Spinning backwards
It’s not just happiness is it? Happiness happens every once in a while, or actually quite frequently, if you let it. No. It’s not just happiness, it’s a sense of well being. A sense of peace and health. The best we can do is chase after it , tap it on the shoulder, ask it to wait. “Please wait.” Maybe it’ll turn around and let you look at it for a minute or two.
People will tell you how to get it. Hardcover for $24.95 plus shipping and you never have to leave your house. Meditate 5 minutes every day. Breathe through your nose. Serve others. Write down everything you eat and stay within your points range. Vegetables are zero points. Walk briskly for 40 minutes 5 times a week. Engage in weight bearing exercise. Take Folic Acid. Don’t forget B-Complex vitamins. Floss daily. Pray. Sit in silence. Get out in nature. Give blood. Be grateful. Use “I feel” statements. Ask yourself, “What’s my part in this?” Color mandalas, beat a drum, get a massage. Acupuncture. Read The Tao Te Jing, The Torah, A Course In Miracles, The Qur’an, The Bible, The Vedas. Vote. Visualize. Donate. Detox. Fast. Slow down. Write to your congressperson. Exfoliate. Relax. Focus. Dance. Sing. Pet a cat. Rescue a dog. Contribute the maximum allowed to your 401(k). Be. Be still. Be here now. Follow the 12 steps. Keep coming back. Sign the petition. Pay your parking tickets. Wear a seat belt. Recycle. Create. Love your neighbor. Love yourself. Trim your cuticles. Call your mother. Feed the homeless. Receive. Tell the truth.
So what do I do with my anger? How do I uncover it, and how do I move through it? Do I really need to remember where it comes from? I hear there’s a newly discovered planet orbiting backwards. WASP-17. White Anglo Saxon Protestant like me. The scientists say it must have experienced a collision during its early history “which flung it into an unusual spin.” If even the planets change course from early conflict, how in the heavens can we mere humans expect to correct our own paths?
Maybe it’s not some long forgotten childhood injury (an early history collision) that has me adjusting the stacks of paper on my desk repeatedly each and every day after day, straightening the pages so all the lines are parallel. Maybe it’s the casual lies people insist on telling for no apparent reason. Perhaps something that small is big enough. Because it’s not as if the two wars the U.S. is engaged in are on the forefront of my day. I can’t claim that I’m regularly conscious of the dozens of regions of Africa or Detroit where children are forced to take up arms. There are thousands-no millions-of injustices and damages and disappointments unfolding by the hour. Name a problem. Pick one. There is suffering all the time. Enough to make us spin backwards and stutter and lie. And hurt.
My shrink says, “It’s important that we talk about this.” Apparently, my “life vest has become a straight jacket”. How can I be brave enough to take mine off, when everyone around me seems to be wearing theirs? And with the state of things, who’s to say it’s safe to take the vest off now, anyway?
But I keep seeing it pass by: Well Being making its elusive orbit. Inhale. Allow your rib cage to open, lungs expand. “Wait. Please wait.”
Rethinking food, one meal at a time
The book Andy has asked me not to read.
It’s only because he’s worried I’d starve myself if I learned more about the farm industry. I’m not going to lie to you, I’ve got animal produce coursing through my veins right now. In fact, I’ve had two cheeseburgers in the last 8 days. But another truth is that slowly I’m learning (even without having read Peter Singer’s investigation of food production) to make better choices.
Our lives changed over a year ago when Andy and I watched Richard Linklater’s “Fast Food Nation” on DVD. I’m pretty sure he stopped eating meat on the spot. I tried abstaining, but psyched myself out after only 8 days.
My excuse? If meat is eliminated, the spectrum of what I’m immediately ready to eat is sharply reduced: I’ve been a “vegephobe” since birth. My strong aversion to the smell and texture of vegetables, combined with my even stronger gag reflex made meal times miserable for my family all throughout the mid ’70s. Whatever pop psychology my mom innocently subscribed to back in the day only served to reinforce my stubbornness.
Green beans haven’t touched my plate since that night in 1977 when my exhausted parents realized that being sent to bed before “Sunny and Cher” was a sacrifice I was prepared to make on a regular basis. Yep. I won. I’ve never even eaten a single leaf of iceberg lettuce. Salad dressing won’t help – mayonnaise is higher on my list of NEVERS than cooked spinach and broccoli.
