The Answers Do and Don't Come

2008-01-25T12:27:00.000-08:00

I had an appointment today to talk to a specialist who works with people with intuitive abilities. (RR -- pick yourself up off the mental floor. You knew it was heading in this direction. We do not have to speak of this day again). When it was time to make the call, my phone stopped working, flashed on and off for an hour and a half and didn't power up until the appointment had been rescheduled by email.

So I guess the answer is, no answer for you, at least not yet.

When The Answers Do Come

2008-01-24T17:32:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking today about the impossibility, often, of changing or healing the past. We do things or things are done to us that are such a rupture to our psyches that they can seemingly never be healed.

I told my friend heretofore known as the Goddess Devi (she is the daughter of a Hindu priest) about a friendship that went terribly bad. The friend and I had a screaming fight on the phone one night when he said he was certain we'd known each other in a past life. I asked what he thought had happened. He said "You killed me and I killed you. Probably with knives."

When this friendship drifted away, I felt awful I'd never been able to have closure on it. Never really been able to say I'm sorry I hurt you and I'd like to hear that you're sorry you hurt me. Instead there was gaping, endless me -- the reality is I could have, and wanted to, hear I'm sorry a thousand times and it never would have been enough. Then there was the friend, who more or less avoided all eye contact with me for the next ten years, including when he was in my house.

So I told the Goddess Devi all of this and how I felt like a failure, like I'd have to go through another lifetime or ten, or at least this one, having failed this friendship, not having ever made it whole or functional or healed enough to walk away and feel like I could throw my hands up over my head like my son so often does, yell "I did it!" and never look back. The Goddess looked at me with incredulity and a small lilt of a smile. "Of course you succeeded! Look at it this way -- you didn't kill eachother! That's enough progress for one lifetime!"

I got an answer today to a question posed in my last post from someone I never thought I'd hear from again. Someone who hurt me badly enough that I didn't want the ending to be good for him, or for me. All I can say right now, other than the ever-popular "BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR" (I asked for an answer from anyone, and boy did I get an answer from Anyone), is that I can forgive myself for not having super-human powers of healing for myself or any of the other broken animals. It's not my job to become perfect in the face of awful, or to work for anyone else to do the same.

I ask that the Universe remove my guilt. I ask that the Universe remove my shame. I ask that anyone -- and Anyone -- who was harmed, abandoned or in any way had their psyche ruptured by the person or people who loved them most -- I ask that we are all held one way or another in the palm of love, and that all of our guilt and shame be removed.

I ask that we pass that love and all the gifts we receive forward into the future. I ask that we are liberated from feeling hatred and anger about people in our pasts, the dead and thoughtless and stupid and young and uncaring, the things that can never be rectified. I ask for forgiveness from anyone I harmed. I forgive everyone who harmed me. Everyone. And Anyone.

When The Answers Don't Come

2008-01-23T17:43:00.000-08:00

There are two problems in my life right now that I am so frustrated with I feel like I'm going insane. I've been to insane. Liked the hours, didn't care for the people. I'd rather not go back if I don't have to.

The first is that my son is having great difficulty sleeping through the night. I truly don't know what the reason is. It's probably a combination of factors as suggested by his doctor, teachers, and strangers whose childcare books sit on our bookshelves, their book jacket photos grinning at me as if the bastards actually get some sleep.

Possible reasons include: It's never been easy for him to get his bearings back after we stay overnight somewhere else; post nasal drip; nightmares (not certain of this, just a guess); very cold room; noisy heaters that attempt to heat very cold room; lack of limits-setting on our part (one more book, one more milk, one more dear friends into the breach); and who knows what else, although I'm sure I'll know very soon because everybody has an opinion, usually unwanted and often seemingly crack-addled.

The second problem is simply a difficult relationship that I would like to see improve. Enough said there.

In both cases I've been asking. And asking and asking and meditating and asking actual people and asking for guided dreams and praying and hoping and asking. And the solutions have not come. What do you do? Keep asking? Change the question? Accept defeat? Squint at the horizon so hard to try to see the tiny changes that have come that you give yourself floaters on your retenas for the rest of time?

Anyone?

Universe, Help Us Help Eachother

2008-01-22T17:15:00.000-08:00

Two things.

One.

In the last post I mentioned being the change you want to see in the world. A friend of mine is on the verge of falling in love, and the lucky gentleman is coming to visit her. Her apartment is in an interesting state of flux. She has new sheets, but they're still in the box. Framed paintings, but they're sitting on the floor. I felt with great certainty that her home should be beautiful and finished, now. It was hard to tell her that, because I felt like it was none of my business. I offered to paint, then to put together a party where all her friends got together and finished her apartment in one day. She said it was the nicest thing ever. I said, no, it's not. It's friendship. And she said, no, it's love. So of course I'll do it. People have done these things for me, and of course I'll do these things for them. It will be wonderful. It will be unusual. It will be joyful. It will be people painting a house and putting up shelves so our friend can open the door, perhaps, to the love of her life, and be ready. And who knows what will come next as a result. It is worth mentioning that this is the same friend who has given me free office space, and put me in touch with the company that gave me my new and fabulous job. So of course I'll do it, and so happily.

Two.

I get very frustrated by Hollywood and the media (and sometimes by blogs) because it can feel like I have no control over whose personality I have to deal with every day, even though I don't know these people. If Britney Spears had keys to my apartment, I'd have my locks changed and call the cops. I'd also call her mother and delicately suggest rehab and a psych consult, because to my relatively uniformed eye, she looks like a drug addict self-medicating for any number of psychological conditions.

So now Heath Ledger is dead. Talented, young, and apparently a drug addict. That really sucks. What sucks more, and sucks every time I hear about a young and talented person injecting themselves into the hereafter, is that they died before they got the help they needed. And what sucks when I hear about musicians in their 50s who did drugs for 30 years suddenly dying of cancer or heart failure or what have you, nobody actually says, hmmm, maybe the drugs wore out your body and your ability to fight off disease.

I have great sympathy for anyone with a drug or alcohol problem, whether they are able to help themselves or not. I have deep problems with the media for publicizing the 'wacky' or 'car-wreck' behavior of people who are clearly addicts and need help. And I have deep problems with partiers and sychophants who create and maintain a sick environment, who don't do everything they can to help a known addict.

May you all be surrounded by friends who want the best for you and will do what they can to make your life the best. May you all be those kind of friends. May you help me, and may I help you.

Be The Change You Want to See in the World

2007-12-20T07:22:00.000-08:00

I believe that one is Mahatma Ghandi. Another wonderful quote is right on this site -- "My life is my message." So what is the message of your life?

Life is getting very hectic -- job changes, work environment changes, all of which I'll be able to talk about more in the New Year. I also have an idea for a new blog that I'm very excited about, but don't know if I'll be able to sustain both. I am officially taking myself out of the pressure situation of blogging here every day, although I do want to write here as often as possible.

