The last few weeks, we’ve had the same predictable daily forecast: scattered storms, clouds, some sun, and a 30% chance of some sort of weather event — rain, water spouts, tornadoes, hurricanes, plagues of toads. Situation unstable. My own moods have vacillated between blue sky optimism, looming thunderheads, oppressive gray pessimism, barometric shifts and sudden showers. Yesterday, I felt a storm building all day and finally put on my sunglasses and raced out of my house for a power walk. I cried the whole way, hoping people I passed would think it was just sweat was running down my face. Knowing I had a therapy session scheduled the next day seeded the rain clouds, and I wanted to get the crying out of the way ahead of time. If I have a cleaning lady coming to my house, I spend the night before picking up and putting away, and if I’m going to see the shrink, I start stuffing things in a mental closet and tidying up any loose emotions that might be showing. So why do I go to someone for help and then pretend everything is fine? It’s like calling 911 and then locking the doors so the firemen can’t get in. Always being “fine” is part of my problem. Especially now, when I’m questioning the point of my job, worrying about growing older and becoming invisible, trying to let go of what I no longer need, wondering if I can create a new life and what that would look like. I wish I had an Emotional Doppler Radar app on my iPhone to warn me of rough weather ahead and a guru to help me ride out the storms that are bound to lie ahead in this part of my life. Or at least hold the umbrella and pass the Kleenex.
Archive for ‘Change’
30% Chance of Tears
June 8th, 2009Wabi Sabi, Sort Of
May 19th, 2009
I don’t know if I understand the concept of Wabi Sabi, but I do love the the beauty in impermanence, the moment just before things fall apart. Because you are teetering on the edge of fullness and emptiness, ripeness and rotting. I love old buildings that have great bones but show an edge of decay, unfinished hems on a satin skirt, Lauren Hutton’s wrinkles and cutting-edge cheekbones, Erik Satie’s Gymnopedie #3 with its longing and long descent into sadness. I’ve stopped cutting the roses in my yard (I have a regular redneck yard, not a garden) because I’m trying to stop intervening in their natural cycle. It’s hard–I always want to short-circuit it, cut the buds before they bloom and force them to maturity in my bedroom. I’ve always tried to do the same thing with relationships. Instead of letting them grow at their own pace, I force them into ripeness before their time. Why didn’t I ever learn to take them into my bedroom when the time was right?
On the Verge
May 9th, 2009
Everything in my amateurish little garden patch is budding or blooming or getting ready to break through the earth, climb, entwine or simply rise. I love that moment of possibility before the southern sun sucks the energy out of every living thing, before it’s a fight to keep the juices flowing. Right now, the sun is gilding the edges of the garden instead of giving my plants the third degree. The morning glory seeds have sent up actual shoots, the rose bush keeps putting out and we have lift-off on the tomato plants, Houston. I feel like I’m on the verge of a new season as well, but I know that I often manage to stunt my own growth by not giving my ideas time to germinate or by not watering and feeding them enough. I grew up in a family of farmers, and I know it takes constant attention and hard work to make things grow. Sometimes I’m just too lazy to tend my garden, to get up early and write, to set aside time simply to mull. My morning glories and tomatoes need sturdy fences and cages to support them as they start to blossom, and my writing needs a daily structure and discipline in order to bloom. Send some good vibes to all of us in this little garden of earthly delights.
Turning Over the Controls
May 4th, 2009
I told a friend this weekend that when I go to New York my inner GPS stops working. I’m like one of those sad bees whose radar malfunctions for some mysterious reason and they can’t find their way back to the hive. In New York, I can read a map repeatedly before I go out the door, but I still can’t make sense of a city that is actually laid out in such a rational way. I buzz in aimless circles and constantly have to readjust my sense of direction. Did I turn left or right? Am I going north or south? Is that the same corner I passed 15 minutes ago? Where the hell is my hotel? My life is like that right now…I just can’t find way my way home. Home being my sense of self, my sense of purpose, my sense of Nikki-ness. For weeks now, I’ve been flogging myself, looking for my next big idea, my next project, my next passion. Looking for me. Tonight I started to wonder, though, if it might not be better to accept that my GPS is broken for now, that I don’t have a destination and that my definition of home might be changing. And just explore the world with no purpose in mind and let the ideas and projects come to me if it’s meant to be. To be a passenger for awhile instead of the pilot.
Opening, Not Falling Apart
April 13th, 2009
I’m a worrier. I see the sky falling instead of realizing it’s just a storm moving through. Too often I assume a mental fetal position instead of rising up into Warrior One. I sometimes gnaw on my fingers until they bleed–21st century workplace stigmata brought on by fear of being dispensable. But today I had breakfast with some out-of-town friends who not only gave me a jolt of their creative electricity but also passed on some of the best advice I’ve heard in a long time: “Things are not falling apart–they’re opening up for you. Just don’t get freaked out by the cracking sound.” I felt that inner click you get when things/ideas/whispers fall into place in your mind. Click, click, click–like moving the tiles around on one of those old-school games I used to give my kids to play with. That satisfying physical click when all the signs align properly and you recognize the path, don’t know where it’s going, but know there are other people traveling with you.
