Please visit elephant journal to view my article, Surviving the Cell with Light.
I appreciate all of your support and hope you enjoy the short prose-ful moment.
Why We Do What We Do Sometimes: Compartmentalization and Fantasy
credit: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com
There are many reasons for infidelity, such as revenge, boredom, the thrill of sexual novelty, sexual addiction. But experts say that a large majority of the time, motivations differ by gender, with men searching for more sex or attention, and women looking to fill an emotional void…. Women tend to have an emotional connection with their lover and are more likely to have an affair because of loneliness.
I googled random words that popped into my head yesterday, only a few that I recall now that I have wandered far from my original search–crisis, conscience, fidelity, causes–and found the above webmd answer to the inquiry, “Why do women (and men) cheat?” Having researched infidelity endlessly in the last six months, I was pretty sure I knew the answers. Yet, as each new search yields slightly different results, I keep returning to the inexhaustible topic.
Paraphrasing here, despite feeling guilty and regardless of how “the other woman” compares to their wives, men cheat when emotionally dissatisfied, i.e., feeling under appreciated or unloved, according to Dr. Gary Newman’s study of 200 avowed strayers. The proposed solution: Wife, get out of yourself and pay attention.
The article teases out the commonplace and dresses it up with officialdom in a reader-friendly version of the study findings. There are few details of the subjects, questions or demographics. But do we need a study to come to the banal conclusion that marriage breeds contemptuous familiarity, human nature tends toward the unconscious and ungrateful, and daily presence and gratitude is the answer to so many of the questions?
Presence:
How can I be kind to my husband and show him how much he means to me with the daily do’s grinding me into the ground: work, kids, parents and the myriad other balls I juggle to keep it all going, each taking huge chunks out of my time, patience and happiness on most days?
Simple, I remark to myself. Stop, breathe and re-set. Do the enormous work of superhuman strength to take ten minutes out of the day for a gratitude inventory: people who care deeply for my wellbeing, who would suffer horribly if I died or fell gravely ill, even if it doesn’t seem like that most days. So that when I mindlessly knee-jerk react to my husband’s insignificant screw up, I can at least apologize and salve the wound. And just maybe avoid the knife altogether next time. It takes practice.
So the next time he goes out to get 2% milk and gets nonfat instead without an inkling that his kids would never drink that, I refrain from laying into him, complaining how clueless and checked out he is. No one wants to feel dumb. No one reacts well to unkindness. I marvel at how I give strangers on the street more kindness than I give my people sometimes. Just unjust.
But kindness is not a panacea and presence is not easy. Some cheat even if they feel good about and are well-treated by their spouses–to what degree I have no idea, but articles abound with studies attesting to infidelity even among avowed happy homers. People stray for as many reasons as there are people, my weak math brain speculates, as each individual comes to a relationship with his or her own nature and nurture.
Compartmentalization:
The human mind copes with conflict in unseen ways. Mindfulness–a condition for catching self-deception in action–is tricky when it comes to danger triggers and survival mechanisms. I have observed that clandestine relationships survive largely on compartmentalization, which is only one tool in the human arsenal of coping skills.
We parcelize ourselves in order to make sense of what we do. For instance, I have been known to be an overly conscientious mother and daughter but a neglectful wife, at times, and I rationalize that deficit by focusing on the surplus.
Likewise, a man in a strained or dying marriage may justify an affair by weighing his acclaimed superior fathering and provider skills against the undeniably less superior husband skills attested to by his wife and his own admission. But since he is a good father and provider, he believes he compensates for the few failings as his wife’s lover, friend or supporter. She gets her due, so he should get his.
That is just one example of guilt-alleviating separation that keeps folks moving along through their days and in their marriages until either or both terminate. But it’s not just for cheaters. Many sites I consulted on the subject such as Psychology Today and Webmd, cite professions that necessitate compartmentalization. Soldiers, for example, seal up the killing to survive the mental anguish.
Compartmentalization is often survival, no doubt, especially for those with high powered jobs widely responsible for others’ safety like police officers, doctors and lawyers. A doctor could not work without burying the constant threat of lives lost at her hands.
To a lesser or greater extent, we survive emotional infidelity by splitting ourselves into bad and good, justified and unjustified. This disassociation answers the question of how she could fuck her lover each afternoon and then spoon her husband to sleep each night. But is she aware of the division?
Fantasy:
We all come to situations as we are. No kidding. Some of us are, and I do include myself, if not outright addicted then highly reliant upon fantasy to prop us up through hard times or as the go-to coping mechanism. I know I dealt with teenage loneliness in fantasy. It gave me the endorphin boost I was later addicted to in distance running.
If I imagined that someone to whom I was attracted also found me attractive as THE object of desire, I smoked those elaborate imagined scenarios with that special someone who found me irresistibly witty and charming, and so, so deep. I would inject the role of lover in love songs, succumbing to the bitter-sweet surrender of being someone else, somewhere else for a while. It was release.
Some people use love to obtain that high even into adulthood. While life sped up for me so much that I lost the luxury of hours mulling in my imagination–school, work, real relationships that were not so ideal and took a lot of rolled-up-sleeves ugly work–I still had spells of disappointment or a generalized ennui that was relieved by lapsing into fantasy.
Specifically, when I found myself in a restricted relationship by borders of time, emotional commitment and opportunity–mistressing, for example–fantasy played a huge part for me and my partner. It sustained the relationship and certainly heightened the sex.
Intention:
There is an interesting thing about daydreaming and fantasy: Sometimes it works to manifest what you want in life, and other times it keeps you stuck in your life. What makes the difference?
The difference has to do with your intent. Are you consciously imagining what you want from a place of inner connection and joy, or are you using daydreaming and fantasy to avoid your feelings and avoid reality?
When you consciously and joyously imagine what you want, you are participating in creating what you want. However, when you use fantasy and daydreaming as a way of avoiding your feelings and avoiding the reality of a situation, you are using them addictively.
So says Margaret Paul, PhD in “Addiction to Fantasy and Daydreaming.” I agree. Intention is everything–almost. Fantasy spans the poles of medicine to poison.
When abseiling the steep slopes of rocky terrain–deep, existential loneliness or disappointed dissatisfaction in a life partner choice–unhealed lovers or spouses find respite in the life-supporting ropes of daydreams or fantasies of another’s possible meaning or potential in some improbable space and time of the imagination.
This human tendency, whether for avoidance or enhancement, as addiction or inspiration, no matter how dilatory to healing a relationship or the self, was certainly pronounced in those who made me mistress. That is one of the things all lovers had in common: being in love with feeling love and their projected ideal–in me. And I did the same for them.
