Do any of you readers drink Yogi tea? I drink the Green Tea Super Antioxidant tea instead of coffee, sometimes. My thinking is it is counteracting something, somewhere in my toxic body and it tastes good. Anyway, every bag of tea has a little white paper tab at the end of the string with a quote on it. Kinda like an Om Shanti fortune cookie, without the cookie. And yes, sometimes these inspirational quotes are lame as crap; like, Your beating heart is an echo of the earth or Breathe in sunshine to dissipate your foggy mood (I made those up but you get the idea).
Today’s tea offered up the quote in the photo above; Love has no fear and no vengeance. Hmmm. Kinda cheesy, but it hit home for me for a few reasons.
Vengeance is seductive. It’s anger with an active sword, meant to do harm. While anger has a place in the grief process, vengeance does not. It’s fun to fantasize about, but acting on it only serves to do harm. Throughout this break-up process I have been counseled to get angry, lash out, be more dramatic in my emotions, seek vengeance. And I get that, I really do. However, I decided in the beginning of this break up that rather than be angry, which could only serve to create drama and stress, I decided I would focus on the excellent love that I had experienced with this person and work from there instead. It can only serve us both and those around us to honor a love that at one point was absolute magic rather than be seduced into a place that, when we were together, we never inhabited. We never operated from anger or drama or verbal jabs that would do real harm. So why do it now? Because it feels more powerful than sadness? Because it would serve him right? Because I want him to hurt as much as I have been hurting? All valid points AND I HAVE FANTASIZED ABOUT IT. I could wield a mighty sword and with one well-timed lunge, I could leave him wounded for a very long time. But the aftermath would suck. It wouldn’t feel good. Honestly, there is so much fucking crap going on in the world right now that I don’t want my life in any way to mirror the hate and divisiveness growing in our country.
And the truth is, I went into this relationship without fear and found a great love. So why leave it with vengeance?
The word that keeps coming to mind these days is Grace. It’s a word that gets used a lot on the tea bag quotes. It’s not a word I ever use in my daily ramblings, but right now it keeps popping into my head. And that’s what I’m going with. Grace. Honoring something that was beautiful and rare and the person who helped me create that something beautiful; honoring it all with Grace. And some whiskey, because I’m not a zen-master and I have Yogi tea to cleanse my toxins, so it all works out.
Hey, Yogi Tea people – You should put this blog post on your tea bag paper thingy!
Now I’m going to stop writing, because I’m grossing myself out with all this cheesiness.
“As soon as you’re done taking photos of me, I will claw the crap out of your couch. You cannot stop me. I am Cat.”
We (me and the lovely man) got a kitten. We are moving in to a new place at the end of July, which means combining silverware and tupperware, deciding which blender stays (his), and which pots and pans go (mine). It means intertwining our lives the way our fingers are when we hold hands (wow, that was pretty sappy even for me, but whatever). It means a solid step across the threshold to what is next for us, toward the future, toward each other. And on Sunday, we got a kitten to begin this next phase with us and to satisfy a need for pet induced stress-reduction (his) and some serious kitty lust (mine).
“And then, while you were at work, I decided to build a fort with your pillows and use my newly sharpened claws to snag the silk on all your pillow cases.”
We’ve got a few names floating around and are waiting for one to land. In the meantime, we haz kitten. I will take my rightful place as a cat photo/video poster on the interwebs. Isn’t that what it’s for anyway?
On Sunday afternoon we had forty five minutes to fit in a workout of some sort before a gallery speaking engagement I had scheduled. We took to the neighborhood streets and their heart-rate-rising hills to get the blood flowing and our minds (well, my mind anyway) up and humming.
As we approached the first hill at a fast clip I realized we were holding hands, not an unusual occurrence in these days of the I-like-you-close-to-me-as-much-as-possible-because-you-are-the-best-thing-ever phase (which I hope isn’t a phase, but just the normal, every day, forever-way we will be together).
As we began puffing our way up the first hill I asked,
Do people usually hold hands when they’re working out?
