Happy Hello, Weenie

The little kids running around in their costumes look so cute I just want to eat them up.

Preferably roasted at 450 with rosemary and garlic and some new potatoes on the side.

Daylight Frittering Time, The Chauffeur, and An Unexpected Gift

Since we're not saving daylight, does that mean we are frittering?

Yesterday I chauffeured my breasts to the Upper West Side for a playdate with Baby Boy. Not that it was planned -- I was kind of at a loose end because I couldn't track down Hawkins for our planned brunch, couldn't scare up EmKay for a plan B, so on a whim I rang the little Italian to see if he wanted to get brunch and catch a flick. Lots of good films out there these days that we both want to see, you know.

Turns out he was having a Lazy Sunday Afternoon -- one of those lie around in your pj's and watch videos kind of days (okay, so he got more done between 7 am and 2 o'clock than most people get accomplished in a 12-hour day, he earned the lazy time).

As soon as I took off my coat, he announced he had a present for me. Ummmm. Can someone explain to this guy that we aren't dating anymore -- I broke up with you! You're not supposed to buy me presents! Turns out, he found an amazing necklace with a hand of Fatima charm that is perfect-perfect-perfect for me. I'm touched and charmed. Actually, what I am is tickled to death. I haven't had a man buy me a present for no reason in god-knows-how-long. I mean, it's just not the kind of girl I am. For some reason, men don't seem inspired to give me shit. I think I've mentioned it before. How does one become a woman that guys want to buy shit for?

No sooner do I flop down to watch the movie with him than he's on the Girls. Horny little tit-monkey that he is.

We did a little wrestlemania, then I walked him down to his meeting and got on a train to the Lower East Side to grab a Cuban sandwich and a beer at EmKay's bar. By this time, it was 7 o'clock and I *still* hadn't eaten anything, so I was stahaharving.

EmKay asked what I had been up to during the afternoon -- I mentioned that I had been hanging out with the Italian.

"Ohhhh," he said with a knowing leer, "so that explains the glow."

I can't help it, I've always given off a post-coital glow that is as obvious as a 5-year-old's drawing of the sun. It's probably more like the stink lines on a cartoon character, but there you have it. You can always tell when I've been up to somthing no good -- or rather, up to something really, really good because I get this happy buddha quality about me. When I used to leave the married guy's office after a particularly good romp, I used to get smiles and leers and second looks all the way home.

I'm just a horny bastard.

PS - I'm back into my skinny jeans after 3 years.

A Wee Miracle, My Not-So-Little Secret, and Crash-Readiness

I LOVE when I have little enlightenment moments. Sometimes they'll occur when I'm having a conversation with someone and I have to wonder, what does the other person see on my face as it's happening? Do I get that starey still look like C-3PO when they turn him off? Or do I get that meditative middle-distance gaze? Or that hyper-attentive listening like an animal thing?

Anyway, today I bounced into work because a miracle occurred last night while I was sitting at home. I was watching TV and noodling around on my guitar, just sort of zoning out, when all of a sudden I focused on what was happening with my hands. I started paying attention and realized that I was playing something I had never heard before and making it up as I went along. Holy capo, Batman, I said to myself! Well, what it turned out I was meant to be writing was NOT a lover's lament about being the Other Woman.

When I opened myself up to what I am supposed to be writing, it turns out to be... a lullaby?

Well, I'm just gonna go with it. See where it takes me. Exciting.

So this morning I ping the Hot Retoucher (from this point forward, HR) with an email, heedless of my "new rule" that we shouldn't contact each other through our work email or through my "name" email because god forbid anyone here at the office should think we're friends. (Side note, if anyone ever asks, I'm gonna say we've been at it like knives since a week after I started. That should shut them up). I'm excited. There's not only the realization that this actually does live in me -- but the more important realization that for the first time in my adult life, I am allowing myself to be... an artist. Just acknowledging.

I have to thank Baby Boy for this. Okay, so the sex was a disaster, but he's the first person who ever introduced me to someone with "oh, she gets it, she's an artist too." (Too bad about the bad sex. How does bad sex happen? He's actually a hyperactive little hottie and we were attracted to each other but somehow couldn't make the parts fit together right...)

So anyway, I guess HR decided that avoiding each other was as ridiculous as I though it was because he actually came right over to my desk to ask what was going on.

So we chat for a bit. It's kind of hard to do in a place as grim as this (oh, there is news on that front, too... I thought I wrote my own death warrant yesterday but it actually turned out to be something good... more on that another time)

Somehow the conversation gets around to monogamy. And he says, "Well, you don't believe in monogamy." Hmm. I'm not sure about that. I know I believe marriage is a bunch of crap. But monogamy? I'm not sure anymore. The most serious relationship I had (with EmKay) was devoted and faithful and passionate for five years. But -- when I'm not in a relationship, monogamy as a concept doesn't even exist in my life. And for some reason, society expects people who are NOT in monogamous relationships to be celibate.

Isn't that a load of crap? Because I'm not in a relationship with anyone, I am supposed to forego my natural and very healthy urges and shake hands at the door? I don't think so.

