Writing with Rox weekly prompt—Knock on your Neighbor's Door Day

I like to make up holidays. Partly to make fun of the ones we have and partly because they so clearly reflect what is so functional and dysfunctional with the world.

The truth is, I like to indulge in the fantasy of an evolved world where we don't need the excuse of holidays to feel loved, do what we love, spend time with loved ones, give gifts, have something to look forward to, etc, because everyday is full of these moments. I've written about this before here in a vision of Loveland, my future city of love light.

The one I made up yesterday during Weds afternoon Intuitive Writing was "knock on your neighbor's door day." On this day, anyone can go knock on anyone's door and ask to come in and join them in their lives for a day. No questions asked, all welcome. You knock, they let you in, you take off your shoes, make yourself at home, and have a big meal, maybe go on an outing. Nothing huge has to happen; you just know you have a place to go no matter what and are welcome no matter what and can stay as long as you'd like.

The idea brought back of memory of last summer when Too-Cute-Face and I were biking home from Lake Calhoun by all those huge houses on Xerxes. We'd been lamenting the lack of parental nurturing in our lives, even in our forties. Wishing for the little things: a meal out, encouragement on a hard day, celebration on a good one, invitations to dinner, etc. I told him I missed being able to go down to my dad's house on the beach in Playa del Rey and doing yoga while he played piano. I missed having a soft sunny place like that to go where I knew I was welcomed all the time (by dad, mind you, not his wife, which is likely why I wasn't flying down there more often). We wondered what would happen if we knocked on one of those big gated doors on Xerxes and invited ourselves in. We could bring the drum and the guitar and maybe sing a few songs together, we mused.

My therapist reminds me that this eternal longing I have for "big community" has to do with growing up without one and always longing for one. I think watching too much TV depicting large happy families has a lot to do with it too. Ma, usually running out the door, late for something, called all those shows which I drooled over daily, "fucking stupid," or "totally unconscious," which was true, but confusing: What was better, big stupid family, community or no community at all?

What holiday would you like to put on the calendar?

In the meantime, come and knock on my door... I'll be waiting for you. (Yes, even Three's Company was one of those shows I wanted to step inside of). But seriously, the Beach community awaits you for writing, sharing, taking off your shoes, getting comfy, and just knowing you are safe and loved and welcomed for your stories, your silence, your truth, loudness, and what and wherever else they dream  you on and off the page.

WRITING WITH ROX weekly prompt—In Memoriam

Daniel writing at the Beach,  May, 2011, at a yoga and writing retreat

In Memoriam
Daniel Hennessy, student, spirit brother, writer, poet, friend

As soon as I received the email from Daniel's wife Lynne, subject line "Daniel Hennessy," I knew that he had left his body and moved onto the eternal sunrise. But how can that be? I wondered in that infinite nanosecond before clicking on the message, how can it be? He's happy now. He's doing great. Life is good. It can't be.

I opened the email and read from Lynne that Daniel died unexpectedly last Thursday evening. "I know you two were close and I'm sorry to have to break the news in this way," she wrote.

I pushed aside my Greek Yoghurt and looked up at the sky. I exhaled with shocking volume and locked eyes with the blue of the sky contrasted against the white of the clouds, the same watercolor blue of Daniel's eyes. "Why brother?" I asked. "Why?"

I remembered the first time I met those watery blue eyes in the summer of 2010 at the Loft.  Intuitive Writing. How familiar they were, how much relief they brought, not only to me, but also to the students he shared his stories with in that class. How that class led to another and another, then several epic email exchanges, some in Spanish, some in intuitive flow.

The last email I received from him last July said: "Hey Rox, goin' pretty good.  Lot of travel this summer plus motorcycle camping in state parks.  Lynne is building a portfolio of state park pastorals...sometimes she uses her motorcyle for an easel....How you?" 

I did not write back.

I'm still waiting for an answer. It's coming. First I have to deal with the grief. Get past the denial. I'm still in denial about my father's death; I keep telling Too Cute Face that "when you meet my dad someday..." because I know how much they'd fall in love with each other upon meeting and part of me truly believes it will happen. So it's going to be a while.

"It's not important how he died," Lynne later wrote, "but how he lived."

And how I can speak to how he lived and how he wrote. The seductive literary drawl of his reading voice, especially when reading a chilling childhood memory, where he managed to weave humor into horror. (We both write of our mothers as "Ma," and we both mean the same thing.).

Yes, I can speak volumes to how he lived, suffered, healed, married, wrote, thought, felt, and celebrated among friends and family last May, that beautiful sunny celebratory day that was his wedding day and a day I will never forget because everything, even the stillness, twinkled.

And  I plan to write those volumes. But not today. Today is not about making anything more or adjectivial or big of the loss over or the life that was Daniel, but just to say I will miss you brother, writer, friend, lover of all beings, watercolor eyes, happy drumming man, love animal, poet wanderer, and eternal sunrise... your stories—both on and off the page, ones we created together, one's I had the pleasure of hearing—will live in me for a lifetime, and when the time is right, breathe some of that eternal sunrise back into the world.

