I was at Kmart the other night, checking out the electronic section to see just how much I can’t afford the DS that tops  Thomas’ holiday wish list. (When I told the kids that I couldn’t get them very much this year, they were super understanding and sweet; then Thomas nodded and said, “Besides, Santa will bring everything.”) What was this speaker for your phone? And this wire for … what? And this handheld thingy? As the rap played on the speakers, I felt incredibly out of it. Dumb even.

But more is making me feel out of it than that. There’s this other thing that reoccurs to me every now and then, something odd and unlikely and a little, well, off-color. Plainly, it’s whether to shave or wax the netherland. The bush. You know – down there. This conundrum – to do or not – came up a year ago when I was having coffee with a fellow divorcing single mom who was starting to date. She was seeing men and women, here and away from town. She was adventurous. It turns out that one of her first questions upon reentering the dating game had been to an old friend — now a gynecologist:  “So, tell me, what’s going on down there these days for most women?” Most women, her friend told her, are shaving. Or waxing.

I tell this to C. And he tells me about a night of friendly drinking and gossip with a group of women friends and one other guy. “All hippies and lesbians,” he says, describing the group. The other man, out of nowhere, says how he misses “bushes.” To which all of the women, in unison, say “Ewwwww! That’s gross. Those are gross!”

I look things up on the Internet and find most women – younger women, it seems – saying about the same thing. Then, on a feminist web site, I find  “Am I Weird Because I Have Pubic Hair?”

To which I want to scream:  Why do we have to tweeze our eyebrows (if done professionally, around $15); get pedicures ($25 – mind you, these are the most conservative numbers possible); dye our hair to make it blonder or less gray or more raven-like — just to make it something it’s not ($40); go to yoga and/or the gym and/or pilates and/or… in order to stay toned ($50/mo) … and now we ALSO have to either pay someone $40 every six to eight weeks – or deal with the itchy scratchy unpleasantness of shaving -in order to look … what? Younger?  More “with it”?

As someone who is broke, as someone who turned on her computer more times than she cares to remember to find an unwanted hardcore pornographic image – one of those images that was supposed to be sexy but could easily have done double duty in medical textbook – filling her screen, as a woman with a daughter, as a card carrying feminist, as someone who is just about officially “middle aged” …. for all of this and then some, I’m bothered. And out of it.

*****

“I love David Byrne,” I write to C., not exactly apropos of this issue – the Bush Issue.  … And yet kind of. David Byrne seems to me to be someone who has always been out of it – sometimes intentionally, sometimes not. Someone who isn’t wearing the right glasses at the right time or the right shoes. Someone who probably hasn’t checked into the electronic section at Kmart lately, especially the section appealing to the Transformers crowd. And yet he’s hip. He has been. He still is. And his “I don’t give a fuck what anyone else thinks” shrug works.

I’m adopting it. For all of me. For “down there” and up here. For now and for later. For me at 43 and for me at 67. For me in love and sexual and for me hanging out with herself reading books and eating chocolates. For me naked in front of others and for me naked in front of my own mirror. For me at the doctor and for me in front of my kids. My bush. My shrug.

Tonight was our friend Mark and Val’s annual Labor Day picnic. We got there late – too late for swimming in the pond or horse shoes. The band was just starting when we came walking up the gravel road, having parked at the next farm down. There was a big table of food — baked beans, hummus, spinach salad with strawberries, a cheese plate, cupcakes, watermelon — waiting patiently for the two roast pigs to get done.

As soon as Bea saw Val and Val saw Bea the two of them were out in the grass, dancing. Twirling. Twisting. Thomas joined them and started doing his odd Happy Feet-meets-Lord of the Dance routine. I grabbed a glass of wine and a wooden folding chair and sat and watched them, remembering how it was a year ago that we’d told the kids we were getting divorced. I’d worried so much about Bea – just dreaded it – but as soon as she got the gist of what Alex was saying — and  he said it because I was certain I’d throw up if I did — she just scrunched up her shoulders:  ”Are you sure?” And when Alex said, “Yes ,we’re sure,” she’d replied with startling equanimity, “Well, can I go play?”