But as for monogamy -- that's my little secret. And I think it has been the real reason why I won't get involved with anyone. I talk the cynic... but the cynic hides the most hopeless romantic. Not that I wish some handsome stranger will come along and sweep me off my feet... but secretly, I want to be THAT GIRL again for someone. I don't want to be someone's dirty little secret -- I want to be someone's Sunday-morning girl. I don't ever want to be the styrofoam peanuts that fills in the empty spaces of someone else's life, I don't want to make it tolerable for someone to go home and sleep next to THE PERSON HE PICKED for another week. I want to be the girl who gets picked.

So that's part of my dirty little secret.

I also realized that all these years, I've talked about EmKay by telling people how lucky I was.

"I'm one of the lucky ones," I said (probably with insufferable smugness), "I've had the Great Love of My Life." If capital letters could be spoken, I was doing it. "A lot of people aren't so lucky -- they end up settling for someone who can just give security and babies." Frankly, I'm surprised that I haven't been slapped, hard, and frequently.

The FLAW in my thinking is this: I believed that you only get ONE. I believed for all these years that I walked up to the buffet, filled my plate, sat down and ate, and that was all I got. I'm sorry, no more shrimp or lobster for you, miss, you've already been through the line once.

Oh, honey. (I just want to call myself honey and pat myself on the knee.)

Oh, honey, didn't you know this is an all you can EAT buffet?

Notes from Randomalia

I've grown weary of my own mewling, so here's a little lighthearted stuff for you:

1) How many men sent their wives off to the theater alone last Thursday, the night the Mets blew it?

2) Don't people realize that synthetic waterproof fabrics hold odors? That stink on the subway is YOU, Mr. Helly Hansen/NorthFace/Columbia! Wash your damn coat.

3) I'm very, very sorry to see the following 1970's fashion trends have returned in full hipster force: Gay-porno-star moustaches, bushy sideburns, and most woefully, a hairstyle I can only call "The Garfunkel."

4) I would love to see one of those tatted-out, full-sleeve hipsters get beat up by a Hell's Angel. Just on principal.

5) When I look at myself in store windows as I walk down the street, it's not because I think I look hot. I am just afraid that my skirt might have somehow gotten tucked into my underpants.

6) One day last week the L train was so crowded I had to let FIVE trains go by before I could fit onto one. I tell ya, the ghetto must have been completely empty that morning.

7) I haven't actually met my new neighbor but I've suspected for a while that he is gay because of the loud dance music he plays at 8:00 in the morning. At first I felt bad about stereotyping like that and told myself "Maybe he's some heterosexual who happens to like dance music -- this IS an Italian neighborhood after all." This morning when I left, he was blasting and wailing along to Cher. "Do you be-leheeve in lahf after luhv?" I don't feel bad for the stereotyping anymore.

8) Walleyed people have a moral obligation to tell you which eye to look at when you are talking to them.

9) How do drag queens dress up on Halloween? Do they wear business suits and khakis?

A Little BackStory

So, someone who before that drinky Friday night basically didn't exist for you except as "the hot retoucher" extends the hand of friendship. You aren't sure where it comes from, but okay, you say to yourself, I'll play along.

But being your mother's daughter, you're a little suspicious (You maybe are a little too fond of exclaiming "Estoy sospechosa!" when things seem a little too easy). But with your dharma vows to try to remain open to all of your experience, and a generous plop of your father's gregarious nature larded through you -- you are, in fact, a USDA Grade Triple-A Prime, Luger's-quality cote de beouf of Aiko larded with Marty -- you shake that hand of friendship.

Things get warm and personal. Maybe a little too warm and personal (you do tend to have, as Anne Lamott might say, some teeny, tiny boundary issues).

You've been spending a lot of time working out your shit, slowly, often painfully. You have had a strange and terrible and wonderful summer, and as luck would have it, the strangeness and terribleness and wonderfulness seem to have worked a miracle and maybe pried open your heart a bit. As luck would also have it, you happen to have a spot open for a new friend. You believe that maybe this opening of your heart and the opening for a friend are perhaps no coincidence.

So, you reach out, and you take the hand of friendship that is offered to you, because maybe, just maybe, you have been having a really hard time with the politics of the place where you work, and no one has really made any effort to be particularly friendly to you.

You, a gregarious person who thrives on building partnerships and friendly relationships in order to be successful at business, you find that some days at 6:00 you barely make it to the corner of Trinity and Rector before you find yourself weeping with loneliness. You don't tell anyone, even your best friend, how you sit in the park some days across from the Hole In the Ground after work and cry and cry in despair at the idea that you made the most expensive mistake of your life.

You didn't notice till later that it is an office populated by loners, everyone huddled like strays over their bowls ready to snap at anyone who comes too close. In fact, no one ever asks the bland polite questions that co-workers ask each other, like "How was your weekend?" "How are you this morning?" No one asks where you come from or where you worked before. It's as if someone smote the ground with a magic wand and up you sprung, wholly formed and without any warning to anyone else.

You look into your boss's eyes and you see a cipher. He frequently mouths management words like "teamwork" but what you are really seeing is just another scared person who feels desperate to protect his own position. But that's for another entry. We're talking about the hand of friendship here.

And don't forget the person offering the hand of friendship is in the middle of an ocean of shit all his own. But for our purposes, this isn't his story. And since you can't know anyone else's experience, we're just gonna let this one be all about you. But maybe, just maybe, he looked into your eyes and saw that maybe here was another gentle soul to whom he felt safe offering the hand of friendship, because maybe he needed one, too. Maybe (and this is pure speculation and making shit up now!) he had been feeling a little lonely at the place, too. Maybe he looked into your eyes and saw that friendship with you is actually a pretty safe place. Who knows? Like we've said, now we are making shit up.

