Minkgirl Muses

Wow. It's been 9 months since my last post. What has been birthed during that time? First and foremost, as I rocket toward 40 - I begin my 5th decade six months from today - I am starting to accept the reality of my life for what it is - good and bad - and acknowledge that efforts to change that reality may be less valuable than efforts to enjoy and appreciate it.

I am also trying to accept that I actually cannot do everything that I want to do all at once. As I sink more deeply into this new realm of academia and struggle to ride the work/family balance wave, I find myself realizing everyday that I need to let go of more than I pick up. I can't say I'm happy about this realization. I was raised to think I could do anything I wanted to do. And the feminism I encountered in college iced the female empowerment cake my parents so carefully baked. But now, as a full-time working mother of two small children, I am starting to see myself really fray around the edges. Recovery takes longer than it used to. I get depressed more easily and stay that way longer. I already realized around 30 that I had gotten too old to pull all-nighters. But now, nearing 40, I'm starting to feel my age in a more metaphysical sense. This constant drive to produce, to make, to organize, to gather, to connect, to improve - this drive is part of what make me human and part of what keeps me and my small tribe alive. But it is also killing me - day by sleepless day, month by grueling month.

And so, on this day of Spring Equinox, this day when the earth is equally poised between dark and light, I am saying a prayer for myself and for all the other super-charged women I know that we can balance not just work and family, but joy and despair. There is much that is overwhelming, distracting, disturbing, and downright depressing about the lives we are living. And there is much that is joyful, beautiful, sweet, hopeful, and hysterically funny. We are the generation who is here to do the manual work of building the dream-house from the blueprints our mothers forged with their brave firsts - the first woman who voted in a national election (1920), the first woman to make partner in a law firm (1973), the first woman to be promoted to Dean at the University of California at Berkeley (2000). A house where we can be women, mothers, workers, lovers, artists, activists and anything we choose to be. Maybe just not all at once.

Much love to all of you as we enter the season of light.

Be well.

Labels: Family Life, Rebirth

RESURRECTION


It has been 7 weeks since I last posted - a spiritual number - the length of time it has taken for me to fully absorb that I am where I am - San Francisco. I have loved and been loved by this City, but it's different this time. I feel like the woman in the made-for-tv movie who gets one last chance to live as she always knew she should. Note: this is different than the way I want to live. I want to stroll through my own mental corridors, thinking, reading and day-dreaming without interruption. I want to spend all day poking around on the internet, following interesting trails and satiating my curiosity about unnecessary topics. I want to exercise everyday, shower everyday, take my vitamins everyday, drink plenty of water everyday, and keep my house clean. None of these desires feature regularly in my new life. But still, gratitude persists. Despite six-and-a-quarter hours of sleep every night. Despite the constant presence of sand on the hard-wood floor. Despite the rush-hour bus commute home. Despite poorly styled hair and unkempt toe-nails. Despite the 137 unanswered messages in my email in-box. Gratitude is my bread and butter these days. Because look around you? Nearly everyone is suffering in some small or large way. How have I missed this for so long? Everyone has: a mother undergoing hernia surgery, an aunt who narrowly escaped a ruptured brain aneurism, a son who punched a girl at school, a husband with suspicious lumps in his side, a colleague who’s afraid she's made an irretrievable mistake, a friend who thinks he might not love his partner anymore. There’s no if, only when. When will the strange angels knock on your door? And how will you receive them. Admit them. Admit them. They may bring sorrowful tidings, but they also bring the light.

Labels: Family Life, Rebirth

We went to Paris last weekend - Lord Limescale and I - alone. It was our last hurrah, a final opportunity for romantic revelry before we fully succumb to the joyous riot of double-parenthood. And it was a revelation to be just ourselves for 48 hours. I didn't bend over once, and my belly thanked me for it. We sucked the marrow out of the juicy chicken that is made from sleep, sex and serious eating. We walked and walked along the beautiful autumnal Seine and up and down the hills of Monmartre, and I felt fine - no aches and pains, no sciatica, no irritating pounding in my head from all the extra blood shushing around.

