tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24001837501280353812024-02-02T02:20:41.741-08:00NomiWritesRandom thoughts on this and thatNaomi Orwinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17858792688958117683noreply@blogger.comBlogger14125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2400183750128035381.post-46640426826169767442015-07-20T11:45:00.003-07:002015-07-20T13:17:41.293-07:00Bread and Butter<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">I learned it as a child. Whenever I
walk through two or more people having a conversation, or when someone walks
between me and a companion, I have to say “bread and butter.” I still do it. And
here’s why.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;">Remember the scene in <i>Ghost</i>
when Patrick Swayze’s character steps through a solid wall for the first time,
or any scene in Harry Potter when he is transported through walls or across
space? They have disrupted the energy of the universe. And so, when they arrive
at their destination, they shake themselves off, because it’s an uncomfortable
feeling stepping through energy. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;">That’s how I feel when I am forced
to walk between two people who are connected to each other in some way. I am
entering their energy field, and I don’t want to. After I am safely through, I
shake off the feeling and say “bread and butter,” as if that will clear away
any remaining negative energy. I will do almost anything to avoid being in the
center, but, I have noticed, many people force me into cutting between them.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;"><br /></span>
It’s a crowded street, and instead
of stepping to the side, so we can pass each other comfortably, they hold their
ground, continue their conversation and walk around me, one on each side.
Sometimes their energy is clearly angry, they are having a heated discussion,
and I don’t exist for them, but there is a tangible energy running between them,
and I can feel it.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;"></span></div>
<a name='more'></a><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;">If someone walks between me and the
person I’m with, that too is a disruption. The invisible cord connecting us has
been cut and needs to be restored. So I say “bread and butter.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;">You’re told that that when you talk
to someone you should look them in the eye. That the eyes are the gateway to
the soul. If you were looking at someone and another person walked between you,
the interruption would be clear, just as
when you’re watching an activity and someone else steps in front of you and
blocks your view. But even when we don’t look at each other, when two people
are together a connection is formed between them even if it is a negative one.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;">When that connection is severed it
needs to be restored, and for whatever reason, saying “bread and butter” is
meant to effect that healing. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<h4>
What's the Meaning</h4>
<div>
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Why is that? I went to look up the
phrase “bread and butter” online, and to my surprise there were lots of
references to it in this context, although its origins are unclear and I have
yet to meet another person who says it as well. One suggestion for the phrase
is that bread and butter are two things that go together—at least they did
before fats and wheats became things to avoid—and therefore they indicate a
connection re-established.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;">Now, I admit I’m from a
superstitious family. I was never allowed to walk under a ladder—I still don’t
today, despite all the construction around me in Center City. If there is a
ladder in my way, I will walk around or cross the street. I have mixed feelings
about walking under scaffolding. I don’t know if it’s the same thing, but I
will avoid it if I can. (Unless it’s pouring out, and it keeps me dry. But I
don’t know an incantation for fixing that.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;">I turn around when I see a black
cat. When I get a new purse, I put in pennies. When I move I make sure I have
candles and bread and salt and honey. I avoid stepping on sidewalk cracks—“step
on a crack, break your mother’s back.” I’m not protecting my mother so much as recognizing
that the world is a very uncertain place, and you should do whatever you can to
keep us all safe. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<h4>
We're All Connected </h4>
<div>
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;">The connection between people is
something that matters. It’s something we don’t value enough. Very often when
people are together they forget to connect to the other person on a deeper
level. Not only don’t we look each other in the eyes, we get so involved with
what we are trying to say we don’t take into account the actual person we are
talking with. And nowadays, that other person is often not actually present,
they are at the other end of an electronic connection. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;">Worse yet, some people get so into
their own ideology they can’t even see the person standing before them as
another human being. We become labeled by our appearance, our attributes, our
ideas, and then criticized for being who we are. Maybe we need to say “bread
and butter” more often. Not only when we break the connection between two
people on the street, but when we allow something else to come between the
honest connections between ourselves and another person.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;"> Racism, sexism, ageism all occur when we can’t
look at each other honestly without the interfering goggles of prejudice. Our
politicians can’t deal honestly with each other because they are looking inward
not outward, at what will get them elected, not what the people they represent
really need. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;">So I will continue to say “bread and
butter” under my breath whenever I’m aware that something has disrupted the
energy around me and in doing so, hope that I am doing my small part to keep
the world connected. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Naomi Orwinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17858792688958117683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2400183750128035381.post-33171815696843194052015-02-17T06:31:00.001-08:002015-02-17T06:40:28.494-08:00Seven Reasons You Should Absolutely Read this List<div class="MsoNormal">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwzjUNKfiVNXJ-HsAODkJnJjcau2zYOAuOiOYse9Zbv1l8r0oHDs2VpBUpk8sGNR51gAOWqFNXuGAQLrPl_BG3ld9rM2NJgtrrji4Sc9K6G0c6_xoX6x84NCLfSBIuH10ISSLzcVcpwYY/s1600/notepad_with_Text_and_Pencil.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwzjUNKfiVNXJ-HsAODkJnJjcau2zYOAuOiOYse9Zbv1l8r0oHDs2VpBUpk8sGNR51gAOWqFNXuGAQLrPl_BG3ld9rM2NJgtrrji4Sc9K6G0c6_xoX6x84NCLfSBIuH10ISSLzcVcpwYY/s1600/notepad_with_Text_and_Pencil.png" height="200" width="200" /></a></div>
A lot of blogging gurus these days say lists are the way to
go. So here’s my list of why <i>this</i> list is absolutely compelling reading.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
1. It’s a list. <i>Duh!</i> It’s got a finite number of
ideas anyone can grasp in just a few minutes. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
2. It’s written by me. You may not know my writing yet, so
this is your introduction to one more person you ought to follow. And here’s a
bonus—I promise not to post every day, three times a day. So you won’t have
those pesky notifications popping up in your inbox all the time.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
3. You always do what you’re told. In a world full of
choices, someone else telling you what you should do is a relief.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
4. It gives you a space to comment at the end. Don’t you
love writing snarky comments?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
5. You’ve thought about doing a list yourself. Use this as
an example of what to do / what not to do. See item 4 above for what to do if
you think this list is an example of either. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
6. You just can’t resist anything with the number 7. It’s a
powerful number—Seven days in a week; You always get your coffee at 7-11; It’s
a magical number. Poof! You’ve almost finished the list.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
7. Whatever. Make up your own reason and use item number 4
to tell me what it is.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Thank you for reading. This is my first list post. Now that
I know how to do it, there will be more to come. So follow me and see what’s