"Oh, fuck it," you say. Because there's something gentle in his eyes that you like. Here is someone in this workplace who actually seems interested in you, the person. Not you, the co-worker. In fact, you, the person, seem to delight him, so you just decide to go with it.

You are thrilled that you might, just might, be able to stomach the job if you know you have a friend there. Just one friend at the workplace doesn't seem to be too much to ask. In fact, after a few minutes of conversation, you realize that if you had met this person outside of work, you would have chosen him to be your friend.

The rest of your life is nothing but your friends. If someone were to ask you, in your life outside of work "Do you ever get lonely?" you would be honestly puzzled. Loneliness seems an anathema to you. It's pretty hard to feel lonely when you know that you are walking the earth loved.

But wait, you should have been more careful.

Because what you didn't see, as you were reaching out delightedly to take the hand of friendship, was the fist that was forming behind his back. And before you can even blink, you find yourself hard on your ass on the floor, touching the bloody lip in wonder and your tongue throbbing from where you bit it when you sat down so hard.

And what you hear, in your mind is a voice that sounds remarkably like your mother's:

"I told you so."

So, what you do is what you've done your whole, entire life. You wipe the blood from your lip, blink back the tears, roll down the shutters over your eyes and your soul, and make sure you are dusted off. You pick the gravel out of your palms and back away slowly, because you have learned.

A Letter from Cheri (my favorite Zen teacher)

Gassho,

How're you doing? How's it going?

Did you look to see? Did you stop to check in and then answer the questions? If not, will you do so now, please, and pay very close attention to what happens as you do. Ready? How're you doing? How's it going?

Actually to look, to see, and to come up with an answer requires a full stop, doesn't it? I find myself closing my eyes in order to eliminate the distraction of sight as I look. Because even though my eyes turn and focus, they are not what's looking. The eyes, having the habit of looking, scan around with the attention, searching out where the answer lies.

Did you see where your attention goes to find the answer? Did it check around in your body to see how you're feeling or did it shoot up to your head for an assessment? Or was it some sort of combination, a conclusion reached by checking in with the "felt sense" of emotional reaction to bodily sensations?

The real question is how do you know how you're doing? Where do you look, who/what does the looking, who does the deciding, who announces the results, and who gets the information?

Each time I met with my teacher he would ask with a certain intensity, "How are you?" It took me a shockingly long time to realize he wasn't looking for "Fine" as an answer. Once I caught on our whole time together grew from my response to that simple, profound question.

At Kripalu (Yoga Center in Lenox, Massachusetts), during the past weekend workshop on fear, I found myself talking with people about the role of fear in the cycles of expanding and contracting energy. On the radio show on Tuesday evening we were talking about the backlash that follows moments of conscious awareness or insight. When I heard myself say, "There's nothing that will bring on an attack of self-hatred faster than happiness," I knew this was the topic for this monthly email.

Conditioned human beings in the waking-up process are constantly checking (or being checked?) to see how they're doing. This checking can come in the form of a review (at the end of the day, following a meeting, or after a particular interaction). It can also take the form of second-guessing, or anxiety or insecurity over performance, or through a comparison to others or against standards such as "where you should be at this stage of life," or via that simple question: How are you? How you are in that moment is dependent on how you came out in the evaluation, yes? You may have been going along not particularly aware of standards or performance, and then a well-placed question produces a self-consciousness that determines your state of well-being or a lack thereof.

This process of "energy management" (high energy when you score well, low energy when you don't) is going on all the time in subtle, often unconscious ways, not just as a result of questioning that is fairly easy to catch on to. That scanning happens
"subliminally," causing a person to decide it's time for a cup of coffee or a "treat," or to feel bad, without ever being aware that that looking-concluding-deciding-acting sequence has happened.

One of the admittedly oddest aspects of Buddhism (to Westerners) is the construct of "hungry ghosts." In the East where Buddhism was spawned, people understand that there are many realms of consciousness, many planes of existence, and this human orientation is just one, not necessarily the most special or significant--except to us, of course!

What is a hungry ghost? It is a creature with a tiny mouth, a very long, thin neck, and a huge belly. It is constantly trying to get enough sustenance through the little mouth to fill that enormous belly. What it ingests is human emotion, in
particular human suffering. So, there are these creatures hanging around human beings waiting for emotional upset to happen so they can have a meal. And they don't always wait! You're going along and suddenly your attention is directed to something
upsetting--a judgment, a comparison, a criticism-and you can feel your energy deflate. If you think of energy being drawn out of your body and consumed, you will have a sense of what the notion of a hungry ghost is trying to convey.

Here's what I'm suggesting. The expansion and contraction of energy is a process. It's not accidental and it's not random. You are present, aware, expansive, life is good, you're feeling good about yourself and life. What happens next? What comes in to produce the contraction? Fear? Anxiety? Judgment? Feeling bad about something you said or did? Just notice. Watch the movement. You're feeling full, full of energy and then, whoosh! Something comes along to capture that energy and leave you feeling empty, deflated.