Over the course of the last 15 years, with help from a good therapist (“Perhaps lightly stir fried Asian dishes with a sauce you know you like”), some great friends, and time spent listening to my beloved Tony Robbins’ tapes (NLP ROCKS!), I’ve been able to incorporate a few vegetables into my diet. But I’ve never made a habit of it. And I’m a long way from being able to put just any old thing in my mouth. God help the person who tells me, “Just try a bite.”
So now, although I’ve obliged Andy’s request not to even skim Singer’s book, my attraction to both the forbidden and horror stories have made doing so sickly tempting. Just imaging how animals on factory farms are treated has caused me to replace my daily milk and yogurt staples easily with organic soy versions. They don’t taste the same but are delicious in their own way and seductively guilt-free. Meanwhile, I have occasionally dared to glimpse at sites like The Unhappy Cow. Luckily, it’s possible to make the transition to compassionate eating without dwelling in the heart-wrenching terror-filled realities of factory dairy farms and slaughter houses.
Leaving the “how” out of it and learning about who we eat is compelling enough.
“Each cow has the ability to recognize more than 100 other cows, and they form close friendships with members of their herd. Researchers report that cows grieve when their friends or family members die.”
“Pigs are curious and insightful animals thought to have intelligence beyond that of an average 3-year-old human child. They are smarter than dogs and every bit as friendly, loyal, and affectionate.”
“Chickens understand sophisticated intellectual concepts, learn from watching each other, demonstrate self-control, worry about the future, and even have cultural knowledge that is passed from generation to generation.”
“Some fish gather information by eavesdropping on others, and some even use tools.”
Thank goodness, with sites like VegCooking and GoVeg.com and really yummy scientifically engineered tofu products, eating ethically has never been easier.
My conversion is slow going. There’s a half devoured wedge of Cambozola in the fridge now. God, I love cheese. So the research du jour becomes finding farms where the cows are treated with love and, in good health, are left to have a full range of moods, including happiness.
My whole life
39 years ago today, I was the uncomfortable addition to my mother’s torso, the months long anticipated sibling to my brother, but I hadn’t yet actually arrived. 39 years ago today was the last 24 hour period my family was just three.
Yesterday, I finally made the time to catch up with Mom on the phone. We had a nice chat, but the thing that kept circling in my monkey mind this morning was a feeling of irritation I had. Annoyed because I felt as if she told me to relax over the election, I conjured up defensive details listing all of the reasons why I felt her to be wrong. I started imagining the post I would write about how important this election is, and how anyone who . . . then I stopped myself.
I thought, “Ruth, a public blog is not the place to work this stuff out. Besides, you’re wrong about what she was telling you.” See, I interpreted what I thought she said, and decided how I felt about it without ever really stopping to understand what she meant. Check out Katie Byron’s, The Work, for more on the topic of how believing our own thoughts is so often the source of our own discomfort.
So I chose to think about other parts of our conversation. The way she listened patiently and graciously to all of my overly detailed stories about the minutiae of my life. The way she’s always, always, so kind to me, no matter what’s going on in her life, no matter how idiotic I may be acting at the time.
She told me the sweetest story about how recently she had chosen a birthday card for me and brought it home, only to have my father veto it. He wanted something with a more profound sentiment, and he wanted to send Hallmark. He takes the “very best” slogan seriously. We laughed about that. So she ended up finding a different card, one Dad liked better. It’s an especially sweet one.
When I was a child and I got myself worked up into a physical state of rage that would spoil the moment for everyone around me, or when I was in heavy complain mode, I remember Mom saying to me, “You have a choice.”
“We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them.” — Kahlil Gibran
What a wonderful gift – to help me to understand from a very young age that I, alone, had the power to determine my own moods and actions.
So this birthday, my choice is to bask in the gift of my family — those three who anticipated me 39 years ago today, and the two (one furry, one human) who share my mornings and evenings here in the place that is now home. I can’t even be conscious of all they’ve taught me and given me throughout my life, but I can offer my gratitude as often as I speak. That’s my choice.