Daniel laughing with writing friends

the two Beauties
by Daniel Hennessy

Alan Watts said we did not
come into this world, 

we come out of it.

Well, there's the rub.

Because there is a nostalgia, too.
That I am a visitor on this lovely planet,
that my real home is in the sunrise, 
and that I am reminded of this
by the glance of an infant.

Well, that infant came out of something, too.

Like dew.

Who are we?

Whether you knew Daniel, or perhaps your own "Daniel," all thoughts and feelings  are welcomed and wanted. Love, Rox

Writing with Rox Weekly Prompt—Proud Teacher Moments

Dearest Students, Friends, Writing with Rox Beach Community of now, then, to be, whenever....

Your words are gifts! Offerings. I'll say it and say it. And say it. It goes something like this:

and the tree was happy...

Every single time a piece of raw writing is shared around the table here at the Beach, (or the Loft, or typed up and shared with others, eventually made into a book, a gift, a dream, a song, a quilt, an anything—or a nothing—, etc) the universe is happy. Why? Because you have offered your raw truth, the part of you that is most fully alive, most fully you, fully real, fully vulnerable, human, community. Why? Because the way I see it, the universe does not know how to be anything but itself: trees cannot stop themselves from budding and falling; weather cannot retreat just because spring is here; sunsets are not beautiful on our behalf, yet recognizing them as such is instinctual; and the moon will round upon the edges of the earth, milking the horizon, even if no one notices; and rocks will cradle water, and water will run freely... No part of nature, but the humankind, questions whether or not it ought fully be itself in all it's truth today.  So: when we allow ourselves to be all of who we are on the page, and if want be, share that being with others, we perhaps begin to integrate that into the way we live our lives, and then offer that same fullness of being into the universe.

In case I haven't said it enough, I am so grateful to all of you for sharing your gifts with me. Each story shared takes root in me, to be remembered sometime when I most need it—if not now, maybe in seventy years. In your stories, I've remembered joy and have been granted resolution, peace, forgiveness, compassion, and the relief of knowing I am not alone—physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually. You've been there. You've done that. And even though I cannot relate today, I will tomorrow and boy will I be glad to know someone else has been there.

And the biggest gift of all is that we begin to see that we become the heroes of our own lives, cliche as it sounds. Because comes a time when you look back on something you wrote and go, wow, I can't believe "she" actually did that! How did she ever get through that? And you realize that she is you.

You wouldn't think so, but just writing about what you did this morning (start with "this morning..." and just go from there, see where it takes you...) and going from there, writing and sharing the truth of what you may consider an everyday mundane Minnesota morning and the uniquely you details of it, can and will change someone's life.



Today one of my students (among many, to whom I am one teacher) sent a link to a story she wrote that was published in today's Star Tribune! It's full of gifts and wisdom. Please enjoy!

http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/goodlife/205273101.html

WWRWP—"Were They Confetti Bombs?"

This morning at the bus stop, a runner went by in Boston blue. In recognition, I put my hands to my heart in namaste and the runner waved back.

"Why did he do that?" Jude asked.

"Well Jude...well... why don't you come over here and sit down." 

He joined me on the steps of the meditation center, where we fittingly wait for his bus each Monday and Tuesday morning. As child-friendly-ly as I could, I told him about what happened yesterday in Boston. I gave him the facts. No drama. Nothing graphic.

Up until today, I've been very protective of sharing world news with Jude. As many of you know, I do not take media news of any kind, which is a whole other subject, the subject of my memoir in fact, which I will eventually finish if I can figure out a way to make more hours in the day. The point is,  he is not allowed to watch regular TV or play with imaginary (or real for that matter) weapons of any kind, at least not on my clock. He is taught daily that "we don't believe in shooters," and reminded that there are no "bad guys," only guys that have been done badly to who in turn act "badly."

I'm not stupid; I know he will and probably does play games of good and evil, though one day last fall I overheard him tell a kid at the playground that "my mom doesn't let me play with shooters." For my benefit,  he also reassures me that when he plays with kiddie toys like BatMan and Robin type weapons over at Dada's that the canons and bullets are love bullets shooting love missiles. I also realize I cannot use young/metaphorical language much longer, which is perhaps why I decided to sit him down today. Perhaps I can tell him the story without sensationalizing it.

Of course he wonders why—why about any and all of it. And because he is my kid, I tell him exactly why. 

For the record, most questions he asks from his creative six-year-old brilliant imagination I'll admit I cannot answer. Often times I will simply say, "I don't know, honey," or I'l make up something really goofy for his amusement. Yesterday he taught me the difference between a "partly sunny sky" and a "partly cloudy" one. When he asks why the sky is so brilliant on stormy days (not his words) I make up something fantastical about magic cloud carpets and Lovelands on high, to which he'll say, "well, I think it's because it's raining over there." He asks a lot of trick questions. 

