hope

https://youtu.be/WA4dDs0T7sM

“You’re an interesting species, an interesting mix. You’re capable of such beautiful dreams and such horrible nightmares. You feel so lost, so cut off, so alone—only you’re not. See, in all our searching the only thing that we’ve found that makes the emptiness bearable is each other.”
~ From the movie Contact

When I watched this video last week I wept. Like it was the ugly cry, you guys. Because, after six months of watching the planet battle this pandemic, I’d forgotten.

I’d forgotten our greatness.
I’d forgotten our humanness, our drive and indomitable spirit.
I’d forgotten what hope feels like.
I could only see the horrible nightmare, becoming completely oblivious to the beautiful dream.

This minute and a half helped me to remember. To revel in the time before which seems so distant now, and to know for certain that because of WHO WE ARE— this incredible collective of diverse and remarkable human beings, that there are better days ahead for ALL of us.

And I figured that maybe like me, you might need a little reminder of what’s ahead.

Moments of time strung together minute by minute that will be so incredible they seem impossible to imagine.

Just like the ones in this stunning video

We ARE an interesting species, Capable of SO much.
Because nothing can stop what we can do together!

Carry on,
xox JB

I love eleven-year-old girls. They smell like freshly opened boxes of crayons and cupcakes. The kind with sprinkles on top.
I love it when they’re named mid-twentieth-century names. The names our grandmothers, aunts, and librarians carried.

Helen lives on the route I walk with Ruby each morning. I’ve estimated her age and that of her little sister Abigail, by their smell and zest for life. Abigail smells like baby powder so she’s eight. I can’t explain how I know that——I just do.

Since quarantine began I don’t see them out and about anymore. But the signs of their zesty, lifieness, well, that’s EVERYWHERE. At some point in the past few days, the sisters, apparently armed with chalk, got out. And instead of the usual flowers and twirly-que-grafitti they usually leave, they jotted down a bunch of their most inspirational thoughts.

How did they know it was just what I, what we ALL needed?  

Because eleven-year-olds and their little sisters are wise. Like scary wise. It’s that time just before conformity and perfectionism kicks in, when sheer grace can shine through unobstructed. Lately, due to circumstances beyond my control, my own eleven-year-old self has started to show up more and more.

She’s named Janet, a fifties name if I’ve ever heard one, and she’s zesty, and feisty, and smells like hope.

I love my husband.
He is doing all the hard stuff. We’re all doing the hard stuff, but I’m watching him do the stuff that’s hard and well, that’s hard too—so I stopped. I stopped watching him and starting paying attention to my own hard stuff, which I’m sad to report didn’t make his stuff any easier but I felt better.

Even when his circus of hard visits itself upon me, I do my best to look away.

I have to.
I have my own hard stuff to attend to.
This morning, when I was in our bedroom meditating and he was already out in his office, having coffee and looking at his empty calender, I heard something unusual in our backyard. Naturally, I texted him to go and investigate because I’m just that lazy and husbands are made for that kind of hard stuff. They relish it. It isn’t even hard for them. It’s fun and who doesn’t need a little fun these days?

BTW: It was nothing. But I know it was something. Something was lurking. So there’s that to add to my hard stuff pile. Backyard lurking.

I love my friends. All of them. They are the reason I am who I am. so you can blame them. 

My BFF and I laugh our guts inside out on a daily basis and it SAVES me.
We’re doing big work in the world these days. Work we were born to do. Work I know I’ve trained for my whole life. Yet, some days the “hard” wins and I just want to disappear into a pile of marshmallow cream— or donuts.

This morning I went to the grocery store which used to be such a non-event but has now become a scene out of The Hunger Games. Masked and gloved and ready for some dystopian warfare, I walked the aisles of Trader Joe’s like a tribute. “May the odds be ever in your favor” I wanted to say to the hollow-eyed man lunging for the last ripe avocado.