Little proofs of the good that comes from connecting and asking for what you need have been everywhere in my life lately. It makes me wonder, who is asking for what I need? And is it working?

More soon.

Taking a break

2007-12-13T10:09:00.000-08:00

Need a break today, hope to post by tomorrow. Take care.

The (Overwrought, Overdiscussed) Butterfly Effect

2007-12-12T05:25:00.000-08:00

Since we're nearing the end of the year I thought I'd go back over these posts and see how things have transpired since I picked up the megaphone of this blog and started shouting into the dark heavens.

I took another look at post#1, Universe Please Help Me Find A Name for This Blog (with apologies to RG who made it very clear he never again wants to read about just what Judy Blume helped me find. I owe him a nice, calming post about baseball.)

What struck me most is that I had totally forgotten the incident in the bar that had led me to start blogging in the first place. Some strangers told me a couple of small stories and nudged me in another direction, one I wanted to go in but just didn't have the map to. And if it hadn't been recorded here, I'd have forgotten all about it.

A good friend of mine recently went through a bad breakup. She said a story I'd told her ten years ago about my breakup with my first love helped her, as did other stories she'd heard about breakups. This was her first real breakup with a longtime love. She said having no experience at this, all these stories prepared her, and she leaned on them, thinking about how her friends had felt and how they'd gotten though it, and it helped her follow a path that others had already walked.

I guess what I'm learning is that life is not a series of big dramatic moments. It's a constant weaving of thousands of threads. You're weaving other people's lives without even knowing it.

The love I have for Owen, my friend who died years ago, still reverberates even though he's not here to tease me about it. After a very bad recent day, when I only saw my badness and all the reasons why the couple of people I know are angry with me right now absolutely should be, and I said "I don't think I can handle this pain anymore," well, there he was. I came home from my evening class and sitting in the lobby of my building were a few true-crime novels. (One of the things I've come to love about my building is the neighbors leave books and magazines for eachother). At the top was Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, Owen's favorite contemporary book and one I've never read. I'm reading it. And all the things I loved about him -- his humor, his warmth, his sense of the absurd and of the good -- are still right here in the world and even in this book with its strange blend of lurid and lovable. And of course I can take any pain there is to be doled out.

Insert Mary Tyler Moore Theme Here

2007-12-11T06:26:00.000-08:00

Personally, I adore the Husker Du version. But, in a word, love is all around. I've spoken to five of my favorite women in the last 36 hours, and I'm struck by how many more people I could easily put among my favorite people. I have been, in so many ways, a big jerk about letting in the many people who would be so happy to be here, and in return I've been nowhere for them. So, I'd like that to change, starting. . . . . . . now.

Tiny little miracles

2007-12-10T05:57:00.000-08:00

1) My computer rose from the dead this morning, bowed low at the waist and tap danced around the room. While it was making me some tea in an elaborate ceremony, the doorbell rang and the new battery for it came. The computer clicked its heels in glee. After two hours on the phone with (remarkably nice and helpful) Dell tech support people on Friday, who had me do everything short of attaching jumper cables to the laptop and starting it off the engine of my car, I'm in genuine shock that flipping the on switch this morning actually worked.

2) I may have an opportunity to periodically go to London for work, neatly and shockingly solving the problem of how I am ever going to see my best friend from childhood who lives two hours from London by train. Even the possibility of this blows my mind. Who ever actually gets what they want? Me?

3) In the debacle following the computer's three days on the slab (I guess it's Happy Easter for the computer), my fabulous Andrea offered me the use of her home office, which I am going to take her up on starting this week. This is another one of those unbelievably lucky and generous happenstances -- I really need to work somewhere other than my house with the working husband next to me at least some of the time, and I would not be able to afford an office space on my own.

4) We loaned a friend of ours a chunk of money several months ago when they couldn't make their rent. We later told the friend they didn't need to pay us back. Genuinely felt that way. Said friend has since gotten lucrative work and not only wants to pay us back but offered to help us start a college fund for our son and make sure our investments line up. Said friend is in finance industry. Said friend rocks.

5) I stopped drinking coffee this weekend after having food poisoning Friday night and figuring that it might be a good time to clean the slate of abusing my body, mainly with caffeine and sugar. The miracle part of this is by taking vitamin supplements and sleeping when I needed to, I somehow never turned into the Jabberwocky nor ate my friends and family whole in one big gulp.

Til later.

Newsflash -- God Hates Knowledge!

2007-12-07T18:18:00.000-08:00

Or, when you look into the atheist, the atheist looks also into you.

Obviously this website does not reflect the beliefs of most Christians or even Evangelicals. And obviously I have to stop reading it. Like now. But I can't, Yahweh-dammit, I can't.

From www.needgod.com (which, by the way, you wind up at with the same types of web searches that seem to lead people here, poor souls.) Italics are mine. Here's how to read them. Picture me screeching with laughter whenever you see italics.

<< 10.If you know the Lord, nothing will shake your faith. It is true that the man with an experience is not at the mercy of a man with an argument. Take for example a little boy who is looking at a heater. His father warns him that it's hot. The child says, "O.K. I believe it's hot." At that point, he has an intellectual belief that the heater is hot. When his Dad leaves the room, he says, "I wonder if it really is hot?" He then reaches out his little hand and grabs the heater bar with his fingers. The second his flesh burns he stops believing the heater is hot. (Note -- No shit! He also stops believing he's the best judge of what's hot and starts thinking he should have listened to his dad.) He now knows it's hot! He has moved out of the realm of "faith" into the realm of "experience."

In comes a heater expert and says, "Son, I have a B.A. in the study of heat. The heater is definitely not hot. I can prove it to you." The child would probably say, "Mr Expert, I don't care how many B.A.'s you have. I know that heater is hot -- I touched it! I'm not in the realm of belief, I'm in the realm of experience. (Note -- Don't kids just say the darndest things?) Goodbye."

If you have touched the heater bar of God's love and forgiveness, if the Holy Spirit has "born witness" that you are a child of God (Romans 8:16), if you have received the Gospel with "power, the Holy Ghost and much assurance" (1 Thessalonians 1:5), you will never be shaken by a skeptic.

When cults tell you that you must acknowledge God's name to be saved, that you must worship on a certain day that you must be baptized by an elder of their church, don't panic. Merely go back to the Instruction Manual. The Bible has all the answers, and searching them out, will make you grow.

If you feel intimidated by atheists -- if you think they are "intellectuals," read the book, God Doesn't Believe in Atheists. It will show you that they are the opposite. It will also instruct you on how you can prove God's existence, and also prove that the "atheist" doesn't exist.>>

I'd much rather eat the pasta of God's love and forgiveness, or maybe knock back the sidecar on the rocks of God's love and forgiveness. I don't want to BURN THE CRAP OUT OF MY HANDS on God's love and forgiveness.