next.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Naomi Orwinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17858792688958117683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2400183750128035381.post-41812564692610324252015-01-05T14:37:00.000-08:002015-01-05T14:51:42.548-08:00Whose Story Is It?<div class="MsoNormal">
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<img height="162" src="https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSqF9Ui9yKpJC9i-Wyyup1xILZiFslZjGgx4TlHP3GLfHFE81d4" width="200" /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As more and more of the Cosby story comes out, I find myself
asking whose story is this?<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">While a few of the women have told a portion of their
stories in their own words on <i>Dr. Phil</i>, most of the time we read their
words in the context of a news story about Bill Cosby. So whose story is it? Is
it a story about Bill Cosby and his fall from grace, or is it the story of the
woman who is telling the story, or is it the story of the reporter and editor
who edit and structure each woman’s words into a compelling narrative that will
sell a publication, or get people to click on a link?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Headlines matter<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I learned the hard way recently that the headline often
determines the story. If it reads, <i>Abuse Charges Against Bill Cosby</i>,
notice that Cosby is front and center and the charges come from an anonymous
source. It is a story about what is happening to Cosby not the story of the
woman charging him of abuse. If it reads, <i>Bill Cosby Facing Accusations</i>,
again it is a story about Cosby and the ramifications, for him, of those
accusations. If it reads, <i>Another Cosby Victim</i>, both Cosby and the woman
are in the headline, but the woman is lumped together with others and it feels
that she has jumped on a bandwagon rather than having a story to tell. Only one
woman, Janice Dickinson, was famous enough in her own right to merit a
headline. Yes, Cosby is the famous one, but does a woman have to go missing to
make headlines and put her name before the public?<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<a name='more'></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Not that these women necessarily want their names and faces
plastered across media outlets across the country labeling them as victims of
actions they would sooner forget about. When women come forward with the kind
of accusations that have been made against Cosby they do so knowing that they
will be discounted, disbelieved, dismissed. They know that amongst those who
actually have an experience to recount, there may well be one who is doing it
for the publicity. And that one person may discredit them all. They know that,
like the woman who accused a fraternity at UVA of gang rape, they may not have
their facts exactly right. That it is purely a ‘he said, she said’ situation,
and they are up against a well-oiled public relations machine and a feeling of
affection for the Cosby who was once a beloved figure. Even on <i>Dr. Phil</i>,
whose show is predicated on the <i>gotcha</i> model of journalism, their
stories were interrupted to suit the Dr.’s narrative, not their own.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Other formats<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The current brouhaha started with a stand-up comedian’s joke
that went viral. Hannibal Buress, in a set at Philadelphia’s Trocadero Theatre,
told the audience to google ‘Bill Cosby rape’ and apparently they did and whole
new set of accusers came forth. Then
social media picked it up, and then mainstream media, and then the story became
an industry of its own. And now we all know the name Hannibal Buress while we
don’t remember the names of the women.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The list of accusers grows, now at standing at 21, and if
they are to be believed, then there are probably many others who will not come
forward, who do not want to be engaged in the inevitable media circus that will
ensue. The story about Cosby and the downfall of his career is the story. The
women who were possibly drugged and assaulted by him became collateral damage
in the rush to be the first to publish some new factoid for the public to
devour. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Victor Fiorillo, a Philadelphia writer who has covered the
Cosby story since 2005, wants to adapt the story into a stage play, to present
the material “in a new way for the public to consume.” He is the right person
to tell the story, he says, because he is so well-versed in it. But what is the
story he will tell? What does he really know about the women in the story, and
does anyone care about them?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Donald and Cosby<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The most bizarre aspect of the story occurred on this week’s
opening of <i>Celebrity Apprentice</i> when Keisha Knight Pulliam, who played Cosby’s
daughter, Rudy Huxtable, on <i>The Cosby Show</i>, was fired by Donald
Trump for not calling Cosby to raise money for her team. Large creepy factor
here, and although the show was shot months before the current accusations
surfaced, letting it stand without editing or comment makes an assumption that
either it is useful for ratings or that our memories are so short that we no
longer care what Cosby did. Either is an insult to the audience. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The only reason we care about this at all is because Cosby
is famous, because he had a squeaky clean family-man persona that has been
tarnished. All the salient details that are printed about what he did, where he
touched her, how she felt, appeal to public prurience but don’t really serve to
enlighten us about what really happened. About why a man who seemingly had it
all had to have so many bright young women and damage them for life. </span><o:p></o:p></div>
Naomi Orwinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17858792688958117683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2400183750128035381.post-73005387385006691642013-12-24T21:34:00.003-08:002013-12-27T22:08:05.148-08:00Waiting For Santa<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidUyKaJXtaiEQj7HExMBs7-QMrC-twCFco5FUtBKsiEcQrpoU0uF3cTcwzYnTSfjZsPIUN2cqvIniYh8qxJ2zZeswElGfp4_P1BN8JqI1QPMLG5l607ad3to-N_HPqCISZsLrkrzzI6co/s1600/Ghost.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidUyKaJXtaiEQj7HExMBs7-QMrC-twCFco5FUtBKsiEcQrpoU0uF3cTcwzYnTSfjZsPIUN2cqvIniYh8qxJ2zZeswElGfp4_P1BN8JqI1QPMLG5l607ad3to-N_HPqCISZsLrkrzzI6co/s200/Ghost.jpg" width="145" /></a>What was I thinking? This afternoon—Christmas Eve day—I
found myself standing in line with hundreds of others—mostly parents and
grandparents with a smattering of children—on the third floor of Macy’s Center
City waiting to see Santa. Well, I didn't exactly want to see Santa myself. I
wanted to see the Dickens Village that was the prelude to Santa, and then I thought
it might be fun to catch a glimpse of actual children sitting on Santa’s lap. Then
I realized I had a rather skewed idea of fun.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Years ago, on that very same day, I had bravely marched into
Macy’s in Herald Square to pick up a last minute gift only to find myself in a
sea of people so thick it was impossible to even reach the escalator on the
first floor. I left without the gift, and I swore to myself I would never do
that again. So what possessed me to venture back into Macy’s? I don’t know, it
just seemed like a good idea at the time.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The first floor wasn't too bad, children were sitting by the
eagle to watch the light show in the center of the store. The elevators weren't
too crowded. Even the line for Santa, when I entered it, moved briskly past decorations
and shops and promises of future wonders. Then the number of people began to
increase. Ahead of me a child was crying, behind me a young person was
announcing that ‘it’ was only two or three rooms ahead, beyond the red curtain.
Farther back a group of teens was singing an off-key version of “Deck the Halls”
with only a few words remembered. The pace had slowed down to barely a crawl,
and we stood and fidgeted and waited and wound our way back and forth through
the maze of rooms and barriers that had been set up to keep us in our place. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlnlXOIrbicnwwezkIG56zky58tFavftf3Ktgka3-8bdQqGDA4d7RhUw1ubjr8Y5yRY2EJXmDCxIJP1zJKU65vdZaeq-seAEDJxsoY5L3biYEbL3zHQ0bxlREfaMe_WR95KRZMFVlSEYU/s1600/Past.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlnlXOIrbicnwwezkIG56zky58tFavftf3Ktgka3-8bdQqGDA4d7RhUw1ubjr8Y5yRY2EJXmDCxIJP1zJKU65vdZaeq-seAEDJxsoY5L3biYEbL3zHQ0bxlREfaMe_WR95KRZMFVlSEYU/s200/Past.jpg" width="150" /></a>“When you get to the village, you can move at your own pace,”
said the one guard who stood at the entrance to the village. I’m not sure what
she thought my pace was, but if she mistook me for a snail, then she was right.