We were in a park  that we didn’t usually go to because I didn’t want to have to walk by it regularly and remember this moment. It was the same psychology I’d used when I’d chosen to have my abortion in Portland instead of Seattle twenty years ago.  Do the messy stuff some place else.

So we sat in the picnic shelter and watched Bea run to the swing set … Could it really be that easy? Thomas, however, was undone. Alex hadn’t even gotten the word out of his mouth when Thomas had wailed, “DON’TGETDIVORCED!  DO ANYTHING. ANYTHING. BUT DON’T GET DIVORCED!”  It was how I’d felt when my dad told me of his diagnoses:  Have anything. Just don’t have CANCER.  Anything else at all. Some words are bigger than the things themselves.

A few hours later, I’d taken the kids out to Mark and Val’s. I was still shaking, but I knew the farm would be medicine for all of us; it always has been. What I didn’t foresee was that the kids would tell everyone — immediately. “My parents are getting divorced,” I’d hear them say across a plate of chocolate chip cookies, usually to someone I’d only met once or twice. “My dad is leaving,” they said to a guy drinking a beer with a shot of Jack Daniels. By the end of the night, everyone knew. And Bea and Thomas learned that pretty much everyone had his or her own divorce story.  ”Did you know that I was married to someone else before Mark?” asked Val. Bea was amazed. Mark and Val are her adopted grandparents – the very groovy, dancing grandparents with a pond and a prairie and a veggie oil car. By the time the bonfire was lit and licking the night sky, Bea and Thomas weren’t so alone; they’d joined a big club, not unlike the misfit toys in the old Rudolf special. Whether you want to be a dentist instead of a toy maker or your parents are no longer in love, you are still a lovable person of infinite possibilities.

Tonight, it got darker but never really inky black because the moon is nearly full and glowing all buttery yellow. When Thomas and I walked back up the road to get a sweatshirt from the car, the gravel crunching underfoot, he marveled that we didn’t even need a lantern; “It’s like we’re walking into the dawn! It’s like that one planet from Star Wars.”  Everything is like something from Star Wars to Thomas. Nothing is earthbound. We returned to find everyone down by the pond, preparing to light the sky lanterns. A local actor who comes out to the farm every summer was holding one, while my friend C. looked on nearby . A few years ago, C. was nearly dizzy with love for this man, though he never had the slightest notion. It was the most serious case of unrequited love I’ve ever seen. She almost left her husband just for the idea of this person, for the heat of her yearning. Now, they stood just five-feet apart, watching as the first lantern filled with hot air and took off, gently in the still night air, and C. appeared unaffected, grounded.

C.’s husband lit another lantern, while Mark held it. A familiar song echoed down from the band. Hum hmmm…. what is it? Ah, yes. Gillian Welch, “I’m Not Afriad to Die.” And pow, I was back four years earlier in a Brooklyn apartment, where I’d played that song while serving artichoke soup, crusty bread and olives to a painter with whom I was in love. As Gillian sang this very song, he had sketched and we’d talked. Watching the lines appear under the weight of the black pen in his large hand had mesmerized me. I’d wanted so to kiss him. But I hadn’t. Instead, I’d watched the table, the soup cups, the olives appear on the page, ideas coming into focus through the interplay of his eye and hand. I wanted him to draw on me, lines connecting my heart to my hands and down into the very center of me.

“Nobody knows what waits ahead / beyond the earth and sky / Lie-d, lie’d lie / I’m not afraid to die.”

Gillian had been playing, too, in San Francisco. It was only three weeks ago, but I can’t recall if it was the same song, the same album. It was certainly her voice, though, that filled the room as I sat with a man — ok, let’s be frank — as I straddled a man and kissed him, feeling the whiskers of his beard on my cheek, his breath in my ear, his hands here and there. “What are you thinking?” he’d asked. Again and again, between kisses. “What are you thinking?” How can you tell someone what you’re thinking when you don’t know, when you are lifting off, filled with light and heat? Finally, my head was gone altogether – only my heart, my hands and that center remained.

