The Quiet Fury

Hollywood becomes part of you when you live in LA as long as I did. Never mind my fringe industry life (“back to one!”) but the normality of celebrities everywhere: Tom Cruise in the dilation lounge at the eye doctor, Keanu crossing Pico, Brad Pitt in Jerry’s Deli, Sandra Bullock, Julia Roberts, Kirsten Dunst in Fred Segal. The list goes on.

Today, at the movie theater, I passed a big poster for AdAstra and said, “Hello, Brad Pitt,” like seeing an old friend.

I now live in a place where, for most people, Hollywood still glitters. They’ve never seen that glitter swept up at the end of a long day where you got bumps for overtime, smoke, and specialty makeup.

Bittersweet.

Art: Lisa Swerling, Glass Cathedrals

I live in ag country. Nothing but crops and livestock as far as the eye can see. “In season” the help wanted signs are up continuously. The workers are Hispanic from field to barn. There is a plentiful supply of white people in need of work in the area, yet they do not apply for these jobs. They prefer assistance to field work. Several local churches offer free meals one night a week. I’ve volunteered at these and the diners are always predominantly white.

The “immigrant as freeloader” story is a myth. Bringing in the harvest is hard work. Our local orchard supplies apples across the northeast. Whatever produce or meat you’re buying, anywhere, was likely touched first by a brown hand.

Gratitude works for me. Do we have to go through a worker famine to get it, that even the poorest white people don’t want to pick?

Am I giving up?

On the big idea? The contribution? Am I saying that all I want is my house, financial security, and a boyfriend?

A lifetime of shoulder to boulder, pushing towards a desire to succeed or “be famous” that is a combination of legitimacy and pathology, some historical experience that bastardized itself into a purposefully unattainable “goal.”

Shoulder to boulder, pushing towards an idea of success that isn’t even mine. I wanted the creative not the corporate, yet the corporate kept delivering opportunity and money.

You can succeed at things you don’t want. And experience a deep lack of ownership of that success. Dirty money.

“In the middle of the journey of my life I found myself in the midst of a dark wood where they straight way was lost …”

Germans believed their country was suffering. They were not the world leader they once were and believed it vital that they become again.

A populist figure said, “Germany’s problem is Jews. (And intellectuals, homosexuals, the mentally ill, the developmentally delayed.) We won’t be ‘great again’ until we rid the country of this vermin that is stealing our jobs, raping our women, decaying our values.”

And Germans answered the call.

“The Other” is a bell endlessly ringing across the ages around the world. America is at a tipping point: Many of us are answering the call. Many are not.

In which direction will the greatest nation on earth, the leader of the free world, turn? What is our true north?

Love. As a revolutionary act. 

People I’ve followed and read and listened to for decades have long preached this concept. I believe in it. But practice it privately, among like minded friends. It feels squishy and New Agey in most discussions. (Like committing to being Marianne Williamson in a field of “real” candidates.) I believe in love as the answer so am I ashamed of what I believe? Perhaps not ashamed but embarrassed?

The wounds in our country are wide and deep and open. And weeping. And being capitalized upon by those whose depth of cynicism knows no bottom.

Anger alone is self indulgent and distances me from feeling all the feelings. This TED Talk by Valerie Kaur right-sizes all of it for me. So, now, every day:

“President Trump, I feel the pain caused by living with a shaming alcoholic addict who disrespected you when you were a child.

I feel the loneliness caused by being shown narcissism as a way of life.

I feel the frustration of the limits your life experience has placed on your capacity to love, empathize, and connect.

I pray that you find a way to quiet the demons and ceaseless battles inside you.

President Trump, I see the child dying inside you.

And I love him.”

Not easy. But the rage inside me relaxes with the saying of it. 

Rage is paralyzing. Revolutionary Love is active.

Three lessons of Revolutionary Love in a time of rage – Valerie Kaur, TEDTalk

These shootings are nesting dolls of blame. The “mentally ill” are one of the outermost dolls, a catchall for all that we don’t understand about why people act violently. We want an answer and “mental illness” is an easy one.

The doll at the center of this nest is Hate along with those who promote it, support it, incite it, and excuse it.

“Senseless violence” — these shooters, hyped up on Hate, are acting with a focused sense of purpose and rightness. The last thing their actions are (to them) is “senseless.” When your leader gives you permission and you make a plan and select a target, the very last thing your actions are is “senseless.”

“There is something deeply hypocritical about praying for a problem you are uniwlling to resolve.” – Miroslav Volf

We need to stop focusing on the mental health of mass shooters

Death is just a pretty way to say murder,

Because I killed it

without much thought.

On the window screen,

wings wrapped and resting,

pure white and harmless.

Birdsong sunlight and nature on the other side,

what I had come for.

I’ve killed plenty in my life.

Smack wipe and move on.

Does that make me a murderer in their world? Or a God?

White, folded, sleeping.

It wasn’t the stuff of quick work, had to smack it a few times, carapace cracking and golden innards on the screen, wet work afterwards.

Less easy to kill a harmless beauty, less easy to forget that cracking shell.

Is there a God holding the memory, however faint, of my breaking shell?

I was recently chatting with some friends, all of us single and “of a certain age.” We talked about relationships past, the great ones and the so-so ones, about relationships future, maybe, and how what we’d like in a partner has changed so dramatically since our 20s and 30s. We all agreed, with no sense of regret, that we are incredibly content in our lives and while a partner (in the truest sense) would be nice, it is also nice not to have to deal with “it all.”

“It all,” a lot of which falls under the headline “Men’s Shit.” A lot, also, is not wanting to deal with what relationships bring up in us.