Once you catch on to how you go from expansive to contracted, you might choose to observe the movement from contracted to expansive. And it is a movement, a series of steps that takes you from the one to the other. Again, it's not random or haphazard--it is very specific and observable. Up and down. Up and down. We look for reasons. Why am I suddenly down? What happened? What did I do? The answer is you didn't do anything. You were distracted, your attention strayed from HERE for a moment, and you
slid into contraction. Your energy just got consumed.

What to do? Nothing. Just notice and enjoy how it feels not to have your life-force siphoned off. The noticing is all it takes. As soon as you get HERE, the energy is once again yours.

Gassho,
Cheri

The Poison of Fear at Work

I got an email from someone on Friday that elucidated the way thing are at my job, and frankly, it's nothing that I haven't observed myself, and I really really want to work at holding myself out of the fray and remain authentic.

My heart demands it.

I'm either lucky or unlucky in that the minute I do or say something that feels inauthentic, something in my heart contracts a little.

Since I started there in May, I have mostly remained an outsider. Which has occasionally bothered me (shades of not being one of the popular kids at school), but has afforded me a tremendous opportunity to observe behaviors, management styles, and all kinds of interactions.

I usually get away with this by cultivating a sweet, simpleminded expression on my face. People will do and say the most outrageous things in front of you if they think you are clueless.

Anyway.

The all-pervasive condition that I've noticed here is an air of fear. It permeates the workspace with a metallic stink that is so permanent and ingrained that most people aren't even aware of it. But I look at things. I see things. I pay attention. And what I see is a lot of people scurrying around afraid to make a mistake, or voice a concern, or even raise their hand to make a contribution that would benefit the company.

It is a quagmire of status quo, that's the way we've always done it. You can't swim through a tarpit. They're still finding mastodon bones at LaBrea, if I'm not mistaken. No one is willing to risk making a change because they want to make sure that making a change will be successful.

Now, this is management by fear. What the top level of management doesn't seem to get is that change is, inherently -- IN AND OF ITSELF -- risky. It's the classic risk/reward proposition. Take little risk, get little reward. Take a big risk, chances are you'll get a bigger reward.

And rather than address problems DIRECTLY, what happens is this: See a problem, then create a cloak-and-dagger scheme to make someone fuck up to PROVE that they are a problem. Rather than taking the person aside and doing that shocking thing known as a performance review.

I know, I know. I was fortunate to work for one of the most progressive private companies in the country. But its progressive management style meant that we were a little 100-person publishing company generating $125 MILLION in gross revenue each year. That's $1.25 million PER EMPLOYEE. We worked like dogs, but we were rewarded and praised and we knew that we had the power to change our own jobs if it was for the good of the company. That was an amazing experience.

Then I was running the little green printing business. And because it was just me, if something didn't work, process-wise, since I couldn't fire myself, I could just change the process to something that worked. Every single one of my vendors loved my ass, cause I was thorough and professional and realistic about schedules. And I had a process that worked.

So here I am in a traditional, patriarchal "society" where no one really feels they have a stake in anything except keeping their own job security. So what's the incentive for people to think outside their cubicle? None whatsoever. And I am watching a once-great company slowly choking to death on its own fear.

More later.

Wow, That Really Hurts My Feelings

Please, will someone run me over four or five hundred times with a steamroller, then maybe expose me to radiation for a year, put my feet in the stirrups of a runaway pinto and drag me face-down along Main Street, then run me through a hot wash and dryer with a good linen-setting ironing afterward?

Because, clearly, I need to get a little thicker-skinned. Maybe like a rhino or a crocodile or something. I need to toughen the fuck up, that's for goddamn sure.

Here's what I'm gonna lay all over you:

Now. Apparently.This person at my office, with whom I had tentatively
begun a friendship, has decided that we can't even be open about our FRIENDSHIP.

WTF?

So. Here's the life lesson in this: Just when you think you can't make yourself feel any worse about having to be someone's dirty little Wednesday-afternoon secret, stand back and wait a while. It WILL get worse. When someone has to keep the fact that you might be friendly with each other a deep dark secret, well my friends, let me tell you, it makes you feel lower than worm poo.

You see, I'm used to being proud to call someone my friend, and to have them be proud to call me theirs. I am so delighted with my friends that I can't WAIT for them to meet each other.

Every time Roni introduces me to someone new, she puts her hand on my arm and says, "This is my very best friend," in a warm and loving tone of voice that conveys to the other person that she really, really loves me.

Am I excessively thin-skinned? Or is this the kind of thing that should hurt my feelings?

You tell me.

Once Again, Someone Said it in Far Fewer Words than I Could

"Our bodies, our minds, and even our souls are the abodes of love, not love itself. Love exists everywhere around us and permeates everything---it is the treasure of this world, and by its very essence it cannot be kept captive inside our own coffers. True love exists beyond the people we love. When we understand this the expectations we place on others diminish: We are loved by existence itself, and so we don't need to feel rejected or hurt when a partner or friend isn't able to love us the way we wish. When our feelings depend on no one, we have attained a high state of realization---our love is our own, our happiness is our own; we are responsible for the way we feel and there is no longer any need to ask others to provide us with these states. This is an important step on the path of love: Link your spirit to love itself, open your heart to existence, choose love as your spiritual journey and you will never be disappointed in humans."

- Rumi


In other words: Don't hoard the good stuff! There's enough for everybody!

Enough! Enough! Enough!