Intuition: It’s physical
Somehow, right around the time I was learning to butter toast, the phrase “women’s intuition” germinated with what was – for any child – a too vast knowledge of I Love Lucy plots. The result was an underlying idea that whatever women think they know, they should just mind their own business anyway.
It took me years of adult living, therapy, seeking and following wise teachers, and developing the habit of doing spiritual practice regularly every once in a while, to realize that Read the rest of this entry »
WOW! THANK YOU!
This afternoon I was out w/ some friends doing a good deed. While I was out, I peeked at my phone to check my email and saw that my TNT donations crossed over the $2,400 mark. I had FINALLY reached the required fund raising minimum for my marathon!!
I think it’s really fantastic that this thing that I’d been stressing about for weeks (How on earth to raise $2400??) finally got resolved when I spent some time doing something else for other people. Literally.
When I set up my TNT fund raising website, I purposely chose the option NOT to have the donors names and amounts listed. I did this because I wanted people to feel comfortable giving outside of the public eye.
But I do want to tell you some things about the people who donated. There were 30 people in all (so far). Every person who gave surprised me and delighted me with their generosity.
- Five of the people who gave are blood relatives.
- Two of the people who gave are new friends who have come into my life within the last couple of months.
- The individual who donated the most money hasn’t seen me in many years – and I don’t know when we’ll see each other again (although I hope it’s sooner than later).
- I used to play all night sessions of monopoly with one of the donors.
- One of the donors gave from another continent.
- I used to have an elementary school crush on one donor, but I can’t remember which grade we were in.
- One of the donors still lives on the same street where my long time best friend grew up.
- I had pretty fun “make-out sessions” with two of the donors – in two different decades – but have seen neither guy in over 5 years.
- Three of the donors gave without ever having met me.
- Two of the donors were college roommates of mine – each in a different residence.
- Many people who gave told me they had loved ones who suffered with cancer.
- One person who gave knew an 8 year old who died of leukemia.
- Two women who donated gave birth to baby boys within the last two months.
- One donor is in training to do a 525 mile bike ride for the Arthritis Foundation this fall.
- One donor told me I’ve got chutzpah – and I’m so flattered!
Constantly Temporary
”Those are nice, huh? . . . They’re not real; so they’ll last forever.”
– Lars in LARS AND THE REAL GIRL
I’ve reached precisely this point in watching this movie for the first time. It’s the part when one of the townswomen (who has agreed to pretend that Lars’ life-sized doll is a real person) has given the faux girlfriend a big bouquet of artificial flowers. Up until this point, it’s been somewhat of a mystery (to me and to the characters around Lars in the movie) as to why he seems to be under the delusion that the doll is a real woman. But as soon as he says, “They’re not real; so they’ll last forever,” it makes perfect sense. When I heard this line, I pressed pause. And then I wept.
This is what’s been bringing about my reoccurring melancholy for years now: everything is fleeting. Fleeting. And there’s so much sweetness that’s passing right before my eyes. There’s a constant powerlessness. A constant letting go. And it hurts.
My niece verbalized the feeling best when she was 4. The day I showed up for my biannual visit with her family – our family, she started the ritual of asking, “How many more days will you be here?”
“9 more days.”
And the next day she remembered to ask, “How many more days will you be here?”
“8 more days.”
Later, “How many more days will you be here?”
“7 more days.”
Finally, on the last day, she said, “I wish this were the first day again.”
“Oh, me too. Me too.”
It’s too sweet. It goes by too quickly. There’s no pressing pause.
She’s 13 now. She doesn’t remember that particular visit. But I tell her the story.
The feeling is the same each time I see my parents. It’s the same each time Andy leaves for work in the morning. It’s the same whenever I have random mundane thoughts about the passage of time – like noticing the heat marks that are impossible to remove from the tea kettle. I remember the day I chose that kettle. It seemed like it would be new forever. It’s the same when I listen to Lily breathing loudly in her sleep.
The only thing that counteracts this ache is when I remind myself of Plato’s Parable of the Cave. But that’s for another post.
All grown up . . . ?