As for the atheists, I love this logic. It means that not only do I regularly speak to people who don't exist -- including, paradoxically, my son's godfather, love that -- but that the few atheists I can't stand never existed in the first place, and if they do ever want to exist, they'll have to promptly go burn the crap out of their hands on some of God's love.

OH MY. . . . goodness

2007-12-07T17:42:00.000-08:00

My computer died this morning. It's true. It's not a lie. Because if it were a lie, clearly I'd be going to hell.

Thank. . . .goodness this quiz is a handy guide to whether or not I'm going to hell. And the answer is a hearty yes. In fact, even the answers that appear to make you a good person sometimes turn out to be lies that you didn't even know you were telling, so it's the lake of fire for you.

I'd like to think trying to work toward being a better person, doing good deeds and helping others would bear more weight than lying just once on where your soul ends up. I also think these particular Evangelical Christians could learn a thing or two from Cosmo when it comes to quizzes. I mean, not even a single secret sexifying move to make him squeal with delight. Come on, now.

Last Minute Save

2007-12-06T07:26:00.000-08:00

At this very moment, as I was about to say I had nothing to write about, our friend who has been waiting for her green card for 6 YEARS just called to say it was in the mail as of yesterday. She is now legal.

We've been asking the universe for this for a good long time now, so many thanks to the universe for helping a very deserving person take the next steps toward a productive and wonderful life.

Strangely, my husband just called her yesterday, and there has been a long-standing tradition of her getting some news on the progress of her green card within minutes or hours of speaking to us. She says we're her good luck charm. I'm very happy to be that for someone.

Stop, Hammer Time

2007-12-05T06:27:00.000-08:00

It's hard to write the Christmas-countdown freak-out I'd planned to when I'm simultaneously watching The Hebrew Hammer. I have to go play "Gentile Invaders" now. Boy, am I sorry people I work with read this blog. I bet they're sorry, too.

File Under -- Please help the people of New Orleans

2007-12-04T05:53:00.000-08:00

And I'm sure most people reading this have asked for that over the last three years.

I've been struggling with the idea of holiday gifts this year, for myself and for others. My kid doesn't really need the metric ton of toys he is going to get and the people I work with really don't need another -- MILKFAT SPOILER ALERT -- Junior's Cheesecake .

We finally finshed our lists last night, but what I really want is to get someone in New Orleans a hot water heater. And it looks like I can.

This awesome-seeming organization, Make It Right NOLA, (hat tip to the New York Times)spearheaded by Hottie McHottie Pants -- er, Brad Pitt, which means Hottie McHottie pants in at least 8 languages -- and a group of eco-conscious architects, is working to help rebuild the Ninth Ward with 150 sustainable homes. You can apparently pick something specific to donate, like a hot water heater or a tree.

So, Mom, because I know you read this, let's talk about making small donations to eachother's charities of choice, along with the 707 stuffed with Muppet paraphenalia that I know is due your grandson, or He Who Flies Around The Room On Golden Angel Wings, and Never Does Anything Irksome At All, at least, Not In Front of Grandma. It would be a nice lesson in giving for He Who Flies, and it might be a nice new family tradition.

And by the way, Brad Pitt, well played, but you are totally stealing my husband's look. Knock it off.

The Mind Boggles, I blog (gle)

2007-12-03T05:17:00.000-08:00

Boy, that was bad. You can tell how close I am to my English teacher roots on any given day by how bad the puns are.

Coming back to this blog after a holiday always seems to be difficult due to work pileup. We also weaned my son off the bottle this weekend, which was kind of like being snowed in during a blizzard -- you stick close to home and create fun with whatever is at hand, but really, it just kinda sucks. The countdown to this event -- stockpiling treats, tense strategy meetings over grain alcohol -- was as close to planning the survival of a war as I ever want to get. End result, however, is that the kid is bottle-free.

My mind is boggling over how much my life has changed in the last few months and particularly in relation to this blog. Some of it I can't write about quite yet and some of it is still in the planning stages. I still have to write about one of my vacation adventures but want to get a sign-off first from other people involved (attention ridiculously beautiful and wonderful newly married couple -- I mean you). In the next week I'd like to go back over what I've discussed here to date and what has come of it so far. And, once again, not like I have any pipeline to the universe that you don't, but if you think a snarky girl in Brooklyn writing your hoped-fors on her blog might help you out, I do take requests.

Til later.

The Ghost Log

2007-11-21T06:09:00.000-08:00

When we went to Portland, OR, during the second leg of our trip, we stayed at the Edgefield, a former county poor farm that has been converted into more or less a resort hotel located in the suburbs of Jerry Garcia's mind. From the hallway walls to the steam pipe caps in our room, the place is slathered in murals that nod to its history as the residence hall for that poor farm, then a nursing home, then a squat complete with real live anarchists, at which point it was rescued and refurbished.

When you walk up the stairs to your room, there's a huge painting of two gleeful old ladies riding a silo as a rocket ship, followed by beatific and bald angels in wheelchairs. The fuse boxes make heads of Shiva-like gods whose many arms are playing with yo-yos. Chagall-like brides and grooms fly around on the third floor. For the duration of your stay, you are living inside some art.

Our first night there, all three of us had nightmares. Mine is just too scary to relate; my husband's involved both running from something and running after something. Our son just said "Bad dream." When I went down to the front desk the next afternoon to ask a few questions, I hung there for another minute, wondering whether to maintain the appearance of a normal person or just go for it. I went for it.

"Can you tell me," I asked the nice lady, "do people often have, uhhhh, intense dreams when they stay here?"

She smiled this potent smile, a blend of kindness and absolute what-the-f*** spooky I've never seen before, and said "Would you like to see our ghost log?"

She handed me one of those marbled school notebooks, filled with handwritten stories from guests and employees about their various experiences over the years, from thumps to dreams to full-blown non-existent people standing right in front of them.

I sat in the lobby, having some of the best coffee I've ever had in my life -- and free! -- pondering the ghost log. I'm not sure what this has to do with this blog, other than that the universe has some very interesting nooks and crannies, and travel is one of the only ways you can ever stumble upon them. That, and that I sometimes expect that asking for all of these things is going to have an inevitable backwash in the form of nightmares and ghost logs. To get the miracles, I worry you have to pay a price.

I'm a tunnel and a bridge

2007-11-20T07:08:00.000-08:00

Close friends of ours threw us a barbeque while we were in San Francisco. The directions to get there, to Stinson Beach, said at the end "over a hill and down to the beach". "Over a hill" actually meant 45 minutes of ascending haripin turns. The first 35 minutes I was fine. Fine with my eyes shut and chanting to myself while my husband said "This is SO AWESOME" over and over again about views I could not see through my very very shut eyes. The last ten minutes I lost it. I also figured we must be lost and would just be making hairpin turns up into the sky until our rental car ran out of gas, at which point we would have to make some decisions akin to the cast of Alive.

