Thursday, June 19, 2008

A New Beginning...

Oy!

I’ve spent too long mulling over my latest adventure ... letting the writing utensils that are my ten fingers get rusty and out of shape. The muscles I’ve built up have atrophied and instead of physical therapy, I like to pretend the last seven months didn’t happen… if only I could press the restart button. However, lying in bed the other night, I caught an old episode of South Park: “Fourth Grade”. After spending the entire episode trying to get back to the 3rd Grade, their teacher advises them that "Life isn't about going back, it's about going forward... The adventure of life is that there's always something new. New challenges, new experiences. A fun game is a game that gets harder as it goes. So it is with life". Crazy that Trey Parker’s sage wisdom would inspire me to reconnect with all of you.

It only now occurs to me that I hadn’t even sent out change of address cards, so I’ve effectively fallen off the face of the earth.

Here I am, high above the country on my way back to Santa Monica to move out of the apartment I unpacked my gear in last November. At the top of my list, my life list of who I want to be and the life I want to lead, it states “Trust Your Instincts”.

I did not heed the call, but plunged into the deep end without my goggles. I have learned the hard way that you can’t rationalize your way into a relationship. It has to mature authentically. In my own way, I conjured up a fantasy, born of a lifetime spent working in the arts, living my own movie style or classic Broadway musical life. But the apple I picked, although well versed in the cinema slang and catchy tunes of a Rogers & Hammerstein hit, wasn’t quite ripe.

And now I find my own orchard is strewn between Santa Monica, a storage facility in Pasadena, and the odd hilltop community of Tudor City, Manhattan. I’ve sold half of my possessions, and now, with the remainder halved and quartered, I would willingly give the rest up for a safe haven. The onslaught of Sister Carrie’s return to the big screen hasn't made it any easier. I want that E ticket to Fantasyland where I can have that gorgeously appealing “Sex And the City” type of lifestyle instead of my own.

In a way, I have been dating my own Big on and off for four years. And like Big and Carrie, we have our own set of “issues”. On the premise of getting it together and working it out, he sweetly asked me to move in. However, when you spend the first month of cohabitation lying awake on your side of the bed wondering if you made the right decision, you probably didn’t.

Instead of following my own credo, I turned into a consumer. In the absence of having my own home, I started shopping … a lot. When the boxes started to arrive, Big II shook his head and said, “I’m getting worried”. In this respect, Carrie & I are alike. There seems to be nothing a new pair of shoes and a fresh lipstick can’t cure, even if the feeling is fleeting.

We decided that our living together was a win-win situation. It was our last attempt of the greatest leap. Either it gels or it doesn’t. “Clean break up – no hangovers” we said. But I’d be lying if I told you I wasn’t hung. I believed in my ability to get out the wrinkles with extreme ironing. I thought this extraordinary skill would create a life of laughter and successes and challenges and all of the threads that knit up nicely into a history. But this isn't that love story and I’ve been falling apart a little, the threads having come loose, unraveling slowly and painfully. And like Carrie, I found myself lying in bed unable to think about anything of substance.

The past six months have been a reverse bell curve. Starting with doubts, rising with hope and now flat lining. You chart a course and go, but sometimes it doesn’t work out the way you thought it would. The ship goes off course and you hit a Nor’ Easter, each person leaping overboard, clutching a life preserver and trying to make their way back to shore, shivering, shaken up and caught in an emotionally charged decision of fearing another wreck or resiliently anticipating the next time you raise the jib with an ability to steer the ship with the proper navigation tools, a sextant or even the stars.

The thing about having a partner is that it gives you a tether. You acquire that look, that “Thank God I Don’t Have To Be Out There Anymore” gaze. It’s easier not talk about the demise than admit defeat, because I’m a fixer, a solution oriented multi-tasker, an ideal resume for a job, but not a relationship.

My story is not going to end with a reconciliation and 200 square feet of closet space, although I can’t promise that finale won’t include a gorgeous gal puffing on an American Spirit with a shiny pair of heels swinging off her tootsies. There are lessons to be learned. For example, like the 4th Graders of South Park, I am right where I need to be even if that means I am ironically, give or take a month, exactly where I was a year ago; moving out, traveling to a foreign country, visiting a Beatles landmark and living fancy free.

When you last heard from me, I’d arrived home from India, a little disheveled, a little enlightened and seeking the simple life. In one week, I’ll be on my way to Mozambique, packing up Goethe's wisdom with me: “Be bold and mighty forces will come to your aid” and taking another leap of faith.

This time, my faith springs from within me.


...and until further notice, you can find me at 2 Tudor City Place Apt. 10 E North New York, NY 10017.

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»