I'm okay not knowing a lot of things. But when it comes to what is happening to our world—humankind violently, satirically, mindlessly, politely, passively (and aggressively) turning on itself—and why—isolation, fear, lack of love—I am unflinching when it comes to sharing this truth. I'm no bodhisattva, but I've done and seen and suffered and rejoiced and studied too much to keep this truth all to myself, to not share what has been taught to me by elders, teachers, fear, life, the universe... When I talk to my students about the "writers' duty," it echoes Faulkner's belief with a twist: we ought write about what we love and the stories about how what we love has helped us fight for and live more whole, loving, lives. 

Of course that's a bit heady for a six year old. The over simplified, copout explanation is that we are Buddhists (or...Bu-Jews. Or...Hind-Jews) and as such we are rooted in lovingkindness and do not believe (or behave) in harming any living beings. And, as much as I can, I try to live this in our daily lives. We hug trees. We sing songs about love. We help others and each other. We do yoga. We bow to Buddha. Yesterday he offered heartfelt thanks to the birds by shouting out of the car window as loud as he could "thank you, robin!" for giving us the late afternoon sunshine break in the clouds. 

So when he asked why "they" put the bombs there I told him it is because "they" are sad and angry and don't get enough love. 

Like I've said, he may write a memoir someday about his crazy mother called "Hare Mama!" He may think I'm full of shit and become a used car salesman (though we looove them too!). Still, it could be worse. I could be Ma. I could tell him the reason for all this mindless violence is because people are assholes, stupid, unconscious, and should be shot. 

But somehow I think my way's healthier. It's much easier to love Ma now, regardless of, perhaps because of, her suffering. 

Before heading onto the bus, Jude asks "were the bombs confetti bombs?" He is thinking of the easter confetti eggs we dropped on each other's heads and the hardwood floor. The image of happy colorful confetti blasting all over the world's wars and hatred and violence makes me smile. On the other hand, my kid may be the next Paul Wellstone. Or Willy Wonka.

"Imagine that, JJ" I said as he took his familiar spot at the front of the bus and waved to me as they drove away and out of sight. "Just imagine that."

How do you talk to your children? Elders? What sense do you make of the world these days? What is your "why?"

Writing with Rox Weekly Prompt—EVERYTHING: PART TWO IN FOUR PARTS

 1.
When I was about four, story goes, Ben and I were playing "Dark Room" in the hallway, which consisted of us scurrying around on the hardwood on all fours and me declaring, "I'm an Aardvark!" while we chased each other back and forth until we'd had enough or Ma put an end to it. On this particular day, story goes, Ma and Dad took us into their bedroom and told us they were going to get a divorce because they didn't love each other anymore.

The way my dad always told it was that Ben and I started laughing and went back to our game.

"While we went back into the bedroom and cried," he added.

That story puzzled dad every time he told it. Later, when I was in grad school for psych, he asked what I made of that, being a budding therapist and all. "Do you think it was some sort of coping thing, Rox? I mean... is there something Freudian about that?" Dad looooooved Freud. Almost as much as he loved Jung. "Eileen, what do you think?"

Ma couldn't remember. "I'm sure they were scared shitless, Leonard," was all she could come up with.

In reality, as far as I can remember, the divorce was a nonevent. Everyone on the block was a latchkey kid with divorced parents. You were weird if your parents, at least your biological ones, were raising you together in the same house.


2.
Tonight while reading books to Jude, he pointed out that he was cuddling his "diverse" teddybear. I looked over and smiled, wishing I could be more awake to take in the sweetness of it. Another night of books, another stuffed animal to love. "Do you know what a diverse teddybear is?" he asked.

Well I thought about that.  I think I know what that means... but why does he? Isn't diversity a bit advanced for kindergarten?  Wow, that Barton sure is progressive! Of course, on second thought, I wasn't surprised to know that diversity was something being taught at his school, and I began imagining the context for this teaching. I looked at the teddy bear for signs of "diversity."

"Do you?" he asked again.

"No, honey, I don't. What is a diverse teddybear?"

"It's when your parents live in two separate houses."

Ah. That kind of diversed.


My kid is so pure with language. I hope he never stops doing it his way. The other day on the way to school he begged me to turn up the "radio-ator" so he could hear "Baila Baila Baila" as loud as it would go.  He says something pure like that every day, which I wish I had time to celebrate as hard as I'd like to each and every time.  Lately he's been saying, "Mama hug me up!"

And tonight he told me, quite matter-of-factly, why he has a diverse teddybear.

I can't help wonder if the pain I feel his or mine. I can't help wonder a bunch of things, honestly. I know what I know... I know my life. But I can't help but wonder all kinds of things, all sorts of what ifs. What if Ma hadn't asked Dad for a divorce. What if we really were sad... And I can't help but wonder about this morning. Jude asked if mon homme was coming over in that predictable anticipatory voice I both fear and love, love because I want everyone to get along and love each other, fear because Too Cute Face and I riding out a storm, forecast unknown. 

I tell him no, not today. "It's a school day, honey."