Once there, I had a good time at the barbeque, but I felt like a wuss. We eventually left the park area and went for a walk on the beach with some friends and our son. New York has some nice beaches, but they are nothing like the West Coast in terms of sheer breadth. My son's comment was "Wow, Mommy. Big big water." I wandered over to the shore line and had my daily universe conversation. I said please let me find some balance. Please let me find some serenity and balance. I'd been frazzled and tired since we'd gotten there a couple of days before and felt like I hadn't had enough sleep or a minute to myself. I attempted a tree pose (standing on one leg, raised foot resting against knee of standing leg) and promptly fell over. Then again. Then again. A friend later pointed out to me -- OK, so you couldn't balance on sand.

I got pretty frustrated and went into a small tailspin in my head, I can't be peaceful, I can't enjoy the moment, I suck at yoga, blah blah blah. So I did what I thought was giving up and did a downward facing dog (hands and feet on the ground, tush in the air) thinking at least I won't fall over from all fours.

I stayed there for a minute and then heard my son calling my name. Before I could get up he had clambered underneath me and looked up and said excitedly "It's Mommy! Mommy is a tunnel! Mommy is a bridge!"

I made a promise then and there to accept this wonderful phase of my life. One where we're running around and doing too much and having lots of exhausting adventures. One of joyful chaos. One where I am a tunnel and a bridge (believe me, I'm going to think about that one some more) and this wonderful little person is here with us, because he will be a big person before long. If you catch me complaining, remind me that I asked for peace and serenity and quiet and stasis and the universe very clearly said "No way, chica. It's time for something else."

Honey, I'm home

2007-11-19T05:23:00.000-08:00

And have been for three weeks. Vacation was wonderful; I'll be blogging about some of the major events here in the next week or so. Since getting back I've been catching up with work, dealing with various welcome-to-winter ailments of everybody in my house and going slowly insane as a result of communications breakdowns. Both between me and other people, and actual breakdowns of my email server and cell phone.

Before I left on vacation, I blogged a bit here and there about a friendship that had stopped working long ago and had many things left unsaid. I had a long meditation/prayer session where I asked for the friend in question to be freed from what I perceived as an overarching state of anger that has been holding them back in life. I asked for their happiness. I asked for them not to be held back by what happened between us. I asked for them to come to some understanding of my side of things.

Careful what you wish for. I'm still glad that, within a week, the wheels were set in motion for all of those above things to begin to happen. I just wish clearing the air felt less like a baseball bat to the skull. This is some really dense and painful air.

I don't want to disrupt this person's privacy, so this is the last I'm going to discuss it here, but I felt it was important in the context of what I'm trying to do here to mention that I'm still having alot of trouble with this lesson, and I think it's an important one, that I don't get to be exempt from the workings of the universe and if I'm going to ask for things, the universe looks like it's going to make damn sure I participate, even if I'm picked last and the uniform is a really ugly color.

Be well, more tomorrow.

Gone Travelin'

2007-10-18T10:06:00.000-07:00

Off on vacation until the 28th. I may try to post, but who am I kidding, I probably won't. Be well and check out the links here if you really need something to look at.

Be Well,

Jen

God, Me, Same Diff

2007-10-17T09:05:00.000-07:00

On the way home on the train yesterday afternoon I saw a little girl get the absolute crap slapped out of her by her mother. I went to tell a cop and the train pulled away. I found myself praying to the universe, actually, to God-- stop being so stupid, get off your ass, God, and help that little girl.

God, me, same difference.

When I get back from vacation, I'm going to start here and find out how I can best volunteer. Nothing upsets me more than children being harmed by the people who are supposed to be taking care of them. Freud and tribal myths agree -- 0-5 is what forms the self, and 0-5 is where so much damage is done.

The URL for God

2007-10-16T06:35:00.000-07:00

Apparently quite a few people stumble across this site by typing "God, please help me" into a search engine. I work in the tech industry, so I can't help but wonder if this is one area where vertical search of domain names owned and operated by actual gods might be helpful. Google just sends these poor people to a snarky woman from Brooklyn, that being me.

I tried it last night myself to see what other snarky people came up, and lo and behold, God has a website. And one of the many faces of God, as I've suspected ALL ALONG, is former Smiths frontman and the godfather of shoegazing pop, if not the patent holder of teenage angst, Morrissey. You can also pray to Oprah, as most of America already does.

http://www.deargodpleasehelpme.com/

You can click on a web interface button to pray for these people. God has disabled comments. That's SO like him.

Be That Kid

2007-10-15T05:56:00.000-07:00

I saw my twenty year old cousin at a family party this weekend. The Kid is one of the few people in my life who I would step in front of a bus for without hesitation. I know this because he is the only person I ever rode the Cyclone with at Coney Island, when he was twelve and I was alot older than twelve and I saw how disappointed he would be if he didn't get to ride in what is basically a cigar box on rails that holds you in with a piece of baker's twine. This is what passed for a roller coaster when it was first built in 1927. Six Flags be damned, there is nothing so scary as a ride that is showing every possible sign of crumbling to bits underneath you while you are in it. I'm calling him the Kid here to protect his privacy but also because he is my kid, and in my heart he will always be my kid. In reality he is a wonderful young man.

So I see the Kid at this party and he comes over to me and the first thing out of his mouth is "Jennifer, I want to be a computer animator." I nearly sing I'm so happy -- he says it with total conviction and he is studying graphic arts. After really searching searching searching for what it is he wants to do he seems to have found it. We talk for a few minutes about it and I say, "You know I don't have any friends who work in animation but I do have some friends who draw comics. In fact, my friend Jamal Igle, who draws Green Lantern or something--" and at this point the Kid's eyes have shot out of his head and are rolling around in the lawn. I forget how cool this is because I've known Jamal forever and six days. But I've just been reminded of how cool that is.

He asks how Jamal worked his way to being Green Lantern or something man (what a bad friend am I that I don't know what the man is drawing right now), and I say "You know, when he was ten years old--" and the rest of the story is Jamal wanted to draw Superman and set out to do it. He had good jobs and crappy jobs and no jobs, he spent some time drawing storyboards for the movies, he kept working and working and now here he is.

But before I could say any of this, the Kid said "That was me! I was that kid! I was that kid."

So today's request is for our childhood dreams to come rolling back into our lives and propel us into the sky, down rickety wooden rails or into zero gravity. For a wonderful lecture on how to achieve your childhood dreams (and go into zero gravity), go here (with thanks, as so often my thanks are, to R). The lecturer is Carnegie Mellon professor Randy Pauch giving his last lecture, on this topic. It is quite literally his last lecture, as he is dying from pancreatic cancer. It is rather phenomenal. Take a look if you have the time.

Until later.