Enough with the meme's already! I don't give a shit what you have under your bed, whether you wear boxers or briefs, or if you lost your virginity on the 2nd floor of Alpha Sig in 1983.

Don't we do enough navel gazing as it is? Isn't the fact that we are out in the blogosphere evidence of our INCREDIBLE self-absorption to begin with? I mean, really, folks, few and far between are the blogs worth reading. Come on, even this. Most of this is nothing but morning-papers-level crap with the occasional funny thing thrown in. And I mean most blogs just suuuuuuuuuuck out there. Have you ever clicked on the "next blogs" button on the blogger homepage? We are the most narcissistic bunch of buttmunches on the freakin' planet, completely self-referential and we think that other people out there in the blogosphere are interested in what we have to say.

Here's what people are interested in reading about in other people's blogs:

- saying funny but incredibly mean things about George Bush's idiocy.
- sex.

Maybe I'll go back to writing about sex. At least it was fun to read, though a few of my friends mentioned that it did make them a little squeamish. File under: Things You Never Wanted to Know, i.e. the ingredients of hot dogs, your parent's favorite position, and the details of Janey's sex life.

But I have say, I never want to see another blog about:

- your new fucking baby. YOU HAD A BABY. You didn't invent childbirth. Kathie Lee Gifford invented childbirth.
- your new fucking house. YOU BOUGHT A HOUSE. Yeah, so did I once, and you know what? If a bank is willing to give ME money for a mortgage without making me give a hand job to the loan officer, then pretty much anyone in the world can get a mortgage.

Of course, my friends are exempt from this crankiness because everything they write is fascinating and creative and hilarious as shit. (it's okay, you guys can pay me later)

Oh. And Archer. He's just the funniest blogger I know. Plus, I'm shamelessly trying to butter him up to leave his wife and marry me.

You know what?

Having done the rants here, I actually feel a little better.

Go Home and Watch Project Runway Better.

Oh, Wait. There is One Place Where I Actually Feel Successful

I have loving friends. Amazing loving friends.

And I love my sisters sooooooo much.

That being said, none of them are fuckin me.

Existential 911

Ok, kids. You need to brace yourselves. This is a rant.

I'm having a serious existential crisis here and need some feedback. This means, if you are a friend, and a lurker, or a lurker who is a friend, prop me up here, folks. Give me advice, counsel, or buy me a goddamn drink.

Cause crawling under the floorboards to die and stink the place up doesn't seem to be an option. Nor does coming back on Christmas Eve to rattle chains and say things like "I wear the chains I forged in life..."

I am flummoxed by my situation at work. Daily. Hourly. I know, I know, all the spiritual teachers say that I can use it as part of my practice. But goldurnit, I am just not there on the path to enlightenment yet. Sheesh. I can't even claim bodhisattva status (fyi, bodhisattvas are those who choose to remain in samsara until all sentient beings have achieved enlightenment). I have to admit something here - I have learned that it bothers me to know that not everyone likes me. I know, I'm supposed to be waaaayy beyond that. And I'm the most famous one to say, "Who gives a shit what other people think?" Well, I'm here to tell you, folks, when you catch someone giving you a look that is sooo full of loathing that it nails you to the floor, well, that just sucks. Yes, sometimes I feel like I have a scarlet brand on my forehead that says, "Yes, I have slept with other women's husbands/boyfriends." Just because I did a bad thing doesn't mean I'm a bad person. But, you know what, I guess I am just not everyone's cup of tea.

But more importantly, there's this other situation and it is so disturbing to me that I am completely stumped. It's called gender discrimination with a creepy undertone of sexual harassment, and I've talked to my boss about it. The company is aware of it, and FOUR OTHER WOMEN prior to me complained about it (before subsequently quitting), and still they don't do anything about it. Hey, Archer, you out there? Can you refer me to a good EEOC lawyer? 'Cause I don't understand why the company allowed the women to be driven out and these ASSHOLES still have jobs. What. The. Fuck. Any lawyers out there who want to comment? You know, Karmic Justice just isn't enough here. I mean, yes, I do believe that any man who sexually harasses women -- it bounces onto his female loved ones two times over. When an untoward comment was made to me once here (by someone now departed) I did shut him up by quietly asking him, "Do you have a daughter, Al?"

I am flummoxed by men... At what point did I become so distrustful and watchful and wary? I mean, for the luvva Mike, my heart could have its own sound effects (cue slamming door, bolt sliding, and drawbridge going up. Oh wait, then don't forget the sound of the General Lee peeling out at high speed.) When did I make all of these mofo RULES? "I will ask twice. If I ask twice and you say no, then I will never ask again." Granted, men have done some pretty terrible things to me, frequently with my permission. And hoooo boy, did my mother do a number on me. And you know what? My brothers are pretty mean people. My Dad is the most loveable man on the planet, but when it comes right down to it, he's feckless.

And you know what? Sometimes I get so fucking tired of always being so goddamned strong and independent and I-don't-need-anyone's-help-cause-I've-got-my-own-toolbox and I know how to change my own oil. Sometimes I wish to whoever that my mother had taught me all the things that other girls learned how to be, how to be outwardly weak and bat my eyes and make men want to buy me expensive stuff (why is it that no man in my life has ever wanted to buy me expensive stuff?) and take care of me like a little piece of girlfluff while all the time getting exactly what I want. Iron fist in velvet glove, steel magnolia, blah, blah blah. Sometimes I wish to god I didn't feel like I'm going through life all elbowy and poky-outy and prickly and snarky. Those little pieces of girlfluff, they can actually eat. me. alive. So I wish to god I could meet someone who looks at me and sees my elbows and poky-outy parts and doesn't think that is who I am but who actually sees the breakable inside that wants and needs all of the tenderheartedness and gentleness that he has to offer and that maybe, sometimes, I need to be set down on velvet and treated like a rare and special diamond.