The second lantern has risen and now a group of kids, including Bea and Thomas, hold on to the third. Someone struggles to get a camera to take a picture of them for it is a sight — six kids holding down a flaming white balloon, as though balancing the future with their looks of concentration and anticipation. Finally, they can contain it no longer and it takes off — up up up with an urgency the others hadn’t shown. It lights up over the pond, hurtling quickly past the big sycamore and then over the prairie and beyond out into the blackness of the fields.

“Forget my sins upon the wind / my  hobo soul will rise / Lie-d, lie-d lie / I’m not afraid to die.”

I made a list of my fears this morning. It started with the fear that I’d never meet anyone as wonderful as the person I met in SF two weeks ago, but then the list traversed to points closer to home, closer to the truth. Namely, the fear that I’ll be alone in the Big Kahuna sense forever. My very wise friend K., who is my witness to this journey, wrote back:  

It is not about being with someone else . .

I  think the thing you need to relax into is this . . .if you are not with yourself . . you will regret it.

I think it is worse to be in a relationship with someone when you are not fully “with yourself” than to be “alone.”

I just wanted to share her wisdom with you on this overcast, drizzly morning, as I go into mediation and try to continue to sit with my scrambled egg heart.  Also, if you’re so inclined to listen to a Buddhist podcast about fear by a very modern practitioner (e.g., there’s plenty of references to sex, drugs and rock-n-roll), I highly recommend the Interdependence Project’s podcast on Fear No Fear.

It’s almost worse to be in a place that is neither hot nor cold, neither incredibly sad nor terribly content. I am getting over the drama that was San Francisco – learning and re-learning lessons about obsessive thinking and how I beat myself up when things don’t go as I hope. Lessons about the great significance of being naked with another person and how that can open you up to so many emotions and memories. (A note on that:  Being naked was great. Easy. Sweet. Delicious. But sitting with my naked emotions the  next day and the feeling of having been opened up – and yes I mean that literally and figuratively – well, that was much much tougher and not so sweet. Very bittersweet, in fact. I’d say Scharffen Berger 65% cacao single origin dark chocolate, to be exact.)

So here I am now, not nearly as dark and crazy-headed as I was at 4:30 in the morning when some nice Eastern European cab driver took me to SF International Airport — but what does look bright and happy at that time in the morning while driving through a city’s underbelly? Instead, I’m facing mediation in four days. The kids are back at school, Bea full of trepidation. I’m negotiating cheese graters and the Jewish high holidays with the ex. And just trying to find the grace in being here now. No drama. No temptation. No kisses on the ears, but no tears either.

Just heard this old Billy Idol song (?!!) and had to share as it sums up the current drought. Got an email from a friend who said she endured five years of celibacy after her longterm relationship ended. Oy. People … CANNOT do that! But I’m also so determined not to share myself with anyone who isnt respectful. As I said to my friend K. the other night, if I have more than a moment’s anxiety about my stomach when imagining being neked with someone, that’s a moment too long.

As we all better appreciate with age  how fragile we are — our skin, bones, egos, and feelings are all tissue-thin and so easily damaged — it becomes that much more difficult to expose ourselves. Gone are the skinned knees of youthful flings – the easy throwing off of clothes. Self-protection is good. Self-respect is righteous. But how do you keep yourself from ending up in the corner reading a book while your body and its desires goes quiet?

…that’s what my friend said to me while we drove through Minneapolis with our kids in the backseat. I’ve known D. since we were 20-years old. Now we’re both writers and in somewhat parallel situations as writers who stay at home with our kids. But his wife brings home a good paycheck and he salted a lot away during a decade in Hollywood as a screenwriter. I’m trying out the idea of moving to the Twin Cities during this trip but having a hard time figuring out just how or what would actually get me up here. Other than a leap of faith. I’ve taken a lot of those in my life, but I don’t have another in me at the moment.

“You’ll just have to find me some wonderful man, so I can move here to be with him,” I muse to D. 

“You don’t want that,” he says a bit sharply.