We entered the village with high hopes and then realized there was no way to
move any faster than the people ahead. Next to me a young woman was having an
anxiety attack. “Just breathe and relax,” her mother kept saying, and I took it
as good advice for myself. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCcLYNxG8wiDY7bGQqFDk5Lj-sHEnTiE9zYcLa_DAUyC7BGBCuINY4xzJptcVmb7QcP6RIb5-n20UvToEIyhl6CmmLsjtwWX0ymZXS-hsx-WV9_Jv5_ACoagDfnshkdpYyQPmk_V91ySo/s1600/Grave.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCcLYNxG8wiDY7bGQqFDk5Lj-sHEnTiE9zYcLa_DAUyC7BGBCuINY4xzJptcVmb7QcP6RIb5-n20UvToEIyhl6CmmLsjtwWX0ymZXS-hsx-WV9_Jv5_ACoagDfnshkdpYyQPmk_V91ySo/s200/Grave.jpg" width="150" /></a>The Dickens Village itself was quite wonderful. Remember all
those animated windows in the department stores? Here I was in the middle of
the window itself, surrounded by the characters of <i>A Christmas Carol</i>. It
really is an odd story to wander through with ghosts and poverty and
graveyards, but it came to life around me through almost life-sized dolls that
moved and danced and nodded. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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When I was young, my parents used to drive into the city—coming
from New Jersey that meant Manhattan, of course—sometime in December to see the
window displays at Saks Fifth Avenue and Lord & Taylor. I was probably
dressed in my new warm coat wearing a new dress and socks with flats and
shivering as we marveled at the magical storied windows with just a few snow drops
falling to make it perfect without interfering with the ride home. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p> </o:p>Maybe I was trying to recreate that childhood memory if only
for a moment.</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Growing up Jewish, Christmas was always a challenging
holiday. It wasn’t mine and yet some years we did have a Christmas tree with
presents in addition to the Hanukkah Menorah and presents. And most years we
drove around to see the lights—there were some very rich people with some
elaborate displays in our town—for the holidays. I think I may even have sat
once on Santa’s lap and I don’t think I liked it. Sitting on some strange man’s
lap, a man with lots of facial hair, wasn't something I would really have wanted
to do. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj84yfWZgaM9NZOdoL1-bfjyrMXgY6t0dZ3o8xa_c46vilY8bh3ea30zxylwN5Os_x34otYM4QxyMnrDZtqu0qHxW2AHlmuOSRFINvWp3fs__48XwnsQ8zEHg7hyG76kbBmpQ2vves8w_Q/s1600/Santa.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj84yfWZgaM9NZOdoL1-bfjyrMXgY6t0dZ3o8xa_c46vilY8bh3ea30zxylwN5Os_x34otYM4QxyMnrDZtqu0qHxW2AHlmuOSRFINvWp3fs__48XwnsQ8zEHg7hyG76kbBmpQ2vves8w_Q/s1600/Santa.jpg" /></a><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So I was curious today to see whether the children would
like it or not. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Unfortunately there were even more lines to go see Santa,
even if all you wanted to do was take a picture, and I had stood in enough
lines already, so I didn't get to see Santa. Instead I took a picture of a
ceramic Santa standing outside the exit and decided that would have to do.</div>
<br />
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<br /></div>
Naomi Orwinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17858792688958117683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2400183750128035381.post-64004694886824335452013-11-25T10:06:00.001-08:002013-11-25T10:06:35.958-08:00Memories of Kennedys and King<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">It is Kennedy memorial time again, that yearly remembering of how
the young vibrant 35th president, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, died in a motorcade
in Dallas, and each time it comes around I am thrust back into the days of my
growing up. College and Kennedy’s election, the Bay of Pigs and student
protests, marches against the war, and the introduction of pot as an
alternative to alcohol. We really thought we could change the world, and in
many ways, we did.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;">This past year, Philadelphia seemed to be obsessed with all things 1968
– and that too awakened memories. Walking through the <i>1968 Exhibit</i> at
the Constitution Center, looking at images and artifacts of events I had
actually experienced, reminded me of just how powerful those times were. And
then, more recently, watching <i>RFK</i>, a revival of a one-man show about Robert
Kennedy, another leader we had believed in but never got to see what he could accomplish.
Unlike the Kennedys, most of us live on the fringes of history, we are not
essential to the events that occur around us, but those events are crucial in
shaping our lives and our eventual legacies.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;">For me, 1968 was the year the young men died – Kennedy, King,
Michael (my own personal loss), and countless unnamed others who were each
someone’s son, boyfriend, lover, father, friend, dying in a faraway land for a
cause most of us no longer believed in. It was a time of chaos and confusion. A
time of hope and horror. The death of men far too young to die, the riots of
young people in Chicago while business went on as usual in the Convention
Center. I wondered how many people I knew in that unruly rabble in Lincoln
Park, wondered if I should have been there too, yet relieved ultimately that I
wasn’t.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;">It was the spring of 1968 and I was working at Bobby Kennedy’s
headquarters in New York City doing something of vital importance like stuffing
envelopes or compiling lists or answering phones – rotary dial of course. Of
all the possible candidates available, and there were many, we had decided to
support the Senator from New York despite some misgivings about how he had come
to that position. We were optimistic and determined. We were against the draft,
against the war; for civil rights and for equality. We were young and
idealistic and heady with the illusion of power that marching in the streets
gave us. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;">That are some moments that we all remember, that we can tell you
just what we were doing when we first heard about it. For today’s youth it is
September 11, 2001 and the destruction of the space shuttle Challenger in 1983.
For my parents it was Pearl Harbor – my father was driving through the Holland
Tunnel when he heard of it. For my generation it was a series of losses that
started with the death of JFK, November 23, 1963, a day when I was also dealing
with health issues of my own.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;">And then it happened again, and again. One evening at Bobby’s
headquarters, a tall figure walked down the stairs, looked at us somberly. We
stopped whatever we were doing and gathered around him. William vanden Heuvel,
assistant to Robert Fitzgerald Kennedy, stood there, wearing a shirt, I
remember, but probably also a jacket and tie – we were a well-dressed cadre of
volunteers in those days – and he told us that Martin Luther King, Jr. had been
shot. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;">There we were, standing in the offices of the brother of the
President who had been shot down just five years earlier. That first
assassination of our lifetime was still raw for us. We stood, cried, disbanded,
left.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;">The next day, I think it was, we gathered in Central Park – where
we gathered many times since – war protests, John Lennon’s death, concerts, any
time there was a need for New Yorkers to gather, that’s where we went.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;">I wore – why I remember this, I can’t say – a pink plaid straight
skirt with a white patent leather belt and flats with a headband (and I never
wear a headband) – perhaps we also felt a need to dress up in the presence of
death. A lot of well-dressed white people gathered in Central Park that day to
mourn the passing of a slain civil rights leader.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;">We drifted away from Bobby’s campaign after that. Too many
candidates, too many issues. He didn’t have a chance. Maybe he wasn’t the best
person, he had a history – with McCarthy, with New York. And then, as California seemed possible, we
began to talk about going back to that basement office with the tables and
envelopes and phones and the stalwarts who had never left.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;">That Tuesday night, we stayed up late to make sure he really had
won. He had. It was late, so we headed for bed, the TV still on in the living
room, and then . . . a sound we’d never thought to hear again. And then there
was no point in going back. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;">The TV was once again our anchor, our connection with the dream
once more deferred.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;">It had been a long time since I held out my hand to the TV screen
to try and stop Jack Ruby from shooting Lee Harvey Oswald. A long time since I
believed in a politician, in politics, in government, in the power of people to
change the system.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;">Watching the one man show <i>RFK (b</i></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">y
Jack Holmes, Ginger Dayle directed. New City Stage Company </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">at the Adrienne
Theatre Second Stage) </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">was a
sobering reminder of how much we lost that evening. The portrait of RFK it
presents is a man driven by insecurities and family pride. Who rarely called
his older brother, eight years between them, by his first name, only by his
title, President Kennedy. A man called ruthless by his opponents who ultimately
came to see that he had to stand up for what he believed in and not just to win
votes.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;">Was this a true picture of RFK? I don’t know. It is a portrait of
the kind of leader so many of us would like to see today. The kind of person we
keep hoping to vote for. The play showed us a politician who was able to change
his mind, who wasn’t locked in to a position that no longer made sense. It’s
interesting to wonder whether in today’s <i>gotcha</i>
politics Bobby Kennedy could have survived. One can only wish that it’s still
possible for a leader to make a real difference, although cynicism makes us
doubt it. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
Naomi Orwinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17858792688958117683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2400183750128035381.post-88848605558914165422013-08-27T09:51:00.002-07:002013-08-27T09:51:43.354-07:00The Drama of a Dress<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><i>Some Thoughts
After Seeing Love, Loss and What I Wore</i></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We complain when the media focuses on what a woman wears,
instead of on what she says We probably know more about Hilary Clinton’s choice
of pant suits than about her specific political positions. Yet we flock to see
a show that is about the clothes we wear and have worn through out our lives.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That’s what <i>Love, Loss and What I Wore</i>, described as
an intimate collection of stories by Nora Ephron and Delia Ephron , based on
the book by Ilene Beckerman, which closed recently after a successful run at
the Philadelphia Theater Company at the Suzanne Roberts Theatre in Philadelphia
is about. The play, staged like a reading - five women seated on stools with
only a few drawings on an easel to illustrate some of the fashions mentioned -
manages nevertheless to evoke memories in the audience composed mostly of
women, even on a Friday evening, of our own experiences with fashion over the
years. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Clothes are significant. They reveal our status, our
aspirations, and our passions. They act as disguises when we want to hide
because we’re in a bad mood, and they reveal our bodies when we want to entice.
