EEEEEK!!!

Have you noticed how practically no one posts unforgiving photos of themselves on their blogs? I'm guilty of it too...after all, who wants a grotesque snap of themselves floating around the internet? But this is how I feel today -- kind of Quasimodo-ish. I made the mistake of buying a magnifying mirror at Bed Bath and Beyond today, and I was knocked for a loop at how old I am.  Why didn't my best friends ever tell me that my pores are the size of moon craters, that I probably need a full facial wax and that my jawline needs to be shored up asap before it collapses on my chest? The rest of the day was given over to rigorous magnification of the rest of my faults. Why am I home alone on a Saturday night? Why is my horoscope so disheartening? Why does my friend's dog hate me? Why don't I have a New Brilliant Idea? What if I die and no one is on the other side to meet me (yes, I actually worry about things like this--doesn't everyone?). I love what Duke Ellington said about how he took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues, and I'm trying to remind myself to do the same. My pores are huge, my talent small, but why not write the blues instead of wallowing in them? 

Storm Clouds

I love rain at night, rain anytime I'm safe inside the house, or at least have the illusion of being safe. I think so often of how lucky I am to have a house, snug and small and wrapped around me like a hug. The house I grew up in was full of discord and loud voices and sharp corners. The houses I lived in when I was married were far from safe because I never knew when the atmosphere would turn violent. I tried to take up as little room as possible, call as little atttention to myself as possible. When I was a single mother, I was always calculating how to keep the roof over our heads intact--paying the rent the very last day it was due, getting to the electric company to make a middle of the night payment. Shutting the door at night and knowing I'd kept it together one more day was sometimes a major accomplishment. So home is unreasonably important to me. Maybe it's why I'm not very daring when it comes to travel...I set off as if I will never see home again, with a resignation that would be comical if it weren't so limiting. Once I'm on the road, I'm better and I can understand why it's important to leave home like Mole in The Wind in the Willows to see the world. But oh how I love the sound of rain on my own roof, no matter how temporal or transient that shelter may be.

After Dark

I bought this print by Olivia Jeffries on etsy.com. It's called "In the Dark, Do I Exist?" and it reminds me of the time after I turn off the lights at night right before I fall asleep. That's when all the scary questions sometimes rise out of the dark corners of my mind:

* what if I die in my sleep?

* what's the point of my life?

* what have I missed?

* what have I made that means anything?

Those are the kinds of thoughts that make me feel as if the scaffolding I've built up to give my life purpose has collapsed like little matchsticks and I am a frail thing floating alone in space and time. Which of course we all are. I know those are questions that we all have to grapple with, but the flashlight gives me hope that I can find my way out of the black holes that fear always has lying in wait for me.

Help!

I just bought a book called Only 127 Things You Need: A Guide to Life's Essentials. I was very hopeful that it would provide an organizational structure for my chaotic fucked up daily life (as demonstrated in this excerpt from my so-called planner). Instead it includes things like a firm mattress, a good black dress and preventive medicine. That's IT? Really...that's it? The Magic 8 Ball would have worked just as well. So I'm starting a list of NONessentials that make me happy even when my life is falling apart. Feel free to chime in with contributions:

1. Rosa Faia Active bra

2. free wifi

3. Chlorox wipes

4. remote control ceiling fans

5. Rotring pens

6. Baggu bags

7. Renova

8. Cellex C High Potency Serum

9. GUM floss sticks

10. Woolford tights

11. Moleskine notebooks--duh

12. Gel pens

13. iPhone

14. PicPads

15. Nordic Naturals fish oil

16. making Gocco prints

17. screening calls

18. Design for Mankind ezines

19. Julie Hewett lip balm

20. New MOO cards

21. Bigfoot--I know you're out there.

22. watching banana tree leaves unfurl

23. gardenias

24. "Ithaka" by Cavafy

25. naan bread

Ouch!

This weekend I was invited to a cocktail party in honor of two cutting edge artists from somewhere hip and out of town. I was nervous because it's a crowd I don't know well and I struggle to make small talk when I'm feeling self-conscious. I was so nervous that I only had a little glass of Italian prosecco punch and I didn't dare eat the finger food because I knew it would end up on my shirt or stuck between my teeth. But I went as a favor to the hostess and stayed an hour and a half, sometimes hovering in the corner, I admit. Unfortunately, on my way out, the gate hit me in the ass and I went flying into the middle of the road. And then I slid on my knees across the asphalt. I'm pretty sure my skirt went up around my waist. My knees were a torn and bloody mess, but my ego was even more damaged.  I don't think anyone saw it happen because no one came running to my aid, thank god. I have a dread of getting sick or injured in a public place and calling attention to myself as a helpless human. I limped to my car trying to affect an insouciant air, as if I always make my exit in that dramatic a fashion. I've gone through 2 boxes of bandaids since Saturday, and my gouged and bloody knees are probably the closest I'll ever get to being on the cutting edge. But I learned that when you fall on your face, most people aren't even looking. 

