agreements

I prefer to live in a “drama-free” zone. So does my husband. Even our dog hides when a voice is raised at our house.

Now, that doesn’t mean our life is 24/7 Kumbaya or completely void of passion. It’s just that, after the past two years, I can hardly imagine what could be more dramatic than a persistent pandemic actively seeking to infect us all the goddamn time. One that gleefully throws a curve-ball into, well, every plan, every chance it gets. Self-certified experts at rolling with punches, the two of us are officially all out of shits to give, making it nearly impossible to be, “emotionally surprised by events or circumstance— which is how Miriam Webster defines drama.

Enter 2022.

Last Monday night, as we engaged in some not at all sexy tandem teeth-brushing, my husband informed me that he might have to visit Urgent Care at 3am.

“Why don’t we go now and save ourselves some drama?” I asked, with a mouth full of paste.
“Because right now I’m fine. I want to observe.”

Let me just say, we observed the shit out of his condition——if observing is snoring with your eyes closed for seven hours.

The next morning, everything appeared under control. I even got my new dryer delivered six weeks late, a day early.
All was right with the world.

“Why don’t you pay urgent care a preemptive visit today?” I suggested, while loading perfectly clean clothes into the washer so I could give my new dryer a test spin.

“Good idea!” he replied.
So he did.
That’s when things went sideways.

“Urgent Care can’t fix the problem so they’re sending me to my doctor,” he said, from his car speaker-phone.
“Mmmmmkay,” I shouted over the loud kerplunk of jeans in the dryer, “lemme know how it goes.”

“I’m getting worried.” I texted two hours later. A short time after that, he called me. “I need emergency surgery,” he said. He sounded like shit.
“I’m coming!”
“You can’t. No outside visitors allowed. Covid.”
“Fuck.”
“I know.”

The surgery went well. I know that because the doctor told me so. My husband, on the other hand, texted me from recovery which was…well, if you ask me, I think they give them their phones too soon, you know, because they can’t have visitors and let’s just say—— I don’t recommend it.

Alone in bed that night, I petitioned god for a referendum on any further drama. We’d had an agreement and she’d broken it. “That’s it!” I declared. “You get one thing. And you blew it all in January so, that’s it for 2022. No more drama.”

Did you know you get to do that?

I learned this trick from my shaman after the California earthquake of 1994.

Terrified of aftershocks, I’d feel every damn one while he felt NONE OF THEM.
NADA.
Zip.
Zero.
It was beyond infuriating!
“I didn’t feel a thing,” he remarked after one particularly strong tremor that sent me diving under the dining room table. Apparently, the kitchen, a mere ten feet away, was not prone to aftershocks. “Remove yourself from the drama,” he advised, “you lived the initial trauma, you don’t have to keep re-living it. Ask to sleep through them.”

So I asked. And from that day forward, I was impervious to aftershocks. I slept, or drove, or simply ladeedah’d my way through them. Seriously.

At 9:30 Friday night, there was a fire across the street. Another one! Except this one was inside the house and it was enormous. Five fire trucks. The home fully engulfed, with flames shooting ten feet in the air. Thick, black smoke. I saw the pictures and I’d have to say it was the highest drama possible without anyone being hurt.

And we had no idea. None.

Our neighbors knocked for us, but when we didn’t answer, they assumed we were out of town.

Stranger yet, you know who hears and smells all of that? All the sirens, smoke, raised voices, and door knocking——Our dog.
Did she hear a thing that night? Nope.

The three of us were blissfully ignorant inside a drama-free bubble in the back of our house. Indulging in comfort food, watching The Prisoner of Azkaban. Spells are magic. Agreements are nonbreakable. God is a mensch.

Abracadabra, y’all,
xox J

A famous photo of Picasso and his Muse

SUPERFLUOUS
su·per·flu·ous
so͞oˈpərflo͞oəs/
adjective
unnecessary, especially through being more than enough.

synonyms: surplus, nonessential, redundant, unneeded, excess, extra,

As you all may or may not know, I am an intuitive writer, meaning: I sit in stillness and basically say to the great cosmic soup of writers that reside in the ethers, “What do you want to write today?”