When I got home, my husband left the hard stuff he was doing at his desk and helped me set up a grocery triage/sanitation station in the kitchen. After that, I took a Silkwood shower and began the rest of my day. But even my eleven-year-old has no zest left in her. And you know what? That’s okay. Because it has to be.

And last but never least, I love this community.

I see you and I FEEL you all sequestered in your homes, your big hearts beating in tandem. Wondering and waiting for the day when the world looks less scary. When we can leave our homes and hug a friend. And never take “normal” for granted again.

Carry on,
xox

I wrote about this a long time ago, but I’m going to post it again because I’ve told this story more in the past week than I have since it happened. 

We have a choice. The future, your future, the future of the entire world—it isn’t written yet. So…regarding this virus, how bad do you want it to be FOR. YOU. Your future is fluid right now and it’s asking for direction.

If you’ve heard it before, go make yourself a sandwich. And please, don’t give away the ending.

In the spring of 2010, I went to Hawaii with my dear friend Wes to get some clarity about which direction I should take my life after the death of my store, Atik. Sudden loss can strip a person of their trust in life—and themselves, and I was not lucky enough to escape that unspoken step of the grieving process. Besides, misery loves company.

Oh, who am I kidding? We went to drink Mai Tais, eat like escaped death row convicts, sit on the white sands of Waikiki Beach all day gossiping and people watching—and get massages.

All we did was laugh. Well, he laughed, I cried—then he laughed at my crying. Then I cry-laughed. It was wet and sloppy. Lots of running mascara and snot-bubbles.
You get the picture.

About mid-way through our seven-day trip, I got the sense there was going to be a tsunami.
You know—like you do…
That evening when Wes met me at the bar for happy hour I voiced my concern. “I want to move to a higher room in our hotel,”  I said, stirring my drink. “I think there’s going to be a tsunami and I’m not going to be safe on the second floor.”

“Did you start without me? How many drinks have you had?” he was laughing, flagging down a waiter in order to join this crazy party he figured I’d already started.
“I’m serious. You’re on the third floor, but I’m not even sure that’s high enough. Let’s look into moving.”

All I could see in my mind’s eye were those horrible images from the tsunami in Sumatra the day after Christmas, 2004.

His eyes said: Have you lost your mind? But in order to calm my fears, he immediately whipped out his phone and started to look up ‘Hawaiian tsunami’.

“The earliest on record was reported in 1813 or 1814 — and the worst occurred in Hilo in 1946, killing 173 people.” he recited, reading a Wikipedia page.
“So it happens kind-of-never, and I’m okay with those odds.” He raised his drink to toast “To surviving that rarest of all disasters—the Hawaiian tsunami!” We clinked glasses as he shook his head laughing at my continued squirminess.

Still laughing, he mumbled under his breath, “But if it does happen, which it could, ‘cause you’re pretty spooky that way— it will be one hell of a story.”

The first week of March the following year, 2011, our great friends, the ones who ride the world with us on motorcycles, asked if we wanted to join them at their condo in Maui. You don’t have to ask me twice to drop everything and go to Hawaii. I was printing our boarding passes before I hung up the phone.

On the beautiful drive from the airport to Lahaina, the air was warm and thick with just a hint of the fragrance of tropical rain as we wove our way in and out of the clouds that play peek-a-boo with the sun all day on the Hawaiian Islands. With a view of the lush green mountains formed from the ever-present volcanoes to the right, and the deep blue Pacific churning wildly to our left, that place really felt like Paradise Lost.

That’s when it hit me. I turned down the radio of the rental car that was blaring some five-year-old, Top Forty song.
“We’re going to have a tsunami,”  I announced.
It didn’t feel like if — it felt like when. A certainty.
“I think we’re more likely to have a volcanic eruption than a tsunami,” my hubby replied nonchalantly, turning the radio volume back up just in time to sing along with the chorus.

Damn, I love my husband. There he is, happily cohabitating with all the voices in my head without batting an eye. Most men would run for the hills. He just stays rational. A volcanic eruption in the Hawaiian Islands is the rational supposition.
God love him.