I don't actually believe that is too much to ask.

You guys tell me.

Cause I'm freakin' exhausted.

The Next Record

Spent some much-needed alone time with Will on Friday night. He and I haven't hung out together, just us, with no outside bullshit, in so long.

He played his new record for me and it is so beautiful. Now, without a doubt, I am biased, like a proud mommy, or at least the way a best friend should be, but listening to it down to the cellular level, it's just a really good record. Cohesive, thematic, and meticulously crafted. It's not one song with a lot of crap splattered around it, like most albums put out by the major labels these days.

And oh, my goodness, can the guy write a hook like nobody's business. Every song you hear, you think to yourself, "I know this song!" But wait, you don't, but you will, and then you find yourself hours later singing one of the choruses and wondering how you know it already.

I can't wait for it to come out, and I can't wait to be able to say, "I knew Will when..."

Just as I suspected, I think I might be kind of a hippie

Someone at work called me a "hippie," and I was delighted!

See, all these people know about me is -- oh, wait, that's right, they don't know ANYTHING about me, 'cause no one here bothered to ask me any questions about myself for the first four months I was here.

They do know that I worked in environmental printing before I came here, so I guess to most of the mamalukes who work here, I'm a certified tree-hugger. All most people have to hear are the words "recycled paper" and it conjures up images of patchouli-smelling, birkenstock-wearing, Burning-Man-going hippie girls doing a noodle dance to Grateful Dead or Phish jams.

But that's not me! I swear! Okay, I do wear a patchouli blend of essential oils. But you will never, ever find a pair of Birkenstocks anywhere near my closet. They're just... ugly. Comfortable doesn't have to mean serious ugly. Two words: Frye Boots. And I've never done enough psychedelics to want to go to Burning Man. It just didn't seem ... appealing.

(I know, I go on and on about my Frye boots like I want to marry them -- now that you mention it, my favorite old pair of Frye boots has lasted longer than just about any marriage I can think of... Hmmm. Would I rather have a great pair of favorite old boots or a marriage? I dunno, you can re-sole a great pair of boots, I have yet to see the marriage of anyone I know that can survive a hole in the sole or a broken heel.)

What no one here knows is that I came to New York and was a *gasp* Advertising Agency Whore. Suits, heels, briefcase, the works. I know, if you know me, you can't believe it. (Racer X, he would believe it, because that's when we met -- when I was Agency Wench.) It's okay, i got out when I realized that a whole lot of people in advertising thought that what they were doing was important. No, seriously, these people actually believe that what they do matters (roll eyes here).

In the meantime, there *is* something going on here, with someone I work with, but I'm not quite ready to talk about it. I don't know if I will at all. Suffice it to say I did get drunk with the hottest guy here, after which I dragged him off to my lair. We've been having a probably-unwise email flirtation during work hours, and all I want to do is drag him back to Brooklyn and have my way with him (in a non-drunken and not-meaningless way).

More will be revealed.

Well, That's Two Years of My Life I'll Never Get Back

All those words, words, words, words, words.

And to think, I could have just picked up Julia Fordham's lyrics to "The Comfort of Strangers," and well, frankly, it's my whole damn blog in a 4-minute song.

Sheeyit.

Here it is:

I'm jam packed full of movie clips and other junk
TV shows and videos and another whole bunch of stuff
It's like a snippet of a song that no longer belongs
And I'm looking to the comfort of strangers

It's noisy and disjointed in this tangled mess
I'm jarred and jangling on a raw and jagged edge
It's like a picture that has faded the colours have all blurred
And I'm drawn to the comfort of strangers.

And I see myself lying in your arms
When I close my eyes at night
No complex conversation
Ooh to taste the comfort of strangers

I'm fit to burst with CD tracks and stereo
Coupled with bad memories that just never seem to go
And you'd have think that I'd learnt that I always get burned
When I take refuge in the comfort of strangers

Still I see myself lying in your arms
When I close my eyes at night
No complex conversation
Ooh to taste the comfort of strangers

Oh lead me not into temptation
To fight these feelings of frustration
I want a stillness inside and a silence of mind
And to stop dreaming of the comfort of strangers

And I see myself lying in your arms
When I close my eyes at night
And I see myself lying in your arms
When I close my eyes at night
No complex conversation
Ooh to taste the comfort, I want to taste the comfort
Oh please give me the comfort of your arms

The comfort of strangers
The comfort of strangers
It's you, only you
The stranger I've been dreaming of
I close my eyes and I'm lying in your arms
Your arms, with you, with you
The stranger I've been dreaming of
I close my eyes
The comfort of strangers
The comfort of strangers

A Quote

From Lama Surya Das, Awakening the Buddhist Heart.

"A good life is not about money, real estate, careers, or the stock market; it's about how well we love and are loved. It's about living with heart."

Just wanted to throw that out there.

More as a reminder to myself than anything. Sometimes I forget.

