Polaroid Love

I took this Polaroid one spring or fall--I can't even remember now. What I do remember: that there was a bird singing in the branches right before I took the photo; that I was drinking a Bloody Mary with friends at a restaurant that serves the best French fries in town; that I didn't know then that my friend would marry a wonderful someone sitting at that table with us and move to England; that life would fling us out in so many different directions; that we would grow older; that we would never be together again in quite that way. When I look at this photo on my mood board, I can feel the crunch of celery,  taste the horseradish, the late afternoon sunlight, the love. Snap, snap, snap...put it in the album of ordinary moments that make up a life. 

Slow Food

When I was a child growing up in Kentucky, I ate tomatoes almost straight from the vine, and "love apples" are still my favorite fruit/vegetable. My grandparents had a wooden cistern top where they put all the tomatoes they picked to ripen. They were every permutation of pink, red and yellow, and the sweet citrusy taste of  their sunlit flesh was summer incarnate to me. We ate them with every meal, and even now scrambled eggs seem naked without a tomato slice. This year I'm growing my own with great trepidation, because I kill everything I plant except bamboo trees. I ordered a Tomato Success Kit which comes with everything but the plants, followed all the instructions and have been tiptoeing around them as they shoot up like the plant in the Little Shop of Horrors. It was all so Whole Foodishly perfect looking. But today I tackled the double-decker cages, put them together backwards, cursed, took them apart, put them back together wrong again, got out the wine, read the directions, counted the parts, tried again. No luck. Finally I found some red and yellow plastic ties mean to bundle computer cables together, jammed the cages into the planters, bootstrapped them with the ties and poured a big glass of wine to celebrate even though they are decidedly cobbled together. They look like hillbilly tomatoes growing in my front yard--all I need is a refrigerator on my front porch to complete the picture--but I like to think I'm returning to my roots in more ways than one. 

Soul Protection Program

Sometimes I wish I had a safe place to stash my soul when I leave for work. Because in this economy, it's tough out there for a soul. How do I keep myself from becoming calloused or hopeless when people I work with are laid off and left hanging out to dry? What happens when my creativity gets a dry mouth and a bad case of the Dreads in the middle of a project? And how do I plunge wholeheartedly into a brainstorming session when I feel brain dead from so much uncertainty and flux? I want my soul to survive hard times without going into hiding or disguising its true voice, but it's an everyday struggle and I'm constantly questioning my decisions and choices. And sometimes, the only answer I come up with is "ice-cream".  

Dream Screen

I have friends who take classes to learn how analyze their dreams, but I have no interest in listening to others' dreams or telling my own.  I usually remember only scraps of a dream anyway, enough to make me feel like I'd been out all night doing something vaguely disreputable. Granted, I do have the occasional pleasant dream in which I have sex with a stranger, and it's good. Or I run into someone dead who I loved deeply, and that's good, too. And a couple of times, I've even written a short story/film with a real plot in my dream (I swear!) that makes me laugh when I wake up. But mostly my brain during sleep is like a toddler coming home from school and babbling on and on and on, getting facts and names and events all mixed up and making stuff up as it goes along until none of it makes the least bit of sense. And when that's not happening, my dreamtime is spent running from tsunami, falling off the same damn bridge I always fall off, being late for exams I finished decades ago, breaking up with a man I haven't seen since 1985, walking around naked in public and being hopelessly lost in my creepy old elementary school basement, which still makes walk-on appearances in my sleep despite having been torn down ages ago. After one of those nights, I wake up wondering why sleep can't just be a nice white sheet of unknowing instead of the equivalent of going on a bender in the alien-filled Star Wars Cantina. Sometimes I have to wake up and give my soul time to find its way back to my body after all that nocturnal tomfoolery, and then of course, it wants me to get a pen and paper and write down its exploits. Which might read something like, "A dog was trying to talk to me and then Professor Murphy said lets get married after we find the baby I left in the attic and we crawled up there on a conveyor belt but there was an airplane and Professor Murphy made me get on it and then it was a bus but no one would let me sit down and then we back down the conveyor belt and the dog was sad...." Maybe my shrink can spin some gold out of that straw, but I just hope I can keep a straight face when I read it out loud.

Opening, Not Falling Apart

I'm a worrier. I see the sky falling instead of realizing it's just a storm moving through. Too often I assume a mental fetal position instead of  rising up into Warrior One. I sometimes gnaw on my fingers until they bleed--21st century workplace stigmata brought on by fear of being dispensable. But today I had breakfast with some out-of-town friends who not only gave me a jolt of their creative electricity but also passed on some of the best advice I've heard in a long time: "Things are not falling apart--they're opening up for you. Just don't get freaked out by the cracking sound." I felt that inner click you get when things/ideas/whispers fall into place in your mind. Click, click, click--like moving the tiles around on one of those old-school games I used to give my kids to play with. That satisfying physical click when all the signs align properly and you recognize the path, don't know where it's going, but know there are other people traveling with you.

Secrets

* Traveling unravels me. I never get any better at it. I hate being a nomad and living out of a suitcase, and it irritates me to be so boring. I have to go to Burning Man just to beat the banal out of my personality.

* I know I'm lucky to have a job even though we've all had to take paycuts, but I can't help missing cashmere.

* I know pay cuts are necessary, but I get tired of being stoic about it. Sometimes I want to be a bitch about it instead.

* George Clooney leaves me cold. I'm kind of embarrassed by that.

* I thought the Sex and the City movie was stunningly boring. All those years of angst and soul searching and the best answer they could come up with was "happy ever after"?

* I'm sick of the Obamas' dog. They should name it Anticlimax.

* I'm worried I'll never have another idea as good as the magazine I started and sold.

* I'm always drawn to a Mickey Rourke, never a Mister Nice.

* Sometimes when I'm in therapy I think about what each minute is costing me.

* I hate hearing other people's dreams and yet deep down I always think mine are oh so interesting.

* I've noticed that I've started leaving the periods off the end of sentences when I send emails. I think it's because I feel so exhausted by technology and work lately. It's my digital version of saying "whatever."

* Postmenopausal zest is a huge scam. All the women I know who are over 50 are exhausted...but no one wants to admit it. Because we're supposed to be perky until we die.

* Sometimes I cry in yoga. Sometimes it's because I think I won't get out of the class alive. Warrior One busts my ass every time no matter how many times I've done it.

* I love the Real Housewives of NY, CA and Atlanta, and I don't care what that says about me. However, I may have reached my threshold with NJ.

Be Surprised

What's around the bend? I always think I know what to expect, and yet I hear so many stories of how lives can change utterly and irrevocably without warning. The lottery ticket that pays off, the lump that isn't malignant, the friend who turns into the love of your life. I forget that life is still magical no matter how mundane I try to make it. By underestimating it, by taking it for granted, by turning down the volume, by going through the motions, by being too grownup to play with it, by being all New Yorky about it, by not learning how to swim in it, by not answering the phone when it calls. No more screening.

Double Happiness

The azalea bush I thought was dying not only survived the winter but bloomed exuberantly this week. The Lady Banksia rose bush not finally started to climb the gate and--surprise--the blossoms turned out to be as white as a wedding bouquet. I walked twice as long as I intended and ate half of what I could have. My money went farther at the grocery and Siggi's Icelandic yogurt is back in stock at Whole Foods. I just noticed I have an extra box of Virgin of Guadalupe matches and two of her candles. I earned double AMEX points on my Barnes & Noble purchase and I bought two heirloom tomato plants today. It's a Double Happiness Day...but every day would probably qualify if I paid more attention. Here's wishing you have one, too.