I had never mentioned my premonition from the trip the previous year—too odd; but I let loose for the remainder of the drive, wondering aloud about what floor their condo was on and worrying if it would it be high enough. Having never been there before, neither of us had any idea and I’ve gotta tell ya,  I breathed a sigh of relief when the answer came via text. The sixth floor. Their condo was on the sixth floor, overlooking the pool, facing the ocean.

We spent the next week eating and drinking amazing food and wine, snorkeling, swimming, driving around, and whale watching. As a matter of fact, the ocean outside of our resort was a veritable whale soup.

There is a passage between Maui, Lanai, and Molokai (both which we could see in the distance), that the whales like to use instead of the open ocean, and we could see them breaching from our balcony. They were present in high numbers and especially active. “It was extraordinary!” The guys on the whale watching boats agreed with our friends—they’d never seen a year like that one!

Two days before our departure, on the eleventh, it all seemed to come to a screeching halt.

The ocean was as passive as a lake. I hiked down the beach to a little cove that was supposed to be like “swimming in a tropical fish tank”—nothing. Literally no fish. People kept remarking how odd it seemed. The guys on the whale watching catamarans were perplexed. Suddenly, there were no whales.

That night after my shower I turned on the TV in our room for the first time the entire trip to catch the results of American Idol.
We made dinner at home that night and I was just the right amount of sunburned, buzzed, full and sleepy.
As I got dressed and dried my hair I casually flipped around the channels. American Idol, Baywatch re-runs, CNN. Then I saw it.

The bright red BREAKING NEWS banner at the bottom of the screen screamed: JAPAN HIT BY 9.0 EARTHQUAKE—TSUNAMI IMMINENT!

I screamed something incoherent as I ran out into the family room, half-dressed, knocking things over, becoming hysterical.
“You guys, Turn on the TV! Oh my God! Turn on the TV!” I grabbed the remote, but it looked like something that powers the International Space Station, so I threw it toward my husband.

“Oh, I don’t want to watch TV…” I heard someone say, but Raphael could tell something was wrong. He said later that it felt a lot like 9/11 when everyone was calling and the only thing they could manage to say was, turn on the TV!

“CNN. Find CNN!” I was so freaked out I could barely speak.

When the images came up on that big screen HD TV they were even more terrifying.
It was a helicopter shot, high above the coastline of a small city. There was a wave with a white cap as far as the eye could see. it looked like it spanned almost the entire coastline and it was headed straight for cars, boats, houses…and people.

Now we were all transfixed. Silently glued to the screen with the frantic sounding Japanese commentary running in the background. This was all happening LIVE.

The CNN anchor sounded reassuring, telling us that Japan had one of the most advanced tsunami warning systems on the planet. Sirens had started sounding a few minutes after the large off-shore earthquake, warning the population to make their way to their pre-determined evacuation points up on higher ground.

We watched in horror as churning brown water began rushing onshore with a ferocity that was nauseatingly familiar.
It just kept coming and coming. Undeterred by the breakwater…and the thirty-foot wall they had built to withstand a tsunami.

“God, I hope they had enough time,” I whispered.

Suddenly the CNN picture was minimized as the face of a local anchor at the Maui station took up the entire rest of the screen.
“Good evening,” he read off the cue card, “The entire Hawaiian Islands have been placed on tsunami watch due to the large earthquake off the coast of northern Japan. We will keep you posted as scientists get the readings off of the tsunami buoys that dot the span of the Pacific Ocean from the coast of Japan to the west coast of North America. If it looks like a tsunami is coming our way, the watch will turn into a warning.” He swallowed awkwardly, I saw his Adam’s apple quiver.
“Stay with us for further instructions.”

The screen was filled again with the escalating destruction in Japan.

I started to shake uncontrollably, my eyes filling with tears.