They also tell our histories. Women used to make quilts out of old clothes not
only because they were sometimes the only fabrics available, but as a way of retelling
the story of the wearer, the lived experiences of those cloths, the cold
nights, the bad dates, the happy births and weddings.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<a name='more'></a><br />
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So the dresses seen in illustration or only mentioned by the
five actresses – they all wore subdued black – reminded us of ourselves, and
the audience responded. They were in on the joke. They understood the
excitement of the new dress, the hopes pinned on looking just right, and the
heartbreaking memories associated with a particular dress worn for an occasion
that went awry - my prom dress of white tulle with a scalloped blue hem and the
boy who went with me; the red shoes I was wearing when I fell down and hurt my
ankle and my life went in a different direction than the one I had intended.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When one actress talked abut her mother forcing her to wear outfits,
I squirmed, remembering the matchy-matchy plaid, scratchy, wool outfits my
mother made me wear when I went off to college - it was the sixties and jeans
had become the new wardrobe staple. I hid the outfit under the bed and wore it
when I went home at break. Others laughed loudly at the memory and
embarrassment of trying on bras – training bras, minus cup sizes, the domineering
sales women and the fear of beign seen.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Shared dressing rooms, a closet full of nothing to wear, the
sense of guilt when a provocative mini skirt leads to rape. The challenge of
shoes too high, too low, but never just right. Breasts and breast cancer and a
new view of one’s body. The play touched on them all, and touched us as well. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We can often remember exactly what we were wearing when that
particular wonderful, awful, unforgettable thing happened. I had a favorite
brown dress. I wore it on the plane to my Mexican divorce on the week before
New York was about change the law and make Mexican divorces illegal. I planned
to change into an un-favorite brown dress but couldn’t because my suitcase
wouldn’t open and I was forced to wear the good dress, forever tainted by the
occasion. Then there was my hippy stage – long hair, long dress, John Lennon
glasses, and my sexy European stage, a barely-there see-through bikini, and a
dress made out of a scarf, which I now wear as just a scarf around my neck. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I still remember taking my mother’s clothes home after her
death – the smell of <i>Estee</i> clung to them even after they were
dry-cleaned and dry-cleaned again. All those boxy bright outfits stared at me
for months until I boxed them up again and gave them to Good Will. Someone else
walked anout wearing her scents, he clothes, because I clearly couldn’t<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Do our clothes carry our spirit with them? I have to admit
that I hate to walk into a vintage shop, the in word for second-hand or used. The
word that makes it acceptable to wear hand-me-downs. For me they seem to carry
the energy and scents, however pleasant, of their previous wearers. All their
stories as well. My own energy and scent and story too, I guess, since I
dutifully recycle all those no longer wearable - due to changing styles or
changes body size - clothes I had so carefully selected. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I have owned a lot of beautiful clothes over the years. A
lot of serviceable jeans and t-shirts too. Each one said something about me –
how I saw myself at that moment in time, how much I could afford or was willing
to spend on myself. When I pass them on, I’m letting go of that moment, that
me.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Is going to a show about clothes frivolous? Perhaps. But
it’s also a chance to look at ourselves, even laugh at ourselves, and
understand that we are part of some age-old heritage of women who see clothing
as costume and signifier.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Do I wish the press covered substance more than clothing -
absolutely. Think how lucky we are that Supreme
Court justices wear robes, or coverage might focus on Justice Ginsberg’s blue
dress instead of her opinions. But we shouldn’t have to wear a uniform to have
our minds explored as well as our bodies and the fashions in which we clothe
them. Clothes do matter, they just shouldn’t take precedence over our bodies,
our voices, or our thoughts. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Naomi Orwinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17858792688958117683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2400183750128035381.post-15206481399455467182013-06-05T11:26:00.002-07:002013-06-05T11:26:51.544-07:00The Blog in My Mind
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Over the last few months I have written some compelling,
thought-provoking articles on a variety of subjects – whether women are too far
out or too far in to be considered outsider artists; how women use their bodies
as well as their voices to express outrage instead of sexuality; which moments in
time really matter in women’s history.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, unless you are
gifted with ESP or some other form of mind-reading, you probably missed these
articles. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s because they exist
only on the media platform known as my mind.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I did not treat these pieces lightly; they were more than
random thoughts that flitted across my mind and then vanished never to appear
again. I spent a lot of time with them. I thought them through; I researched material
and interviewed subjects; I attended events and jotted down notes in a
notebook. I even edited the copy, debating which words to use and what titles
to give each piece. But ultimately they remained imprinted only in my
consciousness and not on paper. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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Now the mind is a very powerful thing. It can affect the way
we feel and behave, it can influence our health and our emotional state. But
one thing it cannot do is write. It cannot, on its own, change thoughts into
concrete form. One might say that words have their own ephemerality (perhaps a
made up word, but it does say what I mean). The squiggles on a piece of paper
have meaning only because we have collectively and culturally assigned a certain
sound and a certain sense to them. Nevertheless, they are more corporeal than
thoughts. They can be shared, they can be preserved. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<a name='more'></a><br />
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Writing is something most of us learn to do at an early age.
It gets embedded in our physiology like riding a bike and driving a car. But
that’s the physical part. The other part of writing, the having something to
say, comes, it seems, from somewhere else.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Sometimes, when I’m really in the flow, I feel that the
words that take shape on the page are coming from somewhere beyond myself. That
I am channeling the words that come through me and appear on the page (or the
screen) as if by magic. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At other times the words struggle to appear. Nothing I do
seems to coax them out of hiding. They stay securely in the ether and refuse to
budge. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I had never understood writer’s block before this. I knew
there were times I had nothing to say and therefore I didn’t write. But never
before have I had so much I wanted to say and been unable to make it appear
before me. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What has changed? Have I suddenly become conscious of
writing as an act of communication? Have I understood that writing implies a
reader and I’ve become afraid of rejection or, perhaps worse, indifference? Am
I seeking a kind of unattainable perfection, where each word is just the
exactly right word, and each article resonates with meaning and significance.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One of my favorite books on writing is Anne Lamott’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bird by Bird</i>, particularly her chapter
on Perfectionism. At an academic workshop on helping students improve their
work I once suggested to a group of scientists that perfectionism was a flaw.
In their world it was critical – and I suppose if I went to a dentist or a
doctor who had barely squeaked through their training, I might agree. But for
an artist of any sort, it is in the willingness to abandon perfectionism that
creativity can bloom.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Or am I just looking for an excuse for not doing what I need
to do to, which is to sit down and suffer through the agony of searching for
the words to express my ideas however roughly and just keep going until I have
written the first draft and then get busy revising. After all, isn’t that what
I tell my students. “Just turn in something,” I say. “Then we can make it
better.” Or “Wonderful happens in the rewrite.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When I tell others, writers in particular, that I have
writer’s block, they want to fix it. They suggest writing prompts,
inspirational readings, morning pages, deadlines. Anything that will get me
writing in the hope that once I have begun, like a car starting downhill, it
will build momentum and the writing will take off and eventually run under its
own steam. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I appreciate their concern and their suggestions. I really do.