Vote for Us
January 19th, 2009
Vote for the underdog, the voiceless, the worker bee, the laid off, the laid up, the one who doesn’t have a chance, the one who comes from behind, the chronic loser, the underestimated, the quiet one, the last in line, the hopeless, the helpless, the unfamous, the one who can’t afford a doctor, the can’t-get-a-grip dreamer, the immigrant, the migrant, the luckless, the unlovable, the lowly, the illiterate, the cynic, the teacher, the cashier, the single mother who cries herself to sleep, the kids who leave for school hungry, the ones who hope against hope. We voted for Obama. We voted for us for a change.
Tied Down
January 14th, 2009
Before the economy crashed in on us, it was a sign of courage and spunk to leave a job that made you crazy. Now it’s considered crazy to leave any job that offers health insurance and isn’t located on top of a toxic dump. Actually, any job that offers health insurance will make you forget the toxic dump. Employers hold the winning hand. ”You want to leave? Don’t let the door hit you in the ass because there’s someone I can pay less to take your job.” I worry I might end up The Mayor of Crazytown, afraid to take a chance because I’m too old or might be broke again. I think often of Mary Oliver’s line–”What will you do with your one wild and precious life?”–and I know that every day I need to be able to answer that question with more than just saying “present.”
The People from Porlock
January 11th, 2009
The story goes that Coleridge composed his poem “Kubla Khan” during a dream but was awakened out of it before he finished by a “person from Porlock” knocking at his door on some stupid errand. Today, I was working steadily away on an important presentation to my bosses tomorrow, when I was interrupted by my own People from Porlock. First, I answered a phone call from a complete stranger who had tracked down my phone number on the internet and called me to solicit advice about the magazine she had started and was trying to sell to the company that bought mine. She almost asked me what they had paid me, but some vestige of manners made her stutter and hesitate. (Not enough and the stock market ate it, I wanted to yell!) On a Sunday! I don’t understand why she didn’t wait and call me at work tomorrow, but even more, I don’t understand why I didn’t say I was busy. What spinelessness afflicts me that I can’t tell people their behavior is inappropriate? Goodbye, an hour of my life. Next, an old lover called to tell me his idea for a new magazine and pick my brain. I could watch closed-caption tv on mute while I uh-huhed at appropriate points, but it made me realize that I probably drone on about my own projects to my friends and fail to cut myself short when I can sense the mental snore from the other end of the phone. Or get caught up in a narcissistic swirl and find myself unable to tear my gaze away from my own navel. When I got over being annoyed and full of myself, I started to wonder if these particular People from Porlock were bringing me messages from my subconscious. It’s too odd to have two calls from people out of the blue on the same day about new projects they’re starting. On a day when I’m wrestling with my own angel about what to do next with my life.
Unscheduling
November 9th, 2008
My dentist is redoing my mouth one tooth at a time. It started so innocently…she urged me to get a Sonicare brush and have my old decaying mercury fillings replaced. But it was like replacing a light fixture in an old house only to discover that the wiring is dangerously out of date and then the plumbing has to go and of course there turn out to be termites in the wall, mice in the attic and cracks in the foundation. So far I’ve had gum grafts, extractions, 3 tooth implants and more crowns that even a princess like me deserves, and every morning I have to use the Sonicare until my brains are churned to butter, floss, rinse with Tooth and Gum Tonic and peroxide. At night, same thing, plus an hour of whitening trays which I never remember to use. And though I’ll end up with a balanced bite and a smile I’m not ashamed to show, my dental “insurance” only pays $1,000 a year. My calendar this year has been filled with a plethora of fear-based medical appointments: 3 hour dentist sessions; mammogram, colonoscopy; flu and pneumonia vaccines; blood work; body scan by my dermatologist. It’s depressing to open my planner every week and realize there is yet more probing, grinding, smashing and jabbing in my body’s future. Supplemented by festive visits from the pest guy, the heating and air guy, the cable guy, the plumber guy. Sometimes my life seems to be one long maintenance appointment. I’m trying to figure out how to incorporate dates in my book for Joy on Waking Up, Surprise Just Around the Corner, Unexpected Gifts, A New BFF or Amazing Big Ideas. To get out of a holding pattern and onto a flight path.
A Different Light
September 22nd, 2008
Today is the autumnal equinox, and this weekend was a pause for me between the hibachi heat of summer and cashmere winter mornings. It was still, almost cool and a little bit sad, as if our corner of the world was saying goodbye to the sun. The light is gradually thinning out, being pulled taut and clear and bright. I took a time-out from time this weekend…staying in bed all day with the two novels by Tana French (In the Woods and The Likeness) and not even turning on my computer once. She created a world it was hard for me to leave, a haunted one that perfectly matched my emotional weather. They’re the kind of novels you think about at work and can’t wait to get home to pick up where you left off. I left my bed to go to a magical dinner in the woods put on by Outstanding in the Field…a long winding row of tables, food served at sunset, interesting people from afar, weather that was made to order. The kind of dinner I often imagine but rarely experience in real life. I’m ready for fall now, ready to move into a new cycle, a different light.