3.
Fifteen years ago I was at a psychodrama retreat on the Oregon Coast. It was my first of many to come, but I don't remember too many details because it was a complete awakening, albeit a traumatic one.  Where I'd been before that I'll never know, living something of a "half-life," I suppose, as my trainer put it. The few things I can recall: I realized I was on the verge of divorce, I felt the most intense sadness I had ever felt in my life, and one of the teachers said one of the most important things I have ever and will ever hear in my lifetime: "Unexpressed grief kills."


4. 
Two weeks ago when the ENT doc told me he could see nothing in my ears, up my nose or in my throat, I refused to leave his office. "What do you mean there's nothing there?" I argued. "How do you explain the plugged ears? The dizziness? The truck-drove-over-my-face feeling?"

"I don't," he said and recommended Sudafed. I felt the pain and anger well up as he left the room.

Moments later on the phone with Too Cute Face, he listened empathetically as I vented about the appointment. "I'm so sorry," he said, among other kind things. "I'm so sorry it still hurts so much." I know he didn't mean it, but that actually made it worse. But the good kind of worse. The kind that reminds me I needn't be such a stranger to empathy, but the kind that is still hard to integrate so it makes me cry.

I cried a lot that week. A lot of old grief was kicking around, looking for a way out.  Miraculously, my sinus hell gradually went away. I should have been listening to it a little harder, perhaps.




What is your divorce story? Or diverse story for that matter? Or (un)expressed grief story?


PS: Is that really snow I see outside my window? Good golly, cry me a river.

WWRWP—Roid Rage in the ER! PART ONE

It started about a month ago with a cold, which eventually turned feral and ate me alive with my first sinus infection. Because I'd never had one before, I assumed the face and jaw pain must have been fibro related, or perhaps lingering effects of the cough, or that time of the month (or second time of the month in my case)... or...whatever... until one morning my face hurt so bad I could barely open my eyes.

"Jesus, Woman," David said, "go to the doctor."

I hemmed and hawed a couple more days until I finally couldn't take it anymore and went to urgent care where the doc suggested I had a bacterial sinus infection and would require antibiotics. "Do I have to?" I protested. I've been on so many in my lifetime I think I'm immune.

"Well, it could go away on it's own," she said, "but the risk of an untreated bacterial sinus infection is meningitis. I flashed on my grandmother and her quivering hand. "Will it help with the pain?"

"Within a few days you should be feeling mostly better."


A few days later came and went. I felt better. But not mostly. A few days later I felt worsely. But again, I figured I'd let it go. And go. And go... As someone accustomed to living with a fair amount of physical pain, I never know what's coming from where. Plus, wisdom from a Jewish Buddhist reminds me that not every physical sensation is a sign of terminal illness, and thus I soldier on.

After two weeks of intermittent plugged ears, head and neck pain, nausea, and crushing fatigue, I was running out of excuses. Could I be depressed? I wondered. Could that be causing all this? I Netied. I Nelimeded. I flushed with ACV and garlic. I did my alternate nostril breathing. Stood on my head. Avoided standing on my head. Cried. Avoided crying.

A round of Flonase  and a packet of  Mucanex D left me hopeful, but unhealed.


In the meantime, my doctor brother suggested I go to an ENT. By then I had diagnosed myself with Barotrauma, a common illness among divers and pilots having to do with changes in barometric pressure, much less common on land. When I insisted to my brother though, that my symptoms mimicked them exactly, Ben conceded that perhaps I could have caused barotrauma by overusing the Neti Pot.

They laughed at this one at the clinics. "You have what?" they'd say, rubbing their eyes in frustration, "what are the symptoms?"

"Unbearable pain."

"That's more like it. Sit down. We'll call you when it's your turn." To pass the time, they gave me a long blue plastic bag attached to a face mask when I told them I thought I was going to throw up; I thought it was supposed to be used to breathe into if you felt nauseous, which I tested in the lobby. I was abruptly told I was confusing it with something else and hadn't I ever heard of a barf bag?

Friday afternoon I finally gave up and headed to the ER just so I could be seen somewhere and do something about the pain. After the requisite CT scan, IV drip of Benadryl, etc, blood tests, we were released around eleven pm. The tests revealed nothing and I was given something for pain and an RX for Prednisone. In my pleasantly doped up state, I understood that the Prednisone was to reduce the swelling in my sinuses. I missed the part about how it would also reduce me to my last nerve.

I slept like a baby and woke up feeling better than I had in a while. Encouraged, we quickly filled the RX and I popped my Preds, excited to be getting back to normal. When the pain roared in around midday, I ignored it. Instead I tidied up and then went back to bed. What happened next is not good. I'd rather not even go into the details. Granted it's the kind of "not good" that will eventually, given enough time and reprieve, be funny. But not today. Let's just say I'm lucky my boyfriend is speaking to me.

"I know you don't feel well" he sighed after trying to get me to smile for 8 hours, "it doesn't mean you can be mean to me all night long." By then he was tired of my pain. Nothing he could do or say got through to me. I turned away from him on the couch. "Fine," I said and headed upstairs. It didn't matter that he took me to dinner. It didn't matter that he sat with me in the ER for ten hours. It only mattered that he refused to watch a movie with me and cuddle, even though it was going on midnight. Why didn't he know that was a federal offense?