Then I saw him flinch out of the corner of my eye. It got my attention and when I looked his way his face looked as if he’d seen a ghost. With the remote still in his hand, my husband turned toward me slowly, deliberately.
His mouth dropped open, his eyes were full of…questions.

Then with no sound; his eyes locked on mine as he mouthed my prophecy from earlier that week: We’re going to have a tsunami.

As an aside, I cannot explain to the wives reading this, the satisfaction I felt when the look on his face telegraphed to me that my tsunami prediction had been real and not the result of some questionable tuna salad at the airport.  

Then I snapped back to reality. The hair stood up on the back of my neck. Really, the hair on my entire body. Even my chin hairs stood at attention.

The shrill wailing of the Disaster Alert Siren brought us both back to reality.
It was official—the tsunami was imminent.

To Be Continued…

LESSONS FROM A TSUNAMI ~ THE CONCLUSION
(It’s a throwback, I’m not gonna make you wait!)

What in the hell was going on? I had unwittingly been given a front-row seat to a disaster that I’d known was going to happen—for a year!

Why in the hell was I in Hawaii again? What was my part in this tragedy?

I never wanted to be someone who predicts disasters. Seriously Universe? Give me another job. Anything.
Something else. Something not so fucking scary.

Be careful what you wish for. Now I talk to dead people. But not the scary ones. Funny ones. The bossy but kind ones.
Thank God.

Anyway, the local anchor came back onscreen to inform us that one of the deep ocean buoys had registered a tsunami fifteen feet high and getting larger, with a velocity of over five hundred miles per hour, and it was headed directly towards the Hawaiian Islands.

It would get to us in five hours.
3 a.m.
Fucking three a.m! Of course, it was coming in the middle of the night!
The witching hour. The time when nothing good ever happens. Oh, and by-the-way, dark water is one of my biggest fears.
I was petrified!

Ginger was feeling sick and went to bed. The guys opened another bottle of wine and started playing cards, remaining lighthearted, partying while waiting for the inevitable. Just like they did on the deck of the Titanic.

I went back to our room, shivering under the blankets with anxiety, glued to the TV while the disaster siren wailed in the background. Right around midnight, they announced the second buoy reading. The wave was larger and picking up speed as it headed our way. Suddenly the intercom came on inside the condo. Nobody even knew there was an intercom connected to the main resort which was run by Marriott.

A voice cleared its throat.

A barely pubescent boy’s man’s voice, extremely nervous, shaky, cracking and squeaking, blared loudly throughout the condo. Haltingly, he instructed everyone in units below the fifth floor to evacuate to the roof. “Bring blankets…pillows…water and, um, your shoes, it’s going to be a long night.” His anxiety was palpable.

Uh, okay Voice of Authority.

Didn’t they have anyone available with a more mature tone? Something deep and fatherly? A voice that could console us and instill calm. Maybe Morgan Freeman or James Earl Jones?
This kid’s voice and delivery were comical to me. In my imagination, he was the pimply-faced nephew of the lady who fed the stray cats behind the parking garage. One minute he was doing his calculus homework, the next, he was behind a microphone, advising hundreds of tourists what to do during an impending disaster. He was the only one that was expendable in an emergency. Everyone important had a task.
Holy crap, he was the best they had!

Thank God something was funny.

One of trembly, squeaky, scared guy’s announcements advised us all to fill our bathtubs in order to have plenty of drinking water in case the sanitation plant was wiped out. Intermittently he’d come back on with further instructions, Anyone with a vehicle in the lower garages, please move them to higher ground behind the main hotel, he advised, sounding as if he were on the verge of tears.

Not long afterward, I heard voices, car keys, and the front door slam as the guys went to move our cars.

In the dark from our balcony, I watched the groundskeepers running around like headless chickens rushing to clear the sand and pool surround of hundreds of lounge chairs. Then they emptied the rental hut with its kayaks, snorkels and fins, inner tubes and dozens of surf and boogie boards.