But I’m not sure that fixing the writer’s block is what is needed. At least,
not right away, </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My sense is that I need to embrace this resistance and let
it fester a bit longer. I think it is about many things that have nothing to do
with writing but a great deal to do with who I am, who I was, and who I am in
the process of becoming. In order to move forward, I think I have to sit still
right now and let the inertia come over me until I absolutely can’t stand it
any more. I need to dig deep inside myself and find out what I really want to
write. Yes, I have lots of clever ideas, and they are all interesting and
others will read them and tell me how clever I am. But they aren’t my soul
talking. And maybe that’s what this moment demands of me, what this block
demands of me. To sit still until my soul cries out to be heard. Not in
cleverness but in truth. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
<!--EndFragment-->Naomi Orwinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17858792688958117683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2400183750128035381.post-18505129324741007242013-03-12T11:32:00.000-07:002013-05-05T21:24:22.058-07:00What I Learned from Gabrielle Roth<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Her music was the background of my life for many years. Her rhythms
affected how I moved through the world<i>. Eternal Dance</i> was the rhythm of
my days. <i>Refuge</i> was the music I used to clean my home. Yet, when
Gabrielle Roth passed away on October 22, 2012 I didn’t know about it. Her
passing was not noted in anything I read or saw, I only learned that she was
gone when Eve Ensler, speaking at TEDxWomen in December 2012, said that she was
no longer with us. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I was saddened to know that I had lost touch with Gabrielle,
with her teachings, with my own sense of self. Her work has been called
meditative dance, sacred dance, trance dance. I called it ecstatic dance, a
call to leave my own limitations and connect with the natural rhythms of my
body. When I ceased listening to her rhythms, I ceased listening to the rhythms
of my own body, my own soul.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Then Eve called on us to dance on V-Day, February 14, 2013,
and I knew that I would have to join, not only to stand with all the women who
had been harmed by violence, but also to honor Gabrielle, the teacher of my way
of being in the world.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><a name='more'></a></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I learned many lessons from her, lessons that can apply to
all of us, lessons that are well-suited to women’s understanding of their place
in the world. My first lesson began on a sultry night in August at Omega
Institute in Rhinebeck, NY.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I already knew Gabrielle’s music, I had read her books, I
wanted to find myself in movement and freedom, but I had gotten stuck. So I had
set out on what seemed like an impossible journey towards transformation. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I found myself one evening sitting in a large
room with several hundred others, a huge blister on my heel, preparing for a
weekend of movement and probably torture.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">We sat patiently, waiting. None of us had done this before.
No one knew what to expect. Then the music started, a slow steady beat. We
looked around. We stood. A few of us tentatively moved in place. A clumsy disco
by bodies unaccustomed to movement. Then little by little a petite dark woman
moved through our midst. Our bodies began to move together, the dance began to
take form. We moved—danced would be too grand a word for what we were doing—for
an hour perhaps—maybe more, maybe less. Time had disappeared, and we were moving
as one and not one word had been spoken. And yet, she was so slight, her
movements so contained, so powerful, so compelling. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">That was my first lesson. That presence is all. She didn’t
have to shout, to exaggerate, she just had to be totally herself and it
affected all of us, each of us. How often are we that totally in our bodies,
knowing who we are and how to be who we are? It didn’t require fancy movement,
or even knowledge of any particular steps, it just required being in the
moment. That way of being, that total self-absorption has become foreign to us.
As women, in particular, we often look outside ourselves to see how we affect
others. This was a time of just being, of finding our own way through the
movement. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The next day we began with the five rhythms and I began to
sense the next lesson—that each of us has an innate personal rhythm. The Five
Rhythms are <i><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">flowing</span></i><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">, <i>staccato</i>, <i>chaos</i>, <i>lyrical</i>,
and <i>stillness</i>, but we are not all equally comfortable with all of them.
I flowed through flowing and jerked through staccato, but chaos eluded me and
lyrical just seemed unnatural. I was unaccustomed to stillness, but in the
beauty of Omega I was surrounded by it</span>—<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">in the meditation of the labyrinth and the rustling of the trees; in the
placid surface of the lake and the glistening of the morning dew. <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">And that’s the other part of the lesson—the rhythm of place.
Each place has a rhythm, each city a heartbeat. I thrive in New York and Tel
Aviv—staccato cities with rhythms that match my own. I am calmed in London, a
city both staccato and flowing. But I was living in a place that was still and
lyrical and for me totally foreign. My body and my environment were continually
in conflict. How could my need for movement be met in a place that stood still,
that hibernated and refused to engage. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">People, too, have rhythms that come in conflict with our own.
I know too many who live in chaos and when I am with them I am always
uncomfortable. I retreat into stillness, and we are totally at odds. There is
no way for us to bridge the gap, so we pretend to be friends, but all the time
we are wondering what we have in common. Conversation is stilted, contrived. Psychology
has fancy names for all this, but if I stop thinking about what is going on,
stop analyzing who is doing what and why and just tune into how my body feels,
I begin to understand relationships in a whole new way. And I start to look for
relationships that match my rhythms and allow me to flourish rather than hold
back.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">As women we have learned to mistrust our bodies as much as
we mistrust our minds. Sometimes we know that something just feels wrong; we
over analyze it, make us or them at fault, and let ourselves stay in places
that are just wrong for us. Asking ourselves how something feels is foreign to
us, it seems self-indulgent. We should be able to overcome what we’re feeling
and just get on with things. But there’s something to be said for tuning in to
our bodies, honoring what they are telling us, allowing ourselves to be guided
by their messages. In hindsight, if I had paid more attention to what I was
feeling instead of what I was thinking, I might have avoided a lot of bad
purchases and several difficult relationships.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The last lesson was perhaps the most valuable. As we stood
to move around the crowded room and claim our space so that we could practice
the rhythms, we kept bumping into each other. And then Gabrielle said the magic
words—<i>Go towards the empty spaces</i>. Suddenly the room opened up. There
was plenty of space for us all. We no longer danced into each other, we found
our places around each other. Others were no longer a hindrance; they were
simply sharers of the space.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">And this is the lesson that has resonated through my life.
If I look for the empty places—then there is plenty of room for me. I can apply
this in many ways. If I want what you have, we will be in conflict—if I want to
be in your place, your space, there seems not to be enough room for both of us.
We both can’t have the same thing at the same time. But if I don’t worry about
you and look for my place in the world, then we can co-exist. There is plenty
for each of us. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">It also means looking for the vacuums that exist around us.
Where can I fill a gap that can help the world as well as satisfy myself? If I
don’t move towards that empty space it may remain empty, or it may be filled
with something less appealing. Perhaps it’s my obligation to look for those
empty spaces and find a way to fill them productively. The same can be true for
my own personal world—how are my days spent? What do I do with the empty
spaces? <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">For women, perhaps, if we stop trying to claim that places
that men have already staked out for themselves but instead look for the way we
can fill the gaps in the world, we might start working towards creating a
different world—one of our making and not someone else’s. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I know that’s a simplistic view of the world, but if instead
of trying to be equal in all things—instead of trying to play tackle football
or shoot a gun, instead of becoming workaholics or heroin addicts—we look at
ways in which we can fill the empty spaces around us with the things that
fulfill us, there might be other options we haven’t even considered that will
add to our own lives and the lives of those around us. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">If I fill those spaces with music and dance, with happiness
and joy, with commitment and passion, I will feel better in myself and in the
world around me, and maybe the world will be just a little better too.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p></div>
Naomi Orwinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17858792688958117683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2400183750128035381.post-69580905961326033762012-08-15T14:18:00.000-07:002012-08-15T14:18:12.538-07:00What Owns Me?
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">I moved again last month—the
fifth time in two years—and it got me thinking about ownership and what it
means to own things and the way ownership confers both status and
responsibility. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">With all that moving
around, I don’t own very much right now. About a year ago, as I planned for
this most recent relocation, I sold off all the furniture I had taken years to
accumulate and packed the rest of my belongings into storage. I felt as if I’d
been cut loose from something that anchored me in place. Since then I’ve lived
in furnished accommodations—hotels, sublets, shares. The few personal items I wanted
to use—toiletries, clothing, utensils—moved with me in several medium-sized plastic
containers that I could manage myself. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">The fact that I have
a storage unit baffles me. What, I frequently ask myself, is in there? And why
do I need to hang on to it? I know a part of the answer: a lot of papers—I’m a
writer and I like to keep what I’ve written. It’s not replaceable. And books
and records and souvenirs—even a box of rocks and shells and geodes—that I’ve
accumulated. The reality is that I could probably leave it all behind and my
life would not be significantly different. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">So then, why do I
own these things—the ones I keep and the ones I store—and what does it mean to own
them? </span><a name='more'></a><o:p></o:p><br />
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">Let’s start with the
fundamentals. I own my clothes, for example, so that means, I think, I have the
ability to do with them what I will—wear them, keep them, store them, give them
away, even tear them into shreds and use them as rags to dust the empty spaces
that come from not owning furniture. I don’t have an obligation to take care of
them, that’s a choice. If I want them to last and I want to look good, then I
care for the clothes. If I have tons of money and can replace them whenever I
want, then I can wear something once and pass it along. I have these clothes
partly out of necessity—to keep me warm and to cover me in public—and because I
love fashion and enjoy looking nice. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">I own a car as well.
