"I took the [road] less traveled by/"

The Grapes of Wrath

2011-08-17T09:15:00.004-05:00

Today was a funny day to wake up. My phone vibrated at 8:40 a.m. with a text message from a friend. No preface, no context, no "good morning," just this portion of an incredible and powerful Marianne Williamson quote:

"We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you."

Then I scrolled over to my emails only to find this comment posted on a YouTube video from my "Body Empowerment" series:

"You Look Like A Miserable, Bloated, Drunk-Bison... You have Saggy, Droopy eyes like a Bloodhound... You are HUGE... You look like a Third grade teacher who gets her ass kicked by her RedNeck Husband... Congrats on the new baby BTW. What are you now? 9 mos pregnant. Make a poem about What A Lard-Ass you are... Looking st you motivates me to be skinny... U fucking disgust me... Good night my fellow Behemoth-BITCH :)"

Part of me wants to send the Marianne Williamson quote to this YouTube viewer, but I'm not particially interested in engaging in a back and forth with this viewer directly. So I figured if I posted both it and the WIlliamson quote somewhere on the Internet, maybe the energy of the Williamson quote would land somewhere on their computer screen and keyboard and seap through their fingers and eyes into their soul and they would stop bullying strangers on the Internet as a manifestation of some awful pain eating them up inside.

The best part of the YouTube comment is the last line when the viewer writes "my fellow Behemoth-BITCH :)." "Fellow." What self-deprecation. How we treat ourselves with such shame. As Daniel "Fritz" Silber-Baker says in his poem "Swag," which references this Williamson quote, "Turn my swag on."

"All the world's a stage"

2011-08-08T11:39:00.006-05:00

I spent time in an empty theater this morning. Standing on the empty stage of a vacant theater is often more titillating than an actual performance. There is something primordial about breathing untainted stage air: there is more rawness than live performance allots.

"It's like foreplay with creation," my friend Jeremy Karafin, Founder and Co-artistic Director of Poetic Theater Productions, said. We were at the Wild Project, an Alphabet City theater at which he works in New York City. It was close to noon. I had just been interviewed outside the Nuyorican Poet's Cafe for a nonprofit's upcoming web campaign promoting confidence in women and girls. I was oozing with confidence myself, and after a lengthy chat with Jeremy, he told me I could walk into the theater. Not to perform, not to work, just to be. He must have known my lust for the empty stage.

As I stood in the front row staring at the vacant performance space, he told me I could go on stage. I jumped aboard. He stayed leaning against the wall separating the seats from the aisle.

I asked him he knew about the feeling. How being uninterrupted, uninhabited, untainted on a theater stage was intoxicating, exhilarating, and prophetic. He knew. Most performers and theater people do.

In lieu of this week being the National Poetry Slam in Boston, I thought about how so often in spoken word and slam poetry we use the microphone as our instrument of engagement. The microphone is powerful. It helps us project. It stands as an incredible symbol by which we promote voice and authenticity.

Still, what happens when our primary instrument becomes the stage, rather than the microphone. In this event, the microphone becomes a part of the instrument at large. Instead of containing our voices and performances into a slender, vertical piece of technology, the stage as a instrument catapults our performance with wider ranger and depth from a horizontal platform. We dynamically work the entire room, rather than playing only a small portion of it.

"All the world's a stage," wrote Shakespeare in "As You Like It." Let's use it. All of it. Let's let our body project and play the room. Our voices will be an inherent and phenomenal causality.

Adaptation

2011-03-23T09:47:00.001-05:00

I wrote this on February 7, 2011. It still feels 100 percent relevant today. I'm not sure that I have a resolution yet, but I know that acknowledgment is always the first step.

There is something terrifying about self-satisfaction. Like it is illegal. And messy. And egotistical. I have watched so many people take advantage of it, and burn forests in the wake of their fires.

I am afraid of sitting still. Of walking away from all the distractions to vomit verbal on the page and meditate myself into myself and other forms of self care and coping and self prophecy.

I am afraid of dreaming. Of dreaming big. Like I used to. Of dreaming happy. Like I used to. Of letting myself live freely with freedom and liberty and all the things we were promised upon arrival.

My stomach makes noises. My noises make gaseous propellant sounds. My sounds are empty. And my arms are waves of reminder chills. The kind I always get. That stopped for a while. That came back a while ago. These are noises. And chills.

And what are words. Are they as powerful as they used to be? Have we sucked up all of their energy? Have we perverted them into quicksand holding patterns because we’ve mistrusted ourselves and miscalculated our own abilities to drip propane gas onto the sounds of chills.

And other chemicals.

I keep avoiding my self. My sense of self. My writing self. My reading self. My inner self. My natural self. For what is the discipline now? There are too many emails to which to respond. Too many interviews to type. Too many children to tutor. There is not enough time in the day for myself. There is not enough time in the day for myself. There is not enough time in the day for myself. Myself. Myself. Myself. Myself. Myself. Myself. Myself. Type it seven times, quickly. Like life depends on it. Like typing isn’t fast enough. Like the brain and my brain and all brains work too quickly. Work too quickly. Type it fast. Faster. Like my brain. Myself. Myself. Myself. Like my brain. Like brain of myself. Type it fast. What’s the reason. What’s the reason that these are all typed fast. So fast. Like myself.

Do anything and everything to avoid myself. To avoid sitting here. To avoid what makes me happy. To avoid. To avoid. To avoid. What am I so afraid of? Why can’t I sit still and do what I want to do for myself. Why. Can’t I. Just sit. Still.

Thriller

2011-02-09T09:49:00.004-05:00

Last week, I eavesdropped on a woman and man at an East Village, Manhattan, coffeeshop. Him: a web designer and computer expert; her: a yoga instructor. He was teaching her how to use Facebook, as she won an "Introduction to Facebook Lesson" in an auction at her daughter's school. He left, she closed up her lap top, packed up, coated up, and started for the door. This is when I stopped her, and learned most of the above details.

I told her I was jealous that she was Facebook free. That she had managed to live this many years without being so overly plugged in. She said she knew it was a blessing and a curse. That anything she resists in life, she realizes she must address - yoga instructor jargon, of course. We chatted a bit more. I told her it was addictive, but also crucial for marketing her yoga studio. That's just how it is, these days, we both agreed. And she left.

A few years ago I met a man at Starbucks, also in the East Village. We talked about the publishing world - I was writing my first book manuscript at the time - and we exchanged information. He only had a land line, and a mailing address - no email. He called himself a Luddite. Of course, he was, ironically, frequenting Starbucks. I think of him from time to time, when I can't pull my fingers or face away from my BlackBerry or Facebook or Twitter or my email inbox.

I have a handful of close friends that aren't on Facebook. I envy that sometimes, assuming they must still have some control and autonomy in their lives. That they must be more productive as artists and activists without existing in both the human world, and the Facebook world.

Because really, that's what it is. Facebook - the Internet and all other social media sites - is another world in and of itself. It feels like this space where things happen, and I can't yet figure out if these things that happen replace connection in real life, or supplement it. I used to think it was supplemental. Back in the day. Back when there were only 15 colleges on Facebook and I only joined because my friend told me he expected that I would have the best Facebook profile ever. So I took the challenge and joined. That was 7 or 8 years ago. I logged on every few days. Wrote novels on my friend Neely's wall. Poked a few friends. We thought it was a funny joke.

Now, it controls so many of our lives.

Yet of course, I embrace Facebook. It's an incredible tool for staying in touch with people and reconnecting with friends. Entire events happen in the Facebook sphere - for better or worse. Relationships come out of Facebook. My friend and his wife just had their second child - they met via Facebook. My boyfriend and I have Facebook to thank. We first met at a poetry show in which I was performing, and he was the photographer. Days later, he friended me. I sent him a message. We chatted for hours. That was almost two years ago.

I just wonder if we'll ever go back to a time when Facebook is supplemental to our lives, rather than an escape from, or instead of, or because of. I feel like it has lost control - that we have lost control.

I think about that mother. I think about her yoga practice. I think about resistance. The Luddite in Starbucks. Has he made it this far - still - without an email address or Facebook account?

And then of course, I will hit the "publish post" button here in Blogger, and my post will publish. And very few people will look at my blog and notice that a new post is up for the first time since November. Then, as I have linked them automatically, the post will feed through my Facebook account, and show up as a note. Which is the only way most people will ever end up reading this.

And then, of course, there's this: http://nyti.ms/h13NzB.

32 Flavors

2010-11-11T14:37:00.005-05:00

There is an epic and ephemeral veil that clothes so many parts of high school. I will never hear Ani DiFranco for the first time again. But I remember that first time. I was in the passenger seat of my friend Brenna's car. She had "Not A Pretty Girl" playing on the tape deck. "32 Flavors" came on. It spoke to me. Meant things I'd never heard before in song lyrics. It sang to me. Melodies I - to this day - hear, that make me feel transcendent, well, over everything in my life.

I'm listening to it now. I have chills. I remember how I listened to this song on repeat for probably an hour my senior year of high school, while at boarding school in Switzerland. The Swiss Alps and Lake Lugano through my window, "I am 32 flavors and then some," through my boom box speakers.

...and then. Literally. Literally, as I finish typing the previous sentence, I see a new email pop up in my inbox. Brenna has friended me on Facebook. Literally, I swear to G-d. I didn't make this up. And I had no idea where this blog post was headed when I started typing. It just seems to have written itself, as I typed her name and that memory and this song back into existence in my life. After all these years.

What are the odds. Really, what are the odds?

And what is the meaning?

Well...maybe those moments aren't so ephemeral. Maybe there is something powerful about remembering and bringing yourself back to basic spaces of newness, because they open you up to present moments of rebirth.

The "re" prefix was created for a reason.

Asterix

2010-11-10T08:43:00.004-05:00

I don't have any reoccurring dream per se, just a reoccurring dream theme: high school Latin class. I'm beginning to think that my reoccurring high school Latin class dream is an anxiety dream, because in every dream with this theme and plot structure, I'm behind. I haven't been to class for a few weeks. I didn't turn my homework in for the day, or the days before. I have no idea where my Latin dictionary is. I had no idea how to get to the classroom in the first place. I have no idea who many of the students are - they weren't in my Latin class in high school! But plenty of the faces are.

It's always the same teacher - one of my two high school Latin teachers. And for some reason, she never scolds me in these dreams. She just goes along, like I'll catch up and shift at my own pace. I'm not sure what that's about. Maybe it's the same way I approach some of my slacking tutoring students: I know they are capable of doing the work, but sometimes scolding and punishing and singling out is more harm than its worth. Sometimes ignoring the problem makes students like me - eager to please, and diligent and capable - feel even worse, because then I know the teacher is disappointed that I didn't work to my abilities.

So why - all these years later, having majored in Classical Studies, and received a Masters degree - do I still go to high school Latin in class in my subconscious as the metaphor for anxiety, and feeling like - knowing that? - I could be working much harder and more efficiently and in a more timely manor than I currently am?

I've written my Latin history before here. I'll spare the lengthy details this time around. But to summarize, I started taking Latin in sixth grade because my father told me it would boost my verbal SAT score (ironically, this would be my lowest standardized test score from high school). I started off with a bang - straight As all through 9th grade, and inducted into the Latin honor society. By 10th and 11th grade, an eating disorder and depression had taken hold of my everything. My grades slipped, my mental stability slipped, my physical health slipped, my emotions fluctuated, and I was, by no means, reaching my potential in school, particularly in Latin.

After a two-year stint studying in Europe, I went to college, wanting to major in Classical Studies, with a concentration in Latin. And so I did. I loved the language. I'd missed it terribly while in Europe. And again - I started off with a bang. Straight As freshman and sophomore year. By junior year, I was struggling. My two worst grades of college, in my major, in the language and subject matter I'd been studying at that point for 10 years.

I don't think it was my ability, or the language itself. It was that I was running two campus organizations, taking several demanding courses - including writing courses in which I preferred to focus my efforts, performing poetry all the time on behalf of one of the organizations I ran, minoring in theatre, sitting on body image panels, attending meetings for myriad women and feminist organizations, and also, you know, maintaining a multitude of friends and a social life. And oh yeah, working heavily in therapy on recovering from previously aforementioned eating disorder, and a series of other luxurious traumas that welcomed me to college.

So again, it wasn't my ability that was being challenged here with college junior year Latin. It was my priorities, my ability to manage my time, my ability to make time to highlight my skill set in an area for which I had tremendous passion. But having enough time for Latin translations each night, meant hours. It took hours for me to translate the works of Ovid and Petronious that I was assigned. And to this day, I still regret that. I still regret fumbling and falling just because I couldn't figure out how to make the time. Just because I have a life-long insatiable ability to sabotage those things I love and enjoy most, by putting other things ahead. Now, in college, I'm not sure that I loved Latin more than my poetry group, or feminism, or writing, or my friends. So I'm not really sure what would have needed to give in order for me to have succeeded that year in Latin. Maybe the excessive emotional stresses I put on myself? Maybe those?

But nowadays, I can see where I'm playing this game again. I can see why I had to have the Latin dream, again. I'm not nearly working to my full potential as a writer. I'm not nearly scratching the surface of what I'm capable of as a poet and activist. I'm putting so many other things ahead. Some of them are in order to survive financially, others could maybe give a little - like the extra hour of snoozing my alarm each morning. On the other hand, others would argue I need the sleep.

All I know is that the dream came again. Last night. Or rather this morning - while I was snoozing - oh the irony. I suppose it was telling me to get out of bed and start writing. And so I did. An hour and a half later than I planned last night.

History of the World: Part 1

2010-11-09T10:01:00.004-05:00

I've been told I live too much in the past. OK, maybe. But I have a theory that our college majors are more than anything, an indication of how we think: I majored in Classical Studies, thus digging through the past, and translating dead languages. But, don't we all have an obligation towards knowing history? Of ourselves, of our families, of our country? Like, shouldn't every American know when the Vietnam war occurred?

Aren't we supposedly doomed to repeat history if we don't have but an inkling of what has come before us? Are we not set to raze villages that have yet to be built if our hands are too heavy with ignorance?

I'm sitting on the G train, headed south towards Church Ave. I'm reading "The Living and the Dead: Robert McNamara and Five Lives of a Lost War," by Paul Hendrickson, one of my favorite undergrad professors.

Two gentlemen sitting to my right ask me what I'm reading. Now, I should add, I already have a relationship with these strangers. Several stops previous, they'd discussed their concern for whether or not they were headed in the right direction - to 4th Avenue and 9th Street. Eavesdropper that I am, I looked up and nodded, yes. Then they eventually sat down on the seat next to me. And jumped up at the stop before their destination, and shoved open the closing doors, and realized it was not their stop. And then released themselves back on to the seats. This is when we smiled and shared a moment, and I told them they were all good - next stop. And this is when they asked me about my book, and its nature and content.

It's about Robert McNamara, I explained. They didn't know who he was. The Secretary of Defense during the onset of the Vietnam War, I explained, who had a hand in masterminding the whole mess.

They didn't know what I was talking about. But they were middle-aged men, probably 15 to 20 years my senior. Pure East Coast accents. Pure English speech. Pure American, with liberty and justice for all.

One of the gentlemen asked me when the Vietnam War happened. He thought maybe his grandfather was in it. Yeah, he was sure his grandfather fought in it. When did it happen, like the 60s, he asked? I said the 60s and early 70s. Oh, well maybe that wasn't the war in which is grandfather fought.

They got off the train. Wished me a good day, sweetheart. I kept reading.

I've heard a lot about this whole notion of "Saturn Returns" lately. According to Wikipedia, this is, "an astrological phenomenon that occurs at the ages of 27-30, 58-60, 86-88, etc., coinciding with the time it takes the planet Saturn to make one orbit around the sun. It is believed by astrologers that as Saturn "returns" to the degree occupied at the time of birth—approximately every 29.5 years—a person crosses over a major threshold and into the next stage of life. With the first Saturn Return, a person leaves youth behind and enters adulthood. With the second Return, maturity. And the third and usually final Return, a person enters wise old age."

So here I am. 27 years old. Leaving youth behind and entering adulthood. I'm revisiting a lot of my childhood in therapy. I'm asking my former roommates from the last several years of my life during which stages of my "career" have I appeared to be most productive and happy. I'm rustling the dust to the surface from the carpet that is my life and figuring out what gets tossed in the garbage, swept away to be a memory, and what settles back down, fodder for another future stage.

And I'm learning a lot. Like why I chose certain coping mechanisms when I was a teenager to deal with my anxieties, and how I can let them cease, or at least, confront them. Like how I am happiest when I am writing - but like, ONLY writing - and working on nonfiction books and long-term projects. Like how I am an optimistic person, and how I do best when my energy is not being drained mostly towards others, but thrown into my writing and art.

So maybe I live too much in the past. Maybe I'm spending too much of my therapy session rehashing stuff from before. But isn't it important to gain perspective? To sift through the dust and understand why things are the way they are, and confirm with ourselves what baggage we'll be carrying on the next airplane ride to the next life stage?

I think it is. And I think it's crucial that we understand our histories. We understand when we shouldn't have gone to war, and when we should have. I'd argue that we should never go to war, but that's just my pacifist opinion.

It struck me as deadly that these gentlemen didn't know much about the Vietnam War. Not that I'm a savant on the subject matter myself, but I have an inkling. I have a sense. I have a clear vision of how we've repeated the mess in the last 10 years. Same shit, different day.

I had someone ask me yesterday - how are you today? This was right after the G train book incident. I told him: same shit, different day. He said: oh boy! Like what I'd said was some articulation of frustration and grief for my cycle of repetition. Maybe he was right. I mean, it is frustrating: same shit, different day.

So how do we get out of the cycles? I say that the key is history. I really do. That understanding the past is our key to unlocking the future. Now, where does the present lie in all of this? Well, I'm not sure. Maybe that's the bit I'm working on figuring out myself...how to be in the present. Or maybe understanding the past is the key to unlocking the future, and maintaining the present. Who knows.

I just know that history is significant. Because we've been on this same shit, different day crap for millennia. Some changes, but not much. That's my take at least. And I'd argue it's because we don't understand history. I mean, we make shit up and leaders and rulers get to write history and dictate how it gets taught. And that's really not productive anyhow.

So perhaps if we start with our own histories - our own truthful and authentic histories - we have a shot and understanding the collective history. We have a shot at embracing the return of Saturn, as we emerge into a new chapter.

The Boy Who Cried Wolf

2010-08-10T23:44:00.002-05:00

I used to be the girl who cried epiphanies. Teary eyed. Daily. Bouncing in my skin because of some new revelation that sifted through my arms and chilled my shoulders, my arm hair standing taut and firm.

I don't have epiphanies like that anymore. Not frequently. Not weekly. Not at all. Maybe it's what happened to my sense of anchoring and home this past year - my parents sold the house I grew up in, and many things regarding the dynamics and relationships on which I used to depend shifted, became different. Maybe it's because I went to graduate school and disconnected from my self. Maybe it's because I grew into my late-mid twenties, out of my mid-twenties.

Whatever happened, I do know that they are important. The epiphanies. The daily connection to the web of strings that attaches everything in the world to a giant grid of splendor and purpose.

I have said this before - in blog posts, in conversations, in my head: I believe that the meaning of life is to discover your core, and nurture it.

I am learning that sometimes, we deviate from that which directly nurtures our soul in order to learn trades and lessons and techniques that will allow us long-term submersion with and around that which nurtures our soul. And that's alright. We just can't deviate for too long. Otherwise, we forget who we are. We start to shatter. Like a broken mirror. Or a broken record. Or a broken heart. We start to shatter into pieces, rather than standing firm, as a solid body, yet still made up of pieces and parts.

I am learning that sometimes, it takes a series of phone calls, or dark thoughts, or smiles, to veer back towards center; and going back to center, is really just diagonally moving back towards the path - because nothing ever goes back. Every step, sideways or otherwise, is always movement forward.

Somehow, I forgot about these lessons, and all lessons. I forgot about the part within myself that constantly reminded the moments of pessimism, that in fact, everything is optimistic. Everything is a give and take towards something of evolution and growth. Somehow, I forgot these things.

Somehow, I forgot about patience. And how everything is perfect. And always as it's supposed to be.

My ability to change trauma or pain or disappointment into a lesson or point of growth used to be fast. I know it's still there. Somewhere. Maybe buried. Or dusted over. But still there. Cause I know that that is, in fact, part of my core.

I'm still piecing together what happened the past 12 months. I know that I got depressed the week before I started graduate school. I went to the West Coast for some Phish shows, a bachelorette party, a wedding, and to visit friends. I remember not wanting to leave my college roommate's studio apartment in San Francisco. The weight of the changes occurring in my personal life fell down on me, right there in the Mission, because my pace from life in New York slowed down, and I suddenly had days to process everything going on around me.

I'm starting to feel like perhaps, this entire year, was spent stuck in that week. I returned to New York: my boyfriend picked me up at the airport, days later I attended graduate school orientation, that Friday I did my laundry - ink from a blue pen in the dryer stained all of my sheets, that Saturday I drove to upstate New York for my poetry collective's annual retreat, that Sunday I drove to Saratoga Springs for the last show of Phish tour. They played Harpua. I wrote my first graduate school assignment on my laptop in the back of the car while my boyfriend and his sister giggled and chatted in the front as we drove back to Long Island. That Monday, I fell asleep in class.

I feel like I just now woke up.

I feel like I spent the last 12 months in a holding pattern, stuck in those days in San Francisco, even while incredible moments and people circled around me. During those somewhat dismal days in San Francisco, I still experienced wonderful joy - my boyfriend and mother and sister texted me and called me, constantly checked up on me. Constantly supported me. My college roommate was an amazing hostess. I saw old friends. I enjoyed weddings, celebrations, and Phish concerts. But there was still something a little off. A little un-epiphany. A little confused.

So maybe, it's now, that I have come to accept the changes that occurred in my life last summer and this past fall. Maybe it's now that I am waking up, after a long nap - albeit still inundated with unbelievable dreams and realities - amazing people and loved ones and lessons and experiences and moments. I fell in love. I got a masters degree. I made the Nuyorican Poet's Cafe slam team, and we finished second in the nation at the National Poetry Slam. I had dreams upon dreams fulfilled.

Maybe the epiphany - this moment around - is that it isn't worth sleeping through class. I probably should have slept the night before graduate school classes started, even though Phish played Harpua in Saratoga Springs.

I probably should have slept that Sunday night. That, or I should have cried my eyes out. Far more than I let myself that week in San Francisco. I should have left my tears there. I shouldn't have flown back home with mist in my eyelids.

Return of the Mac

2010-07-06T16:04:00.002-05:00

I wrote this journal entry a month after I moved to New York City, the summer of 2007. Three years later, I found it and reread it. It was at the end of the book manuscript I wrote two years ago. I am revisiting, reediting, reconsidering the manuscript. Not sure if this entry will still find its home in the manuscript, but definitely sure that the entry speaks to me - myself - in the summer of 2010.

Figured I'd share. Maybe there's a morsel of truth in there for someone else.

***

Dear Journal,

A month since I last attempted to send insight to myself like pen pal. Grass will be the turf for transition. The sod on which we stand unshod for peace. Only earth can bring us back to her through our selves.

In only a few minutes of meditation, I felt my insides vibrating. My body physiologically shifting. There is a rhythm, a pace.

I am often clouded by the veils – forgetting they are translucent and not opaque – as I find myself taking it all so seriously. Not laughing enough.

Intuition is a blessing, not a curse – but I find myself using it as a crutch to keep myself from living in the moment, the same way religion has perverted G-d.
There is a slow thunder of oneness channeling the outermost textures of the universe. G-d is everywhere. Only tears of awe can give justice to the power of the moment.

We hold fear tightly – wound in the concaves of our appendages, stuffed in the closets of our toe nails, stacked on the bookshelves of our honesty. We mask an unconditional source of limitless potential with an amalgamated construct of darkness. We cloud a globe of perspective with foggy overtones of yesterday’s moments. Forgetting that it’s already incorporated into now – it’s inherent – so there’s nothing in which to dwell.

This time – this now – is not a cleansing, it is the cleansing. It’s an inside joke of the joke itself. The pulse itself has a lesson. For, if we are all parts and pieces of that pulse – extrapolations, a plethora of perspectives, a series of journeys, then the pulse must be tapped into a journey of her own.
In short – it is the delivery that matters. We have been recycling the same information for millennia, yugas, time. It is not what we are trying to talk about that must be reincarnated. It is how we talk about it.

My new challenge is to hear these intuitions. Honor them. Be thankful I know my path. But to let them go. My gift is seeing the big picture. Seeing the page in the coloring book of connect-the-dots. I see the dots. The blurry notion of the dots. So I get impatient and try to figure out the order in which they are drawn together. But that is the moment. That is the essence. That is the discovery. That is letting go.