If you watch the Thailand tsunami videos it is those seemingly innocuous beach toys that become deadly projectiles in fast-moving water. You may not immediately drown, but a surfboard or a beach chair coming at you at hundreds of miles an hour will kill you for sure.

It was too much. The destruction in Japan was too much for me to handle.
I watched multi-story buildings get washed away like they were kids toys. We were so close to the water. Could our building withstand the rush of the initial wave? How high would the water come?
The third floor, the fourth—or higher? What was going to happen?

I finally turned off the TV plunging the room into darkness. Once it was quiet I instantly felt a drop in my anxiety level. Say what you will, cable TV can suck you into an endless loop of death and destruction—it’s like a drug. Unhooking the CNN IV, I grabbed my phone, inserted my earbuds, pulled up a meditation, and started to calm my nervous system down. Slow…deep…breathing. In…and out… after a few minutes, I could feel my shoulders drop and my face relax. I’d been unconsciously clenching my jaw for hours.

Slowly, my mind started to unwind. The siren went way, fading into the distance, the boy’s terrified voice becoming a muffled form of white noise.
I actually slipped into a half-sleep state. Aware of my surroundings, but extremely relaxed.

The meditations came to an end. Silence. I was still okay.
No longer spinning in fear. No longer afraid.
“What’s going to happen, how bad will this be?” I asked no one in particular.
Just a question I needed answered.

Here’s where the magic happened.

A very loving, clear and calm voice answered back:
What do you want to happen? How bad do you want it to be?

What? I get a vote? This answer left me flabbergasted. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but this felt extraordinary. Somehow, instinctively, I knew that I couldn’t say make the tsunami go away—there are some things we are powerless to change.
What I could change was MY experience of it. What did I want to happen to me—to us?

Script it the voice said, and that has changed my life.

Okay…I said in my head, remembering the videos from Sumatra, You can come up to the palm trees that line our pool area and define the boundary between the beach and our resort. That’s it! To the palm trees only—NOT into the pool—and NOT into our resort.

No further conversation was needed. No idle chit-chat, no more Q & A.

I fell asleep. A deep sleep rich with meaningful dreams that I can’t remember
Inside one, a muffled voice that felt like it was underwater warned: Stay away from the ocean, Do NOT get near the water. We are on lockdown, stay inside your rooms.

It must be happening, crossed my mind, but I was too deep to care.

Only as far as the palm trees… you can go up to the palm trees…

When I finally opened my eyes I could see daylight. Raphael was asleep next to me and I could smell coffee.
Obviously, the tsunami had come and gone—and everything seemed…normal.

These are pictures of the waterline the tsunami left behind. It may not look like much but it is still waaaaay up the beach at this point, about three hours after it came ashore. It surged forty feet UP the beach, over dry sand, and stopped right at the palm trees that line the pool of our resort.

Script it. Imagine it. Feel it. Ask for it. Relax.

That proved to me, without a doubt, that we can script our circumstances. There are things we can’t control, but there are so many that we can.

Get calm, and set boundaries. How bad/good do you want it to be? What do you want to happen?

We have control over our immediate circumstances.
Script it.

This changed my life–I hope it changes yours.

Carry on,
xox

It was 4 am.
My alarm caught me bleary eyed and mildly confused. I’d barely slept and I had an early plane to catch. The vicissitudes of the previous day were still scrambling my brain. Like many of you, I’d sat riveted in front of cable news for nine hours straight. Something I only do if there’s a catastrophe, like an earthquake or a tsunami.

I’d witnessed heroic courage and unadulterated, visceral rage. And it surprised me. I mean, I don’t know what I’d expected, but it wasn’t what I’d seen play out in front of me all day in Washington.
Again.

It WAS an earthquake. AND a tsunami. Wrapped in a tornado, inside of a hurricane.

Emotional wreckage. Norms shattered. Boundaries breached.
It made me sick. literally. At one point I thought I’d puke. I was seething.
I don’t think I took a breath the entire time Dr. Ford testified. I’m not kidding.

