Bread and Butter

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.

Remember the scene in Ghost 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.

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.

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.

Seven Reasons You Should Absolutely Read this List

A lot of blogging gurus these days say lists are the way to go. So here’s my list of why this list is absolutely compelling reading.

1. It’s a list. Duh! It’s got a finite number of ideas anyone can grasp in just a few minutes.

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.

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.

4. It gives you a space to comment at the end. Don’t you love writing snarky comments?

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.

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.

7. Whatever. Make up your own reason and use item number 4 to tell me what it is.

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.

Whose Story Is It?

As more and more of the Cosby story comes out, I find myself asking whose story is this?

While a few of the women have told a portion of their stories in their own words on Dr. Phil, 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?

Headlines matter

I learned the hard way recently that the headline often determines the story. If it reads, Abuse Charges Against Bill Cosby, 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, Bill Cosby Facing Accusations, again it is a story about Cosby and the ramifications, for him, of those accusations. If it reads, Another Cosby Victim, 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?

Waiting For Santa

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.

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.

Memories of Kennedys and King

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. 

This past year, Philadelphia seemed to be obsessed with all things 1968 – and that too awakened memories. Walking through the 1968 Exhibit 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 RFK, 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.

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.

The Drama of a Dress

Some Thoughts After Seeing Love, Loss and What I Wore

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.

That’s what Love, Loss and What I Wore, 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. 

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.

The Blog in My Mind

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.   However, unless you are gifted with ESP or some other form of mind-reading, you probably missed these articles.  That’s because they exist only on the media platform known as my mind.

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.

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.

What I Learned from Gabrielle Roth

Her music was the background of my life for many years. Her rhythms affected how I moved through the world. Eternal Dance was the rhythm of my days. Refuge 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.

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.

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.

What Owns Me?

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.

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.

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.

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?

The Most Dangerous Thing

Thoughts
Can start wars
Can turn friends to foes
Can make difference dangerous
Silos are made to shelter missiles
Thoughts are the true
WMDs

Dating Daddy: Why Older Women Become Cougars

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.

Here’s why.

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.

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.

Does 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.

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.)

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.

Discontent as Spiritual Practice

"Discover your own discontent, and be grateful, for without divine discontent there would be no creative force." Deepak Chopra

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.

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.

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.

Cinderella's Glass Slipper – Size 7N

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.

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.

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.