Love - Me

Everything's Coming Up Roses

2010-05-15T08:13:00.002-05:00

Yesterday, one of my graduate school deans described our program with the perfect metaphor: it's like having a fire hose pointed at you on full blast, water gushing towards you for nine months, until suddenly, the water is shut off, and you're still standing there soaking wet, expecting more water to keep blasting at your body.

The water has been shut off. I'm standing at the receiving end of a fire hose drenched in confusion and shock. I'm not really sure what just happened. I think I went to graduate school at Columbia. I don't really know how I ended up there.

Growing up and after college, the hypothetical graduate school plan spanned an M.F.A. from the Yale School of Drama, or an M.B.A. from Harvard or Stanford focusing in social entrepreneurship and enterprise, or something - anything - from University of California, Berkeley. A journalism degree from Columbia was merely a spur of the moment idea while reading a friend's short story in the bathtub a month and a half before applications were due two years ago.

And then it all just happened really quickly. Hose, soak, drip and all. It feels like culture shock - to have this new experience under my belt and slowly re-acclimate myself to everything around me. It's as if I'm wandering around, searching for sunlight to dry my sopping wet clothes and hair, and I'm somewhere in the shade, no access to sunlight, patiently awaiting familiarity.

When I was younger, I had a lot of dreams. I had a lot of ideas about both the person I thought I was supposed to be and the person I wanted to be. It took many years to figure out the difference between the two images in my head - I'm still not sure I've sorted through the intersection, maybe I never will - the former being some expected replica of my cultural background as described by my father, the latter being some amalgamation of romantic comedies, novels, and daydreaming in my backyard.

For years, my life fell in line with the images in my head. Even when I went off course - so it seemed - I always managed to meander back to all the dreams. But meandering is mind-boggling if it happens in a way that was never part of the initial fantasy. I've always wanted to be a writer - my entire life, from the depths of my soul - but I never imagined I'd go to journalism school.

And so here I sit. Three days from receiving a master's degree, and I still haven't quite adjusted to the thought of even applying to the program. It all happened so quickly.

I suspect I will just have to dry off - let the water evaporate into amorphous clouds as if it never spouted from a fire hose in the first place - and eventually, the memory of the water will soak me enough, just enough, so that I settle into the dream.

NaPoWriMo - Poem 30

2010-04-30T19:42:00.000-05:00

Items Found While in Graduate School

New parts of my heart

A Harvard graduate who wished he went to Palo Alto the first summer of Facebook
A streetside Henna artist
An innertube of emotion around my hips

Several ledes
A couple solid nut graphs

Two neighbors

The 6.50 lunch special at The Heights
The underlying racism and oppression of redlining that led to the subprime mortgage crisis
The lack of fresh produce in East Harlem
Scallion tofu on a whole wheat bagel

Stories in Flushing and Jackson Heights, Queens

Lynda.com
Chocolate chip cookies from Brad's Cafe
Frida's on Amsterdam
AP Style

A freelance video gig for SmartMoney.com

Deeper layers at certain moments

And other things
I'm sure I'll know
In time

NaPoWriMo - Poem 29

2010-04-29T16:51:00.002-05:00

Beaten

With scorn and judgment,
I punched myself in the eye,
Clocked a fist full of anxiety
at my lower ribcage,
Drop kicked my right shin
with the wrath of my adolescence,
slapped my left cheek with
over-analysis,
and of course,
as always,
ended up sick.

NaPoWriMo - Poem 28

2010-04-28T21:08:00.003-05:00

Tote

My father has always carried tote bags
Usually LL Bean with a monogram - either his initials
or the beginning letters of his former brokerage firm

My father has always varied the bags' contents
Usually a cell phone or two - maybe some stacks of newspapers
or sometimes other miscellaneous items

During freshman orientation in college,
we all received Penn tote bags
During one of the few laundry loads
my father washed
throughout my lifetime
he shrunk my Penn tote bag
to an unusable size

Tonight, I saw someone in my graduate school eatery
Carrying the Penn tote bag

Christina's bag is still in tact - after 8 years
Two weeks ago she got married
She works at Columbia's Law School,
Takes classes at the Business School,
will move to Houston with her husband soon

I wonder what she's managed to carry in her Penn tote bag
All these years
I wonder if I still had my tote bag in tact, rather than
the Ivy League emblem being smudged and the straps too short,
Would I have lessened the load I've been carrying inside myself?
Would my Penn tote bag helped with my baggage?
Or would I be my father, with a monogram for comfort,
and the need to always have luggage?

NaPoWriMo - Poem 27

2010-04-27T21:57:00.002-05:00

Dear Stephanie Mills,

The pink carpet was never enough to cushion me from the fall
Even the yellow walls - even after the candle-lit fire - wasn't
The sunshine I hoped it would be.

But I think I know what it looks like:
hands pressed against my knee caps,
bangs covering my forehead,
hair hanging past my ears,
smile - still the same - causing
half moon eyes to crimp with joy,
bathing suit with room, but snug enough
to stay in tact.

I stood in the living room of Carly's first Palm Springs house.

I must have been young enough to still be
of average weight.

I'm sure some photo album could give an exact date;

I'm sure some therapeutic sand castle dig into my past
could represent the trauma in full;

Either way,

It seems like the only possible reference point
I can find
In the entire history
Of this body.

All the best,
Caroline

P.S. I sang "Don't Nobody Bring Me No Bad News" for a musical review in high school. Apparently, I did pretty well - belting and grinding my voice. I still want to be on Broadway one day. Preferably in the Broadway revival of Pippin, as the first female Lead Player. Similar to when Whoopi played Psedolous in Forum. Either way, thanks for everything. I had your original Broadway rendition of "Home" on repeat for most of boarding school and college.

NaPoWriMo - Poem 26

2010-04-26T21:33:00.003-05:00

Space

In another universe
there are clouds perched
high on the horizon

with cotton candy consistency
and melted morsels of sugar coat.

There is never rain,
only plump hoarding
in the aftermath of evaporation
and greenhouse effect.

Never condensation
or thunder or electricity.

It is a one way stream

birthed of the ankle aches
and stomach twists
of too many tired mornings
and not enough early evenings.

Obtuse, and too obstructive
to ever latch on to something finite,
it is galaxy, devastated by another,
and sprained in the star dust of time.

NaPoWriMo - Poem 25

2010-04-25T20:40:00.002-05:00

Night

In the sinking shift
of the evening sun
there are remnants of an
afternoon
so cold and crisp
that dawn was never
conceptualized.

In this midst,
maybe even mist,
there are bone structures
and temple enclaves
called to worship
in the dull dark dusk
of another tomorrow.

And so,
in the shadows
of an ancient coal mine,
most likely sprinkled with
Castor oil and memories
with a density so exhausting
that perforated edges
rip upon touch,
there is a glimmer of hope
and a sheer veil of transparency
slowly leaking
from the dormant
sky.

NaPoWriMo - Poem 24

2010-04-25T20:37:00.002-05:00

Monotony

It is unclear what came first:
The perfection
Or the compulsion.

All I know
Is that there have been
Too many days during which
I would have liked
To have started over.

NaPoWriMo - Poem 23

2010-04-25T20:37:00.001-05:00

Outer Banks

A semblance
Of cloud fill
In the tints
Of your embrace
It is like watching
The sunrise

NaPoWriMo - Poem 22

2010-04-22T17:28:00.000-05:00

How can I still rub my hand into a hot fire pit
When I know it's flames can burn?

At least today, the guilt lifted.

NaPoWriMo - Poem 21

2010-04-21T22:48:00.002-05:00

Serendipity

At least there are prophets on Broadway,
coupled with surprised on 105th.

NaPoWriMo - Poem 20

2010-04-20T19:36:00.002-05:00

Just as I suspected,
life is easier
when I am able to share
the weight of my day
and brain

It is like the duffle bags
at overnight camp

I was strong enough
to carry a camper's
packed, filled, heavy
duffle bag from
the red truck
to their bedside
on my own

Hoist the bag
with two straps
digging into
my right shoulder
as the width
of the bag
nestled in the crevice
above my right hip

But it was often -
although it takes
getting used to -
easier to share the load
each carrying one strap
the bag balanced
between our hands

NaPoWriMo - Poem 19

2010-04-19T14:11:00.004-05:00

A Haiku

In my gut's pit rests
Uncomfortable angst, which
Mellows with this calm.

NaPoWriMo - Poem 18

2010-04-18T21:45:00.002-05:00

Normal Has Been Many Things

First Class
Fat thighs
Fat arms
Collar bone
Hip bone
Scale
Binge
Some happy
A little happy
Trauma
Binge
Purge
Sleepless
NoDoz
Hip bone
Thigh bone
Ulcer
14 years old with a stomach ulcer
Fat thighs
Purge
First Class
Eulogy
Trauma
Another eulogy
Euphemisms
More euphemisms
19 years old with a metaphoric ulcer
More death, no eulogies
Binge
Purge
No more scales
No more collar bones
Fat thighs
Restrictions
Liberation
Detoxification
Rehabilitation
Clarification
Vacation
Liberation
A different kind of trauma
Restrictions
Binge
More euphemisms
26 years old
and too many euphemisms

NaPoWriMo - Poem 17

2010-04-17T14:31:00.002-05:00

Intervention

How many tipping points
does it take to get
to the center of addiction?

How many Tootsie Pop licks
by an owl of wisdom
harboring candy sucker meltdown
morsels of suggestion?

How many vinyl albums
spinning on one beat
on one record player
stuck in one groove
rotating in circuitous
repetition - nothing sacred,
nothing new?

Every Groundhog Day
is someone's
Puxatony purgatory

Whether shadow
or moonlit
whether spacious
or sun-kissed

There is no formal ending
when wrapped knee deep
in Whirling Dervish
shin splints

Only more questions
and licks by an owl
in a decade
of distance

NaPoWriMo - Poem 16

2010-04-16T16:23:00.003-05:00

Twenty Three

The first birthday that you were dead I didn't want to talk to anyone
I turned off my cellphone and laptop and walked 44 blocks from
My dorm room to the Delaware River

When I reached the edge of Pennsylvania,
I sat perched on a ledge, my legs dangling above the water
I read the Haggadah aloud, to myself and some birds,
And ate pieces of Matzah
From a zip locked bag

Today I weaved through 130 blocks of East Harlem

The backs of my knees feel pillaged by hyper-extension
The skin on my fingers is cracked from the wind
My shoulders are chilled - under-dressed for the unexpected cold spring air

You would be 23 today,
I suppose you will always feel 15 to me

On my way home to the Upper West Side
I stopped to pick up a spinach burrito
A disheveled man at the bar
Rambled to the bartender about Philadelphia

I suppose I will always leave your breath there:
Our last meal on the perimeter of Rittenhouse Square
Our last hug in the parking lot, next to the rental car
Our last phone call on the see-through turquoise cordless phone I haven't thought about in years

Do you have birthday cakes in heaven?
Do you add any candles to the surface?
Or are you forever drowning in the age of your death, like me?

I didn't think it would hurt today
I didn't want it to
I woke up angry from a sordid dream
Uninspired to walk East Harlem

And my feet hurt
As if I jumped from the ledge at Penn's landing 7 years ago
And walked the 97 miles to New York from Philadelphia
Headed now somewhere else
Maybe forwards

Maybe it was always forwards
Even though birthdays of the dead
Tend to penetrate
The sensation of moving backwards
Plunging feet first
Into a noisy bubble-wrapped present
And a card written to your ghost

With the post script -
Maybe next year will be easier
And I won't have to walk so far

NaPoWriMo - Poem 15

2010-04-15T20:40:00.000-05:00

Memory of Smell

The downtown 3 train - the concession stand at Centenial ice rink

The tunnel at 14th between the 2/3 and L - the back of the elephant cage at the Phoenix Zoo

The Nuts 4 Nuts cart outside Port Authrotiy at the southwest corner of 42nd a Eighth - the campfire at River Run campground in Denmark, Maine

Lip gloss - many times, very often, something about seventh grade

NaPoWriMo - Poem 14

2010-04-14T13:47:00.002-05:00

Drowning

Around my lower abdomen,
wrapping around my hips,
hovering on my thighs,
there is an inner-tube,

which inflated over the course
of several months;
it began as an idea, or a
concern rather,
and became a hyperbole
for my emotions.

It is a floating device
to keep me from drowning.

But I am a very strong swimmer
(I used to be a lifeguard),
equipped to bring myself
to shore, or a rescue boat,
or anything concrete and able
to help me stop treading water.

This inner-tube doesn't feel good.

It is obstructing my breath,
and my rest, and limits the depth
with which I can swim - in any
direction, and it is - in and of
itself - perhaps, maybe
the drowning anyhow.

I have been looking for the valve,
to pull the plug,
and let the air deflate.

I am sure that swimming
is much easier
than staying afloat,
stuck drowning on the surface.

NaPoWriMo - Poem 13

2010-04-13T11:47:00.000-05:00

Empty

there are days
when there is no poetry

nothing lingers or hangs
from the birch-bark hilltops
of a fire pit

nothing punctuates or quotes
the lag time in between ocean waves
and pond ripples as a rock
drops
into
place

nothing saturates or depletes
the remnants of always
that seem to dangle
from the branches
of shrubbery

which is to say
that any day
is always poetry
but there are moments
when the words
slip
away

NaPoWriMo - Poem 12

2010-04-12T16:37:00.003-05:00

(For Jonathan: Happy Anniversary)

The Last Moments Before Our First Kiss

Chloe dropped me off
at the Eighth Avenue entrance to Penn Station
I rushed to purchase a ticket from a kiosk

I sat in a window seat,
facing the direction in which the train traveled
My schoolgirl nerves pulsed
like a playground with excitement and anxiety

The train arrived in Long Beach
You stood on the right side of the station,
in a black hooded sweatshirt,
holding your camera

We walked to your car
and drove a few blocks to eat at a diner
You paid for our omelettes - even though I offered,
like I would for the next dozen dates

We parked near the boardwalk
You photographed the wooden ramp

We strolled down the shoreline
I carried my shoes

You reached your arm around my shoulders
and turned my body to face yours

NaPoWriMo - Poem 11

2010-04-11T12:16:00.003-05:00

Beholder

iridescent bubbles
with fibrous optical illusions
bounce
from park bench
to picnic table

it is one of those Sundays
where everything is tense
as soap and water meet
wooden surface

yet when standing
as an onlooker
the site is beautiful
effervescent
and light

NaPoWriMo - Poem 10

2010-04-10T21:06:00.004-05:00

riverside

a monk tossed in a brook,
floating on a river bed
of meditation and small portions

maybe in another lifetime

although my soul is exhausted from karma
ready to revel
in the bonus prize romances
of my heart and other passions
without the distractions
of my ego and fears

I wonder often
if peace is an oxymoron
for Manhattan
or student
or me

I am tired
of binges
and clumps of hair
that latch into my hand
until clogging up the shower drain

there was a moment, once,
in Utah,
where I found myself immersed
in utter freedom

it could have also been Nevada
or maybe even Wyoming

I felt invincible
shaded from the wear and tear
of darkness

I have since then
pulled curbside
or maybe even roadside
to become the rear view mirror

and another lifetime - monk or otherwise -
is too long to wait
to get back on the road
keep driving
and become, maybe even
the brook
maybe even
itself

NaPoWriMo - Poem 9

2010-04-09T20:39:00.002-05:00

Computer

I have been staring at the same computer
For 10 hours
All I have to show for it
Is loss of sense of reality
Exhaustion
Purple patches on my hand
And an overdone class assignment

NaPoWriMo - Poem 8

2010-04-08T09:28:00.004-05:00

Split Ends

I used to pull them apart in Geometry class
Drown my face underneath my straight blow dried hair
Grasp the ends of my split strands and rip them in separate directions
While Ms. Whipple huffed and puffed and wrote proofs on the dry erase board on the fourth floor

I usually fell asleep, and kept my hair pouring over my face to mask and shield my exhaustion

Since I cut my hair senior year of college, I've spent graduate school exposed
No clandestine protein follicles to hide my secrets
I am confronting thoughts and behaviors I was sure I'd left on the floor of Salon Millennium - for an employee to sweep up and Vicki to praise and Baba to gasp at how I'd chopped my security blanket on a sunny summer day

Of course, the fantasy that my addictions to cutting and hurting myself would never again inflame became as distant as Salon Millennium, which closed shortly after my hair cut

I remember vividly how Vicki, my hair stylist, after blowing my hair straight, before grabbing the scissors
Put her hands on my shoulders
And said - looking at me in the mirror of her station -
I'm going to give you a few minutes to say goodbye

She left, and went to the bathroom

I ran my fingers through my hair
I reveled in the way my fingers swam through the lengthy strands
But there were too many split ends
To cover my face, and overweight, and insecurities, and fears, and self-hates

I am, again, sitting in Vicki's chair
Running my fingers through my now short hair

This time, I don't even need a mirror to see my fears and insecurities
They are dangling from my hips and the tips of my lips
And I am ready to let them go
Probably not for good
But at least, maybe this time, for real

NaPoWriMo - Poem 7

2010-04-06T23:06:00.003-05:00

Adam

I have handful of role models;
they are all men.

I sometimes wonder:

Am I allowed to call myself a feminist
while simultaneously aspiring to write,
read, teach, perform, and breath like men?

Or has there only ever been praise
for men as the geniuses and whispers
that soar and dangle knowledge from
the driver's seat of prestige?

I sometimes wonder:

What women have been lost in the fiction scriptures
Of Virginia Woolf's imagination?

What rooms have not been one's own, but rather boarded up
as storage block and kitchen unit?

Will I ever begin to lift the fingers of a second hand
and list Emily, or Eve, or Anna the way I have never
even doubted the first handful, and
even though I pedestal these women as magic?

Or is this Torah - assumed that
I have always known the texts of these women,
mixed into my blood like flour and eggs;
that the study is left on behalf of the men -
one-third Adam, one-third Essau, one-third rib.

NaPoWriMo - Poem 6

2010-04-06T18:08:00.003-05:00

On a Crowded Crosstown Bus From East Harlem to Morningside Heights Where a Baby Chews the Finger of the Girl Who Holds Him in a Pouch on Her Stomach

This is what I know about the woman
with long, gray and black hair:
She has magenta eye shadow on her eyelids,
black eye liner under her eyes,
lived on the east side for 30 years,
has children,
her final destination will be 72nd and Broadway,
she speaks to the young woman on her right,
who has acrylic nails painted purple and silver,
she asks the young woman what she will write about,
tells the young woman to think about pivotal moments
that made her want to choose this path,
says yes to the young woman's response about her mother being a nurse,
tells the young woman to write her story chronologically,
encourages the young woman to include how her son is disabled,
and says, "I'll help you. Come up to my house.
We'll have a cup of tea. I'll write you such a letter you'll cry,"
and she gets off at Malcolm X Boulevard and 116th Street.

NaPoWriMo - Poem 5

2010-04-05T20:59:00.003-05:00

For/Dear Allen (Part III)

I'm having Kerouac dreams again
Roadside and Mother Road
Ghost towns and vacant homes

Real blues
Juke joints
Gas stations

The wind in my hair
Sun glare on my windshield

Tell me, Allen, did you ever find stability?

Or did you feel vagabond until your last breath?

Maybe I did find half-written manuscripts
In the Columbia brick walkways

If so, I'm ready to finish them, of course,
If that isn't too presumptuous

Consider this a book end, maybe?

Or am I pushing symbolism and some psychotic
Fantasy world in my head?

It may be the two tea-bag Grande Awake tea,
But my blood is bubbling, Allen,
Brewing in my biceps, begging for another
Sort of milestone

Carry me West, again
And let it not be the last

NaPoWriMo - Poem 4

2010-04-04T20:45:00.003-05:00

The Clairvoyant

Sister of blue
and snow capped mountains
harvested at the apex of your

yesterday:

I have always imagined
your epiphany
to be one of sultry
surrender

and feathered insight,

floating weightless
into a pond of crystal clear lake water;

and you will swim diligently and effortlessly
all at once (all things at once);

and you will ponder nothing.
You have always known -
I know you have -
and we have always known with you;
we have always known your gifts.

NaPoWriMo - Poem 3

2010-04-03T22:26:00.001-05:00

For Simone

I have learned
That patience
Is real

That holding on
To stomach cramps
Is only just a metaphor
For losing faith

So I promise
That love is out there
Already present
Just veiled from
Your moments

You will find it
It will look
Like your dreams

And dangle softly
In the doorway
Of your now

NaPoWriMo - Poem 2

2010-04-02T09:57:00.001-05:00

Music

Often overwhelmed with tears:
Melodies dripping from eyelids - I've found you
I replay spectacular choices amidst the years before we met
All leading to the crossing of our arts

Sometimes I pinch myself
Like a metaphor or simile
Sometimes I watch your sleeping lips
And kiss your forehead

I wonder if it wakes you

You - patience and home
Answers to cherish
Every bone, every merit

It is always springtime
Always blooming
Waking and open

Like the door

When I return

To find you sitting on the couch

We peruse take out menus - now a habit
As if we've been practicing for lifetimes

Every moment
Every hour
Still feels new

NaPoMoWri - Poem 1

2010-04-01T03:00:00.002-05:00

Items Lost While in Graduate School

The house in which I grew up
The fold up turquoise blue umbrella I bought near Union Square
The black button-down Bebe sweater my mother gave me
The several year stretch during which I did not want to cut myself

Some pedestals
Some confidence
Some hair on the front of my scalp

Sixty thousand dollars
Dozens of paper clips
Several pens

My backpack (although, it was found the next morning)
A quarter-size patch of fabric inside the right thigh of my "fat" jeans

Winter break
Semi-finals at the Nuyorican Poet's Cafe
Spring break

Too much sleep
Too many tears

The moments where I remember there is, even still, so much found

The Last Lecture

2010-03-06T19:16:00.002-05:00

I often think about a group circle, where everyone in the world would sit down. And we'd randomly count off into groups or 30 or so. And the social workers and therapists and social justice facilitators among us would be the group moderators. And it'd probably be a good idea if groups were broken off also by language. Not race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, finances, occupation, or nationality. But by language, just so each group could productively speak and dialogue and listen with one another throughout the workshop.

Yeah. This would be a massive world workshop. And everyone would have to be there. That means that a lot of things would stop for the several hours of the workshop. Like electricity and running water and satellites. But would that really matter for a few hours if everyone was there and all the wars stopped too, and all the lies and greed and murders?

So then we'd all sit in these groups of 30 or so. And we'd sit in circles. And we'd talk about our feelings. And what makes us angry and what we fear. And we'd listen to each other. And realize we are pretty similar. And we'd maybe not want to hurt each other or ourselves so much. And maybe we'd feel a lot more connected after the workshop.

And maybe people wouldn't go back to war or hiding or drug addictions after the workshop. Maybe they'd stick around for a bit drinking tea and talking about their favorite sunrise. And maybe they'd drive each other home. Help each other across the street to the bus stop. Or hug the person next to them - not "goodbye," but "see you later."

I think about that a lot. Like a massive world-wide Shabbat. A pause. A reflection. A conversation. So that we all - all of us - could go back to our lives, refreshed, at peace, and without any want or need for destruction.

110 in the Shade

2010-03-04T12:29:00.002-05:00

I just spent the last half hour or so reading about a young photographer and artist who passed away a few years ago. I knew about her death then. I've revisited websites and words of and about her since. I never knew her, but there are several versions of six degrees of separation through which we are connected.

I'm quite aware of the Internet link clicking scavenger hunt that brought me to navigate her life and death today. How closely linked we all are. How easy it is to get lost in a virtual world and avoid the stacks of laundry on my couch, the list of phone numbers on my desk, the stack of readings next to my lamp. I'm quite aware of these tasks.

But I am startled now. Quite immobile here in my desk chair having just journeyed through these links and blogs and websites.

It turns out that this particular artist - like many - took her own life.

And while I know that suicide is by no means specific to artists, as a life-long artist in a multitude of media, and as a person who spent nearly a decade in and out of depression, I think about the connection between artistry and depression quite often.

Sometimes even I am afraid to let go of the dark places in my head or in my heart because I am afraid I will loose my muse. I am afraid I will have nothing to report. I am afraid I will loose my creativity, and thus my connection to Allen and Gertrude and Ovid and Horace and Emily and Walt.

For it feels that sometimes, maybe, one of the threads that binds us and latches us to the same string is darkness. Although, a similar argument can be made for the light. The way the photographers among us capture shadows and shades all in one frame.

But then I think of Diane Arbus. Whose work I was only turned on to recently. And her death. And her photography. And her life.

And I'm not sure if other artists feel or think about these things the way I do. I suspect some must. I suspect some don't. I only bring this up to some people. Like my closest friends. Or my therapist. Or my mother. I don't want to sound too morbid. Or depressing. Or depressed.