The first thing I did Friday morning, right after brushing my teeth, was to flip on CNN. The east coast is three hours ahead of me and I was anxious to see what carnage had transpired while I slept. The Judiciary committee vote was looming a couple of hours in the future and it looked pretty bleak.

Once at the airport I checked my emails. There were at least half a dozen of you wanting me to write something. To weigh in. What was I feeling? Could I see a path toward hope? Did I see any humor in it or was it really the dumpster fire it appeared to be?

Oh, dumpster fire. For sure…

While I sat there formulating ideas, feeling everybody’s fear, anxiety, and rage jump out of my emails and grab me by the neck, the news broke on the shitty TV at the bar across the way. Jeff Flake, a man of flimsy conscious and the unworthy recipient of the last glimmers of our hope, had decided to vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.

Gut punch. My abs should be used to being pummeled, but they aren’t. It catches me by surprise and steals my breath every time it happens.

I wanted to write something. I really did. I wanted to vent and rage, but my words would have only fueled the already enormous fire. The one I’m certain they could see from space. And what good is that?

That’s why god invented Twitter.

Besides, it was time to board, and I had three-and a half hours of captivity ahead of me in a metal tube that’s hurtling through the air in an aerodynamic way that no matter how many times it’s explained to me – is still a mystery. Anyway, I had nothing but time to listen to podcasts and watch the news. Except there was no live TV coverage on this particular flight, the WiFi sucked ass, and my podcasts had neglected to download.

What.. the … fuckity, fuck?
When that happens it means I need to press pause.

So I sat and stewed. In some very toxic juices.

You need to say a little prayer of thanks to my husband for bearing the brunt of all the collective feminine rage that was up beside us at thirty-thousand feet, caught in the stratosphere, circling the planet.

In the meantime, I poked around social media, seeking the advice of some of the thought leaders I turn to in case of emergency.
Glendon Doyle was livid.
Anne Lamott was devastated.
Of course they were! Then I happened upon this Facebook post by Marianne Williamson. She’s someone who is thoughtful and measured. Someone who I used to go see speak every Thursday night in the 80’s during the AIDS crisis. As I read it, tears ran down my cheeks and great pools of snot gathered at my feet. “Oh, they have done it now,” she said in an uncharacteristically defiant way. “Now they have triggered the memories of every woman who has ever had her opinions ignored or her feelings scorned.”

Bammo! Bingo! Bullseye! She put into words exactly how I was feeling and isn’t that why we turn to these women? To each other? To give voice to our deepest feelings?

“They have harnessed the power of a thousand hurricanes,” she wrote.

Indeed. And tornadoes, tsunamis, and earthquakes.

When we landed in Chicago I learned that Flake had had found his backbone- for now.

Ever since Trump took office I’ve felt my equilibrium tested. But the one thing I know for sure is that he and his cronies in Congress have poked the beast. They’ve awakened the giant – and she is us.

“Congratulations, Senators Grassley, Hatch, Graham, Cruz et al. You’ve done it now. I think you might have just elected the first woman president.”

Yep. And it will be soon. Sooner than they think. #justyouwait
Carry on,
Xox

“Oh, they have done it now.
They have done what thousands of feminists, hundreds of feminist organizations, and millions of women working as social and political activists over the years have not been able to do: they have harnessed the power of a thousand hurricanes. It is not just that they have triggered the memories of every woman who has ever been sexually harassed or abused. Now they have triggered the memories of every woman who has ever had her opinions ignored or her feelings scorned.
Ted Cruz pointed out in his testimony that Dr. Ford was treated with respect. I suppose he means that because they didn’t throw eggs at her. What those men don’t understand is that being silent after hearing her speak, as though actually she had not spoken, does not show respect. Basically ignoring what she said does not show respect. Making it all about “Brett, poor baby, he is one of us and he is hurting” does not show respect. In fact, their entire strategy now rests on ignoring what she said… not even grappling with her credibility, much less allowing a further investigation or more witnesses to testify. And every woman who has ever felt that her words meant nothing, that they somehow disappeared into the air after she spoke them and simply bounced off the ears of a man or men in the room, whether she was ever touched inappropriately or not, she is triggered now.
Congratulations, Senators Grassley, Hatch, Graham, Cruz et al. You’ve done it now. I think you might have just elected the first woman president. A fierce, giant force just been awakened among us. And unlike Quan Yin sitting silently next to my television, we will not be silent. In the coming days and weeks and years, we will speak our truth. We will hear each other and we will believe each other. And this time, by men, and by women alike, we will be heard. #justyouwait