After almost three years of supplying content for this blog just about EVERYDAY—I—the me that thinks she’s a writer, would have run dry of ideas a LONG time ago!

So I’m smart. I outsource my material to those that are wiser, braver and funnier than I could ever hope to be.

My Muses.

These experts literally mine my brain for life experiences and then craft a story around them utilizing my language skills, which as you know, means raw and real with plenty of f-bombs.

I don’t flatter myself to think that this is a new story specific to me.

Muses have been around since time immemorial, and I know that all of the great art and music, literature and any role that Meryl Streep has inhabited, has come into the world this way. Some of us middle-men (receivers) are just more aware of the process than others.

So that being said, I have been told lately by one Muse in particular, that my blog is superfluous. Okay…

By not knowing the exact meaning of the word I took it to mean insignificant, and THAT hurt my feelings.

How could that be so if they are the ones writing everyday?

Well, because they have moved me to explore other intuitive pursuits. I’ll get to those in a minute.

It means unnecessary because it’s more than enough, redundant, extra—NOT insignificant at all.
Note to self: Janet, next time grab a dictionary before you get upset, and remember—muses always pick the perfect word. Every single time. It’s uncanny.

Still I was confused.

You see, I thought my future would revolve around this blog.
A book, maybe three. Spoken word events with me telling the stories found here.
I have become so intertwined with this blog that I don’t know where it ends and my true self begins. The essence of my Muses has integrated to the point that they are me—and I am them.

What that means is that I am either mentally ill, (the jury is still out) or just a fucking great conduit (I vote for the latter).

“We bamboozled you” chortled the most prominent Muse recently while I was out on my walk. She is a recent addition. An overachieving, comedic, bossy pants who has hijacked…well, everything.

As you know, my walks often prompt conversations and ideas, even arguments between my Muses and me. “Oh you did, did you?” I responded, silently of course.

“We got to you through the writing, you were open and eager enough to accept us coming through that way”.

She was right. I had been fighting the process of accepting the involvement of disembodied, outside forces since the early nineties when they had first made themselves known to me.
Back then it scared the shit out of me.
Me? A channel? No fucking way!

Twenty years later they got smart. “We’ll tell her we’re Muses,” they conspired.

A writer with a Muse? Sure! okay! I can do that. And off I went, full speed ahead into the blogosphere.

Bamboozelment achieved.

That was 2012 and ever since then I have sat my ass in the chair every day and waited for them. And they always show up.

Here’s where it gets interesting.

Once you become an open conduit like that, it gets easier and easier for their thoughts to come through.
And not just when I’m in the chair. No, they chat away while I’m driving, in the shower, on my walks, going to sleep, waking up, even while I’m cooking.

There is a cacophony of—not really voices—but thoughts and opinions going through my head that I know are not my own. The difference is subtle, but I have been doing it long enough that I can differentiate who is who.

Sorry, I promised interesting and I can feel myself beating around the bush so here goes: People that have passed on, dead people, now talk to their loved ones (usually someone I know) through me. It’s really quite beautiful, not creepy in the least. The conversations, and they ARE conversations, are so filled with love and interesting, private information that they’ve even made the most skeptical among us—ME—a believer!

Also, in the last six months I have been introduced to the most brilliant, witty and profoundly deceased famous writer, who has captivated my imagination and bamboozled me into believing that my blog is superfluous and that our story, the story of the collaboration between she and I, which is mystical, and magical and hysterical—is my future.

That will be my book. That is the life that has chosen me.

She has been gracious enough to help write the dialogue for my musical, (that’s how she sucked up and gained my trust), she writes the best of my blog posts, and most recently she has been teaching me to write the screenplay of our relationship.

I don’t feel comfortable disclosing who it is yet. I’m sure I will sooner or later…Baby steps.

All this to say: The greatest impression she has made on me so far has been her sheer exuberance at being dead. She had NO idea it was so…interesting…and full of potential.

The fact that she continues to remain bossy, funny and highly opinionated; that she still gets to write via our collaboration, that she is able to focus on her loved ones, and reach out to people—has blown her mind—and subsequently, my own.

“Death has gotten such a bad rap” she reiterates over and over again laughing her wonderful laugh.