Without hesitation he replied,
They do when they’re in love.
I stopped walking, kissed the hand that was held in mine and returned his honest, blue-eyed gaze.
It’s surprising, to me, this sort of blatant love. Quite often his verbal declarations leave me speechless. Holding hands is often the right way to wordlessly express such new and profound emotions that are only just now making their way in to my vocabulary.
Fingers entwined, subtle pressure, exchanged body heat; hand holding, like giving flowers, is such a simple way to show love.
A sweetheart of a man brought me flowers at work today. Unexpected, full of life and color; the bouquet and the man.
The connection of women and flowers is a long and historic one. The connotation of each flower, the giver and the way it is given are as varied as the women themselves.
I chide my younger male co-workers for not giving their women flowers; spontaneous flower gifts, not bouquets given as a floral apology. You know, the kind of flowers that are given on a rainy (or sunny) Tuesday that basically say, “I was thinking of you”. The younger co-workers assure me that their women do not care about not getting flowers, to which my response is, “Yes, but what if you gave them anyway?”
What if, indeed?
Looking at my bouquet in a vase on the desk, the general feeling in me is to give. The upwelling of generosity, the desire to please and return the happiness those humble blooms give to me, the thought that I would do anything for that man if he asked me to, each petal as a token dropping in the slot to keep the gears of love and kindness running smoothly in my heart.
Julia Roberts has never been a favorite actress of mine. She’s tough to get past. Meaning, when I see Julia Roberts playing another person I see Julia Roberts playing another person, not the character she is trying to embody. My actor tastes run toward Aussie Cate and British Kate. And, of course, Magic Meryl the American. Note: Yes, I have noticed that I have written more about Julia Roberts on this blog than any other actress. I’ll work on this.
However, I did love the 1999 movie NOTTING HILL for a few reasons, despite the fact that Julia was playing, well, HERSELF.
One reason was Hugh Grant’s line the morning after Julia spent the night. She asks,
Can I stay for a while?
And he replies,
You can stay forever.
What a LOVELY, WONDERFUL, PERFECT thing to say. But I digress.
The main reason I fell in love with the movie and the moment I decided to write a screenplay was the musical montage.
Here’s a quick summary:
Julia has just kicked Hugh to the curb for the second time. Hugh is left alone with his smitten heart in the middle of the bustling street market of Notting Hill.
Cue the music: Ain’t no Sunshine when She’s Gone.
It’s high SUMMER. Hugh walks through the street market. Jacket slung over his shoulder, shirt slightly unbuttoned in the heat. Vendors and neighbors smile, say hello, nod. Hugh does the same in return, but he’s subdued with the weight of his heartbreak.
He keeps walking. It’s FALL in the market place. Leaves blow, the pregnant woman looks a little fuller around the middle, he puts on his jacket.
Still walking through the marketplace, the snow comes, high WINTER, he folds the collar of his jacket up around his neck. Still the same nods and smiles. But it’s obvious his heart is not in it.
And then, SPRING.
The jacket opens up, fresh green and red fruits in the market, the previously pregnant woman holds her darling baby, apple blossom petals blow by in a breeze, crocusues are surely blooming in Buckingham Palace. And still our Hugh is putting on a brave face for the public. Nodding and smiling, with a decidedly hang-dog, and floppy haired demeanor.
But everyone knows SPRING is a time of rebirth. Life is fertile again. Hope SPRINGS. And sure enough, Hugh gets his Julia in the end (and a Chagall painting, lucky bastard).
This montage was brilliant, really. Perfectly written as a moving picture (which is what movies are) and as a way to further the story while passing time, all four seasons in this case.
In my own personal moving picture, I’m in the musical montage phase and time is definitely passing.
In my montage I am the forlorn, hang-dog expressioned, mourner of a broken heart, dressed in black going to work every day and pretending to interact with feeling. I am saying Well, Hello? How ARE you? and then answering when asked in return, I’m fine thank you, just fine, yes, things are good with a genuinely fake smile on my face. I nod and smile to the people I meet on the bustling street, etc. etc. It all looks good from the outside, but if I was being filmed, the accompanying music would tell the true story.