A little later I came back down and googled "prednisone and irritability." Bingo. The next day several people, both on and offline will agree that it can make you nuts. "Roid Rage," is apparently what it's called.

"What are you doing on your computer so late?" Too-Cute-Face called over from the couch as I hunched over the dim glow, where my computer faithfully burned, an everlasting candle.

"Googling," I said and headed back up. I ignored the little voice saying come with me. I don't want to be alone.

                                                                      ...

Your Roid Rage story?
Your ER story?
What happens in Part Two? 

(PART TWO coming soon! : Rox goes to the ENT...
 Trailer: "I'll do whatever you say. But, please, no prednisone!" )

Writing with Rox Weekly Prompt—"I Am Squishy Yummy Love"

new agey-rockstar rox

Last week in Word Jam we wrote about our rock star selves, the lives we'd be living if we were "living the dream," as they say. One of the amazingly creative and dreamy herself members of the group suggested we explore this on the page by imagining we were making a living/thriving/living by doing (or not doing) something we were naturally good at and/or something we loved, which can be the same thing. Sitting on the beach. Yoga. Chanting. Scrapbooking. Making tea. Asking questions. Collecting seashells. Noticing all the shades of blue. Highlighting. Feeling the blood running through your veins. Shopping. Running late. Complaining about traffic. Procrastinating....

"So Roxy," my dreamy student offered, "you could write about how to make a living flirting."

Well. That's a backstory we needn't explore here, now, but I ran with it. (Confession: part of me dreams of being one of those cheesy Motivational Speaker types (with more truth and vulnerability and less cheese) where I soapbox about the generous heartfelt teachings that have been passed along to me through the many elders.). In a former post, I wrote about the idea of a LOVELAND. Let's just imagine the following excerpt takes place there:

"Good evening all of you lovely edible squishy delicious beings of light and love and juicy squishiness with wisdom candle-ing out every single glorious life-giving pore...Welcome all Lovelies and Loveables.. to the Beach and the Writing with Rox ongoing series entitled "I am Squishy Yummy Love." Tonight's program is about how to write an authentic simple squishy yummy single's profile for the Writing with Rox community making, lonely no more, love seeking, being website and songbook (www.writingwithroxsquishyyummylove.blogspot.com) and/or any other single's website or community building cyberplace of your choosing.  Before we begin writing, Loveables, we must first go inward by closing our eyes and envisioning ourselves in a lovable world, where we are 100% certain that we are loved. What does that look like? Feel like? To be lovable here and now just as you are. We'll begin by writing "what I  love..."  After the break, they'll be a single's writ-a-thon upstairs which will run until tomorrow morning. Thanks so much for coming. Let's write..."

Boy, writing is fun. You never know where you will end up. So that's it then: What is your make a living doing (or not doing) what you love soapbox speech? What does it look like? How does it run? Do you have employees helping you pick the herbs for the tea? Do you have question askers to ask you questions for your question-asking business? Trust that as you write it will go exactly where it needs to!

And, oh yeah, the flirting thing. My brilliant squishy dreamy student wondered if I ever help folks write single's profiles for their sweet love-wishing hearts and I said "but of course!" I meant to do a workshop on this around Valentine's Day, but well... anyway, summer's coming which means skin will be showing, flowers budding, and singers singing! Love will be in the air, where it always is, and surely, if you want to court thee some yummy squishy love via the cyber loveways, I am here to help. It's official: Writing with Rox now offering "How to Write a Squishy Yummy Authentic Single's Profile."♥ 
                                                                                                                                                                ♥
Sending love to all, Rox ♥                                                                                        ♥   ♥       ♥  ♥ ♥
                                                  ♥                                                                       ♥       ♥

                                                      ♥                                                           ♥   
                                                         ♥

                                                                ♥          ♥                           ♥

                                                                                      ♥           ♥

♥Writing & Yoga Retreat ♥ 2013 Classes ♥ Retreats ♥ Healing ♥ Hearts!♥

Bliss at the Beach is back!

  

 ♥YOGA & WRITING RETREAT♥              

...a day of nurturing and lovingkindness

Saturday March 23, 2013

10am-2pm        $65

"and the truth is..."

♥gentle

♥ nurturing

♥ juicy 

♥ laughing

♥restorative

♥ self-care

♥love poems to you

♥ bliss

♥ hearts

♥ 

♥ aaaaaaaaah!

Comin?




                                                             Complete 2013  Class schedule

And 2013 Retreats ♥

♥ 

WWRWP—"Nineteen Forever..."

We have a sweet ritual here at the Beach of honoring one another on our birthdays with written wishes, sometimes as many wishes as the age being turned. The wishes go out to the birthday girl (or boy) and then, as you write, the wishes naturally expand and contract, creating universal wishes for all...

           1. love and kindness for the dandelions.

Yesterday, one of the Wednesday gals, our baby, turned nineteen. Nineteen! This moves me for a couple reasons, mainly because we have been writing together since she was fourteen and she was a brilliant writer even way back then.