But I wonder, is that what happened to Cobain. Or Rothko. Or Van Gough. Or Phil Ochs - a singer/songwriter and activist.

Did they go too far down the rabbit hole that all of us artists notice and see on our walk around the cave of creativity? Did they feel hopeless, like what's the point when the world just shits on itself in self-destruction anyhow? Did they fear their own power and ability to create, to move, to inspire?

I feel these things often. It doesn't drive me to want to take my own life, or consider self-destructing. I've done that already - self-destructed, self-harmed, self-loathed.

But there are days. Days when the melancholy inflames. And the cave gets dark and the light dims. And I fill the page with more sophisticated versions of the angry and confused poetry I wrote when I was 16, at the apex of my self-doubt.

But then there are days when I harness that energy. I write a poem about instantiating fear and hate into love and justice. Or a prose piece about how incredible and glorious and magnificent all of this is and must be. Or I post a Facebook status with a self-written quote that feels empowering and optimistic.

But I always think about that story I've told myself - that good art must come from pain and suffering. I tell myself a lot of stories. Mostly fictional ones - like how you can only have good in life when it is balanced with really bad pain. My therapist once told me that that's a story, that I made up. She's probably right. So I suspect the story about art must be fictional too, even though there are some instances of truth.

And I think about the artists. And the people in general. That they actually left. Went elsewhere. Somewhere different. Where they didn't have to live in fear.

I like to think they were afraid of their own brilliance. That in a world that tells women they are witches, and the elderly that they are a burden, and veterans that their sacrifice can go unnoticed, and foreigners that they are different, and children that they are ignorant...I like to think that maybe, in a world that can do those things, maybe brilliant and innovative can feel out of place.

So I like to think that maybe - for all the ones who left the world too soon - for them, if only for them, we can loosen the reins on our own fears, and let the brilliance and innovation proceed.

I Dwell in Possibility

2010-02-09T20:59:00.003-05:00

One of the assignments my narrative writing instructor gave us was to write down 10 questions per day. He said they'll help us generating story ideas and start thinking in narrative.

So I did. Every day. 10 questions typed into the memo pad function of my Blackberry. But this was getting tedious, and felt too advanced for such a pen and pad gesture in thinking.

And so I grabbed a mostly empty pocket sized notebook off my shelf. I emailed myself the first 5 days worth of questions. I printed them out, cut them in stripes by day, and began Scotch taping them into my notebook. These questions, for narrative writing class.

Curious as to what already embodied the pages beforehand, I skimmed to the first page:

4/27/09

Sunshine in April
Your smile on the pages of my story
Narrative is something
Sacred these days
The sentiments have shifted
It's something indigenous now
And I feel it with my heart.

There it was. A short poem about narratives.

And then the next page:

For Emily Dickinson

What gentle breezes...
the kind that linger
just until the sunset...
found you nestled in your
garden of possibility
yet so boldly shared...
the way sharing equals
honesty of the most
vulnerable form...with
those of us far more
skeptical of a recluse
existence and daydream

Did you ever question in
your sleep...what of
those moments...are
they charcoaled in the
burlap layers of your
infancy juggled free of
horticulture classes and
plant growth...did you
feel them...the vines...
intertwined inside your
spirit...I've often
wondered how you danced
if sitting silent on a
Thursday night...we don't
make those anymore...
those quiet moments...
not in New York at least...
there is always someone
screaming for mercy...
although justice is
making a comeback these
days.

But did you think about
that...even...the
notion that time can
spare the honest...
wrinkle out Velcro collections of
fuzz and dust...clean
slated accuracy and
understanding the way
turnips soak upside down
but always end up shining
beautiful...how they lay
there...both the vegetables and
your poems...of course I
recognize the difference...
the ruffage turning into
ashes...reincarnating back into
compost soil...while your
words shimmer life like on
the published pages of a
Back Bay paper back.

So what is to be trusted and...
what is infinite if even
Alexander burned the
library in Alexandria...
they are burning books
again and calling it
Internet...and even I
sent in my deposit check...
albeit on paper...for
Columbia yesterday...I've
chosen New Media...
would you call this artistic
suicide if I want the
pages to exist far
beyond the rotting
vegetable garden of a
once tradition...

What answers can you offer...
like the lines in your stanza
campfire...it isn't all
that magical

And there it was. A poem to Emily Dickinson. Asking questions. Asking for stories. Maybe, just maybe, a little bit magical.

The Perfect Storm

2010-02-04T10:38:00.002-05:00

At some point it all became calm. Like the awareness. Or rather the awareness of how it can all be calm just seemed to seep into the obvious, having otherwise been in the oblivion.

I basically realized, or decided, or accidentally slipped into a state of calm. And it happened somewhere in the January snowfall. I'm not sure if it was a moment of epiphany, or a series of gradual events and feelings culminating in a subtle drift towards ease.

But it happened. And it had nothing to do with yoga, or meditation, or prayer - despite my mother's desires. It had nothing to do with breathing deeply or chanting or aligning my chakras. I mean, that was how I used to think it was supposed to happen. Maybe it used to happen - sometimes - that way for me. And maybe it happens more often - or even always - for other people.

But I realized it had to do with my own pace. My own time. My own authenticity and voice.

And so I listened to myself. I made a decision that panicking and hysteria and hyperventilating emotions bottle-necked inside my chest was just a silly way to cultivate a happiness of life.

I mean, I'm really just shocked most days. Witnessing myself experience what I've always known as stress in a non-physical way. Watching myself be overwhelmed with little reaction to the situation. Just acceptance. And thus an inner calm resonating through the rest of me, and my tasks at hand.

Maybe it was the years of yoga and meditation and my mother nagging me that if I just went to the space between my breath - the inhale and the exhale - I'd find peace and inner tranquility.

Or maybe it had nothing to do with any of that prep. Maybe it really is a matter of mind over matter. Maybe it really is about the thoughts we think and the actions we thus think into existence. The feelings we actually do get to control.

And I know I shouldn't probably question this space of peace and quiet into which I've tapped. Or maybe I should. Maybe it is worth the abstract prose and banter. Because something changed. And that is always worth a moment.

Bathtub Gin

2010-01-01T02:05:00.004-05:00

Several years ago I sat in my therapist's office. I had graduated from college. We were discussing graduate school - if I'd ever go, why I might go, where I might go, in what field I might specialize. At the time, I was thinking an MBA, in non-profit management - maybe Stanford, or Harvard, or Berkeley.

My therapist - herself of course a doctorate graduate - told me about a friend of hers. The friend realized how overwhelmed she'd been in graduate school. How she'd perhaps missed out on several other things she'd wanted to do with her life during the time in which she was in graduate school. The friend took a legal pad and began making a list of all the things she wanted to do - but did not have time to do - while she was in graduate school. My therapist said that by page 8, the friend was in tears.

I thought a lot about that story when I applied to graduate school a year ago - mid-December 2008 - even though I only applied to one school, a year long program. I thought about it a lot when I got into said school and program. I thought about it more when I began graduate school in mid-August 2009.

And I've thought about it frequently - during the infrequent breaks I've had to think about anything other than my school deadlines and assignments - throughout the last four months of classes.

What is it about graduate school culture that encourages students to fall consumed into an abyss? The tuition? The professors? The schools? The programs? Some societal hazing ritual of the graduate students that came before us?

I don't have answers really. I don't have regrets either. But I do have a goal: to be radical. To go against that current of exclusivity whereby graduate school is the all consuming thought and aura surrounding my life and soul.

I spent the past semester exhausted. Constantly questioning my self worth and identity and well-being and existence. I spent the last week of my winter break resisting actually being on vacation. But I realized that I'm human first. I'm myself first. What I do is go to graduate school...at least until this May.

Is there not a way to master - no pun intended - being a calm graduate student? Is there not a way to enjoy the experience without the self doubt and self pity? Is there not a way to - perhaps - obtain and monopolize more from the program by simply letting it be what I do rather than who I am?

Or is it just a year to suck it up, say "see you later" to everyone and everything else in my life, and pull back together my broken pieces in late May?

Backwards Down the Number Line

2009-12-30T22:03:00.001-05:00

I rolled slowly through the parking lot past a large truck and turned right, yielded at a stop sign, then went left towards Route 3 for our drive around Acadia National Park, Bar Harbor, and the rest of Desert Island.

I held the remaining fourth of my otherwise eaten breakfast in my left hand and continued eating as I shifted the gear into drive.

He began to eat half of his sandwich.

I crumbled the wax paper and tin foil coverings from which I had been eating my breakfast sandwich, and put makeshift ball in between the seats.

He asked, was he really going to eat half of his chicken salad sandwich before nine o’clock.

I ate. We talked.

Another lady walked by – no yoga mat.

I ate. We talked.

We watched a lady walk by with a yoga mat.

I ate. We talked.

I took the first bite. He drank most of his juice in one gulp. I gave him a bite of my food.

He said we should turn on the car, warm it up, and stay there for a few minutes while I ate my breakfast sandwich: English muffin, fried egg, and pepper jack cheese.

We got back into the car.

Diff'rent Strokes

2009-12-29T21:24:00.004-05:00

I spent a lot of my life in my head. Daydreaming. And making up fantasies. And borrowing scenes and scenic views from movies and books and television shows. Mostly romantic comedy films. Sometimes classic novels. Occasionally sitcoms.

And in this way, I planned my future. The characters. The moments. The plots. Setting and climaxes - forever awaiting manifestation from my frontal lobes.

In many ways, the last several years of my life have been an exercise in allowing these preplanned, preconceived notions of happiness to deteriorate. To gradually melt from the confines of my expectations and sift into the abyss of misguided assumption. And in their place, I began to live in the moment. And let the narrative write itself.

Like today. I visited one of my favorite spots on earth: the rocks leading down to the ocean, at the edge of the parking lot, across the street from Barnacle Billy's in Perkins Cove, Ogunquit, Maine.

Usually I visit this spot in the summer. But today, at the ocean's edge, on the rocky incline that I call home and inner sanctity, I stumbled through speckles of snow and outbursts of wind. I shivered in the cold and attempted to take artsy photos of the waves crashing the frosty shoreline. I stared at the Atlantic Ocean, and I let the presupposed narrative deteriorate.

See, for years, I'd decided - in my romantic comedy infested head - that this was the spot. The proposal spot. The spot that "every girl" in America is supposed to have picked out. With the shoes. And the dress. And the flower arrangement. And perhaps, even, the groom.

And as the winter cold carried away my warmth, leaving remnants of chattering knees and leg bones, so too did the desire to let this spot linger in the proposal story. In the same way that the wedding in my backyard plan dissolved when my parents put our old house on the market. Now, the house having been sold, the setting belongs to someone else anyhow.

And today, I realized that this particular story would in theory belong to two people. Not just me. Not just my daydreams. I mean, sure, the ideas, the concepts, the considerations of these future ideals are useful and helpful, and maybe necessary at times. But the need - the nagging need to have them undoubtedly come to fruition - well, why envision some future experience that belongs to two people via terms that only matter to one?

And then I realized that this is a microcosm. This thing about envisioning spaces and stories - that will ultimately involve multiple people - in a context that only includes myself.

Meaning sure, the fantasies may come and go. May be born and grow and linger - but why more than briefly?

Meaning sometimes these huge magnificent expectations are not necessary. This living in my head thing.

Because sometimes, sometimes my ego gets in the way. With maybe a little sprinkling of fear. And then less tranquil images plant movie scripts in my brain cells. And those aren't worth pursuing. Or even having given birth to in the first place.

I wonder what happens to a brain that lets go of living in the future. I mean, sure. Dreams, aspirations, plans - these are necessary. These are essential most often. But the living - the part where the present moments are lost because the living is happening in the future, in the head - well, perhaps these can disappear.

One Thousand Paper Cranes

2009-12-28T20:55:00.007-05:00

I mean, it seems they've severed these days. The triumvirate. The trio. The threesome with the seemingly impenetrable relationship and bond.

And the thing is. I don't know where to start. Well, in the peace making that is. I don't know how, where, when, and maybe even why I have to drag the three of them into the same room and sit there. Facing one another. Staring into the multiple sets of eyes. Confronting whatever it is that spawned the alignment hiatus in the first place.

I mean. The thing is, the task feels daunting. I mean, totally and utterly dominated and contaminated by and with fear. Like this chalk filled overabundance of ridiculous trembling and terror.

I don't know. Maybe I'm afraid to be in sync. Maybe I'm afraid that I've become quite the juggler, and if I switched to audience member, or ring master, or trapeze artist, I'd lose my identity. Or maybe I've never really found a way to live outside the circus anyhow.

But it seems to be the more logical and pragmatic way to exist. I mean, not that pragmatism should dominate decisions or anything. But like. I don't know. Maybe I'm just afraid of what I might lose. Even if it's the bad stuff - which is really the good kind of stuff to lose. Maybe I'm just that scared of letting go.

Because the thing is, if I sit the three of them down - this cliche mind, body, soul configuration - what if I really don't have any control over all the other situations over which I'm mimicking control?

I mean. It's like I feel really alone. Like the disjointed, disfigured trio mess has left me in three different states and different times. Meaning like I'm in all combinations but the unified one - where all three parts coexist harmoniously.

It's like I'm either totally in my mind and body. Or spirit and mind. Or spirit and body. Or body. Or mind. Or spirit - but rarely that even. And then it's like. Well. I just get lost on the journey. Begging for some answer or explanation or map.

And there doesn't seem to be one. I mean, the quiet - nearly silent - voice in the back of my whatever keeps saying something about time. Like giving myself the space and time will be the explanation or map.

And I just keep avoiding it. Again, terrified of what I might find out about myself or my journey or my life.

I mean, people keep telling me about surrender. And telling my brain to shut up. And stuff like that. Like I think too much or something. Or over-analyze. I mean, I know. I know I do that.

But I'm a little stuck. Sticky. Stuck. Dormant.

Just totally discombobulated.

Which is fine I guess. Maybe a portion and part of the journey anyhow.

And maybe on the other side of the expression, the cathartic out pour and igniting of words, there is a peace. One thousand paper cranes worth and the likes.

Blinded by the Light

2009-12-15T01:00:00.004-05:00

At some point, I forgot about the lights. I forgot about the tunnel situation - the one where there is always a light at the end of the tunnel.

For starters, the tunnel seemed and seems endless. Like some quick sand version of a pipeline. Totally disfigured. Discombobulated. Disassociated.

And then the light thing - well, if the tunnel was amorphous, thus the light meant to be at said end, well, amorphous too. Even though light is often without shape. It often is with context. And without a concrete and concise tunnel, the light was hopeless as well.

The thing is. I don't remember a time like this. I mean, I asked my father at dinner a few weeks ago - or rather begged and pleaded that I might be right - if he'd even seen me like this before. Like, wasn't this - isn't this - the worst he's ever seen me? Stressed. Overwhelmed. Disillusioned. Terrified.

He said no.

Which was of course not the answer I wanted.

He said it had happened before. Like in high school. Or college.

But something feels different. And new. Like with some older perspective and years, maybe it's different.

Or something like that.

Fall Out Boy

2009-11-15T12:54:00.001-05:00

It is on these sorts of fall days that I long for leaves. Piles. Along the sidewalk in the curb's nurturing nestle. The way a newborn is held. That way. That's how I remember fall.

And I yearn for youth. In the suburbs. With the leaf piles. With the rakes and garbage bags and tarps.

I consider the feeling. Of crunching dry leaves under my feet on my walk to elementary school. Or on the playground. Or in my backyard.

I engage with the surplus. Of leaves pouncing into the air. Limbs and torso splashing into the piles of leaves. Legs wading through knee high browns and golds. Crumbled into a hundred little pieces after being handled by excitement.

The sensation is invigorating.
The way there is freedom in that jump. That leap. That liberating skip into autumn. As if you are a rock. Skipping ocean or lake or pond or pool. Traversing the surface of something. Until plummeting into the depths. Embraced by the water. By the leaves.

There are not leave piles in Manhattan. Not the same kind. There are not trees to produce such a wonder. Not the same wealth.

I think of the leaves each autumn here. I suppose it's unavoidable. This year with the impending heat that lingers on the sunrise and wavers on the sunset, I think of the leaves with sunshine. The day that my friend and I made lemonade. The day we sat in the leaves on the curbside and drank our lemonade with ice cubes from plastic decorated glasses.

That was a good day. There was sunlight. And warmth. And piles. Many, many piles.

What the Bleep Do We Know?

2009-11-13T03:33:00.004-05:00

I went to a panel tonight at my graduate school program regarding the "Changing Media Landscape, 2009."

One panelist was the social media reporter for the New York Times. The NYT recently began a Twitter page in which they've amalgamated staff members' Twitter lists for readers to get a sense of the conversations writers, editors, and reporters follow. The page quotes "Let @nytimes lead you to the best of Twitter: follow our lists or build your own."

A technology journalist from the Wall Street Journal - upon the other panelist's explaining the NYT Twitter page - cautioned everyone that there are risks to promoting your source list and neglecting to carefully maintain your objectivity as a journalist.

This has been a struggle for me in graduate school. I'm in a journalism program. This means I'm training to become part of an industry where I'm not supposed to overtly expose my subjectivity in my stories. I'm supposed to consider privacy settings for the social media sites I use. I'm supposed to be highly aware of my persona - the public image I'm portraying to the world at large.

This has been a complicated struggle for me for the last three months. I have inhibited my writing flow on account of what I figured should be left unsaid, undocumented.

I have time and time again wanted to express myself in this forum, the way I have always expressed myself in this forum - candidly, bravely, and with patience.

But now I embark daily on moments where I am confused by what is public and what is private. I am confused by what I should and should not do as a vocal and opinionated person, simultaneously harboring desires to write objectively and authentically about other people.

Is there a point at which my candidness and openness about my personal self negatively affects my ability to write respectful and appropriate documentary?

Is there a way to do both? Is there an expected career trajectory by which a writer or journalist is expected to go from narrative to memoir - but never the reverse?

What if I wanted to express my feelings. Share vividly and openly the upset I've just had tossing and turning here in my bed in the middle of the night. Because no one is around. On the phone. Or on GChat. Or otherwise. Does expressing the breakdown I've just had because of feeling overwhelmed and stressed with the work load I have to accomplish for school over the next four days somehow invalidate the reporting I will do to encompass said work load?

I have always shared. I have always reported on my self. I have always felt that usually people want to share in return - that usually when I share how I'm feeling, a handful or more step forward and say, "I feel the exact same way."

So, here I am. Learning to be a professional "reporter" of whatever sort I may so choose. And here I am. Scared to report on myself. The way I have. For two decades. Fearlessly. Without shame. Without concern.

And I am also afraid to openly remark about my experience at school. It seems meta but not. Like if I fully disclose my experience, it somehow exposes something I'm not supposed to expose - because I feel like the full disclosure is meant to be my reporting, not my emotions. Or at least that is what I am collecting through auditory osmosis.

I feel trapped. One foot in the door of expression. One foot in the door of objective skepticism. Are they able to meet somewhere? Because I do not like feeling trapped. I do not feel like I am choking my own voice.

It feels lonely on this patch of confusion. I've held it in for three months. The frustration bubbling inside of me with depth and concern.

Perhaps if I share - perhaps - a handful of other people will step forward and say, "I feel the same way."

Because this lily pad of two worlds - stuck in the door way of "now what" - is but a inkling of the entire pond. There are bullfrogs of contemplation. And rocks of metaphor stuck in mud only patient as to not make a mess. For there are already enough messes. Enough upsets and tears and soggy tissues to clean up the past and make for an inconclusive present.

I just want to write. I just want to sit with words and string them into sentence or phrase or otherwise and report on something. I can't imagine I'm the only writer or aspiring journalist to have reached this tipping point. This cross roads.

What did they do? The other ones, from before now, and after before. What did they do? Did they tipping into the other direction of objectivity? Did they compartmentalize their objectivity with their freedom to still be subjective?

I'm not asking to write only subjective nonfiction. I'm asking if my objective nonfiction looses validity when I publicly write subjectively but separately. I'm asking why we can't fully disclose everything. Why we can't just put it all out in the open. Why we can't just share everything.

I think of the Pentagon Papers. And the notion of anonymity. Or leaking. Or government secrets. Why do we keep these things private anyway? Wouldn't we live in a less violent world if we shared everything we were feeling and thinking?

Wouldn't we save ourselves from war and famine if we let ourselves purge any negative thoughts into the open, rather than letting them manifest into physical horrors?

What then?

And is this not showing not telling? When can sharing be a means to progressively moves us towards freedom?

While I'm interested in the "Changing Media Landscape" as a practice, I'm mostly interested in the "Changing Media Landscape" as a culture. As a concept.

If we are questioning the business of journalism. If we are questioning future of journalism - the longevity, the success in the face of the Internet. Must we not also question the culture? The heart beat that drives the conversation we facilitate amongst the public?

Is that not what journalism is? Is that not the role of the reporter? To facilitate the conversation of the public - leaders, civilians, etc.

I have found that the best facilitators share their own personal story amidst calling on hands and veering questions from the audience back to the panelists. The best facilitators repeat the questions from the audience for everyone to hear - everyone in the back and front and on the sides and watching on their computers at home. And the best facilitators remain emotional and human. And we are more likely to trust them when they let down their guard.

Is this not what a journalist is?

So then, I ask. Why. Why do I feel like I'm not supposed to share my feelings as I help facilitate the conversation? Is not part of the conversation a fervent and spirited expose of the inner self? Because it is that inner awareness that ultimately forms into the tangible stuff. The stuff we fact check. The stuff we put in our nut graph. The stuff we crunch into news ledes. That stuff.

That stuff started inside. As a tiny voice. And that voice deserves to be heard too.

Sourced. Attributed. And published.

Up

2009-11-08T20:16:00.003-05:00

At the moment, I feel like a bursting rain cloud. Not like I'm going to cry or anything. Or explode something liquid or concrete. Just on the verge of bursting. Like, at the edge of capacity. I considered attributing it to not yet having had dinner - but I had several snack breaks to tide me over until I finished a school assignment in time for deadline. I considered attributing it to dehydration - but I've had a XXX Vitamin Water, water, and Green Tea. I consider the dilapidated condition of my desk chair (the right arm long gone, the angle adjustment with a mind of its own, the comfort level steadily decreasing since last winter) - but I sit there all the time, and walk away feeling exasperatingly tense, rather than explosive.

So I consider "bursting," itself. The way one feels when overwhelmed. But not the bad kind of overwhelmed. Not the kind of overwhelmed where one wants to crawl into a hole. I'm there plenty. All the time. Especially recently. No, this is something different. This is effervescent. Like there are bubbles hitting the edges of my skin layers from the inside - like where the blood is. And not bubbles of excitement. Not to say I'm not happy right now, because I am, but the bubbles aren't about overzealous joy.

They are something like wonder. Awe with the way serendipity always creeps into the moment - even at the last minute. When you've given up hope. When you're trading tenses and voices at the drop of a dime because it all seems too integrated to separate based on grammar anyhow. But this isn't about language. Or privilege.

Maybe about transparency. Or disclosure. Or attribution.

I've been thinking a lot about the journalism of the self. Like, is this considered reporting? Like, here I am, sitting in my couch on the Upper West Side, having just finished several graduate school assignments, writing in my personal blog before diving into the next batch of deadlines and readings, chatting with my friend Carmen in GChat, chatting with my boyfriend in Facebook chat, twitching on the inside - the way you shake your foot when it's asleep and you can't get up from your chair, or the way you dance back and forth hip to hip when you desperately have to go pee and stand in a massive line awaiting a public restroom, yeah, that's how I feel on the inside.

So, here I am. Feeling that way. And if I'm giving the details, if I'm reporting the location, the characters present with me - be them virtually or otherwise, and if I'm describing my emotions and contextualizing them through anecdotes and metaphors, is this not reporting? Is this not journalism with my self as the source and subject?

I am curious to understand how far this writing genre can stretch. Where do the lines of journalism end and creative nonfiction begin? Or are there no lines? Or is there no shot that they meet up in the first place?

When is reporting not reporting? If we are storytelling something real, is not reporting every step of the way to gather the facts that make up the narrative?

Maybe this is me justifying a rigorous nine months at a trade school. Maybe this is me finding my way back home to creative nonfiction with the knowledge I've already gained three months into this program. Maybe this is me wanting to pioneer some convergence or at least find those that have already laid ground to an intersection.

Whatever it is, this is now. And I miss reporting about the moment. The way I feel it. The way I see it. I wonder if my heroes like Tom Wolfe or Hunter S. Thompson had this dialogue with themselves - or with their colleagues. Because they didn't have the Internet. And blogging is really having a public conversation with yourself. So what was their blog post? Did they have one? Did they even realize what they were doing? What did it feel like for them to want to push the boundaries of attribution and creativity?

