Sunday, November 25, 2012

On the Ride Of Your Life, Sometimes You Have to Hold On

The porch and yard and driveway are covered in leaves and twigs that have shook loose from their oak trees. The rake is locked up in the owner's storage unit, and even though I predict the fruitlessness of this, I sweep them off with the broom anyway, knowing that a gust will bring them right back to settle out side the window where I sit on my yoga mat. Nature rules supreme here.


“As I let go of the need to arrange my life, the universe brings abundant good to me.” Deepak Chopra’s voice soothes.   I am once again in the middle of a 21-day meditation challenge; the fourth and final theme of the year is Abundance. This week, centering thoughts circulate around letting go of expectation and anticipation. 


I have been forcefully trying to arrange my life this past week.  To "get it together" I chastise myself, scouring Craigslist for housing in Los Angeles, applying for countless jobs online, writing friends and colleagues to let them know I'm available, that I am in need of a little work, knowing the seeds I'm planting are a little late in the season.  My last job of the year has been rescheduled to next April, and my end of year budget is tight.


I haven't had to send up a flare like that since Mountain View Apartment days, circa ’96, when all of the residents were out of work, behind on the rent and steeped in college loan and credit card debt. That, I silently say to Deepak's voice, is something to be thankful for.


I know I am just anxious. Trying to arrange things. Waiting for responses, hoping for a germination and forgetting that it is the end of the year, and the time for tying things up, and storing them away, making room for 2013.


I recently heard a report on NPR that 85% of resumes submitted online never get a response. Spiders crawl through submissions, picking out pertinent words that someone has keyed as necessary and important. If a resume doesn't have X number of those words, it gets auto-deleted.  It would be nice to be acknowledged; such as a form letter sent via Internet “Thank you for your application. You’re not qualified, etc.”  But this ether. This unknowing, this silent phone make it particularly difficult to obey Deepak’s mantra today.  


Maybe the silence is what I need right now.  “Be in the silence”, I will myself.

When the alarm went off on Thanksgiving morning, it was Tony Bennett I woke up to. "Life is a gift" an aging but familiar voice was crackling out. Half awake, I know the day is going to be filled with missives of gratitude starting with Morning Edition. I was not feeling this gratitude. I turned off the radio and opened my computer; bracing myself for the inbox cluttered with email blasts from various organizations I've donated to, an unoriginal choice of words ("thanksgiving" "giving thanks" or "gratitude") in the subject line.  Delete. Delete. Delete.


No doubt, I was grouchy. I am sick of making a gratitude list every day, and that this feeling of defiance should come on THE day of "THANKS"… well let's say the irony was not lost on me.


I brewed a pot of strong coffee, decided meditation would not work for me today, sweatered up and headed down to Lecount Hollow with Pepper, skeptical that his puppy poodle joy wouldn't be enough to change my attitude in time for dinner at Deb's later. The ocean hits the first sand break hard, broken buoys and clumps of seaweed litter the beach, signs of a storm. There is no land to see beyond where I stand. This is the edge of the world. I like that this is a jumping off point, a place where adventure is imminent and that these miles of protected shoreline are constantly changing, reflecting the order of a world in perpetual motion with unpredictable results.



For years, I try to live by the principle of staying present, keeping it simple.  When I’m cranky like today, sometimes this means adopting the simplest tactic of "Stop, look and listen" a jingle lodged in my brain directly from childhood, from Saturday Morning Cartoons and the animated PSAs that would run between Lucky Stars commercials and Batman.



Simple gratitude to me can be sheets on the bed and a ceiling over me. That morning, I wanted a hot bath in one of the Dorchester Hotel's deep marble tubs.  And that thought alone, the memory of my last trip to London, mysteriously caused my brain to shift gears to a Kentuckian who lent me a gentlemanly hand with my overhead luggage on the plane back from Maui last February, and the car Vanessa arranged to pick me up at the airport when she got a last minute gig, and couldn't come herself.


When I stop and look down, I see three sets of footprints on the beach with me, one hot-blooded soul who has shed their shoes, and another with treads and those of a bigger dog than Pepper. I can see their silhouettes by the wreckage of Marconi Station.  

I am not alone, I think and smile to myself. 

After dinner, my now antiquated LG phone beeps and Deb picks it up. We have the same one, and she says "It's yours", handing it over to me. There is a new email, and I glance at the subject line which states "Happy Thanksgiving". I quickly read through, and then stop and re-read it. The message overwhelms me, filling me with gratitude and awe.  

The universe has a way of turning things around.  It must be those constant revolutions around the sun, keeping us off kilter.






Saturday, November 10, 2012

In Wellfleet, the post season doesn’t mean watching your team sputter out in the pennant race, completely obliterating all chances for a World Series, (“I can’t watch the Sox”, wrote Matt Tibbi in Rolling Stone and I quite agreed). 

No, post season begins after the Main Street flood of 20,000 people, in town for the annual Oysterfest, have receded off-Cape to their homes.  PJ’s, The Beachcomber and Laughin’ Lobster mounted their “See You in April” signs late Saturday night, the same block letters that greeted me when I drove across the Bourne Bridge last April. By Monday October 15th, only 25% of the restaurants in town remain open and 90% of the homes will remain empty until June 2013.

Months have passed since I left and returned to the Cape. Summer feels like ages ago, a whole other person ago, as if August were the division between the old and New Year. For most of the month, I was living on the Karissa, a '70s Chris Craft houseboat, motors removed, sharing less than 75 feet with a man I have been involved with on and off for the past three years. I’ve managed to tell no one except my sister, and, with more vagueness than necessary, my mother. I didn't stay on the phone longer than five minutes with anyone. 