Hey Universe

2007-10-12T06:45:00.000-07:00

So I'm all set. I want to sing, make jewelry and write for a living. I will do marvelous things, and help people and I'm open to whatever path this takes me on. I want to be wildly successful, and for that success to ultimately make the world a little better.

Let's make it happen. You and me, universe. We're the same thing anyway.

Happy Friday everybody.

Yay, Or Who Am I To Know What I Need

2007-10-11T05:48:00.000-07:00

I got back in touch with an old friend from college yesterday and we've been pelting eachother with emails like it's a snowball fight. Now that the flurry is dying down, I wondered rather stupidly -- did I ask for this? Did I need this? I know I never sat in meditation and said "Hey, universe, can you make sure so-and-so gets my email address?" But another little window of joy in my heart just creakily slid open, so I'm just going to say yay.

Another thing. I was writing my friend about recent travels and I found myself saying "You know, we go to San Francisco every year to visit family and friends and after that it's hard to travel anywhere. Well, we do visit family at the Jersey Shore every year. And in Vermont. And last year we stayed on a houseboat in Paris for two weeks, but that was just an opportunity that came up to celebrate my friend's birthday."

Here I am, judging my own fantastic experiences, because they just sort of happened to me as opposed to me getting to plan them. I'm complaining about my own serendipity; I'm complaining about my good fortune; I'm complaining about, perhaps, the gifts I'm being given by the universe.

I'm like this with everything. It is very stupid. I shall stop now.

And should you ever get to stay in a houseboat on the Seine, pack sweaters and cough syrup, it gets bone crushingly cold at night. Sometimes the heat won't work and then the most gorgeous strapping blond electrician in the known universe will show up on his moped and fix it for you, which ain't so bad. Oh, and also, enjoy every damn minute of it.

2007-10-10T06:05:00.000-07:00

I petitioned the universe the other day (for more on this, go read Eat, Pray, Love , in fact, go get it right now and read it ten times. I've almost finished it and when I'm done I'm just going to read it again).

There's an old emotional injury of mine that's sort of like a psychotic teacup poodle -- it gnashes it teeth and snarls at me and I still carry it everywhere and clean up its poop. Rather than work through the issue or pray to have it removed from me, I just stated my case. I asked to be free of the problem so that I could be happier and have a more fulfilled life, and be a better contributor to the planet.

And regarding the other person involved, the one who poisoned my poodle and made it nuts in the first place, I asked that s/he be free of this pain as well, that s/he is a marvelous person who can do great things with his/her life, but they need this cloud removed from their sky as well.

And don't you know, I didn't get some miraculous phone call the next day with tearful apologies, but that's good because that would just be continuing the drama for all involved, which isn't what I want.

However, the weird thing I did get is that my posture visibly improved. It's like I got new shoulders. Which I needed, because the old ones were carrying around this old wound like it was this season's oversized "it" bag.

Oh, so that's how it works

2007-10-09T05:41:00.000-07:00

Over the weekend, I saw my dear friend R, she of the divine serendipity and the hatred of John Donne. We were walking across Houston Street at a busy and bright 6:15 on Saturday to catch a cab to a restaurant and meet some friends for dinner. We'd just spent an hour and a half getting makeovers, and hadn't really spoken much beyond rhapsodies over eachother's sparkling eyelids.

She asked how I was doing, and I blurted out:

"I'm okay, I just wish all these little physical problems I'm having would clear up."

"Like what? What's wrong?"

"Oh, stupid little things. My hand was hurting for awhile but then it stopped but now the pinkie on that hand is hurting again. My knees ache. I have headaches, but just once in a great while. Doesn't seem worth going to doctor, but I do need to get all these things cleared up."

The next day I got this message on my voicemail that said I'd won a prize in a raffle that benefits children's programming at our local playground. I won a free hour of acupuncture.

At first I was disappointed, despite the faint shimmer of the thrill of winning something, anything, by chance. But acupuncture didn't seem too glamourous, not like dinner at a restaurant or a manicure at the local day spa.

But acupuncture might help fix my pinkie, my knees and my headaches. Duh.

I slapped my achey head with my gimpy little hand.

Me and The Husband

2007-10-08T06:10:00.000-07:00

"So what should I ask for on my blog?"

"What should you what on your blog?"

"What should I ask for? I haven't written in a couple of weeks since I was sick and then had to catch up on all my work and I kind of want to get back to the pure format of asking for things."

"Have you asked for anything for yourself lately?"

"Not really."

"Well, you could ask for the fortitude to accomplish something?"

"Fortitude?"

"Fortitude."

"I don't really need the fortitude for anything right now."

"Then ask for a donut."

"Do you have a donut?"

"No. But wishing for one could score you one."

"The only way I'm going to get a donut is if you get up and go get me a donut."

"Wish granted. I am part of the universe too, after all."

"I'm writing this whole thing down."

Try The Crazy Thing

2007-09-24T06:22:00.000-07:00

I have to go catch up on actual work after a long sick break, but I have so much to talk about. I'll try to get back here later today. Here's kind of a hint -- an appearance by Tilly and the Wall on David Letterman last year. They don't have a drummer; they have a tap dancer.

Til later. Take care.

#26 -- More dancing and singing please

2007-09-21T06:03:00.000-07:00

This blew my mind. Since I'm doing nothing but blowing my nose (the exhaustion has morphed into an actual cold), here's a fantastic story from the life of one of our modern masters of creating his very own reality, Peretz Bernstein --er-- Perry Farrell. From his Wikipedia entry:

"In December 2001, Farrell risked his life by flying into politically troubled Sudan with other members of Christian Solidarity International to negotiate the release of Sudanese slaves. Jane's Addiction donated their earning from one concert for the redemption of over 2300 people, who had been enslaved under terrible conditions. Once the redemption agreement was signed, Farrell started up freedom parties at various redemption sites "armed only with a boom box and his legendary voice."

"He began dancing and singing," said an associate; "I wasn't sure what would happen, but then everyone joined in. Everyone was dancing. Even the Arab retrievers joined in. It was Christians, Muslims, and Jews all dancing together. Arabs, Africans, Americans, and Europeans — all."

This says a little about why, as I get older and more decrepit and creaky, I see less and less personal value in finding the subculture that accepts you (maybe because I've done that already and admittedly, it's a good place to start because then, a, you have a community and, b, you have some empirical evidence that maybe you are not insane) and more value in this -- showing up and dancing and singing in a crowd of people who are nothing, at all, like you.

Until next time.

#25: Let Everyone Find Their Bliss

2007-09-20T06:12:00.000-07:00

I know there's only about 20 of you reading this regularly -- and to those 20 of you, I say hail the tastemakers! I've been too tired to write anything substantive -- and by tired, for a change, I don't mean lazy. I'm literally exhausted and working to find out if there is a root cause.