Paris is truly a great city - maybe the best city. I like London, but Paris beats the pants off anything the Big Smoke can offer. The best part about being there was how it is exactly the same as it was when I first visited 20 years ago. Paris has succeeded in retaining the charm and originality of its inherent character, rather than succumbing to the contemporary plague of marketing ads that cover every square inch of public space and the nauseatingly ubiquitous chain stores that seem to have completely taken over London. Okay, we did see a couple of Starbucks, but they were on really touristy streets, and they had small signs! I look forward to returning to Paris in another 20 years and finding the same bistro we had dinner at this time and being served the same menu, possibly by the same waiter!

Here are a few of the highlights from our 48 hours of freedom:

1) Walking through the quaint narrow streets of Ile St-Louis while floodlights from riverboats cast dappled shadows on the whitewashed buildings.

2) Sharing an entire bottle of vin rouge w/ Lord Limescale over dinner and having no one look at me funny.

3) Looking out over the city from the top of the Pompidou.

4) Eating raclette in a tiny family-run restaurant in Montmartre.

5) Eating fresh croissants while riding a boat up the Seine on a gloriously sunny morning.

6) Eating oysters and a huge plate of cheese for lunch.

7) Seeing an amazing breakdancing show on the street.

8) Going to a jazz club in a basement in the Latin quarter and squeezing into a tiny room with 300 other people, some of whom were doing the lindy hop in about 10 square centimeters.

9) Going back to bed.

10) Getting exactly what I ordered in French and actually being able to hear the difference this time between "on y va" and "en hiver".

If you've never been to Paris, you should go. I don't think it matters when, with whom, or for how long. There is something so elementally good about the city, that its pleasures transcend economics, weather, and less than well-suited traveling companions. The first time I went was in the blazing heat of August when I was 20. I was visiting a friend - a fellow student - who promised me he had a place for me to stay. This turned out to be false. His plan was that I go to Shakespeare & Co. and charm the notorious womanizer George into letting me crash on the floor of one of the communal apartments upstairs. I used all my money to book a flea-bitten motel instead, subsisting only on baguettes, but nonetheless I had a delicious time wandering the streets in the heat. The second time I visited with David. I was 25, and it was our first trip together anywhere. We were living in SF, and discovered it was cheaper to fly to Paris for Xmas than it was to fly to New York! It happened to be the first year in 10 that it snowed in the city, and we were freezing the whole time, but we didn't care because we were in love. The last time before this one was 5 years ago at the tale end of our 3-week European tour. We were tired of traveling, it was Bastille Day and everything was shut, but we still spent an idyllic afternoon lying in the grass underneath the Eiffel tower.

Paris is a city for dreaming. I dreamed of Pickle while we were there this time. And while I can't remember what she looked like, I know I dreamed of how she's gestating in a rich international soup - San Francisco - Edinburgh - Florence - Washington DC - Paris - and how little bits and pieces from all these cultures are going to be embedded in her like bits of colored glass in asphalt - making her journey through life just a little bit more sparkly.

Be well.

Labels: My Favorite Things, Rebirth

ELEMENTARY

It's been 3 weeks since I've blogged. I feel bad about it, because to honor the Jewish New Year in September, I made "fresh start" plans including the goal of writing twice a week. And then I immediately failed to live up to my own goals. How surprising! But of course, that's the way life is. Maybe this is the universe's first gift of the year to me - a reminder that human plans are mere scratchings in the sand. What matters is that you keep picking up the stick.

But, today is a 21 day, the beginning of the 2nd month of my 37th year, so it's a fine day to refresh, renew and try again. And anyway, I tell myself that I haven't been writing because I've been busy changing my life. Or rather, my understanding about the context in which my life takes place - which in my overly cerebral case is basically the same thing.