...or at least like me a good deal.

I'm really trying to stop speaking in tyrannical absolutes.

Really.

but...

lest ye think I'm getting soft on y'all... I do have one more thing to say.

If you are an old lady and you body-check me out of the way to get onto the L train at 14th Street while I'm trying to get off, then it's GAME ON.

The Dating Experiment

If a guy seems completely into you -- but only when you are together, and then forgets you exist for the rest of the time, as the book says, he's just not that into you.

It sucks to realize that, but when I realized I was having the same relationship with a single, supposedly "available" guy that I had with the married/boyfriend guys, I got the hell out.

There is no way I was going to sit around like a good dog, waiting for table scraps of time from someone again. That ship has sailed, my friends.

Since this is the year that I am pondering the Nature of Love, I'm glad I had that little enlightenment moment.

The next person I sleep with -- MUST. LOVE. ME.

The Chattering of Conditioned Mind

Hold your hand at arm's length from your head. Make that quacking duck motion with your hand pointed at your head. Say to yourself, "yip! yip! yip! yip! yip!"

THAT is what my favorite zen teacher calls conditioned mind.

Conditioned mind, or egocentric karmic conditioning, is out there yammering away all the time. Conditioned mind doesn't really want you to be happy (though it will frequently claim to be acting in your best interests). Conditioned mind is all of the *stuff* that we learned as children, whether we knew it or not, that we have so internalized that we don't even recognize it as conditioning anymore.

For instance, last week, Conditioned Mind spoke to me LOUD and CLEAR, and I actually believed and acted based on what CM said to me:

I went to a reception that was being hosted by Naropa University in Boulder CO. They have a contemplative education program, and a Master's program. I am thinking about pursuing an MFA in creative writing. Naropa meets so many of my needs in so many ways:

a) Contemplative education -- the university was founded by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, one of the main guys who brought Buddhism to the West. By definition, it's not like other cutthroat master's programs.

b) Their writing program is called The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. That alone should be enough.

c) It is in Boulder, Colorado. Look, if someone came up to me on the street tomorrow and said, "I will take you back to Colorado, but the only condition is you have to marry me," I'd ask which subway goes to City Hall. The fact that there is this amazing Buddhist thing going on there is enough for me to take myself there.

Okay, so I'm not going now, or even probably next year, but my promise to my heart -- to my heart, people -- has been that I will go back to Colorado by the end of the decade. Yes, I am homesick. That's a story for another entry

So I go to this reception, and it's fine, and you may not believe it, but I'm feeling kind of shy. Hang around the fringes and listen politely shy. Everything is fine while the good people of Naropa are talking about the University. Suddenly, they start breaking the room up into groups -- "people interested in grad programs over here," and "undergrads over there."

Listen: here's where CM kicked in, and here's what it said, "What the hell are you doing here? You don't belong in this room! Those other people -- they're the writers and artists! What makes you think you're any kind of writer!"

Needless to say, I am well-conditioned. Working on it, but still prone to occasionally listening to CM. So at that moment, I got up and fled the room in an agony of UN-confidence.

The upside of this is that instead of going into "Oh, well, it really wasn't for me, anyway," rationalization that I do, I realized and recognized what had happened right away. The downside? I was already on a downtown 6 train headed home.

Then I very, very gently and as lovingly as possible reminded myself that I am a writer. I just forgot how to nourish my writer. And I am just learning how to do that -- by writing. And I also reminded myself that Naropa will be back, and in fact isn't going anywhere, and that just because I left this reception, it doesn't mean I won't go to another one.

We're back at conscious, compassionate awareness.

Now, think about all these things CM was telling me. I couldn't possibly imagine saying any of these terrible things to a friend. One of the things I'm slowly absorbing is how to treat myself in the way a loving friend would treat me.

Annie & I were talking about this last night when I got home from meditation class, and she quoted Cheri thus:

"Never leave the loving conversation with the person who is in pain."

Taking this job

was the biggest mistake of my life.

i sold my soul for thirty pieces of silver.

I'm now resigned to hating my life from 9 to 5. And
making the most of it afterward.

maybe drugs. maybe i'll start using drugs.

Ewww

The creepy guy I dated for a week included me on his
birthday party list.

Birthday Text Message

File this under: "Items To Be Diplomatically Ignored and Not Dignified with a Response"

Text Message received on 10/2/06:

"wanna celebrate our respective bdays together in your shower?"

Perhaps the big dummy should at least get points for perseverance.

He'll never be getting laid for his perseverance, but he is an unexpected source of amusement, which does have a lot of value.

Is This Better Than the Chicken Dance?

I've spent my life sort of dancing on the fringes of things -- sort of in the circle, but not quite all the way in. I dip my toe in the water, but keep one foot safely on the shore in case I have to make a run for it. (Come to think of it, I do always have my passport with me...)

It's a kind of emotional Hokey Pokey, where I'm quite enthusiastic about putting my right foot in, and my right foot out, then wholeheartedly shaking it all about. But...

When we get to that part of the song that goes, "You put your WHOLE SELF in, you take your WHOLE SELF out, you put your WHOLE SELF in...." Well, that's when my psyche throws up its hands, mops its brow and says, "Whew! Am I bushed! Do I need a refreshment! Which way to the bar?" And smiling (always smiling, always smiling), I back out of the circle away from the people around me who are clearly less neurotic than I am, or at least better at hiding it.