The Night Cafe

This photo reminds me of Edward Hopper's Nighthawks, and it makes me remember how much I enjoy late-night conversation over bottles of wine, being convinced that you are changing the world or at the very least, changing your life, as you volley ideas and just-plain- gossip back and forth. A night when you overcome the distance between being human. The kind of evening when you decide to go to Paris for the first time even though you should be putting that money in  your 401k or when you vow to go home and start a novel or quit your job or learn to knit. A night when all the elements click together like the solution to a Rubik's Cube and in retrospect you say, "remember when we played scrabble in the  bar on Halloween and the guy was hitting his girlfriend and we called the cops but they let them go home together," or "remember when we decided to go skinny dipping instead of going home and there was phosphorescence in the ocean and it was clinging to our arms?" It's nothing you can plan and everything you want a night out to be. It's an after-hours miracle.

Go With the Flow

See me reflected in the faucet. See me trying to control the flow. I spent the day with my son and his ex (third) wife who he is back together with for the third time. I want to wash my hands of the continuing, chaotic drama that is their life, but instead I find myself relaxing into the fact that it is their drama, not mine. I can enjoy my grandchildren, have earnest heart-to-hearts with my (ex) daughter in law, appreciate my son's dry wit and let them GPS their own lives. Of course I want guarantees: Please don't hurt my son again; Please don't screw up your kids again; Please don't promise her more than you can deliver. But in the end, I have to let go and let flow. I don't have to be drawn into a guilt trip down memory lane about my faults as a mom (oh so many!) or feel drawn to give them advice (Are you sure it's the right thing to get back together?). I can just ... enjoy. Going with the flow sometimes feels like giving up or giving in, but sometimes, like tonight, feels simply like giving. My time, my presence, my un-judgment.

If Lost, Return to...

me...but who am I? I have a "real" first name that I never use because it's a boy's name and my mother never intended it to be used. I have a middle name which was picked out of a medical journal along with my first name. I have a nickname, which my mother wanted to call me all along, but thought she needed a "real" name to derive it from. I also have a hard-to-pronounce maiden name (what a friend refers to as her slave name). And I have/use my ex-husband's last name, which means nothing to me except that my kids also have that last name. I've noticed that rich people sometimes have more than 3 names because they have more houses I guess. And the girls often have their mothers' last names as first names, because I reckon it's something the lower orders don't do. My little brother only has a first and last name--no middle name--I think our mother just got tired of it all. Tired of having babies, tired of our father, tired of trying. I mean, who couldn't come up with a middle name? You have to be really really tired. I don't think my maiden name or my married name say anything about who I am. But I've noticed that when I fall madly, dramatically in love with a man, I always think about taking their last name. I hate it that I'm such a patriarchal pushover, even subliminally. I doubt those guys think about taking my maiden name. Because we only have other men's names, and what guy wants to take another guy's name? It would weaken them. So why doesn't it weaken women to borrow a name?

Forever

I love the idea of Forever. I have been buying Forever stamps with the same manic frenzy as a trader in Dutch tulips or the collectors of those ill-fated Beanie Babies. I have BOOKS of Forever stamps in my desk, and somehow they have become all bound up in my fears about my own mortality, the volatility of my 401K plan and relationships that had an expiration date. Oh, Forever! Last night I talked to my my high school boyfriend of way too many years ago (yes, I know I vowed to let go, but Forever was on my mind). He has been through two wives and one child, and I have been through one husband, an encyclopedia salesman (may he ever be nameless), too many Loves of My Life to count, three long-term monogamous relationships, 5 children and one magazine (the Real Love of My Life). I know it won't work when I'm on the phone with him, but I want to go back to the year I was 14 and he was 16 and it was Forever. He does too, but I know when/if we meet, that one dreamy Forever fantasy will be smashed. Because he is looking for my 14-year-old body, and I'm looking for his Platonic shoulder to lean on and neither of us wants to look at the war wounds we've incurred in the years between. If only we could realize that those are the only the interesting bits. 

Waiting

I'm flying to Tampa to be on a tv show today and even though it's just an overnight trip filled with work, I'm looking forward to being on a flight path. I hate the stale germ-filled air and sterile bland food in airports as much as anyone, but sometimes I can get myself completely divorced from the expectations waiting on either end of the trip. And then I love the feeling of being weightless, anonymous, invisible. It's as if the airport becomes a blank slate for my own thoughts and then I can free-associate, read, write in my notebooks, let my mind wander above all the white noise in the background. Of course this doesn't work when flights are delayed or cancelled, security lines are snaking down the halls or I'm dreading where I'm going. If it did, my erratic meditation would be paying off.

Visitations

I live in biking distance of a beautiful beach, marshland and the intracoastal waterway, where startling sunsets are standard operating procedure. I try not to take the beauty for granted and to remember how lucky I am to have free access to the kind of gorgeousness that is usually reserved for the very rich and privileged. Because it opens my heart up to visitations when life tells me to keep the hatches battened. Tonight I'm aching for my grandson who can't find his true north; for my daughter who wants to help and is helpless; for not showing my mother enough love when she was alive; for my own bouts of deep loneliness that come when I least expect it. But still I'm hopeful.