-Marianne Williamson

Hamilton
Orpheum Theatre

There really is a God.

I know this for a fact because she’s answered my prayers. Or at least two so far.

1.) She gave me boobies back when I was thirteen and prayed every night for them. I prayed and prayed like a nun in a whore house—so how could she say no.

2.) I got Hamilton tickets. Two of them. For $89 bucks each.

Now, this may feel like a waste of a prayer to those of you who live on planet Earth where shitty stuff happens. But believe me, I pray for world peace, I have since I was little and I’m still waiting to see an improvement.

I pray for children to go to sleep at night with bellies as full as my dog’s, cancer to be eradicated, aging to be reversed and a cure for shortness. I’ve done the legwork and I haven’t seen great results so I don’t feel like a jackass throwing in the nightly ask for a lottery win aka Hamilton tickets.

Now, I know my limits. I’m not gutsy enough to pray for Hamilton tickets on BROADWAY. I have it on good authority that Jesus Christ himself walked on water all the way to NY and even HE couldn’t get tickets when Lin-Manuel Miranda was the star so…I waited until I heard the touring company was going to be in LA before I ramped up the BIG ASK. Every night before I went to sleep I’d just say in very conversational tone so as not to seem too desperate, “Gee, (Gee is a great prayer opener. It makes it seem like it’s God’s idea. She likes that) Gee, wouldn’t it be great if I got some Hamilton tickets?”

See how open-ended that prayer is? It allows God to come up with a myriad of ways to make that happen.
I wasn’t specific about how many, when or the price.

The price. Good Lord, the price. I say, good Lord because he had nothing whatsoever to do with keeping the prices of tickets down where someone without a trust fund or a hedge fund or any other type of fund had a rat’s ass of a chance.

I saw tickets on certain third-party sites going for as much as $12,000 a seat!

Listen, I love Musical Theatre as much as well, more than the next guy (unless the next guy is Nathan Lane) but I like to eat too. And have a roof over my head. So as much as I wanted tickets my fiscal sobriety kept me from overpaying.

Last Thursday my sister Sue and I walked up to the theater box office with great confidence and fanfare. Not really, we were sufficiently terrified. We’d heard an Urban Myth that claimed that tickets for Hamilton could be purchased—at the box office—for (wait for it) FACE VALUE! In other words, a mere $175!

Hazah!

The dude at the window was a millennial hipster. One with a particularly epic eye-roll. I know this because he rolled it in our direction several dozen times.

“We’re here for Hamilton tickets!” I announced.
He rolled his eyes pushing the seating chart toward us.

“We have these,” he said pointing to the middle Orchestra section, “For $650 a seat.”

My sister and I looked at each other and gulped. That’s a lot of Botox, we, I thought.

This time he looked bored while he rolled his eyes.

“You got anything up your sleeve?” my sister asked good-naturedly. He twisted his face like a baby tasting a lemon for the first time or a guy with a wooden arm at a poker game.

“Ha, ha, ha, ha,” I laughed my big, fake snort-laugh. “Like nobody ever asks you that!” I think I slapped Sue’s back.

Yuk, yuk, yuk. We waited. There it was. The eye roll of all eye rolls. I’m surprised the momentum didn’t flip him over.