My illicit loves were all drenched in rich fantasy, which has made each relationship both an irresistible draw and a resounding alarm. While I heard all I desired, all the tailored words and acts calculated to keep me–or my image–I placed a padded, porous cotton circle of safety around my heart.
Because in time I knew that I knew. Looking at myself from the outside as if in a metafictional moment, an actor slow turning away from the scene to wink at the unseen, unknown audience, I broke the fourth wall. I toggled the strutting and fretting between falling in and out of my heart’s desire in dangerous liaisons, which accounted for my enjoyment and sanity within them.
Of course, there is living in the moment and then there is all the rest. When I was with my lover–in that room or car or restaurant–looking into the eyes of the object of my reciprocated desire at that precise moment, there was only the thickness of amniotic warmth, need and desire in perfect balance.
And the other pole–fear, longing, insecurity, conscience, dissatisfaction–drifted in and out of the majority of hours spent without my lover, sometimes striking me with a punch and other times with contemplative concern.
Most times, however, I just went through my days attending to what was directly in sight. I still do. And hope that sleep, my most beloved and ardent lover of all, returns a new day with answers, insight, solution or simply more of the same as all the other yesterdays–practice.
Presence, intention and study are disciplines that enable me to dip into the copiousness of heart pumping inflow and outpouring. Some days it is easier than others to see myself and others with incisive clarity. Others, I fog over.
However, the intention is always there. Struggling with the practice, sweating the line of possibility and decency, creation and destruction, I awaken each day resolved to do the best I can even as I want to do better than that. And so I get up, falter in a slight sway, and get on with the business of another first step to somewhere.
First and Lasting Love
Social Science Says Lasting Relationships Come Down to 2 Basic Traits, one of today’s The Mind Unleashed selections gave me a warm feel-good flicker of recognition in resonating truth, though so simple and time-worn as to appear trite. The article”s review of a study on long-term marriages concludes:
In most marriages, levels of satisfaction drop dramatically within the first few years together. But among couples who not only endure, but live happily together for years and years, the spirit of kindness and generosity guides them forward.
Sure, kindness and generosity make the world go round, so this makes sense. Now, I cannot say that I have always remembered this prescript in my own lengthy marriage, but the daily practice is important to better the odds of not forgetting.
If I were to give my daughters advice on choosing a life partner, I would tell them to love someone kind and generous–to them as well as others. Hopefully, my daughters won’t need such advice in earnest for a while, though they inch along nearing that precipice of desire.
My soon-to-be-19 year old daughter is falling in love, probably for the first time. I assume both in light of her uncharacteristic giddiness over today’s “date” and the missing catalyst to such annoying behavior previously. Unlike her mother, she is starting out on her love life journey later. She is probably better off for that.
The challenge for me, for any mother, is what to say when. Does today’s second date provide the opportunity to donate wisdom, the benefit of my years? Unsolicited, yes, but shouldn’t a mother do that for her charges, give without being asked or even being appreciated for the offering? So many hats a mother wears, teacher is certainly one of them. A teacher instructs and shares, gracing her students with the benefit of her education, training and life experience, whether the course is English or Accounting and whether the education is received and utilized.
I took the chance, risked rebuff and spoke. An “in” presented itself after a simple line of questioning of plans and whereabouts.
She answered, “I told him I like surprises, so he is picking me up and taking me somewhere. He hasn’t said where.”
“So, he seems interested in you, since he paid attention to what you said you liked.”
“Yeah, I can’t figure out why he does,” she shrugged with a cynical but glowing smile.
I bristled at her statement and wondered why it had to be this way for young women, skepticism and self-doubt, insecurity. Was she being coy or humble? Considering her audience, she didn’t need to make a showing of such virtues or strategies. The mother bear in me overreacted immediately.
“Don’t say that. It’s demeaning to someone I love.”
But then, backing off, I monologued a bit, and she was gracious to listen. I pondered before her attentive eyes: Is it possible for us to develop a healthy love at all with what we are fed by our parents, our culture? I explained to her what my mother told me about sex: Don’t do it until you’re married, boys are only after one thing, and your life will be ruined if you get pregnant. Did I communicate that same defensive posture to her?
I told her the early impression of sex I inherited, one I wrote about on this blog before: women are fortresses and men the invading armies. While the aim of it–precaution–is sensible, especially to young girls of little reference or information from ages 10 to 17, the attitude engendered is one of suspicion and so sex and love are regarded as dangerous.
“The trick is somehow to balance self-preservation and good sense with wonder and openness to some of the best of what life offers. That takes believing in your own worth and risking hurt in exchange for an opportunity to experience euphoric connection with another.”
That was the best I could offer. Fortunately, she is a solidly emerging woman, smart and selective. She has often chosen to be alone rather than be with others who add too little to her life or too much, those toxic relations. But this is new territory, one that tests the mettle of anyone’s constitution to keep one’s head and heart in proper alignment. Generally it takes the burns and bruises of time to calibrate the right give and take, how much and what to sacrifice in exchange for what is gained: the typical cost-benefit analysis applied to almost everything.
She is embarking on this heart adventure much older than I entered the love arena. I was always ready to jump into love and sensuality often and early. My first kiss was in first grade by Artie with the big ears, and even then I felt special. By fourth grade, I developed breasts and the teasing attention of boys. By sixth grade, I longed for the attention of the popular girls who had boys’ silly antics surrounding them and landed my first kiss with a spin the bottle birthday party.
The melt into soft fleshy lips and the scent of another’s closeness, was all it was cracked up to be in my imagination infused with popular lore and far too many books.
By 7th grade, I was going steady with a French kisser and it wasn’t long after that sex entered my life–as both war and weapon. A painful void of information with which to frame a comfortable sexual identity invaded my vision of love up to that time, one concocted from my parents, television, books, songs and neighbors, and fractured it.
Desire and the lure of divinely natural impulses battled fear of heartbreak, exploitation and pregnancy. Sex and love became divorced. And I think it stayed that way for far too many years until I navigated enough relationships to negotiate a re-integration–refashioned and reformulated.
I found that sex and love could be a continuum and an extension of one another. But, ultimately, all winds back to me, my understanding of self in conjunction with others. And not just self-love=ability to love others. That formula glosses over the details, the delicate balance of a hundred or more moving parts, only a few of the major ones being acceptance of humans as largely immutable, education through books and life experience to understand the human condition through behaviors and underlying motivations, and a brave belief in and awe of mystery.
With that in mind, I gave her my best advice–leap, but look both ways before doing so and keep your eyes and ears open. Whether that means something to her or not, I may never know. I still think, however, she has a leg up on me in having waited longer, farther down the life timeline for more brain, body and heart growth. She will have had a longer time living with herself and so a better sense to deal with inevitable disappointment and hurt.
