Year: 2016

(photo curtesy of House of Intuition)

Day 4 – I want to take actionable steps, but I also want to trust. I have to remind myself that these both are and are not mutually exclusive. I have to trust, that means trusting that the how will come to me or I will come to it and when it does I have to act on it. But the other and bigger part of trust is to give up the idea that I can know or control how it will come to me. When I am actively envisioning my desires, I try to exclude the how and just put the vision out there. When I am pursuing any one actionable task, I forgive myself of the idea that I have to do it perfectly in order for my dreams/desires/hopes to manifest. Trust that the big vast blank unknown I see with my closed eyes and meditate it not empty, but filled with possibility. The same as when I close my eyes to meditate and my vision is filled with mysterious light.

I met with a colleague of the university I teach at, Ariane, who moved to Berlin 14 months ago. She gave me tips about preparing for my trip and what to expect when I get there. For example, most Berliners speak English, but it is polite to ask in German first if they do. She had insights about acquiring a visa, should I decide to stay longer, and she referred me to a friend, a fellow writer, who is looking to sublet his apartment in East Berlin’s hip neighborhood, Neukolln, for a couple months.

Something I said to Ariane yesterday morning surprised me, that I want to leap before I look. I want to go in to it blind, but not ignorant. She said, that’s an important distinction.

During my tarot card reading, Erika pulled both the Fool card (adventure/journey) and the Emperor card (rigidness). I told her about my struggle to think differently, that for so long I had tried to squeeze a life’s worth of different possibility into one thread, as if a whole braid of lives would fit in a single strand. Frank was the strand, but my love was too big. I saw only one path, my conceptual framework rigidly defined by a single vision of happiness: love, marriage, baby, but it didn’t fit in the receptacle I chose to hold it. That was my past, rigidity and by-the-bookness. The present is the fool (forgive the immediate association). Erika said this card is about the adventure I’m about to begin, have already begun when I decided to open myself up to the eternal now. These cards validated my decision to trust in the universe’s greater vision of my life. What I can dream up or desire pales in comparison for all that can’t even be conceived of. All the more confirmation to trust: being where I want to be is the boon to being present.

I looked up the Fool card on the House of Intuition’s website and I was surprised, but gladdened again to see its full meaning. From their website, “the Fool represents beginnings, innocence and novelty. The story of the Tarot is often referred to as “the Journey of the Fool,” because it depicts the evolution of the spiritual seeker from ignorant fool to enlightened master. But don’t be fooled: in many ways, the entire secret of the Tarot is summed up in this single card.”

Day 3 – At the funeral, my sister Emily said, “When you’re in the ground, the earth is digesting you.”  Seeing the roots growing around my grandfather’s casket, snuggled next to his second wife, the loved one we were burying, nestled between her and his first wife, was actually comforting.

My grandfather died a year ago. Yesterday I went to his second wife’s funeral, then my brother, sister, and I drove to the beach where I swam in the ocean with 15 of my family members. I think we all wanted to celebrate life; celebrating life is a common grief ritual in Judaism.

The salty water was good. I could taste it even through my eyes. My parents called the beach we were at Connie Island, it was so filled with people and noise, but when I looked down the shore toward the afternoon sun, I noticed all the kids running back and forth from the water’s edge and their castles and sandy buckets, running between the rushing and receding foamy water. Skinny little twig legs and arms, sopping ponytails, the ruffled waist of a one-piece bathing suit, the diaper bulging beneath.

I rode the ferris wheel with my little 3-year-old cousin on one side of me and my 6-year-old cousin on the other. We put our hands in the air and the top and yelled as we flew back down toward the ground. The 3-year-old told me she liked the view from the tippy top. She squealed and pointed out the ocean to me. She said, “I like when the ferris wheel goes fast and my hair flies up.”

Then, my brother, sister, mom, dad, and I took a photo booth picture. Back to the original 5, the nuclear family, us 3 child adults and 2 parents. What are we?

I dreamed last night that a girl, maybe me, was loved by someone but couldn’t get to him, couldn’t leave the building she was captive because a looming, angry and unpredictable man-monster wouldn’t let her. This monster attacked anyone who looked his direction, and though not very big, he was stronger than any other man. So she hid and no one could save her, but no one could see her either, not her best friends, not even her dog. She became a tiny person, like a lilliput, hiding in tall grasses and swimming from one place to another unseen underwater. People tried shooting the monster with guns, but they were potato guns and the monster raged through the streets undeterred. The President was called. Then, the girl, with the hope that he could be stopped, but no idea of how to subdue him beyond the failed efforts everyone had already tried, came out of hiding. It was a terrifying dream. The man was not a man but the dark part of everything unknown. The girl was me.

And then this, the exact email I needed to get right now from a friend and brilliant writer who just read my essay in progress “Wife to Myself.” He told me he loves it, he said, “Your brain is amazing.” My weird brain. My heart is renewed

And, the tarot card reading Erika gave me! 

Day 2 – From my friend Erika’s Instagram post, which was balm to my moody day:

“This leaf jumped out at me today. Not literally. But sort of. I was in a cranky as shit, push the world away, close my heart kinda mood and, well, there it was. And of course, it fits perfectly with the message in today’s cards: Keep giving what you’ve got to give. Give out only what you want to receive.”

I was feeling small, stuck in my own self and thoughts and heart, worrying that what I have to give isn’t enough. It wasn’t until I pulled Erika’s post up a second time later that day, to regain some inspiration, that I realized her impact on me, that what she is putting out there helps me, what I’m putting out there will help you (I hope). It doesn’t take the perfect word, just the expression of one’s authentic self.

The words themselves in this blog post are perfect, as it happens to be, but that she said them reminds me that we can, and do, all help each other.

I really bristled, a few months ago, at the Op-Ed in the New York Times titled, Unless You’re Oprah, ‘Be Yourself” is Terrible Advice.’  I disagree with the ideas behind this article because “being yourself” isn’t the same as being your authentic self, which is a self acting as a function of the larger world’s wisdom, but instead is some weird, ego-driven false self.

Anyway, if you’re afraid to put it out there, your story never gets the chance to help someone else. If you never share it (from a place of kindness, generosity, and love), you’ll never know how it could help someone else. Lydia Yuknavitch, author of the incredible memoir, “The Chronology of Water,” said in a recent interview in Lenny Letter “I believe in art the way other people believe in God.” I read that as: art gives people faith.