Don’t you love knowing that?

What a wild journey this life is, and I’m just beginning to see the purpose of it all.

Hope I didn’t freak you out too much, Carry on,
xox

When you get married, you say the words For better or for worse, and you mean them.

I know I did. At least as much as you can grasp the true meaning of for worse –– as it seems so remote in that moment, just a phrase inside of a vow -– especially after a flute of champagne -–  or four.

I took it to mean someone who is legally obligated by the State of California to share with me the good times as well as the bad. I felt reassured by that.

But what if you discover that when a for worse happens, like a death, the two of you process and handle the situation COMPLETELY differently.
How could you have known that?
And now what?

Especially when the deceased was loved equally by the both of you, how do you cope?

When something bad happens you want me on your team.
You see, I have what I call Delayed Reaction Syndrome. I immediately go into a hyper focused state – cool, calm and collected. I’m the one that makes the calls, orders the food, hands out the Kleenex, writes the eulogy, and is clear-headed enough to make all the uncomfortable decisions. I’m the furthest thing from emotional.
I’m …robotically rational. That is, until it what I call Phase Two kicks in.

My husband on the other hand wears his emotions on his sleeve. Actually they cover the entire outside of his body -– most especially his face.

He is incapable of holding back tears or masking sadness, and his reaction to death is appropriate and immediate.
There is no ambiguity. He’s profoundly sad and you know it.
In that respect we are a perfectly balanced match.

He grieves in the moment, while I get shit done.

There are cultures in the Mid East and Africa where they wail when someone dies, loudly and with great emotion, their bodies and faces contorted by grief. They even have professional wailers, I guess to help the family (and us Delayed Reaction types) along their emotional path.

I envy that. I really do. It appears to be an amazing release.

Two to three hours later is when Phase Two starts.

That’s about the time the tidal wave of sadness and grief comes ashore, washing me out to sea. Now I’m the one who needs comfort, I become numb, my mind unable to focus, and I want to talk and hug…a lot.

But by that time my husband is finished with his outward displays of emotion. He’s all cried out. He has now retreated deep inside, into his cave, and had moved a huge boulder over the entrance.

There’s no reaching him now.

I need to be held and reassured. That is uncharacteristically physically uncomfortable for him.
I need to cry…with someone. My tears are too much for him to handle. He’s reached sadness saturation. He is not available to me in any way, shape or form.

Moving through grief is a very solitary process, and it looks different for everyone.
I get it, I do.
But I don’t like it.

Come to find out we are just as incompatible in Phase Three.

His looks like this: Stay busy. Busy is good. Plan as many meetings and work related things as you can. Book yourself solid for twelve hours straight – then come home and pass out. Try to forget. Want all signs of the deceased erased from the house (I couldn’t do it) and no talking or tears please, too raw.

Mine looks like this: Stay in pj’s on the couch. Cancel meetings, walk neighborhood aimlessly while crying, with Kleenex stuffed up both nostrils, and don’t eat. Isolate and wish for company all at the same time. Bore strangers with your stories. Wish alcohol made you feel better or even helped you to sleep for that matter. Wash all the blankets and beds and then suffer huge regret, searching for her smell. Curl up with favorite stuffed animal for waaaaayyy too long. Forget to wash hair for three days.

Like I said, grief is an extremely solitary emotion that no amount of hugs, or kind words can help. Only time.

And just when you need it the least, it drives a wedge between two people who deal with death differently.

Even two people who love each other to bits just can’t manage to show up to soothe the other person. It was the first time I couldn’t help him. And it just goes to show that even when someone is legally bound to be there for you, sometimes they just can’t…and that came as a complete surprise –– and a crushing disappointment.

Phase Four:

You’ve got to find your solace inside yourself and that’s excruciatingly hard.

Even though he was required by law, when he promised, “I do” –– to be there for worse –– for me –– he had to find his own way first, and while he did that, I searched for my own.

Then we met, after a week, somewhere in the middle –– with open wounds and tears and stories of our journey, and in the process of finding our way back; we’ve grown and changed.

We’re different, and I think in the end we’ll be the better for it.

Carry on,
Xox