Here’s how it would go:
Cue the music: Hold My Heart, by Sarah Bareilles.
While the music plays, I am seen in the heat of SUMMER selling a very fine painting, smiling, laughing, shaking hands in friendship as I peel off my tailored jacket in the warmth and glance out the window as if looking for someone who never appears.
As the FALL leaves blow in a dry wind I’m captured raising a glass of wine in a celebratory toast after rallying troops of artists to bring together a show that people talk about around town, write about in the local press. Smiles all around, my smiles not lingering for very long.
WINTER finds me at work pulling nails from the wall, and repainting the damaged portions to hang something new. Paint is on my face and clothes, spackle under my fingernails.
Switch to a scene of me at home. Cold winds blow outside my bedroom window, while a cup of tea steams on the table beside me. I hunch over my laptop writing an essay to be published in the coming year. Or, for serious comic relief, the scene would show me in the throws of Pilates, strung up on springs and cables like a spastic marionette, while rain beats against the studio windows. This scene would be akin to the Bridget Jones post-breakup montage portion when she falls off the stationary bike at the gym.
Looking busy and continually moving is very important to a grieving person within a montage. So, while I may look may focused and attentive true moviegoers will know my mind is off somewhere else, with someone else, and that all this busyness is just a distraction.
And then SPRING. What happens then?
Well, in real life it’s coming. And with it some sort of change, some sort of re-birth. It MUST. Every montage is the segue to change and the next act, so why should my version be any different?
I’m ready for the fulfillment of desire, some sort of redemption, even if it isn’t the object of my mourning showing up on my doorstep with his heart in his hands offering me everlasting love and devotion as well as a Chagall painting. I don’t expect that in particular, but there has to be something. Even if it’s just the switch to more colorful clothes, a happier song running through my mind, genuine pleasure in daily life. That would be more than enough. I’ve paid my dues for three seasons and SPRING is just around the corner.
For now I will write the SPRING portion of my montage like this:
Cue the song for SPRING: Actually, I haven’t found the happy SPRING song yet, but when I do I will post it here.
The scene shows me, rounding a corner carrying an armful of bright, yellow daffodils just purchased from the crowded farmer’s market and running into…well, change I guess. The question is, what will that change look and be like?
The final rule for every musical montage is this: sooner or later the song has to end and the dialog begins. Again.
Onward to SPRING,
Miss MoL
For those of you who haven’t seen the Hugh Grant montage, here it is.
And what song is the soundtrack to where you are in your life right now? Beyonce’s SINGLE LADIES? Stevie Nick’s GOLDUST WOMAN? Journey’s FAITHFULLY? David Bowie’s UNDER PRESSURE? The entire soundtrack of Disney’s THE LITTLE MERMAID? The possibilities are endless…
In my writing quest this week, I took a break and re-read a few things (not essays, really. I usually refer to them as crap) I had written in the last few months. This portion of a longer piece on committment caught my eye. Since I can’t seem to write anything creatively new for this blog, I’m posting it. For whatever it’s worth.
Then there’s the question of love. How does that happen? I think that I’ve figured that one out, too, even though it sounds presumptuous of me to say so. Love also just happens. One day you’re holding hands and laughing together in the movie theater and the next day you wake up and realize you cannot keep it to yourself any longer; the pressure in your chest and the kaleidoscope of emotion in your mind and body cosmically combine in your heart to form those three little words and they come spilling out on a softly sunny Labor Day morning as soon as you open your eyes and feel him there next to you thinking the same thing…
And there’s really nothing you can do about it. I wouldn’t want to do anything about it. It just happens.
I suppose this post should really be titled DEAR ELIZABETH GILBERT, but I’ve already written a few of those, so I thought I would branch out on the title tree.