“How do you know?” I ask, wondering just what it is I do want.

“Don’t you just want to be alone?” D more says than asks.

“Some days yes. Some days no.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that,” he says. “I would love to be alone. I mean, minus the kid,” he nods to the backseat where his son is chirping about Pokemon with my son. This dark haired, big-eyed boy is clearly his favorite person in the world. As for his wife, they are in a detante. Things between them could be worse, but they could definitely be better. The two of them have begrudgingly chosen togetherness, but D, it’s apparent, dreams of solo-ness.

We whiz home because D has invited friends over for cocktails at my insistence. I’m hungry to meet new people, to feel part of an urban groove. She’s an artist who does large-scale installations and he has some lucrative writing assignments that I want to hear about. I’m imagining a slightly boozy, high-brow, funny talk.

Jack and Sal pull up in their mini-van with two kids. They’re all apologies because they only have a short window of time before they have to leave to take the boys to baseball games. The red wine goes untouched because Sal is detoxing. So much for the urban groove.  But he is worth the whole visit. He is lovely and I am smitten. I imagine her accidentally slipping off a ladder while working on an installation and me moving up to Minneapolis to be with him following an appropriate grieving process. His mouth is perfect…

My son comes into the room looking for his stuffed animal and I snap out of my reverie.

Last night, during a yoga class, I nearly touched the ankle of the man in front of me during one pose. He wasn’t an especially appealing person, I just can’t remember the last time I was that close to a naked male ankle. 

There may be nothing wrong with being alone – and certainly being around the subtle cat fight of this particular marriage is making me see its benefits – but I’d take a little togetherness of a certain ilk. There’s nothing  wrong with that.

I sat on a bench outside the library today as my kids played and read an article in a recent issue of O! Magazine, “Why Women Are Leaving Men for Other Women.”  The title is a bit misleading (what’s new from mainstream mags?), as most of the women in the piece are already separated from men before settling in with a female partner, but it was still interesting food for thought. Most of the women shared that an emotional connection with someone who is respectful, trusting, and caring is more important to them than towing the traditional line. Oh, and the sex ain’t bad either.

There’s been a fair amount of research  lately on what women want from a sexual relationship. It turns out that women are much more fluid than men in their sexuality. A potential partner’s whole person – personality, spirituality, ethics, looks, intellect… – affects a woman’s desire much more than a man’s. Thus, it’s more possible for women to, umm, flow (?)  between partners of different genders.

The Oprah article and my memory of the NYTimes article had me thinking as I sat on that bench that my options are more plentiful than they first appear. It also reminded me of something that my friend K., a married lesbian, said recently of my current state: ”It is sort of exciting that you get another chance to find someone now that you’re older and really know what you want.”

On most days, finding a partner feels more like an impossible hurdle than an opportunity, but I know what she means. In fact, last summer, I totally agreed with her and felt certain that I’d find that person. Now, after asking about several men in town, only to be answered: “married”, “gay”, or “Ewwwww! You do NOT want to go there,” I’m less certain. There was the tryst-gone-sour with the friend earlier in this spring. And more recently, a crush on a roller derby queen, who is sexy but so clearly my antithesis that it’s humorously wrong in ways that extend way beyond my four decades of heterosexuality. But truly? It’s been very very dry on my sexual/relationship horizon. I’m in the desert with no body in sight.

So what do I want? I actually know pretty clearly. Last summer, as I was leaving Alex, I wrote a lot about this – made lists and diagrams. My standards are high, but not outlandish. Part of what was so appealing about Other Guy was that he fit so many of the qualifications – if you don’t include honesty, that is.

Returning now to the list and the diagrams, I decided to speak them aloud; to see how these qualities sound when taken off the page. Just what is it I am seeking in the person with whom I’d like to join lives? What does this person sound like and feel like when described? After I spoke it, I sat in silence, realizing that there is only one person I know in my current life who comes close. And she’s a she. She also lives on a coast with a busy life and multiple suitors. The interesting thing is that none of that feels like a deal breaker to me, nor does the thought of her make go weak-kneed. When I think of her, I smile. And I feel sure about what an amazing person she is. For now, that’s plenty.