But today will be about exploring and the exhilaration of learning about another–and herself. There will be assessments, inventory taking, chuckling, maybe hard laughs, anxiety and curiosity. There will be self-doubt toying with confidence. The heart will burn apace in the heat of desire and the speed of wonder. And possibly the deep surrender to the womb of the unknown.
It makes me hold my breath and bite my nails for the possibility of the story’s unfolding. I know for certain I will be there for the fallout, great or small. Such is a mother’s love of a daughter, which is nothing if not a devoted practice of kindness and generosity.
Sex Through the Ages
This week I came upon two features that spanned the age spectrum of the sex timeline. One was by an older teenager complaining, My Boyfriend Broke up with me Because I Wanted to Have Sex in The Huffington Post and the other a podcast by Senior Sexpert (Don’t you just love that jargony term?) Joan Price on polyweekly.com.
The obvious draw to the first title is its immediate incongruence. Isn’t it usually the other way around–girl breaks up with boyfriend because HE wants sex? That is the stereotype of sexual lore in American culture anyhow. But the writer, Nadia, has this to say about stereotyping:
Let me start my rant by saying stereotypes suck. We all know it, but we still take part in it, even parents. Mine told me to be careful when I started dating and not to feel pressured by all the sex-crazy boys. Little did they know, the very things they told me to make me feel “not pressured” fueled the fire of inappropriate generalizations and damaged concepts in society.
She is referring here to the pressure her boyfriend felt from peers and his brother to “go for it”, which caused the break up; he felt he was not ready.
This passage in particular struck me not so much for the irony as much as my own position sandwiched between caretaker of two teenage daughters, one of whom is 18, and of aging parents, one of whom told me the same about pressure and boys from early on in my youth. If my daughters were amenable to a frank discussion about sex (they are not–“Mom, please, no”), I often think what I would tell them. And I yearn to tell them.
I have so much insight to offer them from my own experience as someone who explored sex in my teens despite hearing the age old warnings and typecasting that all boys want is to get in your pants. While that may be true for most teenage boys, saying so is merely a dismissive attempt at preventing pregnancy, a parent doing the minimum to safeguard her daughter.
Posturing boys and girls as enemies or boys as invading armies and girls as defenders of the fortress, sex is framed from a vacuum of reliable information that is only later legitimately informed through actual intimate experience, and therefore distorted. Sex in this opaque light then becomes more a vehicle for rebelliousness than to satiate curiosity and hormonal insistence. It is fraught with youthful daring, irresistible attraction and yet unrealized trepidation.
My mother’s intention was to protect me, shortcutted without giving me the entire picture of sex, through an acquired perspective that comes with time and growth in love and familiarity. Looking now at her frail remnants of a former warrior woman and wife, I realize she did not have the information herself, having married knocked up at 16 by the first or second boy she ever knew. What could she offer her four daughters about sex?
To add to my mother’s advice to fend off the boys and save it for marriage, I grew up in the heat of Second Wave Feminism when of necessity women were also framing sex and womanhood against men and their patriarchy. Capitulating to sex seemed to me like ceding the war. And at the same time, the 70s of my teen years were also a time of free love and sex, a hangover from the 60s revolution.
The cluster of contradictions did nothing for my sex life. I rebelled, had sex young, had lousy sex, felt lousy about sex, like I had unwittingly given up something valuable of myself to the undeserving, all of which led me to the conclusion Nadia came to:
Sex is just sex. It’s an act we perform. Whether this performance is considered sacred or fun, whether you wait until marriage or do it every night, whether you do it as a profession or some kind of proclamation to God doesn’t matter. If it’s your body, your mind, it’s your choice. No one else matters. So if you’re confused about this subject or worried about the choices you make, I’m on your side. Regardless of how you decide, if you make the best decision for you, I’m proud of that. You should be proud of that as well.
While the obvious is true–sex is just sex–the obvious is also not true. Sex is an act, but it is also so much more. It is a reflection of self, an identity, a connection, an oasis, a weapon, a tool, a livelihood, a happiness, an expression, a biological urge, and much, much more. To say that no one else matters in your choice is to deny that we all grow up with voices in our head that become us, parentally and culturally derived. Our attitudes about sex–a force so powerfully destructive or healing–are derived from a variety of sources and so are complex and not wholly our own until fermented experience kicks in to weed out the garbage.
And it changes in time. Sex at 18 is far different from sex at 68. Take it from Joan Price, who enjoys sex in her 70s and is comfortable with herself–her body, her ability to love and her age. The benefit of good physical and mental health cannot be undervalued. Sexual enjoyment is holistically entwined with physical and mental health. I know that once I felt at ease with and knowledgeable about my body correspondingly with accepting others as theirs, I enjoyed sex a whole lot more than in the confusion of unsorted out slogans and untested values of others.
If I could give my teens advice they would listen to, I would tell them to learn their own bodies so well that they do not have to rely on anyone else to figure out how to pleasure them. In that way, they could be both informed and empowered as well as compassionate by helping their partners. Bodies do come with instruction manuals–owners’. Sex, at its best, is sharing in the heights of intimate pleasure.
I would also teach them to consider their own boundaries, where they end and the next person begins, so as not to lose themselves within the borders of someone else’s need and expectation. Sex is a meeting of minds and bodies in mutual satisfaction. Though sometimes, it is a purely giving act even as it is sometimes a pure taking, both fine in the trust between people performing loving acts, or, at minimum, in mutual understanding of those acts.
Sometimes sex is just sex. For me, whose history is largely long-term monogamy, it is release. If I want to use it to cry or scream or slap, I express and decompress upon the foundation of commitment and mutual caring–for that time, that day, that decade or lifetime, whomever the case may be. Even the same person shows up to the act differently day to day.
Cultural expectations particularly of marriage and monogamy, stress the painted picture of procured bliss through intensely connected oneness and love, a romantic notion that puts a lot of pressure on the act, specifically for youth. And sometimes it is that bliss while at other times it is sacrifice and uneventful working out the strategy of keeping things going, in peace. Sex is part and parcel of being, multifarious as hell. All I know is, it is not what I was told it was.
Ghost Marriages
Ghost marriages? Though ghost marriages are historically reported, and thus are real, the metaphoric possibilities of the concept are far more interesting.
Ghost marriages were an ancient Chinese practice to ward off loneliness in the afterlife. The “arranged” betrothal of an unmarried deceased family member occurred when a corpse match was found to bury beside the unmarried one, usually by a relation, resulting in the intended eternal union. Though contemporary China has discarded the practice and grave robbing is outlawed, there still exists practitioners in rural areas. In fact, just last October, the BBC reported a grave-robbing incident by eligible corpse seekers, which led to arrests.