And now that I've had some distance from memoir, from personal narrative, from this so dubbed self-journalism, I look at it objectively - witnessing myself cantor my fingers across the home row keys in this Blogger text window - wondering if I was being to narcissistic before. Presuming that it was worthy of a write up - the moments through the lens of myself. Attributing the perspective solely to me and my experience. Is that selfish? Or is this just a version of the citizen journalism we collectively write to find a medium or average of the human experience?

And what of the undocumented moments. How do we know we haven't missed them? How do we have faith that they are still collected fairly and justly and accurately somewhere in some version of memory?

But oh, the out pour. Of emotion. Of documenting. Of reporting. Of storytelling. It is but a catharsis. The budding seedlings lined up in the concaves of the finger tips eager to transmit themselves into the pitter-patter of the keyboard. This is how moments happen. This is how life is documented. This is the rain storm. The cloud bursting at the seams, ready, willing, begging to explode.

Coveritlive - Spoken Word at Barnard

2009-10-11T23:15:00.002-05:00

Spoken Word at Barnard

Joshua Tree

2009-10-07T12:02:00.002-05:00

Today is the seventh anniversary of my little brother Joshua's death.

I tend to be resilient when I think about him and talk about him. 364 days of strength makes me think there should therefore easily be 365. But I am finding that difficult today. I am finding myself break down in ways I didn't know I was still capable of doing. I am finding hidden crevices in my spirit that are asking me to pause, slow down, and reflect in ways I was certain I already had.

Perhaps we simply grow so much - with each second, each day, each year - that we must reassess, reprocess, reconfigure the ways in which we understand and contextualize the traumas of our past. Perhaps the strength is the courage in allowing ourselves to explore this challenge. Perhaps the challenge is permission - mostly from the self - to undergo these shifts, and all the parceling tributaries of emotion that trickle into place and rest into riverbeds of newness.

I have found pain today in vessels of my bloodstream. Grief in the fingernails of my hands and toes. Mourning in the rituals of my daily routine. And somewhere in the spaces that harbor my darkness, I have found balance. Suggested to myself that we revisit these abyss caves and walk somewhat compassionately through the quicksand of yesterday; only then is there grace to be found on the other side.

It seems that every moment is thus a death - a transition to the other side. We tend to focus on letting the painful moments pass. We tend to grasp on, exhaling excess life, into the easier moments, the tranquil moments, the exuberant moments. What if these serious moments are actually as serene as the ones that are transparently lighter. The ones that are less opaque and not plagued by preconceived notions of horror. What then.

Do we find ourselves able to hold our own hands through the journey? Do we give ourselves permission more diligently and optimistically?

What then.

I ask myself, perhaps out of fear of my own ability to grow, why I still mourn his death. Why after seven years it still hurts and makes me cry and cringe and act out and project my pain and sorrow onto those around me whom I love. Why am I not more super than this human truth. Why am I not more perfect than these shifting realities. Why am I not more guarded then these introspective moments of depth and pain. Why am I so mortal when I have spent so many years attempting to enlighten myself beyond the fears of death.

Why I ask.

I am left to consider peace. That peace is only inner strength allowing outer challenges to realign into guided conversation. I am left to consider the macrocosm. How we still mourn and remember tragedies from decades, centuries, millenia ago. How I would like to grant myself permission to be this kind of a human. The one that remembers, with the delicate hands of a mourner - nimble in spirit, passive in execution, prominent in faith.

I have found comfort in my grief - from the moment my brother's breath ceased, to the moment I stood last Friday night reciting the Mourner's Kaddish on the Upper West Side in honor of Josh's death anniversary - through my Judaism. And it is less in G-d, or something spiritual, let alone religious. It has been more cultural, more traditional, more in the ritualistic way we Jews have supported and guided one another through death and the very mortal, human process of grief and acceptance.

During Shabbat services, Mourners stand alone when they recite Kaddish at the service's close. Those of us observing a Yahrzeit (the anniversary of someone's death), stand together with those in mourning, who have just lost a loved one. There are moments, certain phrases and portions of the prayer, when the congregation at large joins in. But otherwise, we prayer - just our voices - in a sea of community. Perhaps there is something symbolic there. Something more powerful than a dozen voices left to dwindle and struggle through tragedy on their own. It is how I have found grief to be.

It is a journey I must travel alone - for the most part. It is my own voice that I hear as I grapple with the pains of death and the existential questions it has presented me on account of how I understand the universe. And I can stand, in front of a crowd, strong, grounded, aware that I am capable of remembering and honoring my brother. But there are moments, brief words and phrases, when I must be supported. It is designed that way. It is designed to be a combination of a self guided journey, with the constant reminder that in the end of the day, I am not alone.

Perhaps this is the similar way to support myself in and of myself. Know that most of the year, I am able to harbor this storm on my way. I can walk through the jungles of the reality that my little brother is dead with mere ease and patience. But on this day, and surely others, I must allow myself the permission to speak with others. To let my voice be accompanied by my community. To admit that maybe, maybe I cannot make it through the entire Mourner's Kaddish entirely on my own. That maybe, maybe once a year there is a sense memory flood of remembrance.

And suddenly it is not 2009. But it is 2002. And my brother's head is the size of a basketball, cracked from being flung into the side of a building, swollen from the brain surgery that wasn't able to save him. And his breath is decreasing. And the Rabbis are saying prayers. And my mother is alongside his passing body in the hospital bed holding her son's last moments in her torso. And it is no longer a fall day in Manhattan. I am no longer in brown suede boots with brown tights an a relatively matching ensemble. But it is then. Many years ago then.

And I am sad. Sad to know that my brother will never breath again. Sad to know that everything will change. It already has. Sad to know that he will never graduate high school, or go to college, or make is his own family. Sad to know that he will never be at Natalie's high school graduation, or my college graduation, or watch either of us create our own families. Sad to know that I cannot buy him cool flip flops. Or take him to concerts. Or gel his hair before he goes out. Sad to know that these things will never happen again - well at least this way. The way I'd originally assumed and envisioned and planned.

And perhaps that too is a metaphor for today. A reminder to myself that I am only human. That is OK to be late to report in Flushing, Queens, because it is only Flushing, Queens. And our spirits are much more than the neighborhoods we manifest when we create communities. And that first, we must create communities within ourselves. First, we must clean the streets of our hearts and place safety signs in the synapses of our brains before we are able to manifest these understandings into a clear and calm illusion of environment.

I feel better now. I feel like I have given myself permission to feel and to grieve. I feel catharsis having written for me, for myself, for my own inner community for the first time since the middle of August. I feel free in this moment. Knowing that I am able to have let the ones before this pass. With grace. With honesty.

And, of course, with strength.

And So It Goes

2009-10-05T23:39:00.000-05:00

Perhaps the best thing I realized this evening was not my good fortune, or the fact that I really should send my revisions to my professors within not much more than a day of the request, or that graduate school is simply an unplug from life, or that multitasking does in fact have its limits. Perhaps it was the awareness. The understanding that there are two kinds of full. The kinds that result from sorrow and pain, and the kinds that result from joyous celebration. The former only continues to feed itself pain and sorrow - a never ending abyss of guilt and uncomfortable shame. While the latter can be laughed off, giggled into ephemeral experience, consistently cogniscent of the comfort that rests lingering like plywood in the distance. The good plywood. The kind of plywood that sparks daydreams and dialogues. Manufactured into strength and durability. High quality concrete built into the concaves of my fortitude and resiliance. Nearly vapid and loose leaf in the folds of my former pain full. Like a hand with sand running through fingers. Even the faintest drop of condensation will clasp onto but the tiniest grain of sand. Leaving remnants and memories and evidence. So how can anything be erased. When the winds carry secrets in their pockets. And the rivers transport ashes in their current. And the snow storms pile secrets in their layers. In these natures, in these nurturing moments of daydream, we are but a spec of resiliance and an ounce of clarity. And in the breaths of tomorrow we have but to inhale and ex...

Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

2009-09-18T23:13:00.000-05:00

I wrote this letter to Allen Ginsberg on August 4, 2009, standing at the corner of Haight and Ashbury in San Francisco. I typed it into the memo pad of my blackberry.

...

Dear Allen,

Maybe I'm bitter due to the tango cease of my ancestors. I feel like I'm being split personality and heart like conception in reverse. Even the squatter street kids on the corner of Haight and Ashbury make me cringe. Did you have days like this? Did you just get doped up? I'm considering questioning my self love and calling it a high or hangover or both. Meaning, this is almost entirely about control. I looked at myself in the mirror this morning and felt 15 again. I've lost my center. Had the rug pulled out from underneath me and wonder if I was ever really centered in the first place. Like maybe I was superficially relying on some pair of misfits to anchor myself amidst the ocean waves.

Until I consider the possibility that being centered is perhaps about reassessing. Listening to my own inner mantra - discover your core and nurture it - and remembering that the environment is always subject to change.

Until a few minute ago I felt like I had a hole in my heart. Shot with an urgent pain of unforgiving trauma.

But she is gone now. The angel of death and her associates. Which is fine her being a woman and all. Some would say otherwise, but it only seems consistent being that we women portal birth from the ethers.

Perhaps the inkling of hope is reemerging into my spirit. Having capsized in a body of open water and sunshine.

It seems like everyone is in a holding pattern watching their patience uproot from tomorrow to plant seeds of severed orchards in the back drop of their yesterdays.

I am feeling comradery almost. Even if I never outwardly tell my congruent daydreams we are kindred spirits, knowing is always enough.

Maybe Jack is still hidden in the untouched crevices of Columbia and I can finish his manuscripts. And you will listen when I call you in the desperate hours of the night the way you'd channel Whitman at sunrise.

I feel your spirit on this street. Bold and quiet all at once. The same way my life is both unraveling and rebuilding concurrently.

And part of me wants to make a list. Or a Venn Diagram. Maybe I will. Or maybe its enough to know the beauty in the rhetorical devices of paradox and irony.

Maybe that is simply enough.

Love,
Caroline

Hanging By a Moment

2009-07-13T18:16:00.004-05:00

Found in a box of seventh and sixth grade schoolwork...

Written by Caroline Rothstein circa 1996:

Hanging On a Thread

Have you ever had
What you wanted in life,
But it seemed
Just too good to be true?

For it seemed that some day,
By the touch of a hand,
It would just disappear
In thin air.

It's confusing but scary
And misunderstood.
Near as worse as not having
It at all.

Life is full
Of so much change
That this sort of feeling
Is fair.

For it seemed that some day,
By the touch of a hand,
It would just disappear,
In thin air.

To Live and Die in LA

2009-07-10T09:19:00.002-05:00

As texted to Lindsey at 1:35 AM:

What's shitty about packing up and cleaning your childhood home is that throughout growing up, it serves as a launchpad for growing up. You pack for carpool. You pack for ice skating, ballet, and choir. For sleep away camp. For spring break. Winter break. Nana's house. Grandma's house. Sleepover parties, boarding school, therapy, the hospital, college, etc.

So suddenly, when you're boxing up your attic, putting your Bat Mitzvah center pieces at the curb for the garbage men to pick up in the morning, you realize, you are losing your launch pad.

You are no longer living at Nasa. Or even some base center in outer space. You are floating through a black hole. An abyss of shaken shock. Nothing to hold.

You begin floating into a galaxy of unknown. There are no theories or postulates to prove or steer your destination. Only faith. And the sense that no matter what - black hole or not - there is always a destination. Even if it is in fact the journey.

Crazy Rap

2009-07-05T22:42:00.003-05:00

I have held hands with the wind. Watched it circle through my finger tips and let pins drop more silently than a needle in a haystack. I have held hands with my past. Told the eleven year old girl with clear braces and a fear of weight gain that we are beautiful. I have held hands with my future. Told her that we do deserve this and it is already happening and yes, yes this is all allowed. All of it. Always has been.

I have held hands with my father. When he dragged me out of my bedroom while I was playing with my dollhouse and friends and cousins and brought me into the dining room and living room where my brother was being circumsized at his bris. I have held hands with my mother. Every time she gives me advice - even if the hold is metaphorical it always feels literal. I have held hands with my sister. When she said it was hard sometimes to be affectionate with me because she misses Josh so much; and I hold it in my heart that this too shall pass because I love to hold her hand - even when the hold is metaphorical I want it to always be literal. I have held hands with my brother. When he was in a coma, unconscious, preparing for death.

I have held hands with reliance. When I thought I was dying and didn't want to go to sleep alone in fear of not waking up the next morning. I have held hands with connection. When I was saying goodbye in Westchester, Pennsylvania, starring into eyes for five minutes and speaking hardly anything at all, but smiling and knowing everything. I have held hands with confusion. On a Chinatown bus to Philadelphia the day of Halloween. And acceptance - in Union Square, my energy shifted and my palms read. And faith - in Tomkins Square Park on a bench with grace.

I have held hands with my self. When I climbed through miles of river and canyon to scope the source of a waterfall. When I dangled my legs off the edge of the Grand Canyon and left a voicemail for Vicki and called Greg once I had reception again. When I drove away from departures at the San Francisco airport. When I touched the steering wheel of freedom in the middle of Nevada and knew that I had found myself somewhere in America.

And I have held hands with you. On the subway. In your car. On the airplane. In the park. In my bedroom. In your photos. In your bedroom. And it has always been more than pleasant. It is always like springtime. Blooming into something even the next moment cannot predict. Even though the next moment is happening in the moment and adjusting into itself. Even that cannot predict such warmth. But that's what it always is. Every time. And it lingers on my finger tips. Caught by the wind. Left to settle on my eye lashes. And when they fall, you catch them. And as always, I wish.

Born on the Fourth of July

2009-07-05T01:14:00.001-05:00

Patience.

Acceptance.

Breathing.

These are all things I remind myself to practice on a daily basis.

And usually, actually always, it clicks.

Usually, actually always, others are projecting, and we are just learning lessons anyhow as a bonus prize.

Through the Looking Glass

2009-07-03T14:39:00.006-05:00

The worst is when you clean the apartment. The balcony. Then the common space - floors, tables, chairs and all. And it still feels dirty and unkempt inside. You talk to your dead brother. Just a little bit while Phish is playing in the background, and you're in your yellow Abercrombie track shorts you've been stretching out since high school, a spaghetti strap black tank top that does nothing but keep your stomach contained, and bare feet. You ask him how to handle all this - as you spray Windex on the glass balcony doors. As you wipe away the soot with paper towels and think about how you'd learned to clean windows with coffee filters back in Atlanta to avoid streaks. But you don't have coffee filters here because you don't drink coffee. And you don't have patience for this because you never imagined this would happen. And you're cleaning like it's going to wipe away all the dirt. Like the physical dirt from wind and city has a congruent relationship to the dirt inside this mess of yours. And you swear you hear your dead brother tell you to be patient. But you tell him that patience is difficult when it hurts this much. And you wish he could say something in person to help fix this all but he's six feet under and she doesn't tend to talk to dead people much as far as you know. And so you figure there will be a loop hole out of this mess. Somehow it'll right itself and if everything is as it's supposed to be anyhow, then this is just another instance of that and all is well even though the dirt looks like stained glass portraits of zombies.

Oliver and Company

2009-07-03T00:03:00.003-05:00

I'm laying on my friend's bed in the West Village. This adorable studio adorned with the perfect gems and jewels for a NYC college student. Our other friend is here too. They're walking around the apartment as they let me post my daily blog post for the week. I rode the elevator upstairs here 4 hours ago, after dinner with my grandma and uncle, crammed next to a man who I later learned was a movie producer - according to the doorman.

It's nice to call these girls friends. Years ago - 7 years ago exactly - I was their counselor as sleep away, a role I continued to hold for the next 3 summers. Until an hour ago, I would have still referred to them as my campers. A way to contextualize the relationship. A way for me to know from which folder in my social cabinet to dig out the memories. A way to explain to others who they were in my life and how they have remained.

But then I opened my friend's laptop. I started to type this post. And out came the word "friend." I realize now, these are my friends. 7 year age difference or not, these girls are my friends. Despite the fact that their parents left them in my hands every summer for two months, despite the fact that I was in charge of their medical forms, helping them overcome homesickness, talking them through high school, giving them college advice, these girls - at this point in our lives - are my friends.

I have spent the last 4 hours laughing harder than I've laughed in a while. I have nothing to censor. We have nothing to censor. They are in between their freshman and sophomore years of college, and now, now we are able to connect in a world beyond both camp and high school. Here we three are living in New York City, hanging out at an apartment in the West Village, the neighbor banged on the wall as an understood way to tell us to "shut up." Here we all are, and I feel like I can hang out with them. In a different way than when I was their counselor. Than ever before. Because all the other times before, I was aware of the role relationship. I was conscious of everything going on. I was concerned with their safety and well-being and this desire to protect them from the harshness of the world.

But here, now, instead, I find myself completely unselfconscious. Completely at ease. The way I feel with my friends. The need to be maternal and big sister-esque has subsided. And thus we sit. Me on my back on the bed with the laptop, them on the sofa giggling and chatting - stopping me with questions about where I'm going to live during school and such.

I just heard one of them say to the other, "friend." Completely unaware of exactly what I'm writing in this post.

That word. So powerful. So important. So real.

Reality Bites

2009-07-01T15:35:00.006-05:00

Maybe it's the summer solstice. Or was rather. It is post facto at this point, but still being strung into the daily fibers of what is now July. But I'm energetically all fucked up. If I didn't have other friends in the same sort of disconnected funk, I'd schedule an "as needed" with my former therapist. But I'm feeling this lapse of concrete self formatting is both ephemeral and crucial. Ephemeral because every emotion is but temporary. And crucial because it's always darkest before the dawn.

I am all over the place. Jumping to conclusions and reaching for parcels of preoccupied noise to seemingly avoid wallowing in the present moment. I have many transitions approaching my space time continuum.

I have kept my GMail inbox to a 1 - 4 unread email limit all day. Perhaps a metaphor for being overwhelmed with the amount of information I am being feed and the parcels of knowledge building on the horizon.

Next week I go home for a week. I help my mother clean out our attic. And my childhood bedroom. And other rooms and areas of the house. It is for sale. I was resistant to book my flight home for days. Put it on hold with American and ran away from hitting purchase. I feel this was several fold. One, I'm having commitment issues with my future. I've been a freelance artist for the last few years. The thought of making concrete decisions for several days at a time is terrifying.

Like...I can't even commit to writing this blog post. I stop every paragraph and check my email. Or put on some music. Or read something totally unrelated to anything important. Or get up and do something.

I'm not really sure what I'm so afraid of. At this point, I'm just forcing myself into committed things. Like calling all the brokers friends have led me to in order to find a new apartment for school next year uptown in Morningside Heights. Instead of putting it off an extra...I just hit send on my phone and email. Forced. Coerced. No choice left or given.

And then there's the issue having committed to school. Perhaps this is the scariest of all. Perhaps this is really what it's all about. And all committed thus related to the art of transition from childhood to adulthood - hence cleaning house and moving shop.

I don't know what it is. It's something about school. And my future. It's this fear about committing to a future. That's what it is. Like. All of my friends and I had all this pressure when we graduated from college. And like...everyone in the 20s and 30s gets this pressure. This like, are you on the right career path? What are you doing with your life? Why are you doing that or this with your life? Who are you? Why are you? What are you?

And then suddenly it's a quagmire of identities and boxes to check and such. Like. I know I'm pursuing my dreams. I've spent the last three years since graduating from college as a writer, performer, and activist. I mean...one could even fudge to say that my 10 month stint as a 9 to 5er in Midtown Manhattan at a nonprofit executive search firm while simultaneously running another nonprofit was a bout in activism. Of sorts. Or at least a glimpse into the organized world of activism only to decide that creativity and art had to be at the core of my endeavors.

Point being. I graduated and have been following my dreams ever since. And maybe even roughly following my dreams my whole life. I mean, I've few times stopped doing what I love. I've plenty times said yes to things I didn't want to do...but that never seemed too far off track from what I actually wanted.

Point being. Here I am. 26. Pursuing my dreams. About to solidify the professional end of my nonfiction writing career and aspirations - like I've always dreamed - and suddenly I'm having cold feet.

It's like...what if I get a month into the marriage and realize I made a mistake? I mean. Really. Marriage. Isn't this what they feature in all the romantic comedies I'm obsessed with. Every marriage episode in a sitcom has one of these cold feet segments too. One partner freaking in the corner. And in Fresh Prince Will and Lisa actually break up. In their tux and gown. What if I get to orientation and break up with my dreams?

That's what so scary. To commit to my dreams. To actually own that I have a deep, deep, deep passion and love for writing. The other week I had dinner with my friend who I traded manuscripts with. He'd read mine and has some notes. Wanted to meet up and discuss my words. My pages. My prose.

He complimented the journalistic segments of my manuscript. Said it was what I was born to do. Had a knack for. My natural muse if you will.

And on that walk home, down 8th street, all the way from the West Village to my corner of the East, my heart pounded. Beating, pulsing like crazy. The feeling. The intensity. I wanted to write so badly it hurt. I wanted to be a writer. Drop every other aspect of my life and just write a fucking story - a real, poignant, earth shattering story - right then and there. Just sit down and catch a glimpse of life and type it out. Right then and there. It hurt so bad. The passion and stuff. The fucking passion to just be a writer.

And I still have that. Often. Often I have that hurt and pain. This intense need and want to spill words out of my crevices and capillaries.

And so. If the passion is so prominent. The urge so thick. Why. Why am I getting cold feet? I feel this profession and path and journey in my bones. In my gut. In my core. I presume that's what most people - minus the 50% that get divorced, or maybe they do too - feel when they say yes. When they walk down the aisle. It's like this nutty decision to commit to something you love. And I say nutty only because it's a leap of faith. I mean, I'm a romantic. Huge romantic. Obsession with romantic comedies and huge advocate for watching The Notebook on a regularly basis. But I ask, and plead to understand, why then, is my romantic ass freaking with the prospect of living my dreams - even more so than I already am. I mean, I am nearing the end of having fulfilled one of my many childhood dreams: to be an artist, living in the East Village. Shouldn't I be used to this? Or did I have a similar existential crisis last winter and spring when I left my Midtown job to write my nonfiction book?

Or is this just about transition? I'm not sure that questions - rhetorical, interrogative, or otherwise - are even necessary.

At some point I have to read the blog post I posted last night: surrender to the flow. Accept my dreams. And quit the two dozen years of self-sabotage that likes to pop in on me every now and then.

Cold feet. Schmold feet. I'm going to Journalism School. I already signed off on my meningitis vaccine requirement. And bought health insurance through the school. I mean. I'm clearly committed. I guess it's the premarital blood tests and stuff. And registering for classes is like signing the Kettubah. But I don't think I can wait til August 12 to walk down the aisle.

Maybe it's like that Mad About You episode. When Paul and Jamie wake each other up the night before their wedding and go find someone on the street or maybe their fire escape - if I recall they found a nighttime construction worker? - to officiate their marriage - before the big day. They said this would be for them. This was for them to know that this belonged to them. Maybe the ceremony is orientation. And me - just me - and myself have to have a sort of ritual, sometime in the very near future, where I look at myself in the mirror and say yes, I am giving you a life of writing. It doesn't mean that you have to love writing every day. It doesn't mean that you aren't allowed to burn your pens and pencils when the going gets tough. But it does mean, Caroline, that you are accepting an innate fire inside of you to spend the rest of your life with the written page.

And I'd question this til death do us part shit if I hadn't written my first book at age four on some hotel paper: The Seagull Goes Hunting. Stapled on the left side and everything. Illustrated too. If I hadn't started making books at such a young age - so quickly after learning to write and read in the first place - then I'd question the longevity of this commitment. But the prospect of spending a tremendous amount of money on an intense one year long graduate program - me thinks I must really like this thing called writing and storytelling.

Lizards

2009-06-30T21:00:00.005-05:00

My fourth favorite Phish song is called "Lizards." Mostly for the staccato chorus break down that splices up the legato verses. But also for this one line, "...the trick was to surrender to the flow." It's been overused in Phish lexicon like crazy. And the notion of surrendering to the flow is heavily highlighted and promoted in New Age lingo. And around my house growing up. Surrender. Surrender to the flow. Let go. Etc. And so on and so forth.

I feel like I've had a self-righteous pole up my ass for the last several months. So many years in therapy. So many years of yoga and meditation. So many years of reading energy reports and alternative healing. And psychics. And acting as a clairvoyant myself.

Somewhere between the shift from 2008 and 2009, I decided I was fully self-actualized. I only realized this a few hours ago, in the midst of sitting on my friend's couch in Brooklyn for a total of six and a half hours. A day interspersed with chatting, deep conversation, and watching Reality Bites.