Remember trying to get into those exclusive clubs and restaurants back in the day when you cared about stuff like that and you had to work the guy at the door? Yeah, me neither, I used to just flash my boobs (thanks again, God). But anyway it felt like that seemed.

We had devolved into a female version of Bevis and Butthead and I’m pretty sure he took pity on us. Or it was getting close to break-time. Nevertheless, he pushed the seating chart forward again.
“We have these over here” he was pointing to a little section of about six seats on the side. “This is usually for wheelchairs but we’re putting folding chairs there…”

“How much?! I interrupted.

“Eighty-nine dollars a seat.”

“Can you see the stage? Is there a pillar in the way? Is the sound obstructed? Is that the night all the understudies go on? Is there an orchestra? Is it sock puppet show? What the fuck is wrong with these tickets?!!!” I was getting slightly hysterical at the prospect of actually seeing the show.

It was not how I expected this to go.

“Nope.” he said with a minimum eye roll, “Just folding chairs.”

My sister looked at me gobsmacked “Those are actually decent seats.”
“I love a good folding chair,” was my reply.

“We’ll take three!” we sang out in unison.

And the heavens opened and the choir of angels sang (Something from the soundtrack) and we walked away with cheap-ass folding chair seats to Hamilton.

So, clearly you guys, there is a God.

The End. And Carry on,
xox

“What is with all those people who are shouting their shitty statistics at us? Stop it! Stop trying to convince me that the world is a horribly dangerous and massively disappointing and unfulfilling shit-show!”
~Me

The doctor stands there with his hands together, fingers interlaced, the corners of his mouth downturned into a solemn expression.
“I’m afraid your prognosis is grim”, he delivers the news in an equally grim monotone.

Then it starts.

“The odds are against you. Only sixteen percent of people with this thing you have live past a year. Eighty-five percent survive the chemo and radiation only to expire after ninety days.”

Blah, blah, yadda, yadda.

I know you’re just doing your job but I can assure you, nobody heard a thing after the word grim.

I know some really amazing doctors who have saved a ton of lives but why do they insist on immediately covering us with a sauce that smells like death?

Because they don’t want to give anyone FALSE HOPE.

False Hope
To look forward to something that has a strong chance of not happening—that you may or may not know.

Yeah, that would be awful. By all means don’t look forward to anything that might not happen.

Wait. Most things in life have a strong chance of going down the drain. We have no idea how they will play out. That’s why it’s called hope. We hope for the best. Otherwise, it would be called certainty, or ForSuresville.

I remember being a single forty-year-old when I was told that I was more likely to die at the hands of a terrorist than to get married.

What?

A very successful and famous writer, who an entire room of us not so famous and successful writers had gathered in order to hang on her every word, ended a really sweet and uplifting day with this nugget.
“You can’t call yourself a writer unless you’ve been rejected many, many times.”
That was the “let’s get real” portion of her talk. It was supposed to be motivating but for me, it was mildly nauseating because if you know her story that was not necessarily the case for her and I think, like the gloomy-Gus guy in the white coat—she doesn’t want to prescribe any FALSE HOPE.

If you beat the odds you’re lucky. I suppose I agree. Or tenacious, delusional, persistent and optimist.

Here’s the thing, this is not a one size fits all world. If it were we would all be the same color, height, and weight. We would all look like Cindy Crawford or Bradley Cooper. Then and only then could anyone tell you EXACTLY how something was going to go down.

There are as many different possible scenarios as there are individual souls in this world. So, at last count just over seven billion.

I don’t care how many people survived six months. If you tell me that, I just may believe you because you’re a doctor—and then I’m fucked. I can’t have my own journey. I won’t make my own miracles.

I don’t care how hard it is to get a movie made in Hollywood. Four or five come out every week, so I know some bozo beat the odds.

I don’t care if ninety percent of writers fail at the premise. Ninety percent of screenplays and eighty percent of novels are rejected because of poor structure.

Dan Brown’s three novels before The Da Vinci Code all had printings of less than 10,000 copies