For the past 3 weeks, I've been working almost obsessively on a job application for a full-time tenure-track teaching position at the University of San Francisco. I taught for this department last fall, just before coming to England, and the experience confirmed my suspicions that a university environment might be the landscape in which I could finally make use of all my skills and interests, while living a fairly comfortable life-style at the same time. This was my first academic application for an American university (I've done about 5 for schools in the UK), and it was quite arduous getting all the materials together - letter of application, graduate transcripts, letters of recommendation and support, and the terrifying "Statement of Teaching Philosophy." This last piece was the most troublesome and painful to achieve - it felt just like writing essays for college or grad school admission - trying to figure out how to say that you're cool and interesting with succinct and stylish language while avoiding cliches and hyperbolic metaphors about the value of art.

If it wasn't for Lord Limescale, I might have given up on the whole project. 5 days before the mailing deadline, I finally sat down with some sketchy notes with the goal of hammering out a killer STP. Nearly 9 hours later I had about 5 paragraphs written in a voice that was not my own, which felt wooden, forced, and most importantly boring. When LL came home from a long day in the Chicago salt-mines, I begged him to read what I had written, and he confirmed that I was going about the project in the wrong way - trying to write in an imagined "academic" tone for a mysterious audience whose expectations I had no way of knowing. He dug through some older drafts, pulled out a few nuggets and proceeded to make me an outline laced with simple, direct instructions like "write about this here, and don't use too many big words." His final words of wisdom were: "Persuasive writing is like cooking. Keep your wits about you, and follow the goddamn recipe! Small adjustments are fine, but don’t throw a handful of oregano into the masala." Sage advice for so many situations.

His generous assistance gave me hope and the will to try again to say what I mean and feel instead of what I think others might want to hear. It's amazing how desire ties us up in knots. I really want this job, and that want drew out all my insecurities, and made me doubt who I am and what I know. But by embracing my fear and working through it, I was able to approach the project with some curiosity and a little bit of humor. The best I can do is the best I can do. Whether or not I get this job is actually out of my hands (although I wouldn't mind it if you took this opportunity to make a sign for luck and a mental wish that the hiring committee accidentally spills coffee on all the other applications and decides to choose me because they're too embarrassed to ask the other candidates to resubmit their materials!) But perhaps more important even than whether or not I get the job, is the fact that I learned something significant about myself and my motivations for making art by engaging in the application process.

The title of the USF theatre department is the "Performing Arts & Social Justice Department." Kinda grand. While I love their mission of developing socially conscious artists, I've always felt like a bit of a poser suggesting that I am one of those. I am at best, an accidental activist - the kind of person who goes to political marches because the friends she's made brunch plans with are going and it sounds cool. I always feel good about it when I get there. I get engaged by the issues. I usually think "hey, I should participate in more direct political actions, because I really enjoy the collective spirit and believe in their effectiveness in changing the way people think and behave." But at heart, I am an introvert. I tend to take the easy way out and send money or a letter addressing issues I care about rather than getting out and mingling with others. And at heart I am a privileged middle-class white girl. The troubles and tribulations I have had to deal with in my life are paltry compared to what the average African woman my age has lived through (provided she lives this long.) So it takes more to knock me out of my comfortable little life than it might a person who is living closer to the edge to begin with.