I have finally committed myself to reading COMMITTED, the follow-up book to EAT, PRAY, LOVE. It’s a good book. The tricky part about reading it is that every ten minutes or so something she wrote triggers a thought about something I want to write. Reading is therefore continually interrupted by stopping to either jot down notes or actually crank out a page or two of text on the computer.
One of these reading breaks ended up with me producing a small book, a novella if you will. It is a tale of how the FANTASTIC* lack of marriage in my own life is like the EYE OF SAURON (I’m referring to Tolkien here), but without the evil-ness. The Eye finds me wandering the exhausted landscape of singledom on my quest for love, captures me in its white hot spot-light beam, and renders me helpless and teary at the grocery store when a Dan Fogelberg song comes on (you know the one – Met my old lover at the Grocery Store, the snow was fallin’ Christmas Eee-eve…). Maybe it is an evil eye after all.
Anyhoo, back to COMMITTED.
The first thing that struck me about Elizabeth Gilbert’s book is that it is an exploration into the institution of marriage. She did her research before she got married. She and Felipe made a plan. They had a year to prepare and took the time to research marriage. Smart! Right?
Most of us would never, say, invest in a certain stock without doing some serious research and yet many of us have entered into marriage without examining it from every angle. Because where’s the romance in that? So many American women buy in to the romantic fantasy of marriage, blithely skipping over the research that should be done before investing in this most intimate of bonds. Myself included.
If you don’t have goals, if you don’t have a plan, if you don’t have at least a general idea of the marriage road ahead (or any road for that matter) you are at the mercy of what is thrown at you. Basically, you are a sitting duck piñata, swinging in the breeze, waiting for the next blind-folded hit that will most likely NOT release showers of candy, just dent the crap out of your relationship.
Elizabeth Gilbert has done some research and written it all up in an entertainingly personal way, so I will gladly read it. Even though it is not lost on me that marriage is often referred to as an INSTITUTION to which we can be COMMITTED, it is still one ASYLUM** to which I would voluntarily commit myself.
Thanks for sharing your research, Liz.
Ciao people,
Miss MoL
* FANTASTIC used not as “Hey that’s great! That’s Fantastic!”. But more along the lines of the definition So extreme as to challenge disbelief. Fantasy. Not real! Not real!
** ASYLUM used with reference to the definition A place of retreat and security: shelter. Not the insane kind.
Toes in the PACIFIC - Spring, 2010. With a good pedicure. Yes, I know I have a giant space between my toes.
I couldn’t wait to put my Pacific chilled feet into the warmer Atlantic. Sandy toes! Body surfing! Running along the sand in my flowing beach dress! Early morning runs on a beach untouched by footprints! Blessed summer vacation for a whole week! Yay!
Toes in the ATLANTIC - Summer, 2010. No pedicure. Still have the space.
The very first day, I stripped off my beach cover up and strolled down to the water. It was a bit chilly, but so clear! A light breeze nudged the Atlantic as I ventured deeper. The sandy bottom was rippled and soft. Finally in up to my thighs I pushed off to rise over a wave.
Longport Beach.
I came down and there was a laser like zing that went from my heel up to my knee that elicited a gasp. The next wave went right through me as I stood trying to figure out what had just happened to my leg. Jelly fish tendrils? A Nemo love bite? JAWS?!
I limped back to our beach camp. It felt like a pulled muscle or a really bad Charlie Horse. No big deal, I assured everyone. I massaged it, put ice on it, it would be better the next day.
Not so much.
The sharp pain had lessened by morning, but by late afternoon the sides of my ankle were swollen with a dark, purple bruise. It’s awesome to be on a beach vacation with purple elephantitis of the ankle! The diagnosis of pulled calf muscle with some trauma/separation from the achilles tendon was decreed. Apparently when trauma happens in the calf muscle, the blood pools in the ankle. I iced and elevated and compressed it (still am) and succumbed to my sedentary state.
...
Obviously, the universe or whomever was wanting me to really STOP on this vacation. Stop and contemplate and stare at the ocean rather than running along beside it.