The idea of a ghost marriage is quite frankly creepy to me, but that is most probably due to my cultural predispositions. As the short TED talk featured below describes, marriage is an historical institution that is shaped by the ever-changing values and practices of a given culture throughout time. It is a flexible arrangement that conforms to the people who practice it.
But a ghost marriage is precisely what some people have, whether intended or not. Let me belabor the obvious with an example of the married couple, one of whom works endless days and nights and misses out on the benefits of marriage and family. A husband who works at an all-consuming job appears vacantly in the family functions of necessity, sometimes at dinner or breakfast before scurrying off to work. His mind is never really there, just his body. He is a symbolic figure as husband and father. Though he goes through the motions of patting his children on the head before leaping off to his car or makes love to his wife to keep up some semblance of duty, his presence is somewhere buried in what others need of him: his job.
Or perhaps his mistress’ siren call is the life-suck that keeps him a specter in his marriage. When he is home, he thinks of her and wants to be with her; she provides him with what he doesn’t get at home. He thinks of her when he does his husbandly duty to keep that circle sewn up, maybe even making it possible to complete the task of making love to his wife. He is a ghost husband.
But the ghost husband or wife may also be either or both in a marriage that has run its course, where both long to be somewhere else but remain in the marriage for the sake of the kids or for fear of financial insecurity or the unknown. The comfort of the well-worn patterns walked in the carpeted floor of the family home of thirty odd years is all that is left when desire and disdain have deadened walking bodies, zombies, that refuse to be buried. The glazed over lifeless eyes that gaze out the kitchen window onto manicured green flawless lawns of suburban safety reveal the truth.
A marriage is only as strong as its weakest member.
Marriage clearly is a highly improbable proposition. How can two people pledge themselves forever after in a lifetime of change? The inhabitants of this thing, marriage, are both the components and the encasement of that which has an independent existence itself. Marriage is both the sum of its parts and the excess, an entity in itself, an idea, a pledge, and a monument to societally structured love and order. It persists.
Like the jailhouse that stands separate from the inmates will continue to stand though the inmates perish, languish or thrive within, so too marriage survives beyond its inhabitants. The bride and groom pledge as much to the symbol and practice of marriage from wedding rituals to marriage licenses and filing joint tax returns, as they promise themselves one to the other.
Marriage tests the mettle of its subscribing members. Survivors of imprisonment and marriage–no I am not equating the two–make their world from within not without. Strong marriage mates can stretch, withstand and grow from pain, isolation and degradation yet do not stagnate in the long safe sailing days of predictability, comfort and security. Marriage is both stasis and evolution, the anchor and the ship.
Just as our bodies are garments we wear to weather the surrounding climate, so too the marriage protects us from outside forces that threaten us: disease, rejection, insecurity, heartbreak and restlessness. We trade possibility and excitement, stimulants from the outside, for the quietude and stability from within the shelter of marriage. Some of us need the staid grounding that strengthens us to journey far.
Some find themselves, what they’re made of, only in adversity. While marriage is the impetus for that discovery for some, ultimately, each of us finds within ourselves the necessary tools to make our own happiness wherever we are and with whom we are by self love; selfless compassion and forgiveness; fullness of time; persistence, presence and acceptance; growth in experience; open-mindedness and the ability to laugh at ourselves.
Music is a Demonic Mistress in Whiplash
Credit: paleothea.com
My grandfather died when I was ten. I don’t remember much of him other than what others have spoken of him, that he was a piano tuner and a musician that taught and cajoled all of his 7 sons (not his one daughter) to play an instrument, two of whom were later professionals. I was told he was a gentle and kind man, soft spoken in juxtaposition to his louder more vociferous “witchy” wife, as characterized by an oft chastised daughter in law, my mother. The one lasting memory I have of him, Julius, Isidore prior to immigrating from Russia as his wife’s brother, is a cello lesson he gave me one summer afternoon of a rare visit to our Long Island home.
Though he and my grandmother lived merely a half hour’s distance away, we traveled to their Farmingdale home most visits. My father was the last of the seven boys, so his parents were older grandparents vis a vis my family and thus we traveled to them. On this one visit to our home, my grandfather, as ever interested in family musical progress (all four siblings and I played an instrument), decided to see for himself and sat me down for a listen. I remember his stern, disapproving look as I muddled my way through a piece I was learning for the school orchestra, probably some Muller-Rush simple exercise piece disguised as a song. Those were the days of music lessons and orchestras in elementary school, when instruments were offered in third grade at which time I was appointed the cello due to my long fingers despite my request to play violin. I had only been playing for a couple of years then and had not started the private lessons that I would have the following year, despite my family’s limited budget.
He was aggressive. He shook his head in decided disapproval, got up from his seat and pushed my fingers all about the neck of the cello, pressing down on the forefinger up high and stretching the ring finger down low and absolutely smashing my pinky. Then he jerked my bow arm from the elbow up to place it properly from his perspective, which strained my neck and torqued my hand whose fingers were being smashed into the neck of the now source of torture, formerly my cello, as used by this draconian musician. He instructed me in something barely conceivable as English worsened by his frustration, “Do dees, now dees, like dees!” He muttered in Russian probably.
Since I was ten and was not well versed in Russian, Hebrew, Latvian, Polish, German or other languages my grandparents spoke, hell I was barely fluent in English at 10, I had always felt distant from my grandparents who were adoring enough, calling me pet names like Pamaluchkala and ochichonya (dark eyes), and teasing me with the yiddish equivalent of ugly girl and then smiling and calling me the opposite. They made me nervous, however. I didn’t understand them. That cello lesson did not help matters. I was nervous about playing in front of anyone let alone an exacting musician who spoke little English. If I had any talent or education in the instrument, none of it was going to show under those conditions.
Recalling that experience still elicits a frown to my face, sadly the only recollection of my grandfather, who was a receding character compared to the imposing figure that was my grandmother in stature and voice. That memory still conflicts with the one or two video preservations of some 35 mm film of him, my grandmother and extended family at their house. He always looked gentle, smiling, and composed. Was it the music that brought out the demon in him, the child abuser that plowed over the slightest sensibilities of a child not taking into account the damage he may have done to that child’s love for and thereby development in the instrument?
That question of the madness in the musician besieged me, awakening my grandfather memory and provoked a long look at my musical endeavors, after seeing the movie Whiplash recently. The movie in pinpoint precision well casted acting and unlikely thriller momentum (my glutes hurt afterward) presents the outermost limits of the innermost determinants of personal achievement through mastery of a musical instrument, here the drums: monomaniacal focus of the musician, the demented exactitude and sadism of the teacher torturously beating greatness out of his students, and the Odyssean journey of the student musician into Hades to learn the truth: Am I capable of greatness?