But one thing that has always moved me is people. The phrase "the personal is political" has always rung true to me - even though I think it has been widely discredited in our apathetic age. I remember two years ago this fall a young schizophrenic woman, who was essentially living in a homeless shelter and who had been unable to access appropriate medical support, stripped her 3 children naked and threw them one by one off the pedestrian pier on the Embarcadero into the Bay. This incident haunted me for months. I imagined the children bobbing in the water, the 7 year-old reaching out for the 10 month old and maybe trying to hold her aloft for a moment before they both succumbed to the cold and the waves. I imagined the rescue workers desperately trolling the waters around the pier, both hoping and fearing to find what they were looking for. And most of all, I imagined the woman, "waking up" to what she had done at some future time and the terrible inescapable anguish that would engulf her for the rest of her conscious moments. This event lodged in my imagination and forced its way into my consciousness at the most inconvenient moments. I found myself having nightmares for weeks, crying in budget meetings, having to pull off to the side of the road when an unexpected wave of grief hit me. I know a big part of my reaction had to do with the fact that I shared something with this woman - we are both mothers - but of course I have every advantage and every support, while she had every obstacle. And I felt tremendously angry and disappointed with myself and everyone in my community that we had failed this woman, failed to recognize her deep need before it was too late, failed to be the village that one actually does need in order to raise healthy successful children.

Where I meet the phrase "social justice" is in the simple non-intellectual plane of empathy - the place of "co-feeling." Facts and statistics have always sailed right through my head, but imagining another human being facing their darkest moment creates inescapable images that lodge in me like hot lead. The question is how to transform that co-feeling into some kind of action that will contribute to changing the circumstances that created such a tragedy in the first place. And after wrestling 6 rounds with my STP, I think I can truly say that I believe this is what theatre can do in modern America - manifest characters and their stories in a way that penetrates our information-saturated brains and marketing-perverted hearts so that we care about another person's dilemma enough that we actually get off our asses and do something to help them.

I already knew this in some inner chamber of my heart, but having to write about it for others made it crystal clear to me, and also helped me understand the ambivalence with which I have approached mainstream theatre-making in the past few years in a new context. I don't know what the future holds - if I will get this job or another like it, when I will make a play again, how the recent realization that I don't ever want to direct Shaw or Marivaux or O'Neill will affect my career - but I do know that being in touch in a deeper way with why art matters to me is a good outcome for 3 weeks of work.

I'll leave you with the opening of my STP. May your next 3 weeks be as full of revelation as my last 3 have been.

Be well.

"When I was younger, I made theatre because I found it exciting and challenging to imagine fantastic worlds and then try to manifest them using the imperfect materials of bodies, wood, light, and paint. But now when I make theatre, I am motivated by a desire to give witness to what I see happening in the world and to conceive of alternative ways of being. I believe that theatre can function as a significant tool for social change, but not in the splashy sense that it will cause people to quite their day-jobs and riot in the streets for justice. Rather, I think theatre’s chief value in modern America is that it can create empathy and understanding between people by telling compelling and complex stories in imaginative and emotionally engaging ways. And I believe empathy has revolutionary consequences.

I can read in the paper about a woman who has lost her young children to the state because she left them in a locked apartment while she went to work. I can be shocked or saddened by this story and still go about my day and do nothing to help her or her children. But if I spend a few hours with this woman, in the body of an actor, if I hear her stories and watch her struggle with the economic and social challenges she faces, if I meet her children and see where she lives, if I try on her shoes for a time, I will not be able to forget her so quickly. I may walk out of the theatre with a visceral understanding of how fine a line there is between us. And the truth of that may inspire me to do something I have never done before, like write my congressman about the lack of affordable childcare, or volunteer at a shelter, or simply offer help to my neighbor when she needs someone to unexpectedly look after her kids."

Labels: Career Anxiety, Creative Process, Rebirth

EQUINOX

Gratitude for the gift of life is the primary
wellspring of all religions, the hallmark
of the mystic, the source of all true art...
It is a privilege to be alive in this time
when we can choose to take part in the
self-healing of our world.

- Joanna Macy

Today is a special day. First, it is the Autumnal Equinox, which means that the earth is poised equally between light and dark, day and night, before we slip further into the growing darkness and hibernation of the fall. So, it represents a brief moment of balance which only occurs twice a year, a space between the inhale and the exhale.