I sit here now on my own couch. Laptop in hand and thigh. Half eaten bowl of rice and beans loaded with cheddar cheese to my left. Cell phone kicked off to the edge of my coffee table. Legs plumped over calf muscle and all on the other side of the coffee table. Half full glass of water. Because - the glass is always half full. The other tab open in my browser - an New Agey energy alert posting half read waiting for me to finishing reading. But I stopped at the part about surrendering. And letting go. It seemed to help my couch time epiphanies come to full circle fruition. Just the way I like it. Just the way that makes me smile.

...I just took a hiatus from this post. Read and responded to some emails. Messed around on Facebook. Finished reading the energy alert post.

I'd gotten self-righteous about my self-actualization, personal growth, and emotional maturity. I'd somehow misinterpreted strength and perseverance as entitlement and a free pass to perfection. Perhaps the perfectionist in me - the one that used to manifest as an eating disorder or self abuse and self sabotage to preemptively destroy what would otherwise not be perfection, took its new amorphous shape in the guise of this self-righteousness. This putrid sense that I was better than struggle and pain. That I have risen to a level beyond challenge and conflict.

I'm still figuring out what a non-violent world would look like on an emotional level. Perhaps it's a world where we still feel and express and experience our emotions in full, we just don't harbor ill will towards others and pursue any informal urges to mistreat anyone by means of our anger and fear.

Maybe it's a defense mechanism. Having been kicked and shat on by a massive laundry list of trauma, this is my illusion of shielding and protection. Pretending that there's no need to surrender - I'm eternally shock proof.

But what irony. What hypocrisy. What a joke to spend any more time in this space of I'm pure and clean of any pain. Because the joke's on me. Perhaps my guard is more up than ever before. My guard with the universe. With my self. This shield between my relationship with the universe to avoid being hurt again. Even though I know deep down inside that ultimately much of our hurt is reflected through our own lens of choice and understanding.

...I keep taking breaks throughout writing this post. I've since GChatted with a friend in Seattle, responded to emails, put a plane ticket on hold, had a one hour phone conversation with a distant cousin, washed my dishes from rice and bean dinner, spent 45 minutes on the phone with my mother.

I feel like in conjuring up the words to this blog post, all of these thoughts have come even more full circle.

I have learned much clarity in talking to my female family members tonight. Mothers tend to have the womb of wisdom implanted in their souls - alongside the practical wombs and such.

Problems never really go away. My growth and strength is in how I deal with them. How I react. My healing has been to react in a healthful way - through talking, and sharing, and conversation. Through processing and compassion and patience. Rather than globalizing or letting my ego take charge. Not arrogant ego. But like, brain, opposite of soul ego.

Letting go is surrendering to the flow without the ego. I can only surrender when I let go of the attempt to control the rudder of my sailboat with my ego.

And maybe this has all gone in a big meaningless circle. Me applying meaning to a day and a series of realizations and contemplations that shouldn't garner such a poetic outburst. Perhaps to truly surrender, such pondering is not even required.

Perhaps letting go includes letting go of the analysis. Just working from my heart. Is that what I've been doing these past several months? Or have I been closed off when dealing with my conversations to the universe itself? I know that in so many ways, I have been more vulnerable and open than ever before - or at least than I have been in a tremendously long time. But I do feel like somewhere I stopped trusting the flow. Somewhere I tried to control it - and try does not work. Try only hits itself against the wall repeatedly in frustration and angst.

And so.

"The Helping Friendly Book, it seemed, possessed the ancient secrets/ Of eternal joy and never-ending splendor/ The trick was to surrender to the flow..."

...I am now under my covers. In my bed. It has taken me nearly 3.5 hours to write this blog post. Perhaps 3.5 hours not only to unwind from my day - of AM tutoring all over Manhattan and PM couch sitting in Brooklyn - and process my thoughts; but 3.5 hours to check in with myself. To come back to the balance of flow. To reignite the spark of curiosity that always leads me back along the path of surrender and faith.

It is all as planned. As always. As usual. And the trick, the trick is to simply be.

You Rock My World

2009-06-29T12:36:00.004-05:00

I'm at Katra. A bar on Bowery - Lower East Side, Manhattan. I'm attending the Brazilian dance party downstairs, and figure I'll explore the hip hop playing upstairs. I piece through piles and packs of drunk 20 somethings and emerge into a vacancy large enough to fit a mistake.

All the other reserved tables are filled. Drinks on the tables. Glasses in the hands of those circled around the sofas for drunk sacrifice. Except for this one - near the mistake vacancy. It's totally empty. Despite the hundreds of dollars worth of drinks. Despite the silver reserved placard. Despite the jam packed nature of the rest of the dance floor. These sofas are empty. Except for one man. One guy rather. Men aren't this condescending and objectifying.

He grabs my wrists. Both of them. Pulls me over to him. Says he wants to dance with me. I tell him that my dude is waiting for me down stairs and to please let me go. He pursues. Insist. It's like a lions' den and I can't seem to get an edge. I pull away my body. I pull away my wrists. Anything to loosen his grip - both literally and figuratively. He says that my man was foolish to let me out of his site. I tell him that he's being foolish not letting me go back downstairs. But this is my favorite song; dance with me, he says. Dance with yourself, please let me go, I plead. I pull away. Yank myself, rather.

Head back downstairs. Tell a new friend about the asshole that's just pounced on me in the upstairs lions' den.

It happens a few more times that night. In different ways. One guy stares me up and down like a piece of meat and assumes this check out will bring me over. Another guy starts talking to me as I lean up against the bar. The more appropriate and respectful version of "hitting on"...the one without the wrist grab and lock down. Asks me why I haven't been dancing. But I have, I say. When, he asks. Earlier, I say. I doubt he'd even noticed...this is just clearly a flirting tactic because he then asks if I salsa dance and then asks me to dance with him. You'll have to ask him, I joke, pointing to Jonathan who is now to my left. The dude hitting on me to my right says something along the lines of, "Oh, I didn't realize..." and eventually walks away.

And maybe my pointing to Jonathan and saying, "You'll have to ask him," despite the blatant chuckle with which I tainted my tone, makes me a hypocrite if I were to begin a rant right here about the current state of female objectification. Maybe my jest doesn't grant me permission to wax poetic over the guy upstairs in the hip hop room, grabbing my wrists and pulling me away from the direction in which I was walking.

But perhaps the issue at hand is the stark contrast between the two men - the one upstairs in the hip hop room and the one downstairs at the bar: entitlement and objectification, versus questioning and respect. The dude that nearly attacks me and won't take no for an answer, versus the dude that casually flirts and walks away when he sees I'm not in fact available.

To be honest, the asshole upstairs really pissed me off. I just couldn't believe his behavior. I still can't. I can't believe his behavior. And I shouldn't be shocked. After all I've been through in my life, I really, really shouldn't be shocked. But perhaps, on this end of healing, on this end of no longer associating myself with jerks platonically or otherwise, I live in an illusion of such predators.

And so, it's only a reminder. That it is still a cat and dog and mouse and animal planet mess out there. That if a drunk asshole with claws and fangs is waiting in the vacant booth of reserved table land, then maybe we've completely abandoned whatever freedom and respect we were originally claiming to speak for. Maybe whatever feminist movement we'd taken on from our mothers and claimed as our own has morphed into a messy silence. Or maybe the dissonance - the lack of clarity we've found collectively as women, as people in general - is the issue. The different sides on which we stand. The man with his claws ready to snatch my wrists. Me so eager to run away. What should I have done? Struck up a conversation? Asked him why he felt it was OK to grab my wrists and claim me for his own rather than pulling away and going back downstairs. Or would that have just been self-righteous? And is that what got us here in the first place?

Or was this just another drunken asshole on the Lower East Side on Friday night? And there's nothing we can do about it...

A Night at the Roxbury

2009-06-29T12:16:00.002-05:00

At some point it all starts to blend together. The reveries. The ideas. The feelings. It comes a massive continuum of experience with nothing left to differentiate between the steps of other. And then there are the moments when blank picture frames flood the brain. Like a museum without wall text or anything else explanatory. And the temperature drops. Not like in a seasonal way. More like an ephemeral way. Like sudden and strong chicken scratches on an adolescent forearm. And this isn't how memory always works. Razor burns and carvings making an appearance like absent family members who only call on holidays. If even. Which is apparently just what coping means. Patience and idealism. And romanticism is something else entirely. Similar to jasmine scented acorns in a potpourri basket on top of the toilet. With chicken scratchings in felt tip pen. Because this is what music is. An undying understanding that connection is nearly impossible to come by entirely and authentically. Except for lately. Which will ultimately be yesterday and always. Because always is only a gamble. A game of black jack and Russian Roulette. And sunny side eggs will never make a come back. Dainty and peaceful like the inverse of lightening. Which sounds genuinely corny and probably previously dealt with. Similar to prepositions and self-referential statements of vengeance. Because somewhere in abstract, this exists between the concrete synapses. I am no longer mesmerized by flashy clairvoyance. Albeit humble in speech. It is losing its luster. Its affectations. Its dissonance. Because at some point - it does, in fact, all start to blend together.

Shine On

2009-06-18T01:49:00.001-05:00

Mother Earth

She weeps in her bedroom
And we think it’s an afterthought
Her salty tears
Nestled in the pores of her clouds

She is wind burned
Calloused with volcanic ashes
Like lightening stick in ultra violet heaven

She is twelve
Playing four square with her hemispheres
Fallen slowly from space
Placing life lines and sand dunes
On her windshield of time

She is epic
Patient princess at the gates of epiphany
Waiting sacred on the side lines of destiny

There is no grace period in overtime
No Messiah to dust the ashes from the war cries
Only baby’s breath and olive branch
Dove tails and cosmic depth
Afternoon moonshine
Early dawn tea time

She is infant again
Held in outstretched matron hands
She is yesterday’s daydream
Split open and melted on her harvest

Autumn springtime
Like transparent bridge passing
Over chemistry
Always has been psychics and gravity
Like gentle waves of frequency
Vibrating effortlessly

She wakes at naptime
And she is answer to the questions
She sought upon herself in
Manifested pretense

She is honest desperation
Still calm and classy her in actions
Emotions brewing in the ocean
Of her childhood

Letting go now
She walks the sunrise
And breathes

The Preacher's Wife

2009-06-09T21:50:00.001-05:00

Today's lesson - as per usual - "practice what you preach."

Breathe Me

2009-05-28T00:14:00.003-05:00

I'm sitting outside the Humanities Library at 42nd and Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. Just to the left of the far right lion statue. Seated in a folding green chair, yellow galoshes kicked up on a second one. "Acoustic #3" by the Goo Goo Dolls on my iPod. Second time I'm replaying it.

I watch a sidewalk and street of amalgamated determination float by my field of vision. I keep thinking that I want this moment to last forever. It feels like a movie - or better yet a dream. And I start feeling like I'm going to lose the moment and overwhelming passion in my heart. Until I realize I'm holding my breath.

So, I start to breathe. And suddenly the bliss feels sustainable. The pressure to capture every morsel of the essence of this moment through the grasp of every facial sense - fleeting. Subsiding quite quickly in fact. We always hold our breath. So tightly. We've created a narrative whereby the protagonist stalls oxygen when the want is to hold on. The protagonist holds breath to hold the moment. But the irony is that the lack of oxygen means lack of life. And thus, in order to maintain the moment, shouldn't we activate it with life - with more breath?

It's a bit scary to think that we can sustain and activate ever present bliss...

...and then a hand on my shoulder. I stop writing. And continue breathing.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona

2009-05-21T12:17:00.002-05:00

New York was Madrid this morning. Ten thirty AM from the grass in Washington Square Park. I'm laying on my jean jacket, head resting on my backpack. I've just finished running a poetry workshop at a middle school in Chelsea. But I feel like I'm in Madrid. March or April 2002. My friend Kat and I are traveling around Europe together. We've just finished a three month study program in Oxford, England. It's midday. Maybe afternoon. And we're exhausted. Somewhere in Madrid. We jump off a bus, or maybe it was a tram, but I think it was a bus. And we pass out in a park. Just there. On the grass. For an hour or two.

And this is what my Washington Square Park mid morning nap feels like. Like Madrid. Like Spain in spring. And I haven't been there - either physically or in my mind - in what, 7 years?

I awake fairly discombobulated. I mean, the Washington Square Park renovations are elegant and lovely. But I think I'm in Spain. And I'm still exhausted. And I have no idea what anything feels like. And I force myself to remember Sardinia. And all the rest of Italy. And this train ride I took once from Milan to Verona - via Venice - where I sat on my rolling suitcase in the steps and doorway of the moving train because there weren't any seats left. Which always seems to be the case when traveling anywhere near Venice.

And then I'm on an overlook in Verona. Overlooking the rooftops of sandal wood red and brick sierra. But like sure, literally bricks and window shingles. And it is beautiful. And time is endless. And plenty is magic. And I'm still in New York City and my brain is on a whirlwind tour all over the place.

And this is what happens on Thursday mornings in the West Village. When exhaustion has reached maximum capacity and Memorial Day weekend is 24 hours around the corner, and I'm turning 26 in nine days. I get restless. Antsy and jet-setty. In need of a fix. I seem to center myself when moving. It's like a paradox of inertia.

It's like my brain is on a one way ticket and my body is in a holding pattern. In a good way. So I might hit the road. Rent a car for a day and just drive. This always seems to center me.

But I guess I woke up in Madrid this morning. In a good way. In a centering sort of good way.

Poetic Justice

2009-05-19T08:57:00.002-05:00

Letter To An Atheist:

I shit you not, I was reading the last sentence of the first paragraph of your email when it all went down:

"i feel like if you ran a ctrl+f on your entire book you'd find the words "chant", "mantra" and "third eye" like sixty-four times. Kidding, obviously. but keep an eye on it."

You - commenting on my poem "For Madison," me, standing on the R subway platform at Union Square feeling the breath of a middle aged white man with a Australian Outback hat leaning over my right shoulder. He looks at me with those brainwashed eyes and asks me if I meditate. I look back down at the last sentence I've read. Of course. Of course this is happening now because this is always how it happens and the serendipitous nature is now just assumed and expected. Of course.

And I tell him that I do meditate. What kind do I practice, he asks. Primordial sound I tell him. And he holds up a book called "Yoga." Some guru on the front - name I've heard and seen many times before. But I don't do the guru thing so much. I mean, once I waited in line for a long time to receive a hug and darshan from this guru named Amma. I have a few friends that follow her like crazy. I'm glad I did it - just to say I did it - like drinking wine in the bar across the street from the Monte Carlo Casino in Monaco. But mostly, maybe then I was somewhat still searching.

Point is, this guy is shoving the cheap Yoga book in my face. My train is arriving. He's telling me about mantras - man = mind, tra = instrument, in Sanskrit - and I'm nodding as to appease his otherwise condescending tone. I mean, buddy, I said I meditate, of course I know what a mantra is. But I want to shut him up. And I'm amused, of course, by the serendipity of the moment, having been reading that last sentence of your first paragraph. So I say, how much? And I give him a dollar and take the book. Ultimately, I'd end up throwing the book away when cleaning out my entire bed room and shoveling papers and excess into the trash this past weekend, but for now, let's embrace my 36 hour long ownership of the one dollar yoga book.

I get on the train. I start to write you a letter in mind.

And then the next day, I begin texting you this letter/blog post to my self on my phone at the corner of 6th and 2nd Ave while I wait for my friend to meet me for lunch.

Truth is - my Atheist friend - I see it all as a crutch too. A big cop out from ownership and authenticity, both of which I agree are absolutely terrifying. But what of these moments? These subway platform and media bistro moments when moments so devoid of language capable of articulating the balancing act and effort that must have gone into the making of such a circumstance blend with such clarity. What about those feelings? They don't seem too scientific. They feel of another origin and context; juxtaposed with thinking and scabs and skin tears.

Like now. As I text myself these words to type up later, waiting on the corner outside of Spice to enjoy Thai for lunch, it is cold outside. A bit chilly. Perhaps a slight and soft mundane breeze touching the context of my epidermal skin layer. Meaning yes, there is cold air on my arm. But there is a wave of something else - something other - entirely.

I have found these waves in the form of a muse. In the form of my dead friends and family. I feel this chill now - having tossed my cell phone to my left because I've already finished typing up the stuff I texted myself to include in this letter. Now I'm just typing from now and here.

What about these chills? Do you ever feel them? Am I just that over dramatic and obsessed with living my life like some cross between the great American novel and the best chick flick of the century? Or do you ever feel these chills?

They are happening en mass right now. Rummaging through the energy meridians of my upper arms and shoulders. That's how they usually roll with me. Undulating through the vines of my upper limbs and extremities. And I know I'm not cold right now. I'm in a hoodie and under my bed covers.

What about the serendipity? You even used the word prophetic in an email the other day. When you were commenting on a line I wrote in my book. What does it mean when you use these words?

And going back to the beginning, I agree - it's all a crutch. The stuff they do, I do, many of us do en mass - just a crutch. I even wrote this poem last week:

Interfaith

Crutches
The kind the doctor gives
For broken legs
And ankles
Sprains and twists
And things in question

A parabola bell curve
Seems more sustainable
Than the linear slope of
Preaching mammoths

Who gave permission
For this nonsense
This inquisitive gesture
Of time space apathy

What entropy limited
Theory into question
And reason

There are only metaphors
To further medicate
Metaphors

Only similes to conjure
Broken pyramid crusts
And burnt temples fallen
Languid in trust games

Perhaps a dimension or two
Of acceptance and realism
May shift the plates back
Into alignment

Dust particles – floating
Around nothing for
Nothing anyhow

Suddenly

Resting

In place

I get it. I really do. But then what of your soul? You are a poet. Where does it come from? Do you have a muse? Do you feel a muse? From where do you think your language matriculates?

I'm just wondering. I've been wondering for a long time with you. My friend who is a visual artist once said he is no "soulist." You'll read about it in my book...whenever you get to the chapters in the 20s. It's in there. That conversation I had with him. And I thought he was crazy. I said, but you're an artist. How can you not believe you have a soul? But he still proceeds to make some of the most beautiful work I know.

Do you like Richie Havens? I just put him on in the background. One of my favorite live performances - that I've never seen. I mean, of course there are two categories - those I saw in real time, and those I've seen on video or heard in post time. Either way, the point is, do you like Richie Havens? I'm listening now his performances at Woodstock. He plays an incredible guitar. Sings from his gut. His diaphragm busting out the seems of his brown leather sandals. His arms coveting the wood of his guitar like it's going out of style. His fingers strumming the strings like a hummingbird. Flapping. Fluttering there in the abyss. His eyes closed in a way I'd never let a poet perform - myself included. But he's speaking with this guitar. It seems excusable.

"Sometimes, I feel like a motherless child. A long way from my home...Singing, freedom...freedom...freedom...freedom...freedom..."

Is that what you feel? Freedom - by not being attached? Or do you feel like a long way from home? Or do you think we all feel like a long way from home, and thus we find these crutches to hold onto?

I just wondered. Was just curious is all. You don't have to respond. Maybe I was sorting through it on my own. Just putting out my thoughts to read and review anyhow.

But watching Richie Havens - all these years that I've been watching that performance over and over - I can't help but know that there is something intangible that I cannot see. Something energetically driving and moving and clearing paths into connection. And it doesn't have to be G-d. Or a metaphor. I mean, it feels scientific. Physics. Quantum physics. All that stuff. Chemistry even. And biology of course. But it still feels like magic.

And I'm still getting those chills right now. They weren't constant the entire time I wrote this post, but they have been on and off. They have been happening when I pause. To contemplate and figure out what to write. As if to say there's nothing to think about. Because it's magic. And it's coming from something I might not necessarily be able to explain anyhow.

Love and light,
Me

The Graduate

2009-05-17T01:32:00.002-05:00

I graduated from college three years ago this weekend. My favorite number is three. I cleaned out my entire bedroom this weekend. I found piles and piles of poems I'd forgotten I ever wrote. I found this one, "Graduating," that I wrote when I graduated from college three years ago. I have never shared it. Probably haven't really even read it since. In honor of those enjoying some sort of transition - from school or otherwise - anywhere in the world this weekend, here is my poem:

Graduating

Typed out in the graduation booklet:
Names of the graduates: the awards they’ve won, the honors they hold,
the honorary degrees, and really nice things about the commencement speaker.

No how to, what to, now what, and how you’re going to feel when you drive away from school and find yourself back in the house and bedroom you grew up in.

No instruction manual on dealing with the confusion of the transition into which
everyone even warned you might fall and slip.

No indication or contract waiting to explain the utter shock and educational rumination that lay in the threshold of some elitist four year plan that never made sense in the first place.

You’re back in the bedroom you grew up in, after you grew up.

The juxtaposition of transition ties knots
in the corners of your lower back,
in the concaves of your eye sockets,
in the moments of your hair curls.

Time is enormous;

this time,
there is no cap.

The structure’s extinct and you’re left with an ocean of possibility
like the abyss that you found hopelessness looming in
every other time you transitioned into a new destiny.

This time,
the boundless moments of opportunity
are both enlightening and discouraging:
a plethora of easy option buys selling intuition
on the doorposts of most intellectual reveries.

A curse of alternative heartache sends shockwaves through the pituitary glands
of maturation itself,
and speaking self-referentially
is just another metaphor
for counting time and holding;
holding onto helpless instances.

Just our names and honors.
If only destiny had been Times New Roman
printed next to our majors;
the education might have been complete.
I knew something was missing when I threw my cap in the air.

Little Plastic Castle

2009-04-25T13:47:00.006-05:00

I'm not really sure what feminism is anymore. Where it went. If it was ever really here - in all its egalitarian preaching.

It's the first truly hot and gorgeous day of the season here in New York City. I'm sitting on my bed watching the sun parcel sprinkles of excellence onto my heater; two distinctive shadows on the off white surface: a bottle of Voss water, a "Proud Penn Donor" sticker, and a Phish sticker. Ani DiFranco's "To the Teeth" in the background. There has always been something empowering and chilling about this woman's voice. The way it reeks of femininity. The bad ass kind. The kind that this supposed feminism was supposed to be about.

I was at the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art the other day. Perused much photography and the likes of Cindy Sherman - whose work I'd seen before; and other contemporary female photographers from the 70s and 80s with whom I am now mildly and freshly acquainted.

Something feels eerie and fishy. Their work almost ancient. As if the whole women's liberation movement took a nasty turn and we're staked out in some holding pattern of confusion and mass extinction. I feel as if we're scattered all over the place. Us women. Us womyn. Us females.

Feminism had in its roots an inherent oppression: it dripped of upper-middle and middle class white privilege. And thus, spawned a plethora of other branches of "feminisms" or female movements or gender movements. And now we're scattered. All over the place. In these beautiful manifestations of expression and culture and understanding.

But what now? We have a young generation of youth that won't call themselves feminists because it's seen as too radical or gross or unfeminine. We have an Internet generation of young women promoting anorexia and bulimia and sexual endeavors beyond their natural and authentic readiness. We have an older generation of women dispersed and angry with one another - because, of course, feminism was polarizing and oppressive to many from the get go.

And we keep witnessing opportunities to address this rubble. What mess and anger emerged as we split sides of Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama in the primaries. What mess and anger emerged as we split sides over the likes of Sarah Palin. Why did we not take this opportunity to sit down and communicate with one another? Why did we instead call each other anti-female or self-deprecating? Why did we instead call each other racist and jaded?

What would happen if we worked this out? Are we not the literal responsibility of birth in this world? Are we not therefore expected to practice what we preach on a metaphorical and behavioral level as well?

I met a woman recently who doesn't call herself a feminist. But by every definition of the word, as another self proclaimed feminist and I listened to her beliefs and opinions, seems very much to be a feminist.

Although, I suddenly question as to whether or not this word is just too tainted to resurrect. Abused and burned like we women ourselves have been. The language oppressed and oppressive all at the same time. Is this possible? And if this is the case, what now?

The world is unraveling around us. Every industry is swan diving into a new day of opportunity. What of women? What of the movements we have created to uphold our sense of humanity? What of the arguments we have with one another, should we want and work towards allowing these to cease?

Cindy Sherman must still matter. The artists lining the walls of the Met - they must still matter to whatever we're working to piece together today. But why? Why do they feel so ancient. So left in the excavated fields of the Middle East and Grecian Islands.

Of what sisters can we still speak?

Ladybugs

2009-04-10T15:46:00.001-05:00

Soccer Game

These playgrounds
Weren’t made for miracles.
Although the way coach
Kicked the ball mid-field,
Into mid-air,
Was something out of Fantasia.

By the nineties, everyone got a trophy.
I wondered if we’d lost something;
Either patience
Or a work ethic.

It didn’t feel like egalitarian progress.

The bounce of forehead
Into soccer goal –
Not everyone was made for defense,
Or offense for that matter.