Having spent nearly a week going through periods where I can't really move, I've gotten a little desperate, and a little whacked out, so I started asking the universe point blank for what I need the most last night as I lay in bed.

Please let me have my energy back so I can accomplish the things I need to.

Please let my son feel better (he has a cold)

Please let my friend K find the love of his life, cause I'm pretty sure he needs outside assistance.

Where the hell did that come from?

Next thing I know I'm asking for everything, for everyone I can think of.

And here's the thing. I've come to believe that we can all achieve what we need to in this lifetime. Joseph Campbell, Mr. Find Your Bliss himself, believed that reincarnation was a metaphor for continuing to die and be reborn in this lifetime until you achieve enlightenment.

I worry sometimes that this blog is just so much navel gazing. But I also think that as a society we have a responsibility to get ourselves in order. To be positive, to treat others with kindness, to be conscious of why we do the things we do.

So, here's what I want. For you to find your bliss, and for me to find mine. Let me know what I can do to help.

Tomorrow, I'll start to go beyond that.

Three Little Words

2007-09-19T06:33:00.000-07:00

Still to tired to post, but if you'd like to be uplifted, amused and turned on to the commonality among us, by ABC TV of all things, take a look at this:

http://ugv.abcnews.go.com/player.aspx?id=694149

Sorry I couldn't embed it as a video.

Thanks to Ryan for the tip, and I shall now steal his description:

"ABC has a weekly summer fill in show called iCaught. It’s basically a show that tells the back story behind some of the most popular viral videos on the web. Well one of the things they do every week is something called Y3W. It stands for “Your Three Words”. They ask their viewers to record themselves showing three words that describe what they’re doing or feeling or thinking this week. They then put it together to music. It’s hard to explain but very cool to watch. Very moving."

Hope to have more to say soon.

Can't You See She's Pooped?

2007-09-17T05:35:00.000-07:00

I'm taking a break for health reasons. All I know so far is that I'm so, so tired. Take it away, Lili Von Schtupp.

#24: Jump into life

2007-09-14T05:20:00.000-07:00

My darling friend RR, she who I owe the apology to for the John Donne quote (short version -- the man wasn't a feminist), has created this interesting stepladder of inspiration for me. I once gave her a card with a photograph of a girl in a pinafore jumping in the air, I think the title was Alice in Wonderland. She framed it, kept it, and eventually decided to dedicate the year of her thirtieth birthday to leaping into life. She proceeded to jump out of an airplane. And now the thing I kind of inadvertently inspired her to do continues to inspire me, as I think about ways to push myself into living more, being more, and leaping.

Or, as Laurie Anderson said, walking is just falling and then catching yourself from falling.

I love this:

www.thejumpproject.com

but the artist says in her notes that the online store included home appliances, and when I took a look it seemed like that meant coasters and clocks. Disappointing, because I would totally buy a dishwasher with a photograph of a man in Marrakech jumping so high he can touch his toes.

I've decided to spend my upcoming birthday with my husband playing hooky and museum hopping in Manhattan, then I go to my second jewelry class where I will hopefully take a blowtorch to some gold. Sounds like a perfect day. I'm excited to look at some art and grow some more ideas that I never might have had otherwise.

Until tomorrow.

#23: Let me dissipate rage

2007-09-12T05:54:00.000-07:00

I was on the playground with my son the other day when we saw one kid jump from a great height on top of a younger kid, intentionally. When the younger kid started to wail, the older kid got right in his face and yelled "Well, it's your fault for getting in my way! It's your fault!" and ran off.

I helped the younger kid get up while a couple of other moms tried to locate his mom. The kid hurt his arm and hit his head and just wanted his mom and was wailing. The older kid came back, saw me standing next to the hurt kid, and ran off again. The mom came over and carried the little kid off. I didn't see the older kid again.

Over the course of the day, I felt angrier and angrier at this kid. One, I felt bad for my own kid, who was confused and upset by the whole thing and asked me to explain what happened about five times and acted the whole thing out a couple of times. But I was angrier about the kid telling the younger kid that his getting hurt was his own fault. The reality of that situation was the younger kid was "at fault" for being anywhere near this enraged, angry, out-of-control kid.

And I became completely infected by his anger. I became obsessed with what had happened. My own anger got wrapped around this kid and this incident, and it paralyzed me for the rest of the day.

As I was falling asleep I envisioned speaking with the kid. The first few times, I wound up screaming at him. The last couple of exchanges went kind of like this.

"So what happened out there on the playground?"

"He was in my way! It was his fault!"

"I think you were angry before that. I noticed when I walked in that you were mad someone else had teased you. But you were really really angry about that, and that was a pretty small thing. I think you've just always been angry, and I don't know why. I'm sorry I can't help you."

Annie Dillard wrote in "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek" a passage about how when you chop wood, you need to look at the chopping block and not at the wood you're cutting. I think people are sort of the same. When their behavior is insane, you have to look right past what you see and what they tell you, to what makes sense underneath. That's usually a wounded animal who doesn't even know where the wound came from anymore or how to fix it, so they attack you.

I'm not going to let other wounded animals turn me into a wounded animal anymore.

On another note, I'm listening right now to the podcast interview of the director of the National Institute for Play on the value of play and how it positively shapes our human character and socialization. Very interesting stuff.

http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/play/index.shtml

See you later.

Rufus Wainwright - 11:11 at UofP

2007-09-11T06:21:00.000-07:00

11:11

#22 -- A wish for peace, everywhere

2007-09-11T06:10:00.000-07:00

I don't want to write much today, although I have a couple of essays brewing. With apologies to RR, here's the John Donne quote from Meditation XVII Governor Spitzer read today at the 9/11 Memorial, which says it best for me:

"Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee."

Couldn't find any video of the NYPD Emerald Pipe and Drum Society, but Rufus Wainwright's 11:11 should post here shortly (come on YouTube, you can do it).

My friend Sally Herships conducted an oral history project in the weeks following 9/11 where she and Laura Dotterer interviewed over 200 members of the public about their reactions and experiences to 9/11. More information is here:

http://www.documentnewyork.com/Newsday.pdf

http://www.sohosally.com/sound/listen.html under “Special Projects”

Much love to everyone today.

Numberless Musing

2007-09-10T05:34:00.000-07:00

Thank you to Jamal and Elayne for their kind posts.

A few words on why I'm doing this, as much to solidify my own thinking as anything else.

Really, it started with a good title. I work in public relations, so I have years of training in coming up with a good line and worrying about the content later. But eventually you do have to come up with the content, or the good line falls apart.

I figure I'm human, not to mention American, so I want things all the time. Not material things so much but for "things" to be better, richer, easier, to finally come up with the grand scheme that makes life work like clockwork.

I realize that's a crock. Crockwork.