That this sometimes on, most times off again relationship flickered on again should surprise no one. I have been nothing short of reckless in matters of the heart since 1997, when, on an ill-fated evening, I hosted a dinner party and met a rotund, balding Texan and traded my good sense with a bad habit I just can’t seem to quit, like smoking and the New York Times crossword. 

What can I say? Steak on the grill, corn on the cob and my favorite ice cream in the freezer easily bamboozle me.  Except for a few day trips here and there, I was anchored to the marina, baking homemade granola, blending up green smoothies, half-heartedly doing yoga on the dock and undoing the mind body spirit routine I had established in Wellfleet. When I finally pulled out my favorite bright tangerine orange cords, they were tight around the ass. That’s what this trip to the moon on gossamer wings does to you. Widens the load. Takes up valuable space.

Two weeks into August, one of the librarians called to inform me that “… someone has, well, they’ve torn down your sign for housing and crumpled it up.  If you want to send another, I’d be happy to post it.” My ‘fleetian friend Karen later tells me to brush it off as “Augustitis”, a condition born from overly crowded markets, beaches and restaurants combined with surly impatience for the bloat to be gone.  I’ve since observed, however, that living in a community reliant on such a large seasonal populace is that when everyone “other” finally does leave, it feels as if you’re empty of breath, are strangely bewildered with the absence of energy, and a bit angry too – somewhat like a sugar crash, a symptom I was quite familiar with, especially after the seduction by homemade salted caramel ice cream and coffee in bed.

During my lie-in on the Karissa, I negotiated my lease, returning mid-September enthused, signing up for Beekeeping classes, outlining the film studies workshop I am conducting at the library for middle and high-schoolers, helping my neighbors cover the garden with sea hay until the spring and working with my friend Peter to organize volunteers for the Modern House Trust, and looking forward to the Wellfleet Oysterfest, the last big party of the year. 

Ray, the first familiar face I saw picked me up off the ground and said, "So you're back? For good!?" I said yes, but it is unlikely I will be able to stay here, notwithstanding the winter.  (“Quiet” is the common adjective I get from everyone I ask about the dark season). Putting down roots is a challenge. The Cassick Valley cottage is secured through June 30th until I join the “Wellfleet Shuffle”, due to the shortage of year round housing; unless you are lucky or well connected enough to find it.  For the rest of us, rent will double during the high season of July and August. Another setback is that these rentals are certain to be furnished by the AIM Thrift Store, the swap shop at the transfer station or IKEA,  making it difficult to decorate with things that allow you to call it “home”, or in my case, get out of storage.

This morning, I calculated that over the past five years I have spent, get ready for it, $15,000 on storage. Maybe a little less, maybe a little more, but that about sums it up. I hesitated before I multiplied five years times twelve months times the rental cost, recalling Brian’s advice as I was instructing his men on how I wanted the unit organized.  "You shouldn't be worrying about that.  You should be worrying about where you are going to be moving to next. And I would recommend that you find that place within a year.' "You're right.” I repeat this out loud a few more times, ingraining this knowledge into my psyche. I trusted Brian. He was a solid guy, had moved me twice already, from Silver Lake to Highland Park to Eagle Rock to Pasadena, the location of my first storage unit.
           
I’ve cross-referenced my ideal “life” list with Wellfleet, and it fulfills almost all of my requirements, (a community of intelligent, progressive, creative people, close to an airport, the ocean, volunteer opportunities, etc), except this one: gainful employment. 

The community is warm and welcoming, full of salty fishermen and artists. There are lots of gardeners, activists, writers, and painters.  It would be easy for me to have my own radio show, join a play reading group, get on the affordable housing committees, but I cannot even begin to think about rooting down here without buying a property and that is not feasible without a full time job, a rarity on the outermost Cape. And yes, I thought about filling out an application, but working the evening shift at the Mobile gas station is not something I want to do.

I’m also facing the hard reality that my dream of USC’s Graduate School program comes with an expensive price tag, no less than $40,000, of which I am ineligible for student aid, making it economically impractical for me to enroll without the guarantee of a job. In almost every state, open teaching positions are limited to Math, Science (even EXXON Mobil is promoting the president’s initiative) and Speech pathologists; which, strangely, I qualify for with my “Speech & Theatre” degree from Wagner College.

But I can’t reconcile working my way into the system by teaching ESL when the whole point of shifting gears mid - third career was to share the subjects I love to young minds taking flight into the world of post-high school.  So, I’ve joined the many who have banked their aspirations until a retirement wave of English and Theatre teachers begins.

At the end of this autumn, the trees fat with leaves quickly steeping to brown waiting for the right moment, the right gust of wind (apparently it wasn’t Sandy) to blow them all off at once, I've been told that I wander, but maybe I love too many places.  

A friend from California tells me “Come home, you’ve been gone too long.”

"It is confidence in our bodies, minds, and spirits that allows us to keep looking for new adventures, new directions to grow in, and new lessons to learn—which is what life is all about." —Oprah Winfrey

Shameless Crushes...

find life experiences and swallow them whole.
travel.
meet many people.
go down some dead ends and explore dark alleys.
try everything.
exhaust yourself in the glorious pursuit of life.
-lawrence k. fish

Yoga For Peace

read much and often

Cleopatra: A Life
Travels with Charley: In Search of America
Never Let Me Go
The Angel's game
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Bel-Ami
Dreaming in French: A Novel
The Post-Birthday World
A Passage to India
The Time Traveler's wife
To Kill a Mockingbird
The Catcher in the Rye
One Hundred Years of Solitude
The Kite Runner
Eat, Pray, Love
Slaughterhouse-Five
Les Misérables
The Lovely Bones
1984
Memoirs of a Geisha


read much and often»