In retrospect,
I was made for the
Half-time orange slices.

Prince Caspian

2009-03-20T12:08:00.002-05:00

On June 24, 2004, I was in Noblesville, Indiana, seeing Phish play at a venue known as Deer Creek - it is now officially the Verizon Wireless Music Center. It was night two of their Deer Creek shows. I had driven down from Chicago by myself. I was sort of dating some guy who was supposed to come along, but the night before I left, we were on the phone, and I mentioned that I'd cover the cost of camping and gas. Cool. He was down with that. But when he found out I wasn't covering the cost of his two tickets - I mean, like, really buddy? We've only been on a few dates - he said, "Forget it. I'm not coming." And hung up.

So I jumped in my car - Antelope - by myself. In my yellow juicy couture spaghetti strap summer dress. I felt pretty hardcore. A four hour drive by myself. No idea where I was going to stay or with whom I would see all the shows. But I went. I knew I'd run into friends and find folk. I called my buddy on the way down. Sure he said, I was welcome to crash on the floor of his Quality Inn room with he and 8 other dudes. Perfect.

And so I went. And joined up with them. And had an amazing time. And met friends of theirs. And their friends' friends. And loved every minute and inch of Deer Creek's first night. Like when Phish opened the second set with Haley's Comet into Crosseyed and Painless (by the Talking Heads) into Slave to the Traffic Light. I mean...that was insane.

But that second night. Somewhere in the middle of the second set. Right after Timber. Right after some heavy bass and nearly awkward chords that still feel good to hear, they mellow out into Prince Caspian - a beautiful ballad of sorts from their Billy Breathes album.

It was one of those super happy life moments. One of those perfectly memorable moments that I will never forget. I mean, Caspian is always a great sound. Always a beautiful tune - well played and well received. But this Caspian - this Caspian was special because of the circumstances. The summer night sky floating somewhere perched above our heads. And the friends. The amazing friends I was in the process of making that weekend and the amazing friends I have remained close with ever since.

That was it. This moment of like - this is life. This is what the whole thing is all about - being with people you love and enjoying yourself. Because with incredible souls and sharing something. I'm pretty sure I cried during that moment. Just overwhelmed with how amazing it was - ditched by a presumptuous asshole last minute and embraced by a group of unknowns. Right there. All in a day's work.

And why not? Why shouldn't we embrace each other and welcome each other and just hang out and share our lives and the things we love and just stand swaying in the grass under the Midwest sky with joy and peace and calm and tremendous gratitude and grace? Why not?

That summer, we assumed it was the end. Phish was breaking up in Coventry, Vermont, that August. And so part of the nostalgia and emotion during Caspian was that this was somewhat the end of the line. But of course, Phish recently reunited, and so did many of us friends in Hampton, Virginia, a few weeks ago.

And when they played Prince Caspian on Saturday, March 7, I thought about Indiana. I thought about that moment. I thought about the few folks that hadn't made it out to Hampton to kick it with the rest of us. And here I was in Virginia, in 2009, and all the other folks from the Indiana moment were scattered around the Hampton arena. I was seeing the show with a friend from college, and his buddies from growing up. To my left was one friend from the Indiana evening. I didn't say anything to him - what I was thinking...but it was nice to share the song with him again. And I almost text messaged another one - that I knew wasn't at the shows. But was thinking of, and missing, very much show during the ballad.

And I thought...well...do you let someone know when you think of them? When they are forever with you for a certain song? Or do you just let it go. So I let it go. But sure enough, the next night, Sunday, March 8, I get a text message - from the absent friend - recollecting Indiana. And Prince Caspian. And it was like. Of course. These thoughts and feelings are mutual and cyclical. You put it out in the universe - someone else will receive it - maybe you both do both at the same time.

And that's really the magic of it all. The whole point of Phish and why millions of us around the United States and world at large have gone nuts over this band of four dudes from the Northeast - it's the circle. The full circle movement in which we experience both music and friendships when we enter into the Phish realm.

My buddy flew back from Israel to go to the Hampton shows. Hadn't seen him since August 2004. We were attempting to meet up before the Friday night show - but to no avail. But of course, I leave my seat before the music starts to go the bathroom, and walk right into his arms. And it kept happening like that all weekend.

And it's a microcosm for life. And I walk into and run into people I know everywhere - not only around New York City where I live - but anywhere I am in the world, I tend to run into someone I know.

It's all happening.

And I see it in a whole new way this second time around with Phish. Well - third time around really.

It's just an ebb and flow. And we're all here to see each other and hang out.

That's really the point. And we should let people know when we're thinking of them. And maybe we'll run into them and get to tell them. Or maybe we should call them. Or send an email. But that connection belongs to each of us. And it's only fair to share it.

"...sharing in the groove..."

Birds of a Feather

2009-03-20T11:52:00.003-05:00

And in the abyss into which much has unraveled in these past months, where do you find your calm in the storm? Do you hold onto a lamp post - some inkling that even when the lights go out and some stars may linger on, there is electric, artificial luminescent glass shining 20 ft above the ground? Do you tie yourself to the cellar door - for it may too blow away as the twister spins across the prairie? Or do you just surrender - let your feathers fly weightless into the wind and have faith that you have centered yourself enough to remain present in the vortex of the thunder?

And when the oceans of what seemed like permanence flair up into swollen glands and the mountains of what seemed like dependence flood over deserts of stillness - then what? Do you run away - to the other ocean, on the other side of the whole mess? Or do you just transcend above it all and watch - witnessing in apathetic peace?

Or is there some other option? Some other call from grace whereby yes, yes this is a bit more comfortable and natural. Yes, this is the way that makes the most sense. This way. This other way. This new path that they told me about once. They being the friend who read the "Tibetan Book of the Dead" and called me while I sitting in Veselka rereading "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" by Martin Luther King, Jr.

I am learning that there is no sense in attempting to be productive with "work" when you have not given yourself a) enough sleep and b) some hang time. And hang time. Hang time can be anything. These days, I just want to catch up and watch some Gossip Girl. Or perhaps the second half of the third season of Beverly Hills 90210. Or maybe every single episode of Saved By the Bell - for the 100th time. But I do this thing. This overwhelm myself and not have enough time to decompress and reflect thing. Where I am literally in bed shaking at 2 AM because that's the first chance I've had all day to be still...and my body is still vibrating as if it's rushing back and forth from the East Village to the Upper West Side to Brooklyn and back again.

And when do we get to meet our heroes? In our daytime sober hallucinations...when do we get to witness Ginsberg and tell him that we get it - a little bit - the madness and the generation stuff that he kept talking about for pages and pages in now what has become the Norton Anthology of American Poetry. And when, when do we get permission to know that we are doing our own things - being our own heroes? Or is that the joke these days. That it's not about Ginsberg anymore anyway. And yes, yes that is a mirror and just look into it and practice what you preach and you're going to keep using that cliche phrase in your writing until you live it and stop dancing in circles around it like you're still in beginner ballet class.

And when do I get to go on toe shoes again? Or will that not even be happening? Is that over? Is that a distant past? Because everything seems to be coming full circle these days.

Everything and all things.

How To Deal

2009-02-16T14:21:00.010-05:00

I am a reporter. I am a story teller. I report on the life experiences I have witnessed and felt by telling stories about myself or others. And sometimes, sometimes I feel like I linger deeper into life experiences so that I have more to report. So that I don't miss a beat. So that the editor that is the universe cannot question why I didn't take that lead. Or contact that idea or feeling. Or investigate that aspect and perspective of the situation at hand.

And so I linger here. I have been lingering here for 25 years. Nearly 9 months. 25 years and nearly 9 months I have lingered here. Here in this abyss of self-deprecating terror. Where the fear of one's own power and ability and capacity to live and exist in joy and consistent awareness is so paralyzing, so awesome, so magnanimous, that it appears to be easier and more beneficial to fold.

I'm sitting in my favorite restaurant in Manhattan. Across the street from my apartment. I come here when I am ready to start a new chapter. Usually, it is willful. I am eager and ready to start a new chapter and I walk across the street with a smile on my face.

Today, I feel like I dragged myself over here. I dragged myself over here like my own best friend in hopes that once I recognize my surroundings and see that I'm here - at the starting point - I'll have no choice but to take the initiative and get over my bullshit. Leave the self-deprecating bullshit at the table and walk away when I finish my goat cheese sandwich.

And I even ordered something new. I never order the goat cheese sandwich. I always want to, but I never do. So I figured I would today. Forced really. A coercive tactic of tough love from my self to my self.

Perhaps I am having an existential crisis. Wikipedia describes an existential crisis as "the psychologic panic and discomfort experienced when a human confronts questions of existence. This phenomenon, presumably, is common to technologically-advanced cultures, wherein physical survival is not life's priority."

However, I do feel like I'm dealing with physical survival here. I cannot physically survive any longer in my former state. In the state whereby I self-doubt, self-criticize, self-implode. That is no longer a viable option. It is not producing life. It is not progressing me forwards. It is hindering my ability to survive.

It is freaking me out. It is leaving me - a human capable of functioning and producing at a high level - completely unable to move forward.

I am stuck.

Like in some quagmire of quick sand.

I am stuck.

And I know that I chose to fall into this hole.

My friend recently read me an excerpt from the Tibetan Book of the Dead. He called me a few weeks ago. I was sitting at my other favorite diner around the corner. I was sitting there attempting round one to crawl out of my hole. Clearly I did not climb or crawl out.

Briefly, the excerpt was as such. You are walking down a path. You fall into a hole. You blame everyone else. You take no ownership for falling into the hole. You swear you had no idea that you saw it there. And it takes you a while to get out.

You walk down the same path again. This time, you're aware that the hole is there. But you pretend you don't see it. And you fall in. And you blame everyone else. You refuse to take any ownership in the matter. And it takes you a while to get out.

Once again, you walk down the same path. You see the hole ahead of you. You are fully aware of it. You fall in anyway. You know that you are fully responsible for having fallen in. You take full ownership. It is much easier to get out then the previous climbs.

You walk down the same path. You see the hole. You walk around it. And this time, you take a different path. A new path entirely, altogether. You walk away.

When my friend called me a few weeks ago, he said I was at step three. Somewhere falling into a hole I knew I chose to fall into. Whether I had climbed out or not at that point, who knows. Probably not. I feel like I crawled out of something.

I am on step four. I am at the hole. I see it. It is staring me straight in the face. It is bright and loud and clear. I am aware of it. It is the hole that I have chosen to fall into over and over and over again.

And it's a big decision to walk around it. It's foreign and new and vulnerable to walk around it. It would be a huge risk to walk around it. It would be scary and lonely to walk around it. Or so it seems.

It's just a walk. Around a hole. Into a new direction. Towards a path I have never walked before. But I can do it. I've walked many a new paths before. I've parted ways with many holes into which I no longer fall. This. This I can do.

I am walking around. I already have. It is much lighter without all of the baggage I bring back with me every time I fall.

And is much more simple this way.

I can do this.

I can walk the new path. I am sure I will still have plenty to report and share along my journey.

I'm In a Hurry (And Don't Know Why)

2009-02-14T21:34:00.001-05:00

It's one of those feelings. Those feelings, where you know something happened to you and you'll never be the same. Usually, I know exactly what the "something" is or was. But this time, for some crazy reason, I can't put my finger on it. But I know it had to be something. I am, without a doubt, forever changed.

And it's a good changed. I feel some sort of opening. Some gate that has opened. Some doors that have swung. Some hinges that have unhinged. Some wall that has come crashing down. And I can sit here, pining over what said walls were. What hinges have dissipated into antiquity. What doors are now arcane. What gate is now archaic as my first memory.

I have pondered. For hours. Sat on my couch watching movies and television in ways I haven't played couch potato in years. I have searched the layers of my being. And still, empty and vulnerable here on a Saturday evening, I cannot figure out what happened.

And I know I'm not covering up some memory I'd prefer not to remember. I know it's something good. Something really good.

So I guess. For now. It just is.

Raising Arizona

2009-02-04T09:45:00.002-05:00

There is potential in every moment. Potential, opportunity, possibility, awareness, understanding, acceptance, joy, peace, everything. Everything in every moment. And no matter how we experience, feel, perceive, or deem each moment, everything is inherent present. Everything is already included. We just chose - at times - to see portions of the spectrum. While at other times, we chose to see the spectrum in full by having an awareness that there really is no spectrum in the first place - it's just all there.

Perhaps we have been trained to ignore the potential in every moment. Perhaps we have been trained to only focus on the darkness, the subtle concave inlets that we forget have a convex counterpart. There is potential in every moment.

I sit now at a coffee shop in Greenwich Village. "Golden Girls" is on the big screen TV on the wall behind me. Despite its brilliance and pure entertainment, I had to go into my own world, so I put on my headphones. I am listening to a Phish show - one of my favorites - May 8, 1993, Durham, New Hampshire.

There is potential all around me. Phish is back on tour; my tickets arrived via UPS yesterday. I wrote a book. I have solo poetry performances coming up. There are more to be confirmed and booked. I am on a slam team for an awesome poetry slam competition in April. I am working on a second poetry chapbook to be released in late April. I have cathartically purged through much emotional pain and anguish that was blocking me for many, many years. I live in the East Village, like I've always dreamed. I applied to a graduate school program. I have had wonderful success in promoting eating disorder recovery on YouTube both through personal videos, and collaborative efforts. I am privately tutoring and supporting myself and my art and working with incredible and inspiring and fascinating kids.

And I could continue the list. Keep it going. Ignore the subtle concave moments of frustration or terror that linger in the frequencies of my life. That surround me. That unravel by my side. I could ignore them. And it's not that I ignore them, I just chose to not let them unravel me as well.

I want to embrace the potential. For weeks I have been having a ridiculous existential crisis whereby I am terrified of following my dreams. Of embracing success. Perhaps it isn't even weeks. Perhaps it's months, or years, or even lifetimes.

I think of all the coffee shops I sat in across America where I embraced potential. Where I wasn't paralyzed in fear by the opportunity to follow my dreams. All the places I drove and sat and stood and meditated where I felt empowered and inspired and motivated and endless and limitless. What is it about New York City that can be so paralyzing?

The irony is that everyone comes here to follow their dreams. Or used to at least. All the singers and actors and actresses that moved her with one suitcase and a pile of dreams and became Carol Burnett or Ethel Merman. And I don't feel like I moved to New York specifically to follow my dreams. Or maybe I did subconsciously, but masked it in a 9 to 5 for 10 months.

And it feels like it has less to do with New York, and more to do with society and life and this moment in time. It feels like it has something to do with attachments. Out there on the open road, free from any attachments - any time commitments or restraints - I was free. Completely free and innocent and independent. And in that chosen solitude of Oklahoma hills and farmland and Mississippi River water I was able to unabashedly follow my dreams.

I realized the other week that little kids are ridiculously flexible, not because they're still so little, but because they don't have any built up tension keeping them from sticking their leg over their head.

Out there on the open road, I didn't have anything blocking me. I eliminated all the blocks - both on the road and roadside - by cutting myself off from everything I knew and moving to an unknown city with a new and unknown job and then driving solo 11,600 miles around the United States on unknown roads in unknown towns meeting unknown people. And that's why it wasn't scary to follow my dreams out there. Because there was nothing blocking me.

Here, here in New York City, despite the fact that in many ways I already am living my dreams, there are walls abound. Most put up by myself, because I feel like that's what I'm supposed to do. Otherwise people will think I'm crazy. Anyone who's optimistic during a recession and financial and economic and societal crisis is crazy, right? Anyone who's jumping around and singing on the subway with a Marc Jacobs bag over their left shoulder and Steven Madden boots on their feet is crazy, right?

Well, cool. I can be down with crazy. I can be down with being absolutely nuts because I am optimistic and idealistic. Because that's what a lot of people told me I was for moving to Atlanta after graduating from Penn and working in a sports bar and then driving around the US by myself for three months. But I didn't think it was crazy. It was the best thing I ever did.

So again, it's not like I'm not living my dreams already here. I am. But there are openings all around me - all around me - to follow them even more. And I'm crazy not to take them. Not to step through the doorways, even if what happens on the other side is nuts.

The Open Door

2009-01-29T14:45:00.002-05:00

There are incidents of greatness shielded in possibilities of which only outer space has dreamed. Meaning, there are never possibilities, only convictions. Ones subsequently theorized and amalgamated during awake time.

And there isn't much room for doubt when there is faith and confidence. It all happens anyway. When sticking to childhood dreams. And it all resembles something of another dimension or time.

Something reminiscent of before when we didn't do much other than feel. Now there is thinking involved. And analysis. And marination. But perhaps in before there was only conviction.

Only intuition, which manifested into certainty.

Link

2009-01-08T23:25:00.002-05:00

I learned about linking objects my freshman year of college. The leader of my grief and loss group asked us all to bring in our linking objects - the physical object that we use to link us to our loved one that has died. Sometimes linking objects are deliberately turned into linking objects, other times it just happens accidentally.

I brought in my little brother's UCLA sweatshirt. I found it in his closet after his funeral when his friends and I were searching through his stuff. I asked my mother if I could put it on and didn't take it off for the entire week of Shiva.

I slept with that sweatshirt for the rest of college. Every night, shoved back behind my pillow, it lay there - linking me to my dead brother.

For the last two nights, I have been wrapped in another linking object. An object that links me to my friend Kat. She died six months before my brother. Her father gave it to me after her funeral. He wanted me to have it. Her Bob Marley blanket. She used to lay on her bed during study hour at boarding school wrapped in the blanket. Just laying on her bed, while the rest of us did our homework, staring up at her Pink Floyd poster and telling us hilarious stories about her life back home in Kentucky.

I've used the blanket from time to time over the years. Had it on top of my bed for a while in college. Brought it to Central Park on a magical date this past summer. And haven't wanted to let it go the past two days.

I don't know that it's about missing Kat so much as it is about wanting comfort. Wanting to be enveloped in something familiar and unconditional. When someone is dead, their love for you is unconditional. You never have to worry about burdening them with your thoughts or your feelings or your experiences, because they are unconditionally in another place, where they will always be as supportive and loving towards you as they were the day they died.

I've had an emotional few days. I've had wonderful friends to support me through the tears. I guess the blanket stands in place for the physical when I'm alone. It's like, if the blanket is with me, Kat is with me. I'm not alone if I feel linked to her.

And the self-righteous wanna-be enlightened part of myself feels like this is a cop out. Like this is cheap. Like I'm supposed to be better than wanting to hold a linking object close to my body while I feel lonely. Like I'm supposed to be able to just hug myself and call it a night. But isn't knowing how to take care of myself - knowing when to ask a friend to listen, knowing when to say no to having plans, knowing when to pull Kat's blanket off my shelf and throw it over my shoulders - isn't that me hugging myself. Me empowering myself to support myself. Isn't that what being complete within yourself is? Knowing what you want and how to provide those wants for yourself?

If Kat were here, she'd hug me. And she'd tell me funny stories. And she'd take a nap on my bed while I hammered out my to do list in style and with alacrity. And she'd walk with me to buy cookies or cupcakes. And hang out at a pool hall while I went to yoga. She was like that. One of those unconditional buddies.

I don't do that often. Let myself have one of those unconditional 24/7 companions. I mean sure, I have incredible friends that are eternally supportive and giving. And yes, I've had months where different people have been my butt-buddy and we're constantly together and talk every day for short periods of time. And then we need a break.

But for the most part, I hold a stubborn independent drawl in my demeanor. As much as I often want to have someone take tremendous care of me and just give, I often make it difficult for myself to receive, and thus severe the opportunities altogether.

For some reason, with Kat, I received the unconditional support. The giving. The going by my schedule and wants, as I went by hers in return. Maybe it's because she was so easy going and laid back. I never thought I was burdening her or keeping her from her needs or wants - as they were very simple and she was quick to articulate them. And I know I gave to her in return. Meeting her at work and helping her clean up. Walking her to class. Accompanying her on her own errands. Being there for her when she was upset or homesick.

So I find the blanket comforting. It reminds me of our postgraduate semester in Oxford, England, when all of these aspects of our friendship were in affect. One of the best periods of my life - those three months in Oxford. I was very goal oriented. I was free of the pressures that tended to stifle me in my process back home - or even at boarding school. And Kat was a great cheerleader. One of the best I've had. And I know I was a great cheerleader for her. And that's when a close friendship works. Without the romantic element, perhaps it was almost like a companionship. Of course, she had a boyfriend while we were there, and I was making out with every other boy I met amidst the glorious Oxford nightlife...but that's besides the point. I guess the way we supported each other was the way teammates do, or partners, or something that's unconditional.

Maybe that's what I want right now. That unconditional partnership. That cheerleader that is always on the sideline - whether you're making a touchdown or not. That buddy who meets you at the gym and walks you to your class, just because they want to hang out with you for those five blocks. That's hard to find in New York City. Everyone lives all over the place. Everyone's so busy. So I found it on the bottom of my stack of hooded sweatshirts. Folded into five. The Bob Marley blanket. My linking object. And it's comforting. And feels like home.

Recess

2008-12-17T11:21:00.000-05:00

My favorite vest in fifth grade was an off white woven sweater type thing that smelled like fish; but I wore it anyway – all the time – over a black turtle neck body suit with a pair of yellow and red plaid stir-up leggings. I think my friends thought it was really ugly. I have vague memories of their jesting – in a playful, but genuine sort of way. The same way they giggled when I confessed to wearing a bra at the lunch table earlier that school year.

There is something about fifth grade that is very vulnerable. It’s like a big naked fork in the road right before middle school. The age at which everyone has the potential to grow up either with cuts, or unscathed. And even the unscathed sojourners uncover wounds in need of being tended to in their latter years.

I know a fifth grader that recently began crying over recess drama: the principal may bane the playing of “Sharks and Minnows” – tag, like the swimming pool version, just on land. Apparently it has been deemed “violent.” And my fifth grade buddy was in tears over it. He and his friend went to the principal and begged to differ, pleading that without Sharks and Minnows, they are left with nothing else to play. They will be in a creative drought. They need their Sharks and Minnows – it belongs to them. I told my buddy that they could come up with a new game, but he pouted that they keep doing that and the school keeps banning the new games anyway.

I wanted to tell my buddy – tear drops traversing down his cheeks – these sorts of happenings will continue in time; but his protests will one day be heard, as he continues to persevere beyond the injustices by speaking his heart and mind. I wanted to tell him that while he is feeling vulnerable in exposing his passion for recess, it is too early to give up. It is too early to stop expressing himself through a space of triumph. That at this fork in the road between the direction maintaining his innocence no matter how many times it is challenged, and the direction towards infusing said innocence with anger towards the establishments that may hinder his youthful creativity, may he remain on the former path.

I chose the latter. I freaked out. The bras. The ugly vests. The banning of recess games. I let the anger and frustration get to me. And spent fifteen years running through the forest trees to find the innocent 10 year old of my childhood still walking – patiently – on the other path. I feel I have found her again. Regained that faith in vulnerability. Knowing that it is only a feeling – not the end of the world. A feeling that for which it is not worth relinquishing up my hope and passion for recess just because someone said I couldn’t play Sharks and Minnows.

I keep hearing the lyrics to a holiday song not only over and over on every single Manhattan Starbucks speaker, but also looping in my head, “What should I care, why should I ____, I’ve got my love to keep me warm!” Perhaps that is what keeps us warm – through the vulnerability, the winter snow fall, the temperature drop. The self-love that is strong enough to embrace rejection as an opportunity for growth than capitulation. I mean, sure, there is still a surrender of sorts. There is still a letting go. But it is letting go of the fear of vulnerability and surrendering to the experience of vulnerability, rather than surrendering the effort altogether.

Yesterday morning I was rejected by one of the literary agents to whom I’d submitted my book manuscript. And for some reason, I feel really good about it. Rather than defeated, I feel motivated towards success, because I already passed the scary part: I made myself vulnerable. It feels similar to this one time my senior year of college.

I had a huge crush on a guy in one of my classes. We’d become pretty good friends throughout the course – chatting endlessly on every class field trip (yes, we had class field trips in college), talking on the phone, hanging out for dinner and such. So, one night we go to a movie. We’re watching the previews and he starts telling me about a girl he’d hung out with – in a romantic light. And then he asked for my advice on how he should proceed. And – a little uncomfortable and suddenly brave – I go, “Well, it’s a little difficult for me to respond to that because, well, I like you.” And he was like, “Yeah, I had a feeling.” And I asked him if I had a chance. And he said no. And then the movie started.

After the movie we were walking to the bus stop. I asked him – not to beat a dead horse, but out of curiosity – was his rejection a response to me, or a result of where he was at in his life right now? He said a little bit of both. Just then two of my friends pulled over in their car; they’d been at the same movie as us. They told us to hop inside and offered us rides home. First we dropped off my crush, who lived way off campus, and then headed back towards our own houses – closer to school.