I've also been irritated by things like "The Secret", that have some good ideas behind them, and Scientology, which, whoo boy never mind. I'm irritated by the idea that you have to put down a bunch of cash and then someone comes out from behind the curtain and tells you the meaning of life. (Although if Leah Remini is any example, a bunch of cash does seem to buy you A-list friends, so I won't knock the Xenu-worshippers. Oh who am I kidding, yes I will. Anyway.)

The meaning of life is in the living. This blog is about speaking my voice, making my intentions clear to myself and connecting with other people. I do want to see if I can make locusts swarm the Scientology Center on 42nd Street (how cool would that be?) but mainly I want to see if this can be an experiment, and hopefully a successful one, in learning the meaning of life without handing some faux Wizard of Oz a big wad of money. And that then maybe you can do it too.

More later. Much love.

#21

2007-09-07T22:53:00.000-07:00

A late night wish to move on

There are times I wish I’d never met you.

Never taken your roommate’s offer to lend me money for the bus home and never gone to your room to tell him never mind but thank you, I’d gotten a ride with someone from off campus.

Never seen you with the grin that burst out of your face as you sat on your own bed in your own room at 8 p.m. on a Friday night, alone, with your shirt buttoned up to your chin and covered in so many clothes that I remember you, probably incorrectly, dressed in an overcoat and boots. Never been amused by you sitting there grinning as you listened to music you loved that I loved too and never invited you to the party at my house, impulsively, because you seemed so full of life.

I wish I’d never become your friend, and never held on to that friendship after I left that haunted, unhinged valley -- and the school squatting at the bottom of it -- behind. I wish I’d never heard about how impassioned you were about saving the soul of that rotting school and how beautifully you spoke about the education it had given you, pushing through the scrim of your dyslexia and delivering literature, turning on the light you didn’t know was there and making manuscripts start to push out of your skull, unformed glimmering arms and legs of potential future Athenas.

They fired your teachers anyway, and they shouldn’t have, they should have listened to you when they had the chance.

I wish I could hear “Not So Manic Now,” “All My Ghosts” and “#1 Crush” without thinking of you. I wish my friends who became your friends never went through their own muted or jagged versions of the same pain I did. I wish I’d never, with my husband, spent hours and hours agonizing over how to fit your name inside the vowels and consonants that would represent our newborn child without bursting into tears every time I called him in for dinner.

I wish I could hear news reports of strangers getting shot and just think “Oh, how terrible,” and not “Left temporal lobe,” which is where the bullet entered your brain and took your grin, your sardonic near-evil wit, your embrace, your singing voice, your constant irritations and your deep desire to fix everyone you loved, your freckles and every other piece of you that I loved so dear, away in an instant.

I wish I’d never felt your hand on the shoulder of my fear the night it appeared that I’d miscarried. I wish you never guided me in my dreams. I wish you hadn’t told me I’d marry my husband without ever having met him when we didn’t really know it yet ourselves. I wish I’d never seen magic or joy or love.

I wish I’d never vacationed with you, cleared the dishes with you, sat shoulder to shoulder with you dreaming about the future and laughing about how the hell we would ever get over our pasts. I wish I didn’t see actors from the t.v. shows you worked on and only want to hear your stories about them and your adventures.

I wish I’d never told you, the last time we spoke, that all I wanted was you to find a partner to spend your life with only to have you reply “I don’t think that’s ever going to happen for me.” I wish 3 weeks later, you hadn’t been proven right.

The only thing I do wish, sometimes, late at night, is that I’d called you back that week, or gone to visit you in L.A. like we were discussing, or somehow moved the earth and the heavens and the angle of that goddamned gun. I wish I’d changed time, set the clock off balance, set the world on fire. Maybe you would have walked into that parking lot five minutes earlier, or ten minutes later, or not at all.

I wish I’d stopped what killed you.

I wish you were here.

I wish this would stop hurting. It’s been seven years.

#20: Please please please let me find Little Larry

2007-09-07T06:38:00.000-07:00

Full disclosure: My son Will started nursery school this week and I just dropped him off for his first full day. He was howling and screaming when I left, and everything at the moment is filtered through howling-colored glasses.

On the way there, we seem to have lost Little Larry, who was riding shotgun -- undergun?-- in the basket beneath Will's stroller.

Little Larry is one of a tribe of Larrys. Originally there was just Big Larry, a lamb baby blanket with soft satin paws that Will picked apart over time into cloudy pom poms of thread. He was a shower gift from friends and at one point in his life was actually white and not grey.

Big Larry was at first just Larry, named for my husbands now-late uncle Larry, who wouldn't eat lamb. Ha ha. Larry was eventually lost at the zoo where I like to picture him in the soft grass gazing happily at the clouds and not, say, frolicking with the baboons.

At that point there was a second Larry already, dubbed Larry Feingold, Certified Public Lamb, by my cousin. We ordered a third, and so we had two again. New Big Larry and Larry Feingold.

But the Larrys kept growing. The same friends who gave us OL (Original Larry) also gave us a tiny white Gund bear like the one my friend C had growing up. His was Mohatma Gundhi; we named ours Indira. By the time Will could talk, he let us know that clearly this was a case of mistaken identity. That bear was little Larry; the big teddy bear was Larry Bear; the little brown Gund (plucked from the Salvation Army when we were first talking about having a child and subsequently washed and washed and washed) was basketball coach Larry Brown.

So it's Little Larry, nee Indira, who seems to have made a run for it. I hope to find him in the nieghborhood or through the parents web group. I also hope to get through this morning without a big shot of whiskey.

As a parent you can control two things and two things only -- how much love you put into your children and keeping track of all their crap. In the face of howling-colored glasses and the sense that by God my baby is out in the world now, I'm trying to keep from hyperventilating over the few things that seem controllable.

For a very eloquent take on kids and their bears, go here: RIP, Minty Bear

#19: Please give Elayne the house that will best support her needs

2007-09-06T06:16:00.000-07:00

Back in July I posted on my old blog, Set Cycle to Spin, about the seeming disappearance of PostSecret's man behind the curtain, Frank. You can go look at the old blog if you want the whole story. The whole ordeal earned me minute 3 of my personal 15 minutes of suspect fame when Wikipedia referred to me as a blogger who claimed to have called the police. So my only entry on Wikipedia makes me sound a little like a liar, a little like a hysteric, and a little like Ren from Ren and Stimpy ("Call the poliiiiiiiiiice!").

(Minutes 1 and 2 involved having stories published in national anthologies. As long as the last 12 don't involve anyone else posting footage of me on YouTube, we're good.)

The cool thing that happened, however, is lots of nice, interesting and literate strangers reading PostSecret and that Wikipedia link wrote me nice things and now I read their blogs, like Jessieh Speaks.

Elayne in particular wrote me a very detailed take on blogging etiquette with some good thoughts to chew on. But at the time I was about to go on vacation and when I scrolled down in her post and just saw more pesky words, I kind of panicked and didn't read the whole thing.