                     2. Unlimited minutes to talk face-to-face with your friends and family and loved ones.

                         3. Freedom to tell anyone you love that you love them. 4. Daily cake. 5. dessert always.

The other reason is... NINETEEN! Do you remember nineteen? Do you have nineteen wishes?


6. homecooked beautiful meals using every color found in the natural world. 7. a bouquet of marigolds. 8. Marigold honey. 9. Free Lunch! It's everywhere! 
10. A conversation per day with a stranger. 


     When I was nineteen I took the year off before going away to Evergreen. I stayed at home with Ma and worked at the frozen yoghurt shop and took classes at the Improv and got into Theatre Sports.


11. writing for the love of it. 12. singing as loud as you wish and feeling it massage your insides. 
13. cartwheels across the greenest grass. 14. a lindy hop beneath the bluest sky.

           Late at night I'd come home and find Ma still up watching TV in the dark, swallowed in her big bed with the layers of soft, white comforters and blankets, puffy with Ma love. I'd make her switch it to Star Trek and throw myself into the creamy softiness, merge with it.
         "You smell like cigarettes, Roc, Ish! Go brush your teeth!" I'd been at Dolores', our coffeeshop on Pico. Like most work nights, Sus and I smoked and coffeed ourselves into optimism, before coming down and heading home. After dropping Sus off in Bel Air, I'd head back down the hill toward Ma, blasting Blondie's The Tide is High over and over, fighting off the despair.
         "K," I'd say and not move. Maybe at the commercial.
We'd watch young Kirk, thin Kirk, with his globular muscles and tight space pants.
And we'd dream.
         "Roc! Honey, wake up. It's over. Go back to your room. You can't sleep in here."


15. Nineteen days of silence. 16. Nineteen days of silliness. 17. Nineteen days of inner-reflection. 18. loving your reflection in the mirror. 19. loving your reflection in others. AND * one for GOOD LUCK... Nineteen Forever, Baby! 

WWRWP—What do You Love?

What do you LOVE? ...
...even if it's just one thing, part of a thing, one person, part of a person, one memory, one moon, one June, one color, or the other, one time of day, shade of sunray, one time of night, a summer somewhere bright, a type of food, a wacky mood, Dr Seuss, Mother Goose...

                       eighties music, Sound of Music, Krisna Das, The Boss... dancing swing, your diamond ring, your gray cat CC, your childhood pet FIFI, a sweater you wear, the feel of your lover's hair, the smell of Paris, Bueller (that's Ferris!), sleeping in, your dad's pointy chin, the feel of fleece, laughing geese, yoga and drumming, football or running, singing and chanting, tingling and ranting... lover and lovee (which more are you?), romantic, pedantic, poetry, harmony... your child's laughter, happily ever after, being silly, getting jiggy, dressing frilly, hot diggity, eating yams, hoarding Spam, biking cross town, standing upside down, yoga, toga, taichi, tacky, under, over, sideways, wonder....

What do you LOVE? ...

WWRWP—The Time of Your Life

               A few weeks ago I was having lunch with the tall, dark, handsome young Jew companion with whom I had been spending a great deal of quality time for the past nine months. His parents had joined us and in between bites of jellyfish salad, I was asked by the father, "So, Rox, what is your happiest memory?"

Admittedly, I was taken aback. It was 11 am on a Saturday morning. I wasn't even hungry yet, let alone hungry for jellyfish or introspection. I was still too close to sleep to consider any other source of happiness.

"Hmmmm...that's a toughie," I said. "I don't think anyone has ever asked me that before." I looked at my companion. I figured by now he could answer as well as I because in some ways it felt as if we'd known each other forever. He just looked back at me with that cute face that is way too cute.

"Besides," I continued, "usually I'm the one asking these sorts of questions! Then I give people time to write out an answer in the way of a story..."

Why had I drawn a blank? Were there too many? Not enough? Or was it simply that I loved loved loved being asked this question? An invitation to revisit. To live it over again.



The easy answer would have been: "the moment my son was born." But that's a different kind of happy. A no-brainer happy. And then I could have gone on and on about the countless happy moments we've shared as mother and child, but again, that would be cheating.

 Eventually, I committed to the theme of bike riding.  How when I first moved here I rode endlessly into the warm summer nights, delighting in the quaint flatlands, the small town, wide-streeted easiness and openness of touring my new home, taking in this earnest Midwestern culture that was entirely new to me and realizing how much childlike glee it awoke in me: the fenceless backyards, grass so green I wanted to lick it, porch swings (porches!) flower beds, cicadas, street lamps, the way people pronounce car and refer to Coke as "pop"...

I was on a roll. I talked about biking with my dad in various parts of the country. I confessed that I still have Jude in a bike carrier in the back so I can keep him close as we descend into the magical greens of Minnehaha Parkway, singing our favorite songs as we fly through the curves and jungle, racing the flowing creek beside us. "I'm a bit of an adrenaline junky," I admit, "which goes well with parenting."

Then I put a hand to that cute face, the face of this man's son. "Of course laughing with this guy makes me happy."