I’ve paid for it in full, so in today’s terms that means I really own it. I
learned through friends who cheerfully accrued debt beyond their means, that
having something in your possession is not the same as ownership. As far too
many people who took out mortgages they could not afford are finding out,
ownership comes at a price. The car is a necessity for getting from place to
place. When I lived in Manhattan it was nice to rely on public transportation,
but once I left the city owning the means of transportation became a
requirement if I didn’t want to stay in all the time. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">The car is not the
same as the clothes. There are limits on what I can do with it. I have to take
care of it to keep it running—wash it, service it, fill it with fuel. I can
only drive it as fast as the local speed limit will allow, and I have to have
some kind of insurance to protect myself and others who may encounter the car
along the way. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These responsibilities
mean that in a sense the car owns a part of me, a part of my time and money.
Ownership of a car is a dual obligation. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">I used to have a
dog. I suppose I owned the dog—money was exchanged, the breeder got the money,
I got the dog. I took her home, but from that moment on the dog owned me. I had
to give her shots, feed her, bathe her, walk her. I’ve never had a cat, but I
understand that cats are a very different experience. Cats are very
independent. I think you can own a dog; you can have a relationship with a cat.
I’d like to own a dog again, but that would require settling down into one
place. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">Ultimately, I have
come to realize that for me things have a kind of impermanence. I’m often
exchanging what I have for the next version or replacing what has worn out—I’ve
just bought my third iteration of the Ikea Poang chair in a different color. I’m
on my third laptop which replaces my third desktop computer. My tapes and CDs
have already been replaced by MP3 and WAV files. My clothes wear out, or at the
least go out of style, before they become retro and stylish again.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">I admit I’m fascinated
by the TV shows on hoarders. I am fascinated by the way we need to constantly acquire
stuff beyond what we can actually use. And the way the world keeps inviting us
to own more. I used to love shopping and yard sales and making things. I
especially liked making pillows until I found I had no place to sit anymore.
Then I started making quilts that piled up in the closet. Then I made jewelry that
I still give to people on occasions. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">I traveled for many
years with just one rule—for everything I bought, I had to get rid of something
because I was limited to the one small suitcase I could carry. And that worked
fine for many years. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">After all, what do
we really need in this life? A place to sleep; a basic wardrobe; as many pairs
of underpants as days between laundry loads—start with 14 if you’ve got the room;
a set of sheets and covers; a bed, a chair; a place setting—two if you like to
entertain; and, in today’s world, a cell phone, a TV, a computer, an extension
cord, and a way to connect to the internet. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">Which brings me back
to where I started. Why do I have all this stuff? Why can’t I live like the
Amish in a plain room with very little that needs dusting.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">And that question is
also part of the answer. I don’t want to live in a plain room. I want my space
to reflect who I am, and who I am changes over time and so do my surroundings.
I want my clothing to make a statement about who I am. Some of the things I own
reflect my successes—proof that I was able to buy that expensive and trendy toy.
Some are keepers of memories—the shell from the beach in Cannes, the impossibly
mod dress from Carnaby Street in its heyday. And some I own just because I like
looking at them.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-bidi;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">So, perhaps, it doesn’t
matter that I have acquired a few too many things over time. In the end, I know
that while I may enjoy these possessions, be proud of them, claim status from
them, it is ultimately the experiences I’ve had that define my life, not some
papers sitting in a box somewhere. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div>
Naomi Orwinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17858792688958117683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2400183750128035381.post-14911118780106148162012-02-14T08:39:00.000-08:002012-02-14T08:39:04.977-08:00The Most Dangerous ThingThoughts<br />
Can start wars<br />
Can turn friends to foes<br />
Can make difference dangerous<br />
Silos are made to shelter missiles<br />
Thoughts are the true<br />
WMDsNaomi Orwinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17858792688958117683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2400183750128035381.post-72524177208095526962012-01-01T14:46:00.000-08:002012-01-11T11:34:51.870-08:00Dating Daddy: Why Older Women Become Cougars<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">As I emerge from a several year-long, self-imposed cocoon of isolation and hard work and consider the messy, sweaty, confusing world of relationships, I realize that I have no choice but to become a cougar.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> <br />
</span></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">Here’s why. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">In a trendy, upscale Brooklyn Japanese restaurant recently, a friend and I sat next to three couples in their seventies or more. As I looked at them I was struck by two simultaneous and disturbing thoughts — first, that they seemed to be the same age my parents were when they died, and second, that if I were to start dating again, the male halves of these couples were representative of the men I might be dating. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
</span></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">The only conclusion I could come to was that dating any one of these men or their peers would be just like dating my father. And that I would not, could not do.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> <br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">For someone who has resisted growing up, who has successfully bypassed all the markers of maturity such as parenting, homeownership, and empty-nesting, this was a shocking revelation. I had cleverly managed to avoid putting myself in the kind of social milieu which these men inhabited, so I had never grown up with them as my peers. Instead I haunted the halls of academe, perpetuating a delusion of youthfulness in myself and my students. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">My colleagues, even those of about my age, had never achieved the settled maturity that comes with growing up and settling down. There was no daily ordered routine for us. Three times a year we were confronted by about sixty new faces to convince and cajole along the way to their own maturity. under the guise of sharing our wisdom and offering what we call ‘education.’</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">And then, just like every teenager, we had the summer off, to play, to bask in the sun either nearby or at some exotic locale. We continued to learn and to grow along with our students. And here I was confronting these three — dare I say it — old men who had grown into the wrinkles on their skin. Who had had houses, children, and wives— perhaps more than one— along the way. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">I couldn't bear the thought of dating one of these men, let alone jumping — okay that’s a bit optimistic — stumbling into bed with any one of them.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">I had enough issues when I was a child dealing with a difficult father — you know, the one who left you standing in the middle of the road while trying to teach you how to drive — I didn’t want to confuse or perpetuate that parent child paradigm with romance.<o:p></o:p></span></div><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">I can’t say for sure why men don’t date older women and prefer younger women instead. On the surface it seems obvious — young firm bodies, child-bearing and -rearing capabilities, the way she decorates his arm — but perhaps they too see in women a reflection of that woman, the one who nurtured them, and fearing Oedipal involvement, they look elsewhere for satisfaction. I only know that for me, that revelation meant that I have to explore a whole new dating pool, and hope that somewhere out there is a guy who wants a woman who comes with her own set of luggage. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
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</div></span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> </span><br />
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</div>Naomi Orwinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17858792688958117683noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2400183750128035381.post-78643691900949153292011-09-30T10:42:00.000-07:002012-01-01T13:03:02.070-08:00Does Someone Have To Die For Me To Have Fun?The new TV season just started. Although I’m no longer teaching screen and TV writing, I still feel an obligation to watch all the new shows. To have something to talk about perhaps. To know what I want to watch on those nights when none of my old favorites are on and I just need a TV fix. <br />
<br />