The moment my crush jumped out of my friend’s mini-van and closed the door, I nearly screamed with awkward joy. “Oh my G-d, you guys,” I said, “I just told that kid I liked him at the movie and then he rejected me and I feel strangely OK about it!” “That’s awesome!” my friends said. When I got home, I called one of my best friends – he wanted details from my hang out, which I’d secretly hoped was a date. “I’m so empowered,” I said, “I told a guy I liked him, and I got rejected.”

That’s how I felt yesterday: empowered. Empowered because I’d put myself out there – and that, that is the hardest part. And that’s what we’re so afraid of in fifth grade. The rejection. And many of us spend years – if not decades – running way from ever having to face the principal again. We all just want to play Sharks and Minnows. No matter what, recess isn’t going anywhere, we just might not always get to play the exact game that we sought to play in the first place. It’s the universe saying, “No, I have something better for you.”

"Your lips move, but I can't hear what you're saying."

2008-12-13T20:37:00.000-05:00

It's interesting. How a single day can be one of the worst days in the entire world for one person, and one of the happiest days of another's entire life. And that this, this is how life works.

It's interesting that I can find comfort and solace in a song that was given to me by a person that I don't care to ever speak to again. That simultaneously, this song reminds me of neglect and freedom.

"I have become comfortably numb."

Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb." Covered by Dar Williams and Ani DiFranco. One of my favorite recordings and covers of all time. I sang it at an open mic with a buddy of mine on guitar my senior year of college. I remember that too - as bliss. As I sit here in my white desk chair from Surprise! Surprise! in an old flowered Bebe skirt I've had since high school, a Banana Republic shirt I rarely ever wear, and high heeled black boots I bought on my lunch break last winter with my co-worker in Midtown, my laptop rests on my thighs. I am facing my bedroom window. Three candles on my heater, burning. Two red strings, blessed by the Dali Lama and handed off to a Lama from whom I occasionally seek healing work, lay along side my candles.

And then two of my college roommates walk in. And I fall into their arms. Warmth.

Comfortably numb. And "coming through in waves," I feel their love. Somehow always, it's as it's meant to be.

Beverly Hills Cop III

2008-12-11T14:43:00.000-05:00

There comes a time when you have to bite the bullet. Make an executive decision: you, yourself, and whatever guides you ask to show up for committee meetings - not the ones you hold with your best friends, but the ones you hold inside your head. When you sit there, legs crossed, palms resting on your knees, pointer finger touching thumb, eyes closed, meditating on your yoga mat in the middle of your kitchen - because where else do you have room to do yoga in your Manhattan apartment - you begin to vibrate. You realize that something has shifted. Something is constantly shifting. Because after four years of meditating, you've never just plopped down into a sitting position and started to fill your insides tickle and oscillate immediately - without any mantra or breath.

And that's when you know it's time. The time to bite the bullet. When the universe says it's going on regardless - whether you like it or not. And you can either chose to jump on board for the ride, or keep messing around in the parking lot. I mean, honestly, what the hell is there to do in the parking lot? Keep repeating in your head that you're in section J4 right next to the white mini van with a cooler and tons of kids' toys packed in the back seat? Because there's way more going on inside the amusement park - even if you're afraid of heights or roller coasters or whatever.

And for those of us without a fear of heights - no fear of the 7 loops on Shockwave at Great America, or having our legs dangle on Batman, or flipping back and forth in that crappy zipper ride that they set up in the parking lot of the haunted house every Halloween in bumble Illinois. For those of us that travel to amusement parks nearly fearless, why the hell are we waiting in the parking lot?

I mean honestly. That's when we have to tell ourselves to bite the bullet.

So when I sat there this morning, on my yoga mat, meditating, working so hard to figure out why even without my mantra I was already feeling like bliss, it was like, dude, it's time. It's time to bite the bullet.

No more loitering in the parking lot. Or even near the concession stand. Just jump in line for the ride. Jump in line for the ride that no one else wants to go on. Jump in line and ride it over and over and over until you feel your legs tingle with splendor because they felt weightless for a minute and thirty four seconds.

And do it. Jump on the rides. Do all the things you want to do. Flip upside down. Ride with your arms in the air - the entire time - and then, run down the ramp when you exit the roller coaster. And meet your friends at the bottom. Especially the ones that didn't want to go on the ride with the rest of you. Tell them they have to try it. Not try it. But like, do it. Get on the ride. And you'll do it with them. Because there's nothing from which to be afraid.

As for the man in the library. The dude in the uniform that came over to tell you to put your water bottle away. The one that told you you're not allowed to have liquids in the library. Forget about him. Not because you don't like to or want to follow rules. But because you have to stay hydrated. And if he comes over again, smile, nod, and nicely say, "I was just thirsty. I'm expending a whole lot of energy. And I wanted to stay hydrated."

For Proposition 8

2008-11-14T14:43:00.000-05:00

I Could Never Have a Homophobic Lover: A Haiku
By Caroline Rothstein

Why would you want a
lover that discriminates
against sex and love?

When Food is Love

2008-11-13T14:08:00.001-05:00

Hello everyone!!!

As many of you know, for the past year, I have hosted a video blog on YouTube about eating disorder recovery. Inspired by a girl I met last fall, I began posting videos sharing my own eating disorder and recovery story, in order to help others in the recovery process. The YouTube videos have become a huge part of my activism in recovery work, and I was recently invited to join 11 other YouTube ED recovery bloggers in YouTube's FIRST EVER eating disorder recovery collaboration channel. Unfortunately, the channel was shut down. Should a new collaboration channel be organized, I will keep everyone posted and share the information here.

Please take a look at the videos on my own channel, and keep them in mind as a resource for others. Please pass the link around to anyone and everyone you know that may find it helpful in their own journey - whatever that journey may be. Especially those of you who are educators, health care practitioners, and social workers, please keep these videos in mind as a positive resource for recovery and support.

Below is the link to my YouTube Channel:

http://www.youtube.com/user/Cavernchick

Thanks to you all for your support and help in spreading the word!!!

Naked Gun

2008-11-10T12:21:00.000-05:00

My job as a writer is to report on the human experience. It is an opportunity to react and investigate the choices made by both myself and that which the eyes cannot see. While it is by no means the most difficult experience I have confronted, I am finding vulnerability to be one of the most difficult upon which to reflect and articulate. There is a lukewarm pain in standing naked towards possibility. Yet, there is a tepid grace and warmth in offering honesty that can be so subtle and clandestine, that the usual psychoanalytical tools cannot apply.

Artistic nudity feels different than physical nudity. At 17 and 18 I ran away from my fears of physical nudity by hooking up and making out carelessly with strangers in European nightclubs while studying abroad in Switzerland and England. Were the equivalent to be the case now - I'd be selling my words for fake to violate my insecurity. And while yes, I did dabble in 24 hour long Craigslist writing and typing gigs a few weeks ago, my efforts have ceased, and I have minimized my exposure wanderlust.

I have considered a plethora of approaches to curb this feeling - this uncomfortable feeling of sitting with vulnerability. Accepting the choices I've made. I am learning that patience can be brutal when not initiated from the heart. When the mind engages choice with judgement, we are susceptible to falling apart.

So I listen to Neil Young. And I hope. That this too shall pass. Like all else. That in letting the heart and soul open to brave acts of vulnerability, we allow our selves to expand in full.

Cliche

2008-11-06T17:08:00.000-05:00

You're supposed to get on a train after - right? Isn't that the cliche? How it works? You meet with a freelance writer for big time magazines, he wants to help you with your own pitch, and you hop on a train to Philadelphia for an annual event in your honor, even though you're only 25. And of course, it's raining. And the forecast said snow - in October. Of course you were starving and had to buy an Auntie Anne's greasy pretzel to satiate the hunger. You're wearing yellow galoshes. You have financial aid info for J-School in your bag. You're already 25. It's supposed to be this cliche and dramatic - well the weather's dramatic - and the train was late - in order for it to be that sort of day. That sort of life changing, opening scene in a movie day.

And you're writing it all down - of course. Recording it on a yellow legal pad, which you got hooked on by your father at your college graduation luncheon. Another movie beat: your housemates and their families all piled in one half of an Italian restaurant in West Philly. Your father pulls you outside onto the porch - a gorgeous spring day, of course! - and hands you a yellow legal pad: To Caroline, Love Dad. And he tells you it's for writing out your dreams. Charting your plans. Contextualizing your passions. "This is how you want to organize your plans to be a writer and an activist," he says. And you're hooked. Line. And sinker.

You're hooked. This is where you map your ideas. You buy 12 for 6 packages at Staples. You chuckle inwardly when an employer uses them too - but he uses the college lined. You like the space thicker - you write big when you're excited. This is where you store your passion.

And you've caught it again. Here on the train back to Philadelphia in the pouring rain two and a half years later. You're hooked. You have a plan. It was the stacks of legal pads that brought you to this place. It'll be the next stack that carries you through - onwards.

You stick the ticket stub in the back between the last page and brown cardboard. You always do this - hide tickets in books and journals and pages in case you find it later. You'll remember where you were in transit when you reflect upon your personal transitions.

And when you arrive at 30th Street station in Philadelphia, you'll call a family friend's assistant at Ticket Master. She got you 2 tickets for each night of Phish in March. At the Hampton Coliseum in Virginia. Totally, totally cliche. Perfect.

School Ties

2008-10-28T08:30:00.000-05:00

I find it interesting that the most instances of Antisemitism that I have witnessed in the past few months have been on YouTube. A few months ago, a viewer commented on one of my video blogs by saying that I was "A rhinoceros with an ugly Jew face." This morning I was watching a video about energy and Kabalistic predictions by a Jewish scholar, and a viewer had written "kike" over and over in his comment - an entire checkerboard of racial slurs.

And then there are the racial slurs that cloud the Obama videos. And the sexist comments that pour out along the Palin videos. And suddenly there is a smorgousborg of discrimination lining the inseams of one of the biggest virtual communities in the world. Being that the Internet is a forum of free speech, it is not fair to deny people the privilege of voicing their opinion. And they are free to chose dislike over compassion. It is not to say that one is wrong or one is right.

But it is fair to say that it is a choice. It is a choice how one views and accepts one's neighbor.

That said - the slurs, the epithets, the discrimination - the manifestation of fear - these things indicate so much about the social landscape and opinions of our country right now. If there is anything that this presidential election can tell us - regardless of its outcome, it is that we have work to do. We have work to do in opening our hearts to one another in full.

No matter what the outcome a week from today, we have work to do. It doesn't end next week. No matter what.

A Walk To Remember

2008-10-21T13:08:00.000-05:00

I Googled "faith." The results: a series of websites and links about religion. Wikipedia and Webster definitions. Obama and Biden. A website devoted to some tiny little dog named Faith - I mean, really, how does that make the top ten? Faith Hill. Faith Popcorn. Religion. Spirituality. Christianity. Ancient Faith. Baha'i Faith. Faith. Faith. Faith.

Pages and pages of faith.

I canceled my gym membership. Although, I still get charged for next month - which is totally bogus. I was up until 5:30 AM Sunday night - giving my book manuscript liposuction; there is more nipping and tucking to come. The only food I had in my apartment this morning: carrots, hummus, and crackers. I had a few of my roommate's gummy bears for dessert. I really don't like gummy bears that much. I ate so much gummy candy at boarding school, that I fulfilled my gelatin needs for the rest of my life.

I am at a crossroads. This intersection. Not a fork in the road. Or a street to cross. A full on intersetion - with at least four different directions. Like a compass. Like the biggest recitation of Never Eat Soggy Waffles of my life. This huge crossroads. With a stop sign in each direction. A car at each stop sign. The type of situation where you think back to driver's ed to make sure you're following the rules of the road. And the whole things at a standstill.

I feel like the whole thing is at a standstill. All these cars. Waiting for me to make my move so they can follow suit - clockwise around the intersection. But I can't move. I'm stuck. Stuck in the mud. Stuck in break mode. Stuck in transit.

I think about Abraham and Isaac. It's been debated for centuries - millenia. Is the story of Abraham bringing his son Isaac to the top of Mount Moriah, according to G-d's request, about faith and loyalty to G-d, about punishment, or about something else?

I myself have always interpreted it to be about faith. I mean, sure when I was a little kid in Hebrew and Sunday school, the story just pissed me off. Like, wtf. G-d telling this guy to sacrifice his son and dude listens? What kind of a father is that?

But now - here at this crossroads, here at this intersection in my own life - I'm going for the faith interpretation.

I feel like I'm about to jump off a cliff. Not climb Mount Moriah. Not slaughter my own son. But jump off a climp - take a major leap of faith if you will. And I have to have faith that I've done enough for the universe - or G-d, or myself, or my life - that taking this leap of faith, sacrificing what seems like so many other things, will result in my sacrificing a ram instead. Meaning. I have to have faith that I'm not going to kill my child.

Meaning. I just invested much of my life savings, much of my time, and much of my soul into writing a book. In many ways, it is like a child - it's something I gave birth to. I created it. Me and my muse - we had a baby: a book manuscript. And I've started sending it out to agents. I've taken it up to the top of Mount Moriah, and it feels like I'm about to slaughter it. It feels like it's terrifying. Like G-d told me I had to do it. I had to take it up there. But I have to have faith, and know in my gut, that it isn't going to get slaughtered. That my sending it out into the world - that my exposing myself as a writer, to following my life dreams - will not end in the bloodshed of my own blood. Will not end in the most morally unethical filicide. But rather, a ram will get the ax. Or nothing really. Nothing at all. I mean, being a vegetarian, I don't want a ram to die in this exercise. But the metaphor - as sacrificing rams in Biblical times was no big thing - is that no big thing will get sacrificed. Like. Maybe I'll sacrifice my fear or something.

Maybe that's what the ram symbolizes. Or in my analysis of the story - maybe that's what it represents. The ram is fear. Abraham kills his fear instead of killing his faith. His faith, his love, his loytalty - is his son Isaac, is his G-d, is his own intuition. And the ram - the ram is what doesn't survive. The ram is what actually gets killed - and what dies is doubt. Fear. Disloyalty. Disobeying your G-d, your intuition, your faith.

So I'm hoping that in taking this leap of faith - in emailing my manuscript out to some agents, in taking what I have given birth to and exposing it at the top of Mount Moriah, some angel will come to my side and say, no Caroline, you are not killing your child. You are not killing your childhood dream to be an author. You are instead, sacrifcing the ram - letting go of your fear, your doubt, your anxieties. I hear the angel say. I reiterate to myself.

It's hard. Not an easy intersection to get across. There appear to be so many directions in which I can go. And it's not to say that they are all wrong. I mean, if I turn right, and I should have gone left, ultimately, I'll be able to turn back around. The streets are just a grid anyhow. They all lead back to the right home.

But it's more about wanting to take the most direct path. Wanting to get there as soon as I can. Not have to lose my way. Because that can be frustrating.

So I stand here, stuck in mud. Weighing my options. Over and over. Marinating them. To the bone. So that the juice in which I've let them fester starts to leave a potent stench in the entire kitchen. In the entire apartment. In the entire building. And thus, it is time to cease perseverating. I must just go. Just cross the intersection. Just climb to the top of Mount Moriah, and have faith. Know that the angel will tap me on the shoulder. And say, kill the ram instead. Let go of the sword you have overhead your book manuscript. Let go of the notion you have created that you can sabotage your creation. Let go.

Kill the ram instead.

It is time.

Let go of your fear.

The Curtain With

2008-10-17T12:59:00.000-05:00

My mother accompanied me to three Phish shows during their "pharewell" tour in 2004. So inspired by what she saw, she wrote the following article. She always knew that the article would once again have relevance, and the time is now. Here it is, passed on from my mother.

Reflections on Phollowing Phish – A Mom’s Perspective
By Nancy H. Rothstein
Written August 30, 2004

For multitudes of Phish Phans, the end of an era came on August 16, 2004 when Phish played “The Curtain With” to 70,000 devoted fans with scores listening in from afar. Amidst the cry for more, the sound of silence, unwanted albeit appropriate, was what permeated the tear-soaked air.

A year has passed, Phish has not been heard from but their music endures as do my reflections. Their phans continue to communicate but have moved on with reluctant acceptance…and a lot more time on their hands!

I entered the fold at the tail end of the Phish odyssey. While feeling somewhat like a voyeur, in retrospect I feel fortunate to have been a part of the Phish journey at all. As a parent, I love to be immersed in my children’s worlds. Phish was music that I was used to hearing, I even had some favorites yet was far from an aficionado.

I received the ultimate invitation last June. “Hey Mom, do you want to come to Phish with me?” Somehow Caroline’s mind was open to even the possibility of my joining her Phish world. My daughter’s five year dream to do the Phish summer tour was to become a reality during the summer of 2004. The announcement on May 25, 2004 that they were beginning their “phinal” tour made her commitment to her forthcoming journey all the more significant.

Throughout the summer my daughter kept me up to date on our concert plans. I also received a custom made “mix” of Phish music to enhance my familiarization with the band. My husband and I were ready to guide, but our devoted Phish Phan was doing quite well having attended every Phish concert since the tour began. And so on August 9, 2004, Caroline and I flew to Norfolk, Virginia for the Hampton concert. That evening as we approached “the lot,” my daughter said to me, “Mom, I am beginning to rethink having brought you here.” As with generations before, my daughter couldn’t quite fathom that someone my age was once young! Actually, I found the Phish Phans to be quite tame relative to my recollections of a certain festival in New York back in the 60’s and of many a concert in the era of my youth.

While to many a parent, the pursuit of Phish or other bands with fervently devoted fans, may appear void of purpose and a misuse of resources, it takes a significant commitment of time, money and planning to join the bandwagon! Capitalism did not escape the purchasing process for coveted Phish tickets, albeit my daughter did sell an in-demand ticket at face value. Certainly, producers of blank CDs should continue to thank Phish fans for the scores of homemade CDs.

I was struck by the choice of the Phans to immerse themselves in a pursuit that was both meaningful and pleasurable for them in a multitude of dimensions. In their thirst for community, fine music, adventure and dedication to the band, Phish Phans flocked to hear their music, hang out and feed their souls. They certainly did not come for the edible food! Creative cooking enterprises (think portable grills) in mass parking lots did not do it for me, but a quick quesadilla, grilled cheese, Rice Crispy Treat or a myriad of snacks coupled with an array of bottled water, beers and sodas satisfied the appetites and thirst of many Phans while feeding the wallets of others looking to fund their journey with Phish.

Following a band is a busy and sometimes stressful undertaking, not to mention exhausting. Finding time to dine, as well as places to do so, isn’t easy amidst the driving, flying, and getting situated at hotels or campsites as the journey continues from venue to venue. My daughter and I were guests of the Holiday Inn for the concerts we attended at Hampton and Great Woods. I wasn’t up for camping!

As for crafts, the multitude of artistic wears and objects was noteworthy. Homemade T-shirts and what some would call hippy-garb, as well as a panoply of jewelry, were readily available. For those who “needed” them, beautiful glass paraphernalia were in abundance. Tour sponsored T-shirts caps and other memorabilia signifying Phish were sold within the arenas or concert parks.

As for evidence of our technological society, cell phones were prevalent amongst the Phans and were a virtual necessity. How else could you locate a friend in the midst of scores of Phans? And speaking of friends, many of the young adults I met were with other Phans that they had met over the years while Phollowing Phish. Others were introduced via Phish related sites on the Internet. In fact, one of the most valuable aspects of Caroline’s Phish journey last summer, both on-line and in person, were the exceptional friendships she made with Phellow Phans. I was fortunate to have met many of these fine young adults. Despite Phish’s “end,” Caroline continues to communicate with phellow Phish Phans.

While I did not see a single laptop, 92% of Phish Phans own a computer according to “Surrender to the Flow” magazine. That’s even more than the magazine’s estimated 87% who own a cell phone. Hence, when not at concerts, computers play a significant role in the interaction of Phish Phans and the fans of other bands as well. The official Phish website and numerous fan created sites perpetuated the flow of information and commentary. Speaking of commentary, I was amazed at the intensity of the analysis of Phish concerts. These Phans are a discerning group! Within minutes of being played, the “set list” was available to any Phan interested who was not at the live concert. On-line and off-line discussions of Phish’s song choices had and still have a flow of their own. “Surrender to the Flow” even compiled a “Best Evers” list of 28, including an explanation of “why 28,” songs as performed at historic concerts.

As for cameras, I was quite surprised at the absence of photographic efforts, especially considering that this tour was “it.” Photo enthusiast that I am, it took restraint for me to leave my camera behind. My daughter informed me that cameras were not allowed to pass through security, although I saw a few flashes go off here and there. “Be in the moment” was the explanation that fit the scene.

Having covered the associated details, let’s get to the core of Phish, the music. Intelligent is the word that comes to mind. Not a Rock N’ Roll fan (the noise grates on my ears), I quickly came to appreciate the exceptional quality of sound and music that Phish creates. Rarely do a group of musicians accomplish the synchrony of sound which Phish produced. What was most remarkable to me was the underlying current, or theme, which flows through each song. I was acutely aware of a thread which stretches through and subtly permeates each song. In fact, I became convinced that what enabled Trey, Jon, Page and Mike to jam so independently was that each of them can reconnect to the pervading thread. How many groups of musicians can accomplish independence and congruity with such finesse? To Phish, I say, you taught me a ton about music. In fact, being at three of your concerts taught me a lot about life. Phish epitomizes the power of harmony in diversity, a microcosm for our society as it could be.

The multitudes of youthful Phans did a heck of a job displaying unity in diversity as well, and we’re not talking race. An absence of people of color was quite apparent to me. However, there was diversity amongst the white youth culture as far as economic means, physical appearance, demographics, sexual orientation, and religion. As for gender, there seemed to be an even split amongst Phans. Yet clearly, I have never seen so many white men dance, Motown aside! Nary a lad was still regardless of substances consumed. Why? What got everyone, including me (I danced my head off) to move virtually non-stop throughout a Phish concert? Back to the beat, the essence of Phish’s music. It gets to the core.

I have a theory. We are constituted of 75% H2O. Water is one of the best conductors of sound. Every person has a different vibration pattern. Phish created sound which flows through the bodies of scores of Phans, surely touching their souls and enabling them to connect to the music. I know I did. I did not move my body, my body moved me! The impetus to dance came from deep within.

Hey parents, are you hearing what I am saying? This is why your kids went to such extremes to Phollow Phish! They CONNECTED to the music, to a band for whom they had the utmost respect.

What I learned and observed about Phish Phans was far more enlightening and extensive than I could have expected. My confidence in our youth was enlivened. Many, and I stress many, an adult (say, over 40) could learn many things from the younger adults who followed Phish. Contrary to popular opinion of those put off by dreadlocks, hippi-ish garb and an appearance of lethargy, Phishies (a mom’s term of endearment) were and continue to be a remarkable group. They exhibited, and quite naturally, an abundance of attributes.

• Patience- Entry and exit to a Phish concert would leave most adults in a state of panic and frustration. I witnessed no pushing, a flow of hoards of Phans leaving the venues with respect and the implicit recognition that “It’s gonna take a while!” When it came to parking, no evidence of road rage was apparent at any of the three concerts I attended. In fact, the patience exhibited while exiting the parking lots of thousands of cars was truly amazing.
• Peacefulness- Considering the fact that I was amidst approximately 50,000 Phish Phans over 3 evenings, the peacefulness I observed was remarkable, especially in light of the traffic and logistical aspects of attending the concerts.
• Generosity- Whether observing the exchange of tickets minus price gauging or the sharing of food, generosity was prevalent.
• Kindness- I think the reason that the security personnel and vendors were so nice To the Phans was because they were treated nicely By the Phans.
• Appreciation- This quality was in evidence constantly. Phish Phans went to great vocal and physical extremes to express their appreciation to the band for their work, song by song. Trey, Page, Jon and Mike must have been tremendously inspired by the high esteem in which their Phans held them.
• Respect- I have not seen such an abundance of respect displayed in a long time. Whether respecting one Phan’s need for space, and a lot of it, to dance freely or respecting a band member’s need for self-expression, Phish Phans set an example which is far better than many adults display.
• Dedication- Well, how many bands have fans that attended over 129 concerts over a period of years, dedicate most vacation time from work (yes, Phish Phans do work in a myriad of professions), and collect every possible studio album and live show of the band’s works? I might add that music that was not “published” but that was played by Phish at concerts was quickly available to Phans. Manufacturers of blank CD’s should write Phish thank you notes!
• Acceptance- I was impressed at how the Phans were accepting of each other, regardless of differences in style or appearance. But most of all, I was amazed at the respectful acceptance of Phish’s decision to STOP, albeit an unwanted progression of a long and successful run. I might add that long time Phish Phans were somewhat “ready” for the end of the era so that they could “get on with their lives,” a phrase I heard more than a few times. My daughter, however, was just beginning to get into the thick of it last summer! Am I relieved? Well, I would have felt that way too had I not participated in the Phish experience.
• Enthusiasm- Short of the cheerleading rage that has swept many a high school age teen devoted to a pop-star, Phish Phans exhibited a zeal that was worthy of their devotion to one remarkably talented band.
• Commitment- Passion, respect and appreciation combined set the stage for fervent commitment. I only hope that the commitment Phish Phans extended to their love of Phish now extends to other worthy pursuits throughout their lives.