A trained therapist would say this stems from my fears of intimacy, relationships and committment.

He or she would probably be right.

But hey, every day, the dance gets a little more uninhibited and I get a little closer to the middle of the circle.

It's baby steps, kid. Baby steps.

Mean Streak

Every now and then, I want to walk up to an obviously anorexic chick, pretend I know her from way back, and then comment, "Wow! You've really put on some weight!"

Holy Consumer Hell, Batman!

Saturday afternoon, feeling motivated and also a little peckish for some shopping, I realized that, hmmmmm, yes, I am ready to start dating.

You know what that means, ladies.

New underwear. You buy new underwear when you are ready to dive into a new relationship, or to even put yourself back on the market. God forbid you should take someone home when you're wearing last year's grayed-out Lilyette with the underwire that's been poking you under your boob for six weeks. Or when you're down to your last pair of underpants and are forced to wear the granny gutchies that you keep hidden in the back of your underwear drawer. (Why do you have them, again?)

So I'm feeling a little, I don't know, hungry or something. Not necessarily for a relationship, but for something. Regular companionship. Regular sex, for god's sake.

Natale doesn't count. He was a test relationship, total time spent together over 7 weeks, approximately 36 hours. Not really a relationship of any kind. Not to mention, the sex was a disaster of epic proportions. How is it that you can be completely physically attracted to someone, only to have it all fall apart when the naked happens? To him, I think I was just some person transporting a pair of tits that he was enamored with. I was their driver.

So, no, Natale wasn't enough to inspire me to buy new bras and underpants. In fact, I called him AFTER buying the bras and underpants and ended it.

(By the way, does anyone call them underpants anymore?)

So, I headed to Macy's. During a sale. On a Saturday. In the rain.

Perhaps I should have gotten stoned before I went. Maybe it would have mellowed me out.

At any rate, when you see that your favorite brand and style of bra is on sale for less than twenty bucks, you stock up. Men will never know. Once, in a fit of passion, Rocky ripped my bra off my body. What came out of my mouth, instead of a gleeful "oooh" was "Hey! That was a fifty dollar bra!"

But I digress.

Anyhow, you've got to love a new bra. When I wear a new bra, it's like I've been issued a new pair of boobs. Seriously. They just look better. Perkier or something.

The most serious mistake of the day, however, was going to the fragrance department. With the noise, smells and lights, I felt like I was trapped inside a pinball machine, being caromed from one Spritzer Person to another. They kept looming in front of me like apparitions out of a horror movie, wielding their bottles, forcing me to throw my hands up to protect my eyes. Finally, all I could do to protect myself was blurt out to one of them, "Michael Kors!"

Like I said, I shoulda been stoned.

This Book I'm Reading

Well, actually, there are about 4 that I've got going right now.

But I picked up CS Lewis this weekend (yes, *that* CS Lewis, the Narnia one) "A Grief Observed." Yeah, yeah, go ahead, say what you want about the nonbeliever picking up a book by a Christian writer. Just because I don't believe in God doesn't mean that I don't believe in great writers who believe in God. What can I say? I'm a literature whore, a slut for the well-written word. One of my favorite writers, Anne Lamott, is a self-described "Jesusy" Christian.

A little background -- I was shocked by hard I was hit by Mark's death in July -- it actually plunged me into a deep, deep mourning. I thought I was depressed but came to realize that I was GRIEVING. And grief is something we, as a culture, treat like a head cold -- you know, you've had a couple of days to be sad, now get over it, move on, aren't you finished being sad, YET?

Why are we so uncomfortable with our own sadness and mourning? We're bombarded with messages that we are supposed to be happy all the time. And if we're not, then there must surely be something wrong with us, so take this pill -- no, this pill -- no, try this one! We fail to recognize that grief is a process to be gone through, not a thing to be discarded or distracted, or a disease to be cured by magic pills. We are so uncomfortable with others' sadness or depression or weltzschmerz or whatever you want to call it, that we WANT people to pop the little blue pills that will make them more appropriate. Well, I ask you this -- since when is it inappropriate to show that you are sad when you are sad? We have become so uncomfortable with the cycle and circles of our own emotional thermostats. Somehow, the belief has been perpetuated that the emotional temperature should always be 72 degrees and sunny, with no humidity.

Well, folks, I like weather. All kinds of weather. It reminds me I'm alive.

A week after his death, my sister went back to work. Simply because she did not know what else to do. Rattling around their house, in which they had lived for just one month, in which Mark was so happy to live because it wasn't an apartment, because he had a lawn to mow and a driveway of his own, was just too overwhelming for her. So she did what we women in our family do. We go to work. A few days in, one of her young co-workers said to her, "What's wrong, Carol? You seem so quiet today." (Oh the insensitivity of the young.)

"I'm not quiet. I'm mourning and in grief. Mark DIED. This isn't the flu. I'm not going to get over it in a week and have my life go back to normal. He DIED." I actually have to feel pretty bad for the kid. She probably felt terrible.

Anyhow, I picked up this book at Barnes & Noble -- there I was, lurking like a pervert in the Christianity section of the store, hoping not to see anyone I knew.

I flipped it open on the subway, and began to read:

"No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear."

My throat began to feel tight and breathing became difficult, and I could only put my head down and weep silently all the way to Lorimer Street.