All the messages: About our thighs. Our waists. Breasts. Chins. Looking like we “gave up,” not looking like 50 and 60 something actresses, even while acknowledging that those women don’t look like that.

And how we — smart, wise, funny, creative, accomplished, and fabulous — still carry insecure messages from our teens into our grand and glorious present. Always aware of our “good side” and how to camouflage flaws. Shaking our heads when complimented. Doing the best we can with what we have, vs. appreciating all we’ve been given.

My mind drifted to a FB pic I saw of a former flame, an unconsummated “work husband” whose chemistry was such that we could barely get the work done. He and his partner were frolicking at a holiday party. And while not a sexy picture, there was definite sexuality there.

I was never “up tight” as such, but there are no “slap you on the buns, oh my!” snaps of me on social media. The high beam expression of my sexuality was always muted.

By me, it turns out. All the messages. And a bone deep fear of some sort of ridicule, or coming off desperate or needy. I drew a line, separating my physical self from myself. Somewhere in there, playing it so cool became cold. I’ve never experienced an unfettered joy in my body.

Eros, is what my Jungian therapist would say. Not sex, which, in my 80s youth, was somehow easier and less intimate or revealing than a conversation. But Eros in the full-throated enjoyment of life. In feeling joy in, and of, my body — in what it’s capable of, the life it supports, and the array of pleasures it can experience (from good bread, great Pilates, or 500 thread count sheets wrapped around it).

My friends and I don’t look like we did 20 years ago. But somewhere in our psyches, all the messages tell us we should still look that way. That not looking that way says something bad about us. And what’s worse, so many men, our age and older, hold the same expectation. They look like the dad’s of our high school friends, all no-haired and cardy-paunchy, but we ladies are expected to keep it tight, high, and on display.

Let’s acknowledge right here that Eros does not live “tight, high, and on display.” This is not joy. This is not unselfconscious frolicking. This is not woman.

All the messages.

I know for many of us there are deep issues of shame and fear around our bodies. We must move gently in this space. I can’t lie, I am sad about my chin. But I’m sadder that I lived my life until now allowing all the messages to keep the joy in my body constantly tempered and measured.

Today is international women’s day. So, even if just for today, let’s forget all the messages since not one of them was “love yourself.”

Let’s invite Eros to the table, and joy into our physical selves. Taste the food, feel the stretch, turn to the sun. If you’re having sex, really have it: Let go a bit more, release a bit more, exhale for pity’s sake.

Let’s let “delicious” be our guide to the experience of our bodies, physicality, and life.

Let’s dig in.

In my head, it goes something like this: There’s a place. From the outside it looks as crumbling and rock strewn as everything around it.

On the inside, everything is soft and smooth. There are no sharp edges. The color is blue, the shimmery blue of sea glass and good spas. Tile floors are cool in summer, warm in winter.

Only women live here. And they spend their time singing, cooking, or making things out of bright cloth, colorful thread, and beads. Maybe they just sit. Maybe they put their feet in water.

The women who live here are done.

These women are among the hundreds of northern Afghan women who have set themselves on fire as their only means of escaping lives of misery, brutality, indentured servitude and hopelessness.

I think if you have reached the point where you douse yourself in cooking fuel, light a match, and survive, there’s nothing more to be asked of you. Breathe in, breathe out. Be safe. And never again feel rough, sharp, or hot against your skin.

I’m not naïve. I know this isn’t how it’s done. I also know I am one woman, in the west, who’s not wealthy, connected or political. But I’m also one woman, in the west, who has reached the point where I can no longer continue with this. This is where I stop: Too many things enrage me or defeat me.

At a loss for where to begin, I write a check.

Subscribing, reading, posting, listening, watching, the world on fire. So many women pushed to the ground, faces in the dirt, skirts around their waists. Dangerous daughters of Diana.

Women on fire, burning, itching, raging, clawing at the air like blind cats.

What’s the plan? Because there has to be one.

People, I could eat me a big bowl of Daniel Craig. With a little tiny spoon.

I don’t even really like light men. But I do like real men. Manly men. Not boys, not guys, not fellas.

Same with Don Draper. Or do I mean Jon Hamm? Either way, crazy good-looking. Yes, the social mores of the Mad Men era were such that it was easier for men to don a suit and assume the position  — I get that. But still.

I love a man in a suit. Always have. Take me to dinner, take off that tie, and take me to bed.

Where are all the men? Why did boys become all the rage? It’s one thing to be a boy when you are one, but we’ve now got these George Clooney boy-men who look so good on screen, but get them walking and talking as themselves and it’s all practical jokes, farts, and dufus shenanigans. I do not believe Cary Grant thought farts were funny. But I do believe that George Clooney does.

Can we call a moratorium on the Apatow male? And the androgynous teen idol who is still a teen idol at 35? I can’t take Leonardo di Caprio seriously, even when I want to. Even when he wants me to, although I admittedly didn’t see that Scorsese film.

It’s a quality. A self-posession, an ownership. Even Woody Allen was a man (at least before 1985), albeit not one I would have slept with. But then, what do I know? I wouldn’t sleep with Bill Clinton either, but I am told that if you happened to fall under his gaze, you would willingly fall under the man. He owns it, whatever it is.

I was recently in a car with my friend and her two small, kvetchy children. To keep them occupied, she started singing “Where is Thumbkin?”

Where is Thumbkin, where is Pointer, where is Tall Man…

“Aunt Caroline, do you know this song?” “Oh, not very well, sweetheart.”

Ring Man, Short Man. “Where are all the men, where are all the men…”

Wait a minute, baby, I believe I do know this one.

Please let’s not have Bill Clinton be the poster boy for the It Factor. More men, real men, respectful, stand up guys, with good haircuts, better tailors, and a way with words.

Who’s with me?