I have pontificated for paragraphs with accolades for Phishheads and, of course, for THE band. Trey, Page, Jon and Mike combined to create exceptional music. My eyes were wide open and my system was, shall we say, pure. I was fortunate to have had the opportunity to be amidst an incredible group of young adults, to hear exceptional music and to spend precious time with my wonderful, Phish-loving daughter. After the concerts, I asked Caroline, “Who learned more about whom these past three days, you or me?” Caroline quickly responded, “Me.” Coming from the perspective of experience, I would agree with her. I do know she was both relieved and pleasantly surprised to see that I survived being a part of the Phish experience, that I was non judgmental and that I really had a great time! Yet, I know I learned more about young adults than I could have imagined.

In our rushed, overworked, push-for-more society, few people take the time to immerse themselves in a pursuit to which they are both committed AND truly enjoy. Let’s be honest, who really likes the intense workouts to which people subject themselves in the name of pleasure, endorphins aside? Phish Phans set examples which many of us could transpose to our daily lives. Phish was pure pleasure. Trust me, I witnessed and experienced their magical effect.

©2005. Nancy H. Rothstein

Taxi Cab Confessions

2008-10-15T23:17:00.000-05:00

My senior year of college, I had this professor. This fairly nutty professor who fell apart after not getting tenure. It was a mostly all chick class - the course being about women and religion. Maybe five dudes - including the TA, on whom I had a huge crush - all religion majors. She dug me - the professor. Held me on a pedestal as a teacher's pet of sorts. Another classmate, two years younger than me, was absolutely the real teacher's pet. We talked about it at brunch this summer - laughing about the whole thing. How the professor cleaned up my classmates' dog's excretions from the classroom floor, as the professor insisted the dog come along to recitation that week.

Not really sure why the professor is coming to mind today. Maybe because when I left the classroom after our final exam she said, "Caroline, I want to know where you are. Please keep me posted. I want to know what becomes of you. Even if you're sitting under a tree pondering the meaning of life, I want to know about it."

This coming from the professor that asked me to give her a copy of my entire portfolio for the class - everything I'd written, every paper, every assignment - so that she could keep it as her memento for the semester. This had happened to me freshman year with my writing professor. I guess some professors do this - save the work of someone they want to refer back to...who knows. Whatever.

Point is. She dug my work. She dug my future. My nonexistent, to be determined future, and wanted in on updates - because she dug my present.

Today I was in a cab. I was in two cabs today. Which sucks when I could've timed it differently to avoid the brutal cost of cabs altogether. But I was in two cabs. Once in a rush to get to training at a restaurant, and once to get crosstown to babysitting pick up - (have you ever been to the Chelsea Pier's Sky Rink after hockey practice for 6 and 7 year old boys on a Wednesday afternoon? Cause you must. You really must). The second cab was crosstown. I'd taken the bus uptown from 9th to 23rd, but there was no way I'd make it on time with the crosstown bus, so I jumped in Oscar's cab.

Oscar. Maybe it's magical because I'm currently reading The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao. Probably not. It probably has no magical meaning whatsoever, but it's always nice to pretend. To play sponge games with the universe and squeeze out every little morsel of possibility. Maybe it's because I'm out of underwear and desperately have to do laundry. No. It has nothing to do with that. But I am out of underwear as of tomorrow and have no choice but to do my laundry at this point. It's not that I don't like laundry, I love doing my laundry. It's that as a recovered bulimic I like to play binge and purge in "healthful" ways...but that's still not healthy. And what does this have to do with the second cab ride, or the professor who broke down, or anything at all?

Oscar the cab driver. In the second cab ride. He offered me few stories, out of nowhere. Some insider cab driver knowledge. The way that strangers or acquaintances pour out their life stories and deepest darkest secrets seemingly out of nowhere to me all the time. The way that I carry secrets about strangers no one could ever imagine. The way people just spill their guts - as if it's another nudge from the universe telling me that I'm most certainly a nonfiction writer. Oscar tells me about some dude that lives like a bum, he says, but banks movie from cab companies he runs like a millionaire. Well, not even like. No simile. Literally. Dude makes millions.

And Oscar keeps telling stories. As we pass 6th Ave., and 7th Ave., and 8th Ave. "18 years." For 18 years he's been driving a cab.

I tell him that I'm a writer. That I'd love his card to contact him one day. Would that be alright? I'd love to write about him - his stories. The stories he has to share - that all the cab drivers have to share. Would that be alright? And he says yes. He looks forward to it. He hopes he'll hear from me, as I jump out of the cab and run down the sidewalk to the Sky Rink.

As I babysit throughout the night, there are a few moments when I get a little choked up. Kids in bed. Or doing their homework. I get a little choked up when I pause for a moment and think about Oscar. I get a little choked up because I think about how much I want to write. How much I just want to spend my days writing about Oscar. Telling people's stories. Telling stories and writing stories and printing stories and publishing stories and being asked and asking to write more and more stories.

When I am in Port Authority, I fantasize about writing a book about everyone in line for the New Jersey Transit. A chapter about each commuter. A sentence about each tristate area epiphany. A word for each breath - inhale and exhale - of a stranger.

And it's like. So how do I get there. How do I make this happen. And I have so many balls in the air - juggling forks and knives and sticks on fire right along with the balls. Tons of things - random things - spinning in the air. Picking up inertia. Spattering the dust into clouds of potential. Tons and tons of things. Juggling like circus tent.

And so it's like. Now what. These are too many balls to be juggling. Too many other things to be juggling with the balls. Cause all I really want to do is write. I just want to write about Oscar. And publish excerpts from the documentary I wrote in college about Hooters in Maple Shade, New Jersey. And the people on the NJT. And the skateboarders that wear tight jeans and indie rock tshirts and olie off the steps in Union Square. And the waitress at the diner down the street from me. She's carrying this insane story right behind her cheekbones. I can feel it. I can feel it when she hands me my feta and spinach omlette. That she's itching to peel off the veil and spill her guts.

So when do I get my big break? When does someone from Newsweek, or the New York Times, or Rolling Stone, or Vanity Fair call me up and say - we want your spec on Oscar. And then at the bottom, in italics, it would say: Caroline Rothstein is a freelance writer and spoken word poet living in the East Village. Her first book will be on shelves soon.

And I'd call up my professor. The one from women and religion. Wherever she is now. I'd have to ask my friend and classmate - I think she knows. And I'd send her my new portfolio. The one with clippings and a book. And then I'd send her an invitation. To meet me under a tree somewhere. The one in Central Park where I laid in the grass for three hours in July listening to Broadway musicals. I'd tell her to meet me there at noon - to ponder the meaning of life. Just sitting there. Just knowing.

Fixin To Die Rag

2008-10-12T13:19:00.000-05:00

I go to the orthodontist - per the dentist's request. I leave the orthodontist - whose office resides atop a mall. On the first floor: a video arcade. I've had a pinball craving for weeks now. I walk into the arcade. Buy a dollar's worth of tokens, and head straight to the pinball machines. I decide to play Hook. My token gets stuck. The attendant has to come over and help me. He laughs at me - maybe even flirts? I guess 25 year old women don't come into video arcades on Friday afternoons.

I play a few games. Discover my perfect machine: Funhouse. Buy another dollar's worth of tokens. Win the matching thing for a free game - magic. And then, my pinball gets lodged in the back of the game. Like, I pulled the thingy too hard to launch the ball into unknown stuck oblivion. I have to go get the attendant. He comes back, with a Mallrat by his side, making fun/flirting with me some more. He has to pull the glass off the machine, says I'm only flirting with him by having all these pinball machine problems, and I grab the ball from the back of the game. He turns it back on - and I get to play again.

The attendant goes back to the desk. The Mallrat - Chris - stays to my left. He watches me play. He's missing a front tooth. He looks and smells like he loiters here often.

"You'll never beat my high score," he says.

"Oh yeah? Are you the winner on here?"

"This game and all the games," he says, "Let's just say, I'm a video game guy."

"Cool. I'm a pin ball girl myself," I say.

"Old fashioned girl, huh?"

"Yeah, I guess so."

"Well, may I say that you're very pretty?" he tells me.

"Thank you," I say, as I lose game after game - it's difficult to stay focused with a stranger hitting on you.

He asks me if I have a boyfriend. I say - I just instinctively say - yes. And I feel bad about this. I never lie, or make things up, especially not the day after Yom Kippur. But my gut said to say I had a boyfriend. And in retrospect, this was the right decision. He might have otherwise spent the entire rest of our encounter hitting on me and focusing on asking me out, rather than being engaged in the conversation that would ensue.

He apologizes if he sounds muddled - says he didn't sleep much last night. Never sleeps much, not since he got back from Iraq.

I stop playing pinball.

I turn to him. "You were in Iraq?" I ask.

"Yeah," he says. Empty fountain soda to go cup in his left hand, resting in the dormant pinball machine two over from Funhouse. "I got shot in the knee," he says as he hunches over to tap on the side of his right knee cap.

"When were you in Iraq?" I ask.

"2004. I mean, 2002. I come from a military family."

"Are you voting in the next election?" I ask.

"No. I'm not voting in this election. Or any election ever again."

"Why not?"

"We'd be so much better off without government. It ruins everything. If everyone in the world destroyed all their weapons - guns, nuclear weapons, everything - and everybody went into therapy, we'd have world peace. We'd have world peace so fast, people's heads would spin."

"Wow. I mean, I agree with you. That's an amazing perspective."

"All we need is psychotherapy."

I ask him if he's been in therapy since Iraq. He tells me - when he can. He gets nightmares. He has flashbacks at night. And talks in his sleep.

He tells me he's never hit a woman. He never would. Another attempt at a date, it seems. He says he'd hit a wall before he hit a woman, or anyone really.

"I've had anger management problems since Iraq," he tells me.

And somehow he mentions something about rape. I can't remember the context - perhaps about how other men rape women.

"Was there a lot of rape in Iraq?" I ask him.

He shakes his head yes. This terrified, horrified shake as his face fires up with red pigment. As if this is bringing back the flashbacks. As if he has no idea how to talk about this stuff without falling apart inside. He shakes his head yes, a violent, saddened yes.

"The US soldiers raping the Iraqi women and children?" I ask.

"Everyone. The US raping the Iraqis. The Iraqis that captured the US female soldiers raping them. Everywhere," he says.

He tells me that I should never let my boyfriend go - my hypothetical boyfriend that I'm more than open to meeting anytime soon?!? - because nothing is more important than that. He says that he had a girlfriend, a fiance, before he left for Iraq. And then she died in a car crash. If only he hasn't gone to Iraq he said.

I tell him I'm a writer. I ask him if I can share his words. I'm Caroline I say - and put out my hand. I'm Chris, he says, and we shake. And yes, he tells me, "Tell everyone. Make this public."

I tell him I have to leave. He follows me on my journey out the door. The attendant sees me leaving, "You're leaving without saying bye to me?" Another Mallrat leaning over the counter.

"I have to get going," I say.

"What, do you work in the mall?" the attendant asks.

"No," I say, "I live in New York City. I'm just home for a quick visit."

"Well, stop by next time you're here," he says.

"Yeah, and I'll break another pinball machine."

Chris continues to follow me out. When we're outside the arcade, nearing the front door from the mall to the parking lot, he says, "Well, if you don't have your boyfriend the next time you're home, promise you'll go out with me?"

"Sure," I say.

We part ways. Wish each other "G-d bless" and I drive away.

Talking in Your Sleep

2008-10-12T10:38:00.000-05:00

There's this mini bluff in Central Park - say - aligned with W. 63rd Street. Viewed naked with the mild hoverings of three threes at the front stage west side opening. There are five - maybe six - people standing in the rough center of the plateaued apex. I think of boarding school. Stop dead in my downtown tracks at 11:45 on a Saturday night in mid-October after babysitting for five hours on the Upper West Side.

Plop my GAP covered ass on a curb next to the walking path - neighboring the bike path - and two horse and carriages pass behind me. I'm in a black cashmere sweater acquired last night from my mother's closet - home for Yom Kippur - and it is the perfect armor for the husky autumn air.

There's something potent about memory. About watching a feeble image whisk you fearless seven years previous as if standing in the trees outside the cafeteria at boarding school in Switzerland is congruous with the rocks below the baseball diamonds below Sheep's Meadow. And this is the same park in which I told my friend Jon, "I could never live in New York City."

But here I am - a year into my East Village artist existence. Babysitting, tutoring, interviewing at restaurants, constructing my plan to shop my book manuscript around to agents.

What is ambition? The coward figurine masked with envy in the background? Eager to ensure the last stab at universal doubt? Or a calling? a selfless calling to call the universe honest and say 'thank you' for listening to your childhood dream. And what does this have to do with Central Park? Those kids on the pseudo-bluff doing G-d knows what? And Switzerland? As if memory has anything to do with ambition.

A police car drives over. I guess single girls don't usually sit curbside at midnight with confidence.

I stand up.

"Everything OK?" the cop asks.

"Oh yeah, I'm fine," in my cheerful how-to-talk-to-adults-and-other-authority-figures voice, "Just sitting here writing. Is that OK?"

"Oh yeah. Fine. I thought you were looking for help."

"Oh no, I'm fine," I say.

And the car drives away.

Help. Maybe. I mean, sure, do you know anyone at Random House or Simon and Schuster? Anyone looking for a new columnist at the New York Times? No. Not looking for help. I guess. Or maybe. I don't know.

This has something to do with myself. Like how the these of this Yom Kippur for me was asking G-d and my self for forgiveness - for ever letting self-deprecating misery ever have the final say. For ever doubting the plan. My resin d'etre. My birthright. The path. Knowing gutterly - that the only person I should ever have to explain myself to is my self.

But I appreciate the cop's inquiry. He's just doing his job. And so was I, just sitting here writing.

Lost In The Crowd

2008-09-14T11:28:00.002-05:00

The thing with being an extrovert is that there is always a balance. Meaning, do you ever walk off by yourself when you're at a bar amongst many good friends and hundreds of the best poets in the country? It's the only way to process. To counteract the energy. To rejuvenate the system.

Meaning, do you ever feel lonely in a crowd? When there's no one you want to talk to or call or text or email in the moment?

That's when you know you have to either write or go inside yourself. This is about letting go of my ego. Nestled in the back corner of a back porch outside an apartment complex down the street from some bar I'm supposed to be at in Madison, Wisconsin.

When we let go of the identities with which we associate ourselves, we let go of our egos.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame

2008-09-10T07:10:00.000-05:00

When I first moved to New York last summer, I went on a date about a month after I moved here. We ate at this restaurant down the street from where I now live and had what I felt was an awesome first date. It lasted for five hours. We laughed. We talked about Phish tour. We talked about art. We talked about philosophy and things of that deep nature. We even kissed when he walked me to my doorstep. But we never went out again. I feel like we both just knew that the spark wasn't there. Like, we clearly had a great time together and had a lot in common, but the spark was missing - so what was the point in forcing another friendship when we were clearly on the prowl via JDate -how we met.

None of this really matters. It has nothing to do with the story. But I like telling stories. The point is. He said something to me that I only just remembered last week when my neck gave way into stiffness and spasm seemingly out of nowhere and I landed myself in a chiropractor's office. He said to me, sitting there at dinner, "You have really good posture."

Now, this isn't something I've ever a) heard anyone tell me before, b) heard in the context of a date or romantic compliment, and c) heard anyone tell me since. So this brings up several things. 1) At that moment, having just moved to New York, having just driven 11,600 miles around the United States by myself, I was swaggering in confidence. 2) My posture was reflecting my confidence and presence in the world. 3) Something happened in the last year that caused my then "really good posture" to spasm into a chiropractor's X-ray machine.

I must have started hunching over. I must have started shielding my chest and heart chakra from the rest of the world. Terrified to put myself out there and be present in the world. I mean, something happened that I closed down my posture. And my neck is screaming out to me to open up again. To sit up and stand tall with my shoulders back and my head in the air.

I've always noticed that there's this stance. This teenage through 20s and 30s chick stance whereby women disempower themselves by hunching their upper back over. Pay attention to it. It's an epidemic. Like, they arch their shoulder blades, toss their ribcage backwards, and cock their head forwards looking down instead of up and out. It's like this "I'm cool and I fit in" stance, but really it's about being afraid to be present and powerful in themselves. I saw it all over the place growing up, all over the place in college, and still all over the place in New York City. It's gotten better amongst a lot of people I know. Fewer and fewer women who I come into regular contact with do the stance. But there are tons, TONS of younger girls and women I watch capture this postural persona.

What are we so afraid of? Knocking our chests into something? Standing upright? There's no reason for that. It's just not necessary. It only causes back and neck pain. And trust me, it's not worth it.

Cool Runnings

2008-09-05T04:20:00.000-05:00

When I was a kid, the first presidential race I was actively aware of was in 1988 - George Bush versus Michael Dukakis. I was five at the time. When I heard everyone talking about a "race" I kept picturing a track field. I picture George Bush and Michael Dukakis on a track field, in full 80s track short and tank get up. Running their asses off around a track field. One of them - coming in first, and becoming the next president of the United States of America.

I remembering wondering why the whole thing was such a big deal then - all this supposed voting for two people running a race. So I figured the "voting" was just people responding. People's reactions to the verdict determined by the candidates' own strength and athleticism.

20 years later, at 25, I know it's not a track race anymore - but this 2008 election feels like a sporting event. However, it's not like the sporting event I envisioned in my youth - where the runners race according to their own bodies, their own training, their own valour. Instead, they're tripping each other. They're not playing fairly. They're not using sportsmanship. Instead, it's a bloody all out war - it's a death match.

And the child inside me doesn't understand. Doesn't understand why they can't make speeches addressing only their own strengths. Why they can't run campaigns based only on their own qualifications. Why they can't run laps around this country in their own track suits, with their own team's sponsorship, and leave the other guy alone in his own lane. I just don't get it.

So today, 20 years later, I wish I was that kid again. That thought the presidential race was a 1500 yard dash around a big field. Not because I think my favored candidate could win a running race - I swear I was pulling for George Senior when I was 5 in his track suit, mostly because I didn't like Dukakis' last name and such are the decisions that children can make - but because in my childhood vision, they didn't touch each other before they got to the finish line. Because at the finish line, they'd shake hands - and mean it.

The Wizard and I

2008-09-04T09:38:00.001-05:00

Kat and I had the same bandannas. The same white bandannas, each with our boarding school laundry number in it. 181 written in black sharpe in the corner of mine. I'm not sure what her laundry number was - but it's tucked in her bandanna which I keep tucked in my cabinet in my childhood bedroom along with a memory box of souvenirs from our friendship and adventures.

Kat's dad gave me her bandanna at her funeral 6 years ago; along with her fleece, her Bob Marley blanket, a Christmas ornament, and a jar of moonshine. Our bandannas were a reminder that we'd come from different worlds, different paths, yet we brought something similar to the table. We each a flair for white bandannas. We each covered our heads the same way - our very different heads in very much the same way.

Looking back it's funny how inseparable we became. We met our postgraduate fall semesters at The American School in Switzerland. She was a soccer playing machine from Ashland, Kentucky. I was an academic and theatrical machine from Wilmette, Illinois. Her southern drawl and wishes for home made her at times miserable in our dorm room in Lugano. My enthusiasm with being away from the Chicago suburbs left me politically radical and at times anti-American. She spent study hall laying on her bed wrapped in her Bob Marley blanket telling stories of Kentucky. I spent study hall wrapped in my books, obsessed with my grades, and staying up late into the wee hours of the Swiss night. She didn't care much about going to college. I was overly preoccupied with where I wanted to go to college. Some called her lazy. Some called me overly ambitious.

But we clicked. We left TASIS to spend our spring postgraduate semester in Oxford, England, at in a program for those taking a gap year. We were immediately inseparable. She taught me to relinquish control. To surrender to the flow. I taught her to take some initiative. To make a plan. We met in the middle. We smiled with one another. We laughed - a lot. We traveled all over Europe. We played a game in Amsterdam where we got on random trains and public transporation and let it take us wherever it took us - it was a bit of a disaster - much more successful when we tried it in Madrid, Spain.

Three weeks after said traveling, she died in her sleep. I gave one of her eulogies. My brother died six months later. I realize now that I put much of my grieving for her on hold while I grieved my brother's death all these past years.

She is on my mind a lot lately. I thought about her this morning when I put on my white bandana. It's getting holes. Many holes all over. Years of wear. Years of memories. Years of washing and cleaning. Maybe if mine falls apart entirely, I'll use Kat's - no longer afraid that using her bandana, and letting it wear and tear, will not take away her memory.

So often we are afraid the use things of those that we have lost. We are afraid to go there - afraid that use will tarnish the memory. But this is not so. Use will only cherish the memory. Honor the spirit soul whom we miss. We may shelve it in a box for a while, but one day, it's worth pulling the box out of the closet to see what's inside. To touch the memories. And to feel blessed that they can empower us.

Bouncing Around the Room

2008-08-26T17:21:00.002-05:00

The only person you should ever have to explain yourself to is your self.

In many areas of my life, I'm excellent about not giving a shit what anyone else thinks. For instance, what I wear. A few weeks ago I felt like feeling like it was 1988. So I wore white leggings under these awful cut off jean shorts I made out of my father's old jeans for a school music show in 8th grade. I wore a black T-Shirt with these gaudy colorful beads for a necklace. I had vintage Gucci black sandals on my feet - and my sister saw the Facebook pictures and said I looked ridiculous. Whatever. I was conjuring a great decade.

Or how I listen to music in public. I dance: on the sidewalk, on the subway platform, in the elevator, what have you. It's not to show off or make a spectacle of myself. Sure, at earlier ages in my life, it was to be performative and draw attention to myself to overcompensate for my insecurities. But now, I belt along to my headphones while walking down the street because I don't have a car in which to do this while transporting myself from one spot to another.

Basically, I tend to go at my own pace in these external sort of ways - behavior, etc. It's the existential things that sometimes throw me for a Lemming sort of loop.

For instance, I have been creating misery where there is none. I'm inherently a happy person. I'm inherently optimistic and funky and offbeat. I'm inherently unashamed and carefree. And yet, I have been starving myself of this consistent spiritual joy I know is not only within immediate reach, but within. Always with in.

And why? Why starve myself of this joy and peace and love? To fit in.

A good friend once tole me, "You will never fit in, but you belong."

I always thought that meant something tangible. Something about identity. Something about the outside.

I know now that he was referring to my insides. My experience of the universe. My relationship to and with myself.

Misery does not belong to me. I have touched it. It taught me very many amazing lessons.

But now. I have no use for that vibration anymore. I can let the baggage go. Leave it in the past, as I fly to my new destination. My journey. That belongs here. In this universe. But may not always fit in with someone else's version of reality.

Fire On the Mountain

2008-08-26T17:13:00.000-05:00

My mother said something to me this morning about anticipation. A close family friend passed away. In fact, a family member's boyfriend to be exact. And my mother made a good point - what was so exciting for them both was that they could anticipate seeing each other every few months because at the stages they were both at in their life, it made more sense to maintain a seven year long long-distance relationship, rather than uproot and live together.

I spent the next few hours somewhat disagreeing with my mother. Anticipation...doesn't that keep us in the future rather than the present?

But then I realized that anticipation is a state and an experience, that takes place in the present moment, even though it may have an awareness of the future.

This realization came to me as I walked down 28th Street from 3rd Avenue to Lexington to meet my friend for lunch. I was listening to my favorite Grateful Dead show. "Fire On the Mountain" was playing. It was 5 minutes into the song and the lyrics still hadn't started. The anticipation!!! And that's when it hit me. That's what's so great about some of my favorite music - like Phish or the Grateful Dead. The anticipation. The long wait from the moment the band hits the notes and chords for "Fire." You know it's "Fire." You know it's "Fire" after 2 seconds. You've heard it over and over so many times listening to (or seeing!!!) all sorts of shows on all sorts of occasions. You know that almost for sure - unless they really throw something crazy into action - they will eventually start singing, "Long distance runner, what you standin there for?" And when it happens, you feel an overwhelming sense of joy. There is a release of sorts. But that doesn't take away from how much you enjoy the first 5 minutes of intro where you enjoy the anticipation.