The movie was truly well done, especially the nuanced acting of Miles Teller, the aspiring Buddy Rich, and J.K. Simmons, the complex, somewhat deranged professor. So much of the movie occurred in their faces, that subtle twitch, stare or glint. As is often the case after seeing a movie of such caliber that it lingers in my mental limbs the next day, I wanted to read more about the movie, reviews and such.
Serendipitously, I came across this quote by renowned American conductor Leonard Slatkin on my morning travels through the net: “Ultimately, music is a possessive mistress.” I read this and immediately thought about the scene (SPOILER ALERT!) in which Teller brilliantly and brutally spells out to his girlfriend in a great detailed cause and effect chain of prognostications why he cannot maintain a relationship, which, without spoiling too much, amounts to the essence of Slatkin’s quote. There just isn’t much time for other passions when one consumes so absolutely, burns so powerfully inside that all thought and action is that passion or tied to it in some way. All else is peripheral. One eats to keep the engine able to execute for the sake of the art.
Whether my grandfather broke my art or I just wasn’t good or passionate enough, I gave up playing the cello seriously by my junior year in high school, the year I delved deeper into the world eschewed by obsessively driven musicians, artists, actors, and anyone with the monomania to pursue greatness: a social life. Now I pick up the cello or the guitar, which I later tinkered with, when the mood strikes me. I like it that way. The small suffering of frustration and yearning for skillful music making, that lifelong itch, falls far short, even in amassed decades, of the inconceivable agony in attaining greatness: the innumerable hours, indomitable doubt and suffocating insecurity for a payoff that may turn out to be no more than a less than stellar roster of achievements.
Sounds a lot like the trials and tribulations of the writer, who must likewise be owned by a “possessive mistress” if she wants to be the next something to read on a list somewhere. Or be content to dabble to her heart’s compromised content. The only writing whisperers of the J.K. Simmons kind that writers withstand are their own tormenting demons. They have to find their own motivation for distinction in a sado-masochism of their own making.
“Mistress America” Coming Soon
Looking forward to doing things that increase my happy this year, one of which is to see more movies–that is, carefully selected films.
I used to pride myself on keeping abreast of the latest in cinema and music, always knowledgeable of the reviews and stars of the new and up and coming movies and albums. My husband and I would often compare our notes for the week’s reviews over dinner, each of us agreeing with or refuting Robert Hillburn’s reviews in the LA Times on music or Siskel & Ebert on the movies. It was the nineties and for us a time of celebrating creativity by taking in art fairs around town, even purchasing pieces, and subscriptions to plays in Los Angeles. We went to concerts of our favorite artists at the time, Sting or the Police before him, enjoyed small jazz clubs in Newport or classical performances at the Hollywood Bowl. Then we had kids.
After children, we barely had time to remember our names let alone keep up on the arts. Something about that lost time always has me remotely anxious about the possibility of alien scientific observational abductions or parallel lives. Where exactly were we and what were we doing all that time that seemed impossibly franticly activity and emergency-laden? And yet I cannot remember more than a blur of movement punctuated by tears of joy, terror and pride
But now that the kids are mostly grown, I have the yearning to re-immerse myself in the creative world, enjoy the spirit of human expression. Toward those efforts, I spent some time last year checking out a few friend-recommended and friend-curated gallery openings around town and in the city, OMC Gallery of Contemporary Art in Old World, Huntington Beach, and Coagula Curatorial in Los Angeles, to name a couple, for discovering up and coming and/or lesser known artists. I also went to the locally notorious Sawdust Art Festival in Laguna Beach for the first time, though I have lived in Southern California for over 35 years, in addition to a few visits to to the biggies of museums like Los Angeles County Museum of Art to see the Stanley Kubrick installation and later the World Cup soccer exhibition, as well as the Huntington Library, the latter for the first time.
These discrete instances have stirred the hunger for more to colorize my thoughts and the sensibilities the way only the arts can. This year will continue the gradual immersion back into the b/c (before children) life with even more live music performances both classical and rock I enjoyed the latter part of last year, more art appreciation opportunities and more movies.
I read this a few weeks ago, but thought a blog post about the Sundance Festival projected favorites of the year would both offer readers who missed it a heads up and manifest my intention to sit in theaters more (so I get to see an entire movie rather than portions that I happen to walk in on when the rest of the family is vegging before the tube). There are several movies on the list I’m excited for, but of course Mistress America attracted my attention by the title alone. Not much has been released about this Noah Baumbach collaboration with Greta Gerwig (Francis Ha), other than the one or two lines of plot–college freshman gets yanked from solitude into wacky escapades by her future relative–and that it is scored by Indie pop duo Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips (who I listened to and enjoyed in researching this short review).
Curious title for the plot snippet published, which entices me to watch for enlightenment. In what context is “Mistress” used, as owner, object of desire, or illicit interloper? And is the future step sister the mistress with that title or is America called a mistress, titled by mistress as form of address? I get distracted by this sort of thing. Like everyone else, however, I’ll have to wait and see.
Hope for all those not working (I am, but contentedly so) it is a down day, down on the couch or in the armchair that is, watching movies or football or the garden grow, whatever relaxes. Peace.
Happy New Year! What Else Could I Write?
Happy arbitrarily chosen day to start counting all over again and feeling resolved to do things differently! Thank you, Caesar for setting this day in 46 B.C. of all days to start the new year, and not the logical one, which would be and was before him the vernal equinox, the official start of spring in late March. Just goes to show you, it’s good to be the king.
Resolving to make changes, do things right, and avoiding mistakes of the past is inspiriting. It’s the ultimate Mulligan. Who doesn’t love second chances (and third, fourth and fifth chances)? More importantly, who doesn’t love to be self-deluding? Not to be too cynical, but most of us make resolutions that stretch far into fantasy land of what I want to be when I grow up: thinner, stronger, healthier, wealthier, and a host more of -ers.
Truth is, those big resolutions that require the maker to do something avoided the previous twelve months are not going to magically happen with a declaration that it be so. Most understand that, so why make resolutions? Because it feels good to be resolved. It’s like any shot in the arm that gives a little boost from the limbic brain, like feeling sexy or getting out of the cold into a warm house. It just feels good.