On days like today, when I’m sitting in my office working away, merrily unstapling pages and paperclipping other pages and typing numbers into the calculator and looking at spreadsheets, and then all of a sudden, a Grateful Dead song comes up on the iPod shuffle blaring some tune like “Bird Song” through each of the little speakers on my desk, I think to myself, “Is this what I thought being a grown up would be like?”
And I wonder . . . When I was out there on the staduim floors twirling, show after show, watching my skirt wave out around my 18 year old body, did I have any idea that 38 would look like this? That I would have relocated to California and made a life on my own here? That I would have waited more than a decade to meet the man of my life? That I’d be employed in the TV & Film industry? That even inside my own office, I’d feel a little guilty for stopping to write a journal entry?
I didn’t have a clue. I wonder what the next 20 years will bring. If in 1988 I couldn’t even fathom such ideas as an iPod or the internet . . . and iChat was Totally Jetsons, man, then what’s 2028 going to look like? What toys, what jobs, what endeavors, what relationships? Jerry will still jam on whatever gizmo delivers the music, though, that’s for sure.
20 years goes by so quickly. Too fast. Too fast. “Perhaps it was all a dream we dreamed one afternoon, long ago.”
You want to know what keeps me going?
When I was 19, I had a drug related nervous breakdown and ended up in the hospital for 10 days. I wasn’t physically addicted to anything, but the drugs I had been taking caused 4 days of insomnia which in turn, drove me absolutely out of touch with reality. I was the crazy girl walking through the student union in her pjs & bare feet. Yep, that was me. Read the rest of this entry »
iWill Power
Alright. It’s been 3 years and a change of employers, perhaps I can push up against the guardrail of the NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) I signed way back when. Just to be clear, I am not going to disclose anything I agreed to not to disclose. But I am going to tell you that standing in a gorgeous digital screening room reviewing a spot-in-progress for what is now an Ancient Toy with several advertising execs, some of whom had God’s number on speed dial (that’s the God most commonly pronounced with an “S-t-” and rhymes with heave), somehow put a yearning into my cells.
It was Fall 2004: I saw the green (it was a special green …. long deliberated over by many highly paid people sipping expensive water Read the rest of this entry »
Pumice Stone
“I know the difference between a book club and this seminal moment in our history.” — Oprah Winfrey
The first time I heard Barack Obama speak was the summer of 2004; we had the DNC playing on the big screen at work. I wept, sniffled and wept some more and as soon as his speech was over, I ran to the phone, called Andy and said without greeting, “That man is going to be our president someday.”
I exerted a lot of effort that summer. Raised money for the Kerry campaign, beaded & sold bracelets with slogans like “Kerry On”, studied Read the rest of this entry »
As seen on the playroom floor
One of the best things about going to Santa Fe for Thanksgiving is sitting around A-D’s studio-turned-temporary-playroom drinking hot coffee, playing with the children, reading the paper and getting into deep conversations (and some not-so-deep ones) about the state of the world. It’s a multigenerational event where we gather with no schedule, no agenda, nothing to do except be with each other. I savor these times.
Before we caught our flight for this year’s gathering, specifically around 4am on Thanksgiving morning as I tied my boots, I distinctly remember bending over and being mid-tie when I heard a man on Andy’s radio speaking out against the war. My hands stopped moving and I listened. Read the rest of this entry »
Amazing Grace
Yesterday we got lost in Burbank. Don’t laugh.
See, for better or worse, I spend my days and nights nestled comfortably between the Pacific Ocean and the 405, between the Santa Monica Mountains and the 10.
It’s, I don’t know – I’m guessing, a 3 by 3 & 1/2 mile radius. I’m not intentionally isolating myself, but you know how easy it is to fall into habits. For those of you who don’t know Los Angeles, suffice it to say, Burbank is outside of the area you see pictured above.
Friday afternoon
Co-worker to Ruth: What are your plans for the weekend?
Ruth: I have to go to Burbank
Coworker: Don’t go!
There’s nothing wrong with Burbank, it’s just that it’s not my beloved Santa Monica. Someday I’ll do a whole post about geographical snobbery. It’ll be filled with irony, as I hail from the tobacco farm country of Prince Georges County, Maryland – An Undesirable Address (if you’re the kind of person for whom those things matter). I’m not knocking my folks for raising us there; on the contrary, I LOVED being 20 minutes from D.C. during my formative years. Even if, as Montgomery-County-bred-Andy jokingly points out, I was on the wrong side of the beltway.