My companion's father smiled, obviously pleased. In that moment, he looked a lot like my father—there are some touching similarities between the two. I think I may have thought for a moment I was actually talking to my dad. That made me happy, though I did not know it at the time. Now it is a happy memory.

I could have said more. A lot more. I don't know why I didn't. I don't know why I hesitate to write what that "more" would have been. Perhaps it's because on some level I suspected things weren't going to work out. That if I asserted myself too far into the fabric of this family I would inevitably mourn for it too much when it was gone, longing for another mundane, obligatory, way too early Saturday morning meal out in a dingy kitschy basement eating pickled jellyfish on Eat Street.

Or maybe it's because we were sort of in a fight and I was feeling stingy.



I volleyed the question back to the father, a man who has lived almost twice as long as I.

"Gee," he said, "I never thought about it..."

"SEE?!" I said, "it's harder than it seems."

But it wasn't long before he was off in memory bliss. A light went on, one I'd not yet seen or thought possible, but there it was, radiating from his entire being when he talked about being a young father to my companion. It was as beautiful as a rare sunset, a real rayon verte. It remained as he described a childhood memory with his sister, one of the few he recalls of actually being allowed to be a child, a rare freedom to play, which I get the feeling was so scarce that he actually had to sneak it behind the backs of overly stern parents, the same way I had to sneak pot and cigarettes, but realistically, not really.

Eventually my companion took a turn, then his mother. I believe I took another turn as I simply could not help it. Honestly, we could've gone around the table for hours. Well... at least me and Too Cute Face's father. It was reminding me a lot of being around the table with my parents and how much I missed that. How much we all loved those lingering times around the various dining rooms of our separate homes, restaurants, vacation places, etc, where we could always find a place of peace and neutrality, because, as in any family, we had our family history. Even though my parents were divorced and I'd been twice so, we all gathered year after year, entertaining one of my dad's many random questions (Do you prefer Washington or Lincoln?), which inevitably led us down some happy memory lane or another.


Life is really funny, isn't it? Funny ironic, I mean. Because if ever comes a time when you are really struggling to remember a single happy memory, you will likely fail to recognize that you are in the midst of making one.



What's your happiest memory? 

WWRWP—I Didn't Write it Down!

No, that's not me with the Italian Speedo Guy. Oh, wait...those are the tips of my feet.

Apologies for the delay. I have not written much since Akumal. In fact, I didn't write much of anything while in Akumal either. You can see why.


The plan was to write a lot, write together, write alone, etc, as what can be more inviting than writing beneath the velvet palms with their happy necks stretching toward the absolute most turquoise perfect sea and sky there ever was?

     ... Where words like azure, aquamarine, conch, coconut, flamenco, gecko, chuppa, liquado, mango, palapa, amigo, Maya, chacha, maraca, picante, etc were born, organically spun from the endlessly giving honey beauty making love to itself? Indeed this is a paradise for writers, I reflected daily over morning coffee (mas cafe por favor!) and juevos rancheros.


Only, I could not write.  And oh, I wanted to write. I wanted to make sure I wrote down the following at least once: This exists. This is real. Appreciate this. Be grateful for everything that has come before to make this very moment possible, that that has lead you to this very sunshine, soft, loving, peaceful moment. And remember that even missing this moment, longing for just one more walk along the warm sand when you are back in freezing MN or wherever you happen to be, to allow yourself to be sad. This is a beautiful place and time.  And...remember to take a moment to linger wherever you are because you never know when you'll long for that moment again, too.

 At least I think that's how it would have gone, but I didn't write it down, so who knows?! Perhaps I'm just trying to rewrite my thoughts so I can feel better about being in 0 degree climes again. Why didn't I write it down? Well... I didn't do much yoga either.  I couldn't do anything, frankly. I was too busy being. I could not take my eyes off of everything. I hated to close them at night. But then I got to listen. And in listening I could imagine what these late night tropical dark sounds were glowingly up to at all hours. And then, feeling...oh, the claylike sand, ground conch in all colors against bare feet. And that's just above water...the feel of cool ocean water will always feel like home to me.

 When we first arrived, we joked that we finally had time to be "one with the palm trees" for as long as we wanted. No hurry. Nothing to do but be here now. Having only traveled out of the Midwest a few times, he said he was so elated by the colors and sounds and courtyards, and brightness that he could just cry with his entire being with the bittersweet awareness of being a part of it, belonging.
           
               Likewise,  I cried over the mangoes. I discovered the sun in the middle of palm trees. I couldn't get enough of the sound of the large green, white and pink washed brain rock coral rolling all over each other, a little city of song, with the tide. I remembered the scent of Mexican laundry taking forever to dry on the line in the blazing tropics. I heard the familiar song of middle-aged Mexican men that I'd heard growing up in LA, a  part of the landscape, singing through open windows cut solidly out of pink stucco bungalows while they worked. And I saw clearly what Leonard Cohen meant in Suzanne...how naturally, simply, everything and all things of nature, including me, leans out for love in the direction of the sun.