A day for reflection, however chosen, is also a good thing, particularly because humans, Americans especially, seem to need to be told what to do when. That’s why we get a select few calendared holidays strictly enforced by the day off with stores closed and Hallmark greeting cards that remind us how we are supposed to feel. Think about how hard it is on Christmas day to be housebound because there is nothing open for distraction. Okay, except Starbucks…and the movie theaters. Just last week I surrendered to the deep desire to stay in pj’s all day and watch endless movies on Christmas day with the all-right-in-the-world justification of knowing that that is what my country wants me to do. Why else would I have the day off with almost everyone else?
Besides, the recovery from an after calamitous Christmas shopping for days on end hangover was much needed. So Christmas day is for recovery of one sort and New Years day is recovery of another–the obligatory drinking. How else does one know one is truly happy and celebratory if not drunk? I must admit the dry years and the wet years made the difference between boredom and enthusiasm vis a vis heralding in the new year. Oddly or maybe not so oddly enough, in the sober year ends, I never saw midnight except in the visions dancing before closed lids.
This evening, I will imbibe a bit, but probably just enough to keep me warm not sleepy. I don’t want to miss the stroke of midnight good cheer with the clinking of glasses and kissing of cheeks, some with loving embrace. The ritual synchronizes me. All is right in the world when I follow the rules of new years eve obligatory good feeling and hope.
Even though the rituals have changed throughout the years–from waking the kids up for pots and pans banging when they were little, to poppers and noise makers when they were a little older, to trying to stay awake til they got home safely–they still are important for setting the rhythm of days: wiping my hands clean of the old to roll up my sleeves and dig into the new.
Credit: https://valleyartscene.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/newyearevepainting.jpg
Two feet on either side, straddling the old year and the new, I step into the new year at 12:00 a.m. just as the last possible touch of the toe tip of my high-heeled boot lifts from the pavement of the old year to meet its mate in the new. This is the constant: keep on walking.
And don’t look back. Every year I resolve not to resolve but to keep up the good work of living. Like every year, it was the worst of times and the best of times–more or less. I had the good fortune of testing my mettle to its very painful depths in hardship and loss this year and found that I am stronger than I know and have so many who love me more than I shamefacedly have realized. I had the misfortune of resting in half sleep for days on end in the contentment that comes with ease and comfort. And the new year will bring more of the same.
I wish all of you who I am so grateful for and have enjoyed in my slapdash, sometimes frenetic attempt at a meaningful sharing of the fragments of my memory, thought and pleasures in this blog, a happily, merry, loving evening. See you tomorrow (I will tap softly on the keyboards in deference to your sensitive state in the morning ;))
Cheers!
The gaze
Ahimsa
credit: image.slidesharecdn.com
Dinner table discussions around the holidays are always enlightening. The boisterous clashing of personalities of all who chime in on politics and religion, especially liven up any table, even if not recommended for ease of digestion.
Inevitably, when the shouts die down and civil conversation resumes, family members ask me about the latest on the blog. My preoccupation of yesterday I have to admit was the sticky issue of mistress morality, and how I may have mis-represented myself as rather heartless or conscience-less with respect to the cheated on wife. I have maintained that though I have felt guilt, sorrow and empathy for the wife of my married lover, I have not felt as if I cheated her.
She is not mine to betray, the wife of the married man I have loved. I have made no promises to her.
Yes, we all owe others the duty of non-harm. Ahimsa. I came across this term several years ago when I renewed my yoga practice, probably in a yoga journal. In my readings over the years, I have come to understand that the Vedic meaning is non-violence, though it has been modernly used as a wider term embracing all non-harm, whether in word, deed or thought. While I embrace non-harm as a measure of ethics, I confess I find the practice challenging, perplexing at times.
How far does that duty of non-harm/non–violence extend? Some say as far as the improbable. There is no Sanskrit exception to the rule. I would hope the love thy neighbor biblical axiom would likewise have no exception clause. But I am neither a Sanskrit or a biblical scholar, just an ordinary person trying to live well among others.
How far does my duty to others extend? Am I obligated to stay home when I have the sniffles in order to prevent someone I may come in contact with in the street, on the bus, or at work from contracting my cold? Or is my higher duty to go to work, the grocery store and the pharmacy in order to keep my life, and those whose lives depend upon me–children, husband, parents–from suffering damage, i.e., jeopardize my job, feed my children or medicate my father’s diabetes. Whose harm do I avoid? In this hypothetical, I would do what I could to protect others in a compromise position: keep my distance from others and protect them from my coughing and sneezing by directing my germs away from them and wash my hands frequently. But I would go out.
We always weigh our priorities, and often, we hurt others in picking one priority over others. Okay, I am not equating the possibility of spreading a cold to hurting a wife in the event she finds out her husband is cheating. I am simply stating that our choices are relative to circumstances, and we are often forced to choose the lesser of evils. I’m also concluding that there is no way to completely forego harm to others.
The mistress to a married man risks injuring his wife, that the wife will find out and the fallout from the discovery will unleash the untold misery of hurt and immeasurably blasted trust. I have suffered it. And I also have caused it. Neither end of it escapes the scarring.
There is nothing equal to the hurt that comes from betrayal. It overturns the world of belief most adhere to just to get by, feel safe and experience love and peace day to day.
My children betrayed me recently. In light of the depth and length of our relationship, betrayal is the appropriate word. I felt betrayed. The predominant emotion was hurt, not anger.
I raised my daughters under the banner of honesty is the best policy. I reminded them frequently since they were born that honesty and trust go a long way to buying freedom. As they approached teen hood, I spelled out more concretely the concept: the leash is longer if you follow the rules of checking in and answering your phone, telling me where you are when I ask. I’ve explained the consequences of lying and deceit, that it causes all parties to suffer from constant vigilance: verification of the whereabouts and alibis and lockdown when verification isn’t a possibility.
I depend a lot on trust. I relax my vigilance some in faith that they will do what’s right, that I raised them with a good guiding inner voice. I depend on their bond with me as the cradle of their freely confessing their fears, hopes and mistakes, knowing that my love overcomes disappointment or disapproval to rescue and forgive. I depend on that bond.
But they are kids. My 15 year old crawled into my bed early the other morning like she hadn’t done since she was little, complaining of a stomach ache. She slept uneasily by my side for an hour or so. I let her stay home from school, something I am loathe to do unless fevers, broken limbs or other severe maladies present. A teenager will want to stay home from school for a ripped cuticle. Concerned and questioning her symptoms and possible alleviation, I determined to let her stay home.
Later, I went off to work but came home mid-shift to pick up some lunch, something I hadn’t done before. On the way home, I called the older, my 18 year old, asking if she had seen her sister, was she okay, and did she think she was faking. She said she had seen her but didn’t know if she was faking. She seemed a bit stuttering and cagey. When I arrived home, I went up to see the infirmed one, who was nowhere to be found. Checking in with my father, I found that she went out with her sister somewhere.
