Changes

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

Are You There, Margaret?

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!

The Email I Sent This Morning

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.

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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

The (Overwrought, Overdiscussed) Butterfly Effect

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.

Question #1: Universe, please help me figure out a name for my blog

Last night I started thinking about an experience I had a couple of weeks ago. I was missing a friend of mine who was killed seven years ago. The anniversary of his death is coming up next week. On my way to a bar, I looked up at the sky, told him I still missed him, and that I needed some help.

Within a few hours I was chatting with a few other bar patrons about travel and the education system and how to start your own business. One of the guys I was talking to -- handsome, charming, well-traveled, successful -- told me that his best friend from college had died in his arms. Soon after the bar owner mentioned to me that his father was dying.

It helped me. Those two little comments helped me so much. I thought, everyone lives with grief, everyone deals with death, everyone has some space in their life that they are still working through, no matter how perfect other things may look. And we can all help eachother. And I'll always miss my friend, and I think he helped me.

Then I wondered what would happen if I just started asking for answers or help or a sign or what have you every day and blogging about what happened.

I asked the universe for a name for the blog, because I suck at naming things. Then this came into my head -- Are You There God? It's Me, Blogging.

I went into the livingroom, where my husband was watching something with guns on tv with his headphones on and his other wife (our cat) in his lap. I told him the idea.

"That's great. Why wouldn't you call it that?"

"Because I love Judy Blume and without Forever I probably never would have found my clitoris, and I can't imagine anything more depressing than the woman who helped me find my clitoris issuing a cease and desist order for my blog about trying to find meaning in the universe."

My husband made several other really good suggestions, like Blogprints in the Sand, but they all sounded more Jesusy than I would like and they didn't hit the mark. He assured me he would have eventually found my clitoris even if I'd never read Forever. He gave me some great advice on web searching similar titles and then basically said, come on, you know that's the name.

Question answered. See you soon.