One of my guilty pleasures—after Billy the Exterminator and Project Runway and all the other pseudo-reality shows—are detective stories: cop stories, private eye stories, private eye working with cop stories (think Castle, a definite favorite), PBS stories. Perhaps it’s a carryover from the time I auditioned for the role of Nancy Drew when I was a teenager. (I was really a Judy Bolton fan, but I would have gladly killed to play Nancy—a possible mystery plot there.) <br />
<br />
The problem with these shows is that someone has to die. That’s what gets the story going. That’s why the cops are called in, the detective is hired, Mrs. Marple and Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes start poking around. Sometimes there is just a mystery in place—a missing jewel, a nasty family reunion—but even then, soon someone is found lying somewhere not breathing and oozing blood over the nicely polished floor, the cobblestone path, the expensive wedding gown.<br />
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Who are these people who are killed for our pleasure? They are someone’s father, mother, sister, brother, fiancé, cousin—isn’t everyone related to Angela’s Lansbury’s Jessica Fletcher (Murder She Wrote)? Only rarely does the story deal with the pain these relations suffer, the emphasis is on finding the killer. That’s what the detectives do; they hunt down the killer and pursue justice.<br />
Some shows, like Law & Order, deal with ambiguous outcome. After the detectives have identified the perpetrator, “perp” in the lingo of the shows, Law & Order shows us that justice is not always done. <br />
Yet the detectives, private or publicly paid for, set out again the next day or next week to determinedly pursue the latest perp and bring about justice. <br />
These detectives are not flawless themselves. They have hidden violence in their pasts that is allowed to leak out during the lifetime of the series. Jethro Gibbs’ wife and daughter were killed in a car crash after they had witnessed a murder (NCIS). Patrick Jane’s wife and daughter were killed by his nemesis Red John (The Mentalist). Temperance Brennan’s mother disappeared mysteriously, only to be found as a Jane Doe skeleton and victim of violence, and her father has been accused of violent crimes to protect his family (Bones). Kate Beckett’s mother was violently killed and she almost lost her life to the same killers (Castle). Even Sergeant Lewis’s wife had to die in a car crash for him to get a promotion to Inspector and his own show (Lewis). <br />
I don’t think of myself as a bloodthirsty person. I skip over violence when I spot it while channel surfing. I did some research several years ago about the effect of violence on viewers, and the thinking at the time was that those who watch violence are the ones who are disposed towards it anyway rather than becoming violent through watching it.<br />
But this violence is so artfully staged—we have all learned about bullet trajectory and blood spatter patterns—that we somehow don’t even realize that we are watching the aftermath of true violence. It’s just a plot device, a HItchcockian MacGuffin, so we can get on with the story and watch our favorite detective in action. We usually have little interest in the dead characters, but we do want to see justice done.<br />
I learned years ago—and I can’t credit the source more than it being a talk on mystery stories at the NY Public Library—that there are essentially two types of mystery stories. The English Drawing Room story, in which the world has been torn asunder by the murder and it is the job of the detective to set it to rights, and the hard-boiled American film-noir narrative in which the detective is as corrupt as the society in which he operates. In these stories, the world can never be set to rights, but violence can be met with righteous violence and the murderer taken off the streets by a gunshot on the spot or a sentence to spend time amongst others just like himself in a place of violence. It’s also a world in which, as in Law & Order, the perpetrator may be let free to kill again. <br />
Modern TV stories tend to bridge the gap. The detectives are usually the kind you would invite into your drawing room for a cup of tea—Patrick Jane often invites himself to tea with his suspects, although a few tend towards hard-boiled, but even they are softened with a touch of kindness—the family tragedy, the hidden kindness. <br />
These shows are also unrelentingly optimistic. The crime will almost always be solved within 60 minutes, and the world is, at least momentarily, set to rights. The detective survives the most horrendous injuries in a cliff-hanger to return the next season to fight once again for truth and justice. The dark side is portrayed in the lingering subplot—the evil opponent who recurs every few episodes to threaten the stability of the detective’s world, the lingering mystery about origin and family secrets. <br />
We are drawn to the men and women who examine the bodies we see laid out on gurneys in the autopsy room or pulled out of cabinets on the wall. We’ve become so inured to these sights, that where once the camera only showed the body and the sheet, we can now see the skin pulled back to display the organs. <br />
What does it do to us to watch this much violence? Are we more afraid to roam the streets at night? Do we keep our families close and arm ourselves with the very weapons that cause so much mayhem on nighttime TV? I worry not so much that we become violent as that we no longer see violence when it is in front of us. I worry what it does to me, to my energy, to the way I see the world, when I can’t wait to turn on TV and see an attractive detective standing over the victim of a violent crime.Naomi Orwinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17858792688958117683noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2400183750128035381.post-53832305801053404232011-08-05T14:28:00.000-07:002012-01-01T13:07:59.211-08:00Discontent as Spiritual Practice<span style="font-style: italic;">"Discover your own discontent, and be grateful, for without divine discontent there would be no creative force."</span> Deepak Chopra<br />
<br />
I am perpetually dissatisfied. I always have been. That doesn't necessarily mean I am unhappy, it just means that I usually can see a way for things to change.<br />
<br />
Such dissatisfaction could be seen as a flaw—it might seem that I am always the critic, finding fault with everything: it can also be seen as a path towards change and even transformation. <br />
<br />
I recognize that discontent in large doses is hard to be around—it can sound very much like complaining or even worse—like whining. But beneath this discontent is a drive towards change, a desire to make things better. It is a sense of the possibility of things, and when acted upon it can be the impetus for creativity and freedom. <br />
<a name='more'></a>Some have called this form of discontent divine. Jose Ortega y Gasset, a Spanish philosopher and humanist (1883-1955), describes it in romantic terms. <span style="font-style: italic;">“The essence of man is discontent, divine discontent; a sort of love without a beloved, the ache we feel in a member we no longer have.”</span> A sense of longing for something that we have lost, whether actual or imagined. A sense of something we ought to have but don't right now.<br />
<br />
Kenneth Grahame, in The Wind in the<br />
Willows, describes it as inherent in the changing seasons. As Mole cleans his house, Grahame writes that, <span style="font-style: italic;">"Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing."</span><br />
<br />
Referring to this discontent as divine might seem to imply a connection to religion, but only one writer I came across, an Irish actor (Cyril Cusack) in fact, used it this literally—<span style="font-style: italic;">"Religion promotes the divine discontent within oneself, so that one tries to make oneself a better person and draw oneself closer to God."</span><br />
<br />
While in his book, Divine Discontent: The Religious Imagination of W.E.B. Du Bois, Jonathon S Kahn discusses whether Du Bois' statement <span style="font-style: italic;">"I cannot promise you happiness always, but I can promise you divine discontent with the imperfect,"</span> is an indictment of religion. <br />
<br />
Leaving religion aside—what does make such discontent divine rather than just complaining about things? Is it the source or the goal? Is there some connection to spirit that drives us towards change, or are we driven by a seeking to connect with the divine in whatever form the divine is expressed for each of us. Does that goal, that longing for connection, have to be internal or external, thought or action? <br />
<br />
Or are we, as Ortega y Gasset implies, merely driven because we are driven. Simone Weil, seems to subscribe to this notion. <span style="font-style: italic;">“We have only to imagine all our desires satisfied; after a time we should become discontented…We should want something else and we should be miserable through not knowing what to want.”</span> *<br />
<br />
For some this discontent is the source, not of growth, but of struggle. Alcoholics and addicts wrestle with this sense of discontent by trying to deny it or make it disappear. They use drink or drugs or shopping or too much TV as a way hide the pain caused by facing what is in front of them.<br />
<br />
Interestingly, Buddhism sees this discontent as one of the problems, if not the major problem, of life. The Four Noble Truths of Buddhism begin with positing that life is <span style="font-style: italic;">Dukkha</span>—suffering, as it is often translated. This suffering is caused by attachment and stops when attachment is relinquished. <br />
I wrestled with this view. While I acknowledge that there are struggles in life, I am oddly a bit more optimistic—life does have struggles, but, I believe, things can be done, even without immediate results. When I grew to understand <span style="font-style: italic;">Dukkha</span> as the gap between what one has and what one wants, I saw it as another way of describing divine discontent.<br />