What/when/who/how was the last thing you saw/heard/felt/experienced that was so unbelievably moving or beautiful that you just had to sit down (for a week, a day, a moment) and drink it all in? 

Escribiendo con Rox Prompt de la Semana

Hola from Akumal! What is your beach paradise story?

Writing with Rox Weekly Prompt—Auld Lang Syne, me Dears!

young Dad

Like Harry and Sally, this song never made much sense to me other than the raw feeling it generates every time I hear it. It's one of the rare things in life I enjoy along with the masses, perhaps because my dad liked it so much and played it on the piano, along with Both Sides Now, Send in the Clowns, Holiday for Strings, and Country Roads while I did yoga and watched the boats go by.




I have a love/shame relationship with my deep love of this song. I own several covers of it and tend to sing it when doing the dishes. It works when I need a lift or when I need a good cry. I am trying to encourage my little kirtan and music community to somehow work it into a chant.... Auld Lang Syme, Krisna Krisna! Syme Lang Auld Hare Hare!    A few weeks ago my fiery, brilliant, state-the-obvious, ninja girly friend suggested that perhaps I love it sappily so because it is seen in like every movie there ever was that takes place on New Years. "You know," she said, "it's so cinematic."  





Well. There's a thought.

There's a thought I never wanted to think.

There's a thought that means I have been duped by Hollywood along with everyone else even though I have written a memoir about how not to be duped by Hollywood because I was duped by Hollywood growing up there.

What's your auld lang syne story? Excuse?



Today in Friday Writers we wrote "what I don't want to forget from 2012." I emphasized "what I don't want to  forget" verses "what I want to remember" because it adds a subtle spin on the focus. They could take it anywhere it went. To a memory. A rant. A moment in time that lasted a lifetime. A lesson learned. A laugh. A midnight summer thunder light show by the pool.  The results were gorgeous.


What do you want to not forget from 2012? Follow the trail.......... And don't forget to come write with me in 2013! Raising a cup of kindness and a thousand pens to you all, ROX                                 xoxoxo

Writing with Rox Weekly Prompt—Christmas in Hollywood

I love the holidays, always have.  Perhaps it's because we never really celebrated them growing up, which created a nostalgic mythology about the whole season, especially in LA. I tried to get Ma into it. I'd beg for a tree, to which she'd argue "We're Jewish for Christ's sake!" and besides, it would kill my grandmother if she ever found it. Did I really want to live with that guilt? 

"It's enough that our menorah is from Mexico," she huffed.

"Well, how 'bout a Channukah Bush? I think they do that in Israel, don't they?" Not that we celebrated Channukah, either. We usually just lit the menorah on the nights we got presents.

"Now that's absurd, Roxanne!"

One year I was so desperate to celebrate Christmas like all the other LA Jews that I cut a branch off one of the cypress trees in the backyard, put it in a vase, and decorated it with cheap Christmas tchotchkes I got at Newberry's. 

"You're dragging that fucking tinsel crap all over the house," Ma complained, which was true. 

"Yeah, but it's pretty, isn't it?" I was proud of my little tree.

"It's low class," she said, picking a piece out of her hair. "Get rid of it!"

"After Christmas. I promise! Can we go back to Newberry's and get some more orgaments?"

Ma frowned. How I knew she hated that "fucking store." But I reeeeely wanted a few more candy canes and lambs for the little cypress. "You can get more of that Almond Roca stuff that you like... Or, I know! I can get it for you for Christmas! I mean, Channukah!"

At some point she'd give in and we'd head down to Pico Blvd in the fat red and brown station wagon.  After a bit of browsing, she'd even get a little excited,  enjoy looking at all the cheap Christmas crap with me. "Look at thooooooooooooose," she'd say, pointing behind the counter. "Pretty." 

"See Ma?" I'd say, "isn't Christmas cool?" My body flooded with hope every time Ma played along with my holiday fantasy. Maybe this time. Maybe this year it will be just like it is on TV. Maybe the family will appear, the snow will miraculously fall upon us here in the desert, and Santa may come down our chimney the same way he does at Kenny's house.

Inevitably Ma's patience would run out and it would be back to the usual,  "this is just cheap crap shit and we don't celebrate Christmas and let's get out of this fucking store, I got work to do!" 

But by then I was coasting on the high of hope.  On the drive home,  I held tightly to my little bag of shiny ornaments and basked in the parade of Hollywood Holy-Jolly that never quite looked so beautiful as it did that December twilight. The SoCal palm trees proudly wore their tinsel high in the azure sky, leaning their exotic necks toward the ocean. Santa and his reindeer flew across Santa Monica Boulevard in the 75 degree sunshine while Sinatra crooned swingin' Christmas songs out of all the rolled down car windows, gridlocked, but beautifully happy. 

Even Ma swearing at the "idiots" ahead of us in traffic as we drove away from Newberry's couldn't touch me safe in my holiday dreamland. I knew we'd be back next year, maybe sooner. Someday, Ma might even say yes to everything.

...

Childhood holiday stories? Snapshots? Fantasies?