Now the rule in my house is that if you are too sick to go to school, you stay home. Even if you have a miraculous recovery, you stay home to convalesce or catch up on missed school work, work ahead if you have to. So, this was not only a clear violation of rules, but a deception maybe even from the start on the part of the supposed ill daughter. However, the cover up of the older was just as if not more culpable. She defended herself by saying it wasn’t she who broke the rules; she just provided the ride. However, I found her lack of responsibility to advise her sister about the consequences and to consider the choice, to be disappointing, but to lie by omission to me was the worse of the two indiscretions.
She had broken the trust between us that she would not sever the bonds of faith built upon her good character.
My younger daughter was contrite, desperately apologetic. However, I countered to her apology and explanation that I did not know whether she was sincere or just telling me what I wanted to hear, that that is the real tragedy of deceit. It puts all actions, all words, in a new light, suspicion.
As to the older, I finally got through to her about her part in deception by offering her insight into my misgivings going forward.
My daughters are close and enjoy spending time with each other. I allow the younger to go places and do things, like concerts and late night movies, that I did not allow the older to do or go to due to safety concerns. The younger, however, is permitted to do what her sister could not at her age, when she is accompanied by her older sister.
Now, however, I explained to my older daughter, I did not feel comfortable allowing her to be the guardian of her younger sister, given that she does not have the moral compass I entrust her sister to. If she cannot be a guide to her good choices and her safety, cannot make her sister consider her actions in light of what the consequences might be at minimum with her own mother, I cannot entrust her with a minor for whom I am responsible. She got the point.
We are all on lockdown when trust is broken. The suspicion is taxing on mental space and energy. The process of verification, of having my daughters prove their whereabouts or my confirming their stories by others or checking up myself physically, is not only fatiguing physically but psychically. It’s a lot of negative energy.
So how much more is the bond of spouses severed when one person cheats and deceives the other? Similarly, the faith that each operates on daily, the one that feels like a guarantee that the other will not do injury to his or her loved one, gets shattered. He thinks: “She really does not have my back but is only out for herself.” Not only is that faith gone, permanently or temporarily, but in its place is the pain of betrayal: “I gave her my body, my secrets, my love, my all, and she gave the same to me. That was our bond, something we silently swore is what makes us, us. When she gave her body, shared intimate pleasure with another, shared her secrets, maybe, gave her heart, even for that moment of orgasm, she severed what was our bond of sole sharing. Now I cannot trust her to protect me for my safe keeping, not of my body nor of my mind and heart.”
The injury slices deeply. It is a death. One person kills trust which is the root of allowing the self to deeply connect and surrender. It is a promise between two, to love and be loved.
So when one strays, and the other finds out, trust is broken and the suspicions turn what was once sailing on the calm seas of faith in doing no harm, into the turbulent waters of where is he and what is he doing, feeling, thinking? It is the difference between the peace to pursue one’s own dreams supported by another and the anchor of watchfulness in keeping another.
Most, I suspect, opt not to keep the trust breaker after that wounding and aftermath of recovery. The one I cheated on chose not to keep me. Others learn to trust again after determining that there is a good chance that it won’t happen again and believing in time as healer. Some may also remember that there was something good enough in the first place to keep that person (their others) so close, to let him/her in that far.
When my husband told me early on in our marriage that he loved someone else, a purported friend that he had just gone camping with for a few days, I was devastated. He hadn’t had sex with this person as the friend would not engage, but I believed the love was reciprocated. No matter, the fact that my husband was in love with someone else was the hurt.
The circles of suspicion kept my mind imprisoned. It rolled back to days and months past. Was he anywhere he said he was when he was not with me? What had been said between them to make this happen? He must not love me, and here I was loving him, giving him all I had. It hurt so much that I could not stand to be near him as it felt like the Promethean stab to the liver time after time. I moved out.
I forgave him eventually. I think I did. I accepted that it happened. I also accepted that he wanted to be with me and would get over the other, the outsider. I accepted the risk that he would do it again. There was and still is no guarantee. My heart wanted him, and I accepted that too.
In the 32 years after, he did stray again. However, there were still more practical and impractical reasons to stay together than not, and not only children, despite those others who were in the woodwork, crawling about the gaps in our marriage.
Jealousy, isolation and hurt, large and small, is part of the history of our marriage. If it wasn’t another person, it was his dedication and love for other things he spent so much time and energy on to the exclusion of me: his job, his sport, his music, his friends, his family, his depression. I learned to adapt. I learned about him, and me, how I could not make him something he was not. I took inventory constantly. I weighed priorities.
As long as I could be sure that I was physically protected by my own measures in addition to assurances from him, I had to be okay with the way things were or leave.
Our marriage has morphed over the many years to adapt to the changing individuals that comprise it. As our needs have changed, so has our marriage. What was once the passion of two young people is now the mature steady support and backbone of each of our lives, which also forms the silent sturdy scaffold of many other people’s lives: his, mine, our children, our parents and siblings, our employers.
We are able to perform our life duties and pleasures by virtue of knowing there is someone in each our separate corners. Someone to defend us and pick us up when we feel no strength to get up on our own volition. Someone who will defend us even when we are not deserving, not judge us when we judge ourselves more than anyone else could, make us feel like something when we feel like nothing, love us when we cannot love ourselves and love us even as we are not loving in return. Each does that for the other. Those doings are more important to me than sexual fidelity. But for some, it is all or nothing. And that is theirs to negotiate.
When I carried on an affair with Wayne, I could have contributed to his wife’s injury, only because it would have been me and not someone else that facilitated his infidelity had she found out. And only now I realize just how much. Did I intend to harm her by being kissed that first time so unexpectedly? No. And neither did my kids when they conspired to flout the rules, nor my husband when he fell in love with another. No one declared, “Let’s hurt mom/my wife today.” Did I intend to harm her when I accepted his invitation to meet a second time knowing that it was to continue a clandestine act? No, but the probability of injury was higher. If his wife has not found out to this day, have I harmed her? No. If I had not found out about my kids’ or my husband’s actions, would I have been harmed? No, not then. And I believe that the greater responsibility for her hurt goes to the one who specifically promised not to hurt her in the very manner he would have–by loving another–whether explicitly or implicitly by the marriage contract.
Did I hurt Wayne in carrying on an affair? I did not help him to stay faithful to his wife if that was what he wanted to do. I did not help him if he suffered a bad conscience. Did I cause his suffering of bad conscience or infidelity? Indirectly, I suppose, as catalyst. Had I rejected his advances, I would have protected him from the injury of conscience he may have suffered.