Yesterday was dark and heavy. Lonely – so lonely. I spent some time in bed – something I rarely afford myself during the day. But rather than feel nourished, I sobbed. But today, I woke up to a beautiful crisp and breezy morning – the world scrubbed clean. My heart feels open today, happy with what it has and open to newness, too.

I was reminded of this passage from Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love. When I googled it – not having the book handy – I had to  laugh because several reviewers dubbed it the single worst passage n the book. Hmmm, Master’s in English be damned; I rather liked it!

A word about masturbation, if I may. Sometimes it can be a handy (forgive me) tool, but other times it can be so acutely unsatisfying that it only makes you feel worse in the end. After a year and half of celibacy, after a year and a half of calling my own name in my bed-built-for-one, I was getting a little sick of the sport. Still, tonight, in my restless state—what else could I do? The potatoes hadn’t worked. So I had my way with myself yet again. As usual, my mind paged through its backlog of erotic files, looking for the right fantasy or memory that would get the job done fastest. But nothing was really working tonight—not the firemen, not the pirtates, not that pervy old Bill Clinton standy scene that usually does the trick, not even the Victorian gentelmen crowding around me in their drawing room with their task force of nubile young maids. In the end, the only thing that would satisfy was when I reluctantly admitted into my mind the idea of my good friend from Brazil climbing into this bed with me… on me…

           Then I slept. I woke to a quiet blue sky and an even quieter bedroom. Still feeling unsettled and unbalanced, I took a long stretch of my morning and chanted the entire 1782 Sanskrit verses of the Gurugita—the great, purifying fundamental hymn of my Ashram in India. Then I meditated for an hour of bone-tinkling stillness until I finally felt it again—that specific, constant, clear-sky, unrelated-to-anything, never-shifting, nameless and changeless perfection of my own happiness. That happiness which is better, truly, than anything I have ever experienced anywhere else on this earth, and that includes salty, buttery kisses and even saltier and more buttery potatoes.

I’ve been reading this amazing book, Broken Open by Elizabeth Lesser. The premise is that a life crisis, such as a divorce, illness, or the death of someone we love, can bring us the opportunity to die and be reborn, to experience what she terms The Phoenix Process. You have to be broken open to become whole. The book begins with the Anais Nin quote that graces the lefthand column of this blog; it’s been Lesser’s touchstone. 

I’ve been shamelessly dogearing my library copy for the last week, and will eventually need to buy this book, as I can tell that I’ll return to it again and again. I love, for instance, Lesser describing her first encounter with the Buddhist teacher Chogyam Trungpa:  ”He was not interested in spirituality as a form of escape. He was training people to become ’sacred warriors’ — not so that they could do battle with others but so that they could develop the kind of courage one needs to be kind and happy and radically alive in the midst of the world. There is no dry land, he said; there is only fearlessnes, which is to be found in the heart. This is the path to freedom.” RADICALLY ALIVE – love that!

Or in quoting from a friend who has MS and a child with birth defects, the friend comments: “The lesson is not to dwell on whether or not something should be happening to me. …my only hope was to give up the life that had been, in order to make room for the life that is. …Making that choice, over and over again–to accept what is, and to release what was–has become the major focusing agent for my spiritual work.” In other words – give up the notion of self as victim.

But perhaps what’s spoken most to me so far (and I’m  just over half way), is Lesser’s concept of the Shaman Lover. She quotes Rumi, “There is some kiss we want our whole lives,” to describe the longing for another person, to be totally engaged with another. “The Shaman Lover,” she writes, “is a man or woman whose destiny is to heal the  heartsick with the sweetness of love, and to give the gift of fire to those whose passion is frozen. …sometimes the Shaman Lover has been sent by fate to blast us open, to awaken the dead parts of our body, to deliver the kiss of life. And if we succumb, we are changed forever.”

“Every marriage has a story that could end in divorce. That does not mean they all should.”