So I did. And I also sampled FIVE different kinds of cheese steak (McCools in Avalon won the taste test), savored some gelato, experienced an Italian hoagie, cream donuts, and cinnamon rolls, assorted cocktails. Then there was pizza. And more pizza.
...
Prior to this trip I was aware that I needed to slow down. I need to be still more often and look around me, focus on one thing for more than a moment. I’ve been distracting myself, lately, with movies and books and work. Distracting myself from what? From the thoughts (good and bad) that inevitably arise when your body and mind are quiet, the clear thoughts and solutions that come through when we are still and focused and in this case, staring at the ocean.
I had a lot of profound thoughts on this trip, some having to do with my life, many having to do with pizza (where the next slice would be coming from) and most having to do with LOVE.
LOVE of BABIES (One miracle baby in particular)
LOVE of OCEAN
LOVE of FRIENDS
LOVE of FAMILY
LOVE of a CERTAIN MAN
Solitary confinement. In a good way.
It’s good to get away. But it’s even better to return with clarity, purple ankle and all.
WHEN I WAS FIFTEEN YEARS OLD, the more heart broken and forlorn I was, the more I wrote in my journal. Pages and pages (did I mention pages?) of teenage melancholy punctuated by a big sad-face icon. At one point in my THIRTIES I burned those journals in my fireplace as a testament to leaving that crap behind.
In my FORTIES I find I cannot write unless I am feeling happy. Conversely, I find I become happy (or happy-ER) once I begin writing. The deal with this blog was to share the happy, sarcastic, chuckle-icious moments with the internet world.
I was once labeled by a friend as being like HOLLY GO-LIGHTLY. Honestly? These days I have not been feeling very Go-Lightly, therefore not writing much at all. Last week I posted a hopeful Shakespearean sonnet. This week all that’s running through my brain is the funereal poem by W.H. AUDEN.
If I’m going to share globally it should be the happy-go-lucky part of my personality. Right? Why would I put my mid-life melancholia out into the forever land of the interwebs? You can’t burn it later on in your FIFTIES. *Sigh* God forbid I end up withe BLACK CLOUD OF THE BLOGGING WORLD Award.
Look at The Pioneer Woman. She is NEVER down. Every post is BEAUTIFUL HUSBAND! ADORABLE CHILDREN! INTERESTING RANCH LIFE! GORGEOUS PHOTOS OF FOOD! DARLING DOGS! There is never a post about angst or melancholy and I love her for that.
So, where does that leave me? In a tough time. In a melancholy place that is certainly more informed than when I was fifteen. In a place that I thought was one thing and has become another. In a place that is new territory and therefore frightening. In place that makes me realize that regardless of how old we think we are, how much we think we have learned, there is always more. For better and for worse. And under this dark cloud right now I choose to see it for the better.
DEAR INTERNET, bear with me and thank you for providing a place to write my way to a better place. In keeping with my recent post about Annie Lennox and the List of 1,000 BEAUTIFUL THINGS, here is a partial list of beautiful things that make me happy;
– Waking up knowing that all you have to do is whatever you want and hopefully it will involve coffee in bed, the person you love, and a good book.
-Good French or Italian movies (or even bad ones make me happy – who am I kidding)
– Beaches and Sunshine
– Kittens!
– Speaking Italian
– Wandering through an ancient city for the first time
– My daughter
– My family
– An exceptional piece of art
– Summertime
– Fireflies
– String quartets
– Cathedral bells ringing (although those can trigger melancholy as well)
– Love letters, love letters, love letters (sending and receiving)
Well, I do feel better after writing this post. I wouldn’t say happy. But maybe happy-ISH.
What are the things that make you happy? What are the things that take away your black clouds if you ever have them? Let’s swap lists.
Onward,
Miss Holly Go-Lightly-ish
PS: If you haven’t read it yet, I highly recommend THE HAPPINESS PROJECT, by Gretchen Rubin. Based on the subject of this post, I should probably re-read it.