So why Burbank? Read the rest of this entry »
I’m Completely Smitten!
Check out this site! Fantastic! You may notice that most items are “Sold, thanks”. Buh, but, but . . . . I NEED the bunny with the skull & cross bones sweater. I need Florrie the fox wearing blue Mary Janes. I NEED those Zero Calorie ADORABLE cupcakes!
And what’s more? She blogs. (sigh!) This knitter, Julie, blogs with an utterly artful style & scrumptious poise. Martha Stewart on her best day had nothing on Julie. Let’s add “little cotton rabbits” to my list of things I’m so very grateful for.
Where’s the rest of the list? In my head right now . . . soon to make an appearance at a blog near you.
I go by myself
The fires in So. Cal. this week reminded me of this . . .
I was probably in some kind of mild shock for a day or two after I heard that Cheyenne’s house burned down. It didn’t burn down to the ground like you see on Lifetime TV, but it was deemed unlivable.
Smoke and soot damage is an intense thing. I never would have believed just how bad it can be until that time my little orange acrylic Buddha candleholder—the one I splurged on from Fred Segal—caught on fire during a party a few years ago. Such a tiny deity set ablaze offering flames up the kitchen wall. We put it out as soon as we realized what on earth was setting off the alarms. And yet I found specs of soot for months. In wine glasses in closed cabinets on the other side of the room. Even in the linen closet on the other side of the apartment. Soot doesn’t just rise and fall, it glides and maneuvers, sneaking in to forgotten corners and stays until you do something about it.
Cheyenne and her family got out okay. Safely. The first few times we talked, I had the presence of mind not to ask about our scrapbook. I waited until she offered the information. And she did. The scrapbook survived too. Thank God.
We’d been keeping that scrapbook since we met, six years prior, at Big Brothers/Big Sisters. Read the rest of this entry »
Is this really impolite?
Until I was nine years old, and dying for a pair of designer blue jeans, specifically, Jordache jeans, I had no idea of my parents’ financial limitations. We couldn’t even find designer jeans in the stores where we normally shopped. We had to go to the special department store in the special shopping mall. Without making any promises, Mom agreed to take me there to consider the purchase.
So we went to Garfinkels. With the shiny floors and chandeliers, it felt like a modern day castle. I spoke more quietly than usual, but I couldn’t tell you why. Read the rest of this entry »
How Long?
This was originally posted at Thirty Voices in response to the “Posting Challenge” – What would you banish to Room 101?
A while ago, I wrote an incredibly angry essay about the janjaweed and the U.S. government’s failure to vote that Sudan be brought before the International Criminal Court. The piece came from a moment of palpable rage.
I don’t think I can reprint it here because it displays an indulgence in what my mother calls “lazy language.” Neither of my parents ever utter more than, “Damn” or “Hells Bells,” and those expletives are deployed rarely –in times of sudden irritation– like in 1976 when Mom discovered that the “Putt-putt-Pinto” wouldn’t start and she may be late for work, or in 1981 when Dad burned his arm on the pancake griddle. See, when I said “rarely,” I meant just that. Years pass between my parents’ use of even the most mild cuss words. Their example taught me that speech matters.
Even if the readers and women of 30 Voices don’t mind some occasional profanity, it just so happens that Read the rest of this entry »
Birthdays and Gifts from Ghosts
Had my grandmother lived another 14 months longer than she actually did, and had that amazingly pedestrian Midwestern chain of eateries, “Bill Knapp’s” survived, she might very well be having her birthday dinner there at this precise moment. The “Happy Birthday” song would play over the loud speaker as the chocolate cake was served, and she’d receive her 95% discount . . . one percent off for every year of her life.
Happy Birthday, Grandma.
It would not have been Grandma’s style to haunt us. Nor would she have had any interest in performing an occasional apparitional visit. She was just way too, well, solid, for that. But I do believe it was either she or Grandpa (dead since 1987) who came back and invisibly and deliberately offered a special gift to me. There’s simply no other explanation for what happened. Read the rest of this entry »