Blogging etiquette has been on my mind lately. I remembered the post and felt up to conquering all the words and went back and read it (good stuff) and then checked out her blog. She mentioned she's hoping to buy a house.

So, universe, please help Elayne that house, and if not that house, then another really cool house she'll love just as much. I don't know much about her, but it seems to me she has a big heart and a deep desire for this to happen, so give her a hand if you could.

Until later --

#18 -- Let's Move From Getting Well to Kicking Ass

2007-09-05T19:15:00.000-07:00

Sorry I haven't posted lately. My son is starting nursery school. I didn't realize it would feel like the whole house came down with mononucleosis. Even the dog looks like she needs antibiotics and ice cream. My husband and I more or less lay on the floor of my son's room after dinner tonight, unable to move. The boy was too tired to jump on us. Transitions suck.

Much love --

#17: Help

2007-09-02T18:57:00.000-07:00

Help anyone at the bottom find the ocean floor, bend their knees, and push back up toward the surface.

Help anyone with a voice to open their mouth and use it.

Help anyone coasting along to want more and do better.

Thank you for the roads that keep popping up under my feet right when I think my leg is going to disappear down into the quicksand. And thank you for all the fine folks who pick me up when I'm hitchhiking or chat from the backseat while I drive.

For those of you who know me and the fact that my main form of i.d. is still my passport, that last one is a metaphor, and shut up.

#16: Sing Out, Louise, or Being Public and Other Dilemmas

2007-08-31T11:12:00.000-07:00

Today's request is for a public life.

Some interesting things have been happening as a result of this blog. For one thing, people are starting to read it. For another, they're starting to tell me what they think. And some of my co-workers are now aware of a part of my life I've kept private up until now, such as, for example, my clitoris.

(All I can say to that, dear co-workers, is that I've known and worked with some people who've made me MUCH too aware of their privates from the get-go, so be thankful and then put it out of your mind. I'll come up with a synonym. My "unicorn" perhaps?)

One of the great things about writing is the illusion that you're engaging in some kind of dialogue with the collective unconcious without the collective unconcious actualy saying anything back to you. Praise is great; opinion, critique, and the sense that I'm appearing in someone else's dream without my clothes on, not so much.

But that is the difference between living out in the yard, in the park, on the street, way up high on the mountain -- and under your bed, in your house, with the windows shuttered, locked and painted over.

I'm having trouble right now with writing every day when there are responses, which is riduculous, because I could just pick up a paper journal, they are typically pretty quiet. So I'm forging ahead.

I'm going to allow comments here for now because I do find it helpful and interesting, and because I do believe everyone has a right to express what they think. Unless what they think is that I belong in hell, or spam for a porn site, in which case they have no rights at all accoring to the Me States Constitution.

I am going to maintain a fourth wall however if I get an opinion on what I should or shouldn't be doing or feeling, because without the fourth wall, I can't keep writing this. I'm feeling very overwhelmed at the moment.

But back to the request -- to be comfortable showing whatever parts of myself I choose to whomever I choose to show them to. To not live in a segmented way. To not act so happy if I don't feel like it. To not be worried about seeming too happy. To be unconcerned with other people's responses, because that's what I'm usually trying to avoid. Integration, I guess.

One more thing. It occurs to me that nearly everything I've been asking for is for me. Well, at the moment, I'm trying to get my own house in order to go do some great things. I think change in the world starts with the individual. I've seen some little bits of evidence of that, and it's thrilling. However, I do plan at some point to ask you all to close your eyes and wish real hard for big changes in the world and see what happens.

Maybe we can start by conjuring a unicorn. And by unicorn, I mean unicorn.

Until Tuesday -- have a nice vacation.

#15: Just let me write

2007-08-29T10:46:00.000-07:00

My problem is rarely a lack of ideas. It's usually that I have too many ideas and freeze. So here I am, writing, even if this is short, humorless and not that intelligent.

Insert joke here about guys I've dated. . . .

Regarding a previous post, my friend's dog is OK with total recovery uncertain at this point but I'm very thankful he's still here, both for the dog and for the friend.

Regarding another previous post, I have been invited to sing in the wedding of a friend. I haven't sung in public by myself in years without the aid of several cocktails and/or a karaoke video of people running along a beach while I croak out"Love Is A Battlefield." Not to say I haven't considered those options for the wedding, but I'll probably stick to one of the lovely standards suggested by the jazz band.

I'm thrilled about this. And by thrilled I mean really happy and honored with a side order of panic attack.

Perfect

2007-08-23T08:28:00.000-07:00

From Overheard in New York:

How Can I Help with Your Typical Teenage Problems?

Teen: Are you there, God?

Techie in catwalks: Is that you, Margaret?

--Sheepshead Bay

Overheard by: Ilysse

http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/archives/011373.html

#14: My fantasy/science fiction wish

2007-08-23T08:07:00.000-07:00

In the realm of the more wacky wishes, here's what I really want.

I want all local and state governments to hire geniuses and empaths. People who are so smart they can see 10 steps down the road what could happen and people who are so sensitive they can see 10 steps down the road what could happen. You know, the people nobody ever listens to. People who can look outside of how things are done to how things get done.

In the investigation around the recent fire at the condemned Deutsche Bank building, where two NYC firefighters were killed, it was discovered that the company hired to demolish the building had never demolished an environmentally or structurally hazardous building before, which could be why they still hadn't demolished the thing a year after winning the contract. In addition, the building has been more or less sitting there since 9/11 because no one remotely legitimate wanted to touch the project.

Hmm. Condemned building, sitting there for six years, harmed in 9/11.

I wish I could have taken the damn thing down myself. I wish the rules had gone out the window and a creative solution was reached.

I wonder how many more problems like this are sitting out on the street.

Rescinding

2007-08-22T09:31:00.000-07:00

My friend's dog was badly injured last night by another dog so I'm taking back my previous request and making this one -- please help him recover.

Lucky #13: A New Myth

2007-08-22T08:21:00.000-07:00

I am a big fan of the myth of Orestes. There are many versions of it since it has been translated and retold many times.

The baisc jist of it is this: Orestes' blood line has been cursed for many generations. Orestes' mother and uncle murder his father. Appollo shows up, all golden and glowy and pissed, and tells Orestes he has to avenge his father and make things right. Orestes is tormented by this, but he does it.

You'd think he's free now, but ohhhhh no. The Furies show up and torment him for what he has done and don't exactly accept his explanation. There is a trial and the jury is split right down the middle. Athena shows up and casts the deciding vote, showing mercy and setting Orestes free.

I love the basic idea here, that we have the power to end our curses, but don't think for a minute it's going to be easy. Orestes' "hero's journey" is not simply revenge, but ending the madness and illness that has plagued his family for generations, and in so doing, he frees himself to write the story of his own life.

But I think, as of now, I don't need this myth any more. If you'd like it, you can have it.

I'd like a new myth.