With respect to his wife, I believe I did no harm–in actuality. In fact, I may have even done her a good turn as I have maintained before by causing him to stay in his marriage when all was said and done–if that is indeed a good place for her. It’s all speculation just as much as if she had found out is speculation.
But rules of conduct and the practice of non-harm only make sense as rules and practice in view of potential harm, even if ahimsa was not originally meant to address possibility. Otherwise, rules are not rules but relative applications of labels after the fact. And what of self harm? Did I cause myself injury in engaging an affair? Yes. I suffered the injury of bad conscience and dishonesty. I forewent my principles that structure how I live and how I expect others to live. I did not support monogamy or fidelity, even though I was a believer in them both at the time. In fact, I contributed in some fractional way, to the erosion of those principles.
In light of my use of ahimsa–non-harm–I did harm in engaging in affair, as did my children and my husband to me, though the degree and duration of each specific instance of suffering may differ. And just as I have taken inventory of harm, I could take inventory of the blessings I bestowed and were bestowed upon me, especially if I follow the cause and effect chain far enough. Is it a blessing to love someone and cause him to feel loved and worthy of love? Yes, and more so when he feels unworthy and unloved. Did my children’s awareness of my hurt change them for the better, gear them to be better people, and strengthen our relationship? I believe so. Did my husband’s affairs teach me about myself, make me wiser and stronger? Yes.
Some would judge me as justifying for even considering the benefits since avoidance of harm should be the first principle. Perhaps they are right. I weigh costs and benefits and assess risk in much of what I do by examining facts and the principle of cause and effect. I don’t always believe in that method but I do it, nevertheless. I also aim to behave with compassion and empathy as a general rule. It’s a practice, never finished or achieved as a constant.
Though the tendency is strong to generalize about marriage, cheating, betrayal and hurt, to pay attention to what is universal in the human condition, the specific promises each person makes to another is made upon the particular intentions of the person making the promise, the intentions of the person receiving it and the bits and pieces of their lives coming into the relationship and living their relationship together. Each bond between two minds is unique. It cannot be parsed and judged except on knowing the story of each case. My life as an attorney, teacher, wife, lover, mother, daughter, sibling, friend and citizen has taught me so.
The mistress blog contains many stories. Each who weighs in on the moral, ethical and experiential of her own or another’s story, does so to tell, teach and entertain others–to share. Judging, urgent and unconscious as it is in all of us, curtails or stifles the conversation and may snuff out someone else’s story. Who wouldn’t recoil after being labeled a cheater or having her motives or morals questioned?
While judgment is necessary to a citizenry, to curb behaviors that break down social bonds, there is a time to listen and learn without judgment. There is also a time to judge (discern?) in order to act within one’s own conscience with respect to others, i.e., I won’t date a married man because I don’t want to risk hurt to his wife and me, inevitable with a man who cannot be trusted to be faithful. But too many judge others to silence or control them, using judgment as a weapon rather than as a tool, i.e., if you date a married man, you are as bad as the cheater.
I harp on this point about judging. Without restraint, the importance of the human condition generally and particular human choices specifically do not get revealed and discussed, not only on this blog but in the market place of ideas upon which the American democracy has any chance of survival.
So let’s be scientists or possibilians with respect to stories of love and marriage and mistresses, and suspend judgment until we can definitely rule out certain possibilities. An open mind that does the work of understanding from study, listening, and paying attention, and not knee jerk reaction or bandwagon mimicry (yes, I’m judging) is crucial to preserving awe and wonderment in the world and democracy over militancy and violence in our country. It is not a plea for tolerance as much as for cogent consideration. Ahimsa.
What Love Is
Love cares what becomes of you because love knows that we are all interconnected. Love is inherently compassionate and empathic. Love knows that the “other” is also oneself. This is the true nature of love and love itself can not be manipulated or restrained. Love honors the sovereignty of each soul. Love is its own law.
So says Deborah Anapol, PhD in The Seven Natural Laws of Love on exhibit in a Psychology Today article, which is a quick, worthy read. She sums up that love is mistaken as sex and marriage and many other things that couch it, but love is its own law.
On this day before Christmas Eve, I made a short list of things–not necessarily people–I like and appreciate, things that make me feel the love in the natural law of loving life.
What I like: joking with my kids, eating in restaurants that have a great variety of vegan foods, when my mother smiles while looking in my eyes, making my great nephews and nieces laugh, laughing, books that I wish would continue on after the last page, books I never want to climb out of, books, when my father says I love you to my mother, writing something with a few well-turned meaningful phrases, writing poems, time to write, making love, being a lover, being a wife, being a mother, being a daughter, being a friend, being a sister, when someone is inspired by what I write, good comments that provoke a stimulating conversation, salmon, art, photography, Stone IPA, fine pinot, a French white burgundy like a merseult or chassagne montrachet, cooking when I have time and ingredients that are exotic and fresh, organic, being home alone, quiet places, long into the night conversations about people, love and life in a car parked at the beach, watermelon on hot summer days, fresh strawberries with fresh cream, pineapples atop soft serve vanilla ice cream, yoga, smoking with a beer, wax, running with Kiah, the ache of loving someone so hard, orgasm, the unobtainable, P’s laughter, my daughters’ laughter, watching my daughters play soccer, being out on a soccer field on a dewy summer morning, snowboarding, swimming in the Caribbean, being a friend, looking at love in someone’s eyes, slow bicycle rides along the water at dusk, finishing a marathon or half marathon, when playing soccer was fun, when playing tennis was fun, when running was fun, when swimming was fun, floating on a waveless warm sea with my ears immersed and eyes closed, Samasati, snorkeling in Tobago Cays, summer camp when I was a kid, warm feet when it’s cold, unexpected gifts in the mail, good strong flavorful coffee, when I was friends with M, Louis CK, movies that make me think about them or feel them for a long time afterward, Joni Mitchell songs from Blue and Court & Spark that I can sing every word to, long movies that go by quickly, teaching, a tender kiss, a strong character, passion, being invisible in a crowd, crossword puzzles, Halloween teen night high at the cemetery that was really Mordar, the pleasant surprise of not being disappointed after seeing The Lord of the Rings, not being afraid, the idea of love at first sight, book stores, people in heroics, the scent of an infant’s head, the epiphany of understanding that the earth, stars, space and humans are made of the same stuff, randomness, that the components and shape of DNA molecules in plants, animals and humans are the same.
The mountain woman sleeps in the forest green.
A mountain of a woman, she is the sleeping green of the forest.
Oh, mountain of my dreams, oh womankind, you are the green of my forest sleep.
caption: vuing.com
In the gaze of the other 