I really appreciate Lesser’s description and belief in the usefulness of the Shaman Lover, for twice I was blasted open and both times I felt guilt. The first time, I fell in love with someone far away. Someone I never knew in the flesh. We finally met once, but by then, our relationship had shifted. When, however, we were first learning each other via phone and email, I was opening to him as though my ribs were cracking open. I’d been so alone and felt so unheard by anyone, especially by Alex, that I actually sometimes had the impression that people couldn’t hear me – that I wasn’t speaking loudly enough.

One day, I sent my  new friend an email that was more personal than most. I admitted how lonely I was, how afraid of life. He wrote back immediately to say that he was going into a meeting and couldn’t talk right then –  it was the middle of a week day – but he wanted me to know that he’d heard me. And then he sent me a song that hinted at the depth of the feelings we were both increasingly becoming open to – even engulfed by. 

It was a dark November night. My office door was shut and most people were gone. I began to cry when I heard the song and then, actually brought to my knees on my office floor, I sobbed as I realized that I loved this person and all of the ramifications that held for my life, my marriage, my tiny children.

I was very honest with Alex about my feelings for this other person, but eventually decided that I wanted to try to make our marriage work. I ended contact with the other man. I did whatever it would take to “right” myself in Alex’s eyes. I  moved up to the attic. I worked on myself. I had daily affirmations. I read and read. I softened. I made changes I hadn’t wanted to make, such as going on an anti-depressant and putting our very small kids in daycare. I changed. 

What I sensed at the time but was too wracked with guilt to appreciate the effects of was that Alex did not change. He’d totally bought into his role as the wronged party, allowed me to work my fanny off at improvement, and had remained just where he was. In fact, a month after I came down from the attic, after we’d agreed together to try again, he had an affair. “It was his fair due,” friends said. “He had to do it to make things even,” others said. I bought this. Sort of. And on we went.

But two years later, I found myself in a similar situation. Again, falling in love with someone. This time with someone who was as dangerously romantic, if not more so, than I. Someone who promised the moon. Whereas the other man had written me haiku-like simple but mysterious admissions of his feelings, this man declared them to the Universe on bended knee. And I fell. I fell and fell. And when I kissed him in broad daylight, I knew that everything was over between Alex and me. It took me a few weeks to tell him; but I knew. And I was ready. Not  just for this man — whose love for me turned out to be nothing more than lust disguised in a way to lure back  his wife, or as an inability to give in to his own need for a Shaman Lover — but to dive into the fire of finally, truly ending the marriage.

One thing I like about Lesser is that she is neither pro- nor anti-marriage/divorce. “Every marriage has a story that could end in divorce. That does not mean they all should.” But she wants us to take seriously our patterns, the way we repeat ourselves. She wants us to listen when our souls are dead and not be content, after the danger of an affair, to return to the status quote.

“I do not wish upon anyone a descent into hell,” she writes. “But if your life has to be turned inside out in order for you to know yourself–if the shadow of a sham crosses your path and your turn and follow it down–I pray that you use its force wisely. I hope that you take the ultimate responsiblity for your actions and that you consecrate any destruction to the rebuilding of your higher self and a more radiant life.”

Now, a year after that broad-daylight kiss, there are days when I am lonely. There are days when I wish someone else would mow the lawn or deal with a child’s tantrum or make the PB&Js. Sometimes, I even wish someone would take care of me – just a little. But I never wish to feel dead again, or to feel angry at another person on a nearly daily basis as I felt toward  Alex in our final years. I am gaining myself. And I will only open again for someone else who is found, who is whole, who is fearless.

I have been sooooo aware of my springtime desires, lately, to put it  nicely. I wonder when it will be time to meet someone. I still am feeling a bit vulnerable, as though my heart has some bandaids on it that aren’t quite ready to come off.  But my body doesn’t feel that way at all. Ah, to get the two in the same place, and then to actually meet someone. That’s the rub! I guess I’ve been living in a cave, but I hadn’t heard the term best friends with benefits until lately … and I like it. Putting my best vibes out to the world to treat me gently but to fulfill me…