Second, it is my birthday. I'm 37 today. A good solid number. And a prime number to boot. I've always liked prime numbers - numbers which are only divisible by themselves and 1 - they seem so full of themselves, tributes to individual identity. After the first batch of essential divisors (1, 2, 3, 5, 7), we have 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, 29, 31, and now 37. To me, prime numbers carry a certain amount of potency, a little magic even, and a great deal of mystery.

So, in tribute to the number and the day, I'd like to offer (in no particular order) a list of some things that I'm grateful for:

1) Living this long. By average estimates, my life is half over (or half begun). And yet, I have already lived longer than many people in many places can expect to. I'm grateful to the universe for continuing to give me the resources I have needed to sustain my life.

2) My mother. For being a stay-at-home mom. Something I definitely didn't appreciate enough in the feminist haze of my adolescent and post-adolescent years. But she gave me a lot of time and attention, more than I may be able to muster for my own kids. And it mattered.

3) My father. For many reasons, but especially today for his regular $100 birthday check. It's nice to have a few things you can count on in life. A birthday splurge at the bookstore is a joy I enjoy today courtesy of dad.

4) Swimming. Nothing feels better than the feeling of my body moving through water.

5) Trees. As long as I live, if I have a window to look out with a bit of sky and a tree to see, I'll be okay.

6) The Ocean and the Sky. Whenever I've been sad, depressed, or confused in my life, I find that half an hour gazing at either of these constantly changing marvels sets me right. Tom Robbins says "Spend 1/2 hour every day reading poetry, being in your body, writing with a hard-on (girls too), and looking at the sky." As apt a recipe for a good life as any I've encountered.

7) Chocolate. Especially Lindt milk-chocolate truffles.

8) Fluevog Shoes. A San Francisco treat.

9) Books. Of every stripe, but lately especially memoirs.

10) Money. And that I have enough of it not only to meet my basic needs, but to buy things I love like chocolate and shoes and books.

11) My Health. Specifically the abilities to walk; see; hear; eat, digest and shit without pain; sleep soundly; and grow and carry two babies in my body without undue hardship.

12) Music. There is so much to be grateful for in this category: jazz, new flamenco, the female diva crooners like Annie Lennox and kd lang, taiko drumming, Tchiakovsky, organ music, and my all-time favorite instrumental on the harp guitar "Because It's There" by Michael Hedges.

13) Being born American. This an unexpected and fairly recent gratitude. Despite all that is wrong with our country and all that we have to be embarrassed and ashamed about, as a woman and a citizen, I have more rights, privileges and freedoms being an American than I would as a citizen of most other countries. I have the ability to speak, dress, and work in any way I choose. Something not to be taken for granted.

14) David. I remember being 20 years old and thinking that I would live the rest of my life alone (probably with a bunch of cats), because I couldn't imagine meeting anyone who I could stand to share my life with or who I imagined would want to be with me for that long. We've been together for nearly 15 years, and while there is lots that we struggle with and plenty to still learn about each other, he has been for me and with me through so much. When my mother called at 6am 4 years ago to tell me that my sister had been in a life-threatening accident, I was only able to gasp. David, in his sleep, heard that giant intake of breath and immediately knew something was terribly wrong. He came charging out of the bedroom and threw his arms around me and held me tight, never asking what was wrong, just holding me, containing me, while I cracked and fell apart.

15) My Friends. All the many varied friends I have collected over the years. Especially the ones who keep reaching out to me and pulling me close even when I'm busy and distracted.

...to be continued.

Labels: My Favorite Things, Rebirth

HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL

Today is the first day of spring on most calendars. It is also my half-birthday. That cosmic convergence makes the day extra special to me. The 21st of every month is a fresh start day for me though. Since I entered the world on a 21, the possibility of rebirth seems a bit more graspable on this over all other days. I love new beginnings. In addition to the 21 days, they also seem possible after holidays and retreats. How many have I had in my life? How many moments of hope?

“Aha! Now I’ve got things figured out. This time I’ve got life where I want it. I’m going to eat right, exercise, send thank-you notes, be responsive to friends and take the time to be really present with everyone I meet!”