<br />
Only Buddhists don't seem to see it as divine. For Buddhism this gap is a problem to be overcome by following the Eightfold Path and living in the 'right' way: right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration. For me this gap as the start of transformation, of wanting things to be other than they are and acting to make them so. <br />
<br />
I looked into my own religion, Judaism, to find what it had to say about this sense of discontent. What stood out for me was the Kabbalistic view of healing a flawed world. Because the world was shattered as it was created, there are bits and pieces of wonderful all over, and it is our job to find them and put them back together. Judaism does not spend a lot of time bemoaning the shattering of the vessels, instead the daily prayers are about giving thanks for the gifts we have and acting with a consciousness of the world. So, although the flaws of the world are accepted, there does not seem to be a sense of discontent about it.<br />
<br />
But I don't think religion is where I can find answers to my questions. Religion is basically antithetical to divine discontent. If we are constantly dissatisfied, then we become dissatisfied with religion as well, and therefore religion is promoting its own undoing. <br />
<br />
What then to do with this discontent that shakes my world, drives me to want something that I don't have? I have come to understand that I must embrace it. I must sit with it and let it grow until I see clearly what I must do. This may mean changing external circumstances, it may mean writing a story or a poem or painting a picture. It may mean changing my wardrobe or taking a tango lesson. It may mean moving or it may mean sitting still. <br />
<br />
Jungian analyst Marian Woodman, writes about holding the tension of the opposites, sitting with both sides of an issue without running away from discomfort. This includes dealing with the integration of spirit and body, but also being able to hold the tension between any two seemingly opposite feelings that arise within us. <br />
<br />
This is a daily challenge. If I am discontent with what is, then I must decide if I am called to take an action, to shift something within myself, or merely let go. So as I wrestle with the choices that discontent imposes, I am learning and growing into the person I want to be acting to help create the world I want to live in. <br />
<br />
<br />
* Simone Weil, <span style="font-style: italic;">On Science, Necessity and the Love of God</span>, trans. and ed. <br />
Richard Rees (London: Oxford University Press, 1968), 148.Naomi Orwinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17858792688958117683noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2400183750128035381.post-39132902905055168642011-07-19T12:34:00.000-07:002012-01-09T11:44:23.044-08:00Cinderella's Glass Slipper – Size 7N<div style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyHX2U6n_BeId7IwTRbCp3bJJ8dgM1PCRU8HgrvD-6q0f_NS6VqmwdrAhPafJLYrNVSrPqjjaGIrjcKuexjiE_J3rBi1wzIpPexfcrHC28eUoVN2iq5YjH1jX2q9lLGUCjOHgvAWGPi90/s1600/blue+1+web.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyHX2U6n_BeId7IwTRbCp3bJJ8dgM1PCRU8HgrvD-6q0f_NS6VqmwdrAhPafJLYrNVSrPqjjaGIrjcKuexjiE_J3rBi1wzIpPexfcrHC28eUoVN2iq5YjH1jX2q9lLGUCjOHgvAWGPi90/s1600/blue+1+web.jpg" /></a></div>Here's the part of the Cinderella story that no one mentions—the reason that no one could fit into her glass slipper was that it was a perfect size 7N. And the reason that she was so upset over losing it, was that Fairy Godmama, otherwise known as Mama Manolo Choo, had made those glass slippers just for her. They were the only shoes Cinderella had ever worn that fit her just right.<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">When the Prince finally returned the slipper, Cinderella instantly said 'Yes,' because she knew from thenceforward she would be able to afford a cobbler to make shoes for her that fit. And so they lived happily ever after—Cinderella, the Prince, and the Cobbler Louboutin.<br />
<br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">But I am not Cinderella. I have no Fairy Godmama. I have simply a relentless desire to find a comfortable pair of stylish shoes in just my size. I am a part of that ever-diminishing genus—women with narrow feet.</div><div class="MsoNormal"></div><a name='more'></a><br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9E3Ythck7YwAvLCoOW9uStU0Zc_umTjluePaGiedxWbmIpTxM96yJjQC-O-P-jQuMHSf1CwDd_TwvNxhuK4GS7QZLPRgZOJKk9ZCJ1f3Kt2JbPm1m9vgfw2ucQHpRzjd5WK7QdUkJs3A/s1600/three+2+a+web.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9E3Ythck7YwAvLCoOW9uStU0Zc_umTjluePaGiedxWbmIpTxM96yJjQC-O-P-jQuMHSf1CwDd_TwvNxhuK4GS7QZLPRgZOJKk9ZCJ1f3Kt2JbPm1m9vgfw2ucQHpRzjd5WK7QdUkJs3A/s1600/three+2+a+web.jpg" /></a>When I was young, 7N was a standard size for most shoe lines. The classic lasts of the major department stores, such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Bergdorf Goodman, included 7N. Today such shoes have become an endangered species, while their once rare cousin, the wide shoe, has made a comeback and can now be found in increasing abundance wherever shoes are for sale. </div></div><div class="MsoNormal"> </div><div class="MsoNormal"> </div><div class="MsoNormal">As I walk through the local shoe warehouse that, the manager tells me, carries over 22,000 pairs of shoes, I am painfully aware that hardly any of the shoes displayed will fit my feet. Occasionally am I tempted by a bright orange sticker and the letter 'N' on the end of box, but, alas, the letter N is not a guarantee of either narrowness, comfort, nor wearability. </div><div class="MsoNormal"> </div><div class="MsoNormal"> </div><div class="MsoNormal">Yes, 7N can be found—in catalogues and stores specializing in shoes for those with orthopedic problems. It seems that 7N has gone from being a major player in the shoe world to a 'condition.' Just as giving birth has been pathologized, so having narrow feet has become a problem in need of a remedy.</div><div class="MsoNormal"> </div><div class="MsoNormal"> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTSCVmgKW-dLBNw2z21Saho2_YlkTu20yxyms-k04Os-SKPL64_AvevK5bOhB5BGy0TjirTEXjo7lnCihYpTRrEU16v5n3QLX1Xjuop3fx_7PdAioCz7SWdFBKPBqBNwya8Txs0eKNnh4/s1600/black+over+a+web.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTSCVmgKW-dLBNw2z21Saho2_YlkTu20yxyms-k04Os-SKPL64_AvevK5bOhB5BGy0TjirTEXjo7lnCihYpTRrEU16v5n3QLX1Xjuop3fx_7PdAioCz7SWdFBKPBqBNwya8Txs0eKNnh4/s1600/black+over+a+web.jpg" /></a>I can only surmise, based on the chunkiness of narrow shoes, that designers, with the encouragement of podiatric doctors, have determined that narrow-footedness can lead to a serious lack of balance which must therefore be rectified by providing a solid base to stand on. Shoes for people with narrow feet are clearly designed to keep their wearers from tumbling over.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div></div><div class="MsoNormal">There are some well-known designers who have bucked the trend, and who do offer narrow shoes—at a very broad price. Stuart Weitzman and Ferragamo, to mention two, do cater to narrow feet—if you want to lay out $200 or more for a pair.<br />
<br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">But here's the problem—not all narrow shoes or narrow feet are created equal. Some feet are narrower in the heel, some are not. Some shoes have narrow heels, some do not. And, unfortunately, I have found that price is not a guarantee of shoes in which my feet not only look good, but shoes that I can walk in as well.<br />
<br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">It's often hard to discover this before buying. When you can't try shoes on, it's hard to assess fit, and the fact that so few places carry narrow shoes means that those of us who need them must rely on catalogs, e-stores, or experimenting with ways to insert enough padding to pretend that the shoes we want fit.<br />
<br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I have, I admit, succumbed to the lure of a beautiful shoe that I found online. In my closet I have a gorgeous pair of green suede shoes that I would wear if I could do so without excruciating pain. I regard them more as a museum piece than an item of clothing.<br />
<br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Women of all sizes, it seems, have accepted that new shoes mean discomfort—pinched toes, bunions, blisters, sore feet. Oprah Winfrey has freely admitted to wearing her shoes only long enough to walk on stage and then sitting down as quickly as possible. I am talking about comfort in a general sense here, I am not even addressing the ridiculous heights to which heels have gone—that's a discussion for another day.<br />
<br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Perhaps it seems petty of me to complain about the lack of stylish narrow shoes and then gripe about the ones that do exist. But frankly, if I am going to lay out a large sum of money for a pair of shoes, I want them to fit—and that, for me, includes comfort. <br />
<br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I do applaud Zappos.com for not only offering shoes in a variety of sizes—with free shipping on returns for those of us who are hard to fit.<br />
<br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">So as I sit here in my lace-up, sturdy, well-balanced shoes, I dream of one day meeting Cinderella's Fairy Godmama, who will wave her magic wand, and I will look down and see myself wearing the most wonderful, comfortable pair of shoes I have ever owned.<br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Shoes shown by Jessica Simpson, Guess, B.O.C. and ???</span></div>Naomi Orwinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17858792688958117683noreply@blogger.com1