It sounds like a good life. I don’t know why it fades so quickly from my view. Today, as I contemplate the new beginnings mindset, I am aware of two things.

1) A good life only seems possible when one is in a generous open state of being – rested, well fed, and satiated with affection and beauty.

2) Daily life in America is a “grind” that wears you down and uses you up. Despite all your best efforts toward health and optimism, again and again you find yourself in survival mode – tired, poorly fed, lonely, disoriented. In this state, it is all you can do to take care of your basic needs. Even if there is time (which there usually isn’t), there is no energy or will to be kind to other people, to make sustainable choices, to be curious or open to what life puts in your path.

Related to this is the over-stimulation factor. When I first return home from a trip, it seems possible to remember things – call my friend back, drop a note to let someone know I enjoyed their company, take the car in for servicing. But after a few days, everything seems overwhelming – there are more errands than time, more people to connect to than I can emotionally stomach, more things to do than I can remember. This chronic over-stimulation is a lifestyle norm in our culture. And in this state, something new is virtually impossible.

One of the great gifts of moving to a foreign country is how the strangeness of your new environment shatters your sense of familiarity and comfort with your old environment. My friend Jen says:

”When you go to a new place, your senses are heightened. You don't know where things are, what to expect, what is expected of you, how to do things. To compensate for your inexperience you have to really concentrate the way a child does, mobilize all of your senses. And when you do that, you wake up.”

The part of me that has woken up in the relative stillness of my London life is a girl I haven’t seen in a long time. She may have disappeared during college or shortly thereafter – right around when I entered the “world of work.” She is a girl who’s greatest pleasure comes from looking at the sky, from reading, from taking long flights of mental fancy. She measures her days in terms of experiences rather than achievements. She is not ambitious, productive or efficient.

1st Corinthians instructs:

“When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man I put away childish things.”

And this is what it means to be a grown-up in American culture – to put away a part of ourselves, to hide her in a cupboard, starve her into submission, and pretend that she is no longer us.

But that child is the source of all our creativity and goodness. She recognizes and yearns for beauty. She is addicted to joy. If we sprung her from her long captivity, she just might rescue us with an ingenious scheme, a daring contraption that could catapult us into a more imaginative and satisfying life.

And that is what I’m trying to do here. I like to tell people I’ve just met that I’m on “sabbatical” or that I’m trying on full-time mothering. But really, I’m trying to overcome my enslavement to a modern lifestyle that demands that I work and sweat and strain to acquire and achieve until I explode or expend myself completely. I’m a ripe candidate for this kind of cultural hari-kari – a first born, slightly anxious, overly analytical, good-girl who likes to please others and derives her primary sense of self-worth from work. I come from sturdy peasant stock. I have tremendous endurance and can deny myself everything and just keep going and going. But for the past 15 years or so, every 21st, I would look up and wish for something else – another kind of life with a slower pace, more light, and more room to breathe. And the new perspective that the strangeness of London allows, the possibility of seeing like a child again, seems like an absolute life-buoy to me – one that I reached for intuitively last fall when Boss Dog (my husband has asked for a cool blog nickname too!) was unexpectedly offered the job here. The only catch was that to grab the buoy I had to let go of everything else – friends, family, artistic community, and any kind of place on any kind of ladder. The vertigo of this decision still has me reeling. And yet, it reminds me of a favorite long-forgotten quote from my college years:

“They say it’s prudence to gain the whole world and lose your own soul, but your soul sticks to you if you stick to it, and the world has a way of slipping through your fingers.”

- Captain Shotover (Heartbreak House, George Bernard Shaw)

So my wish for today, on the first day of Spring 2007, is for the ability to remember next month and next year what I can see and feel so clearly now. May your wish, whatever it is, come true too. And may you be blessed with an extra helping of joy this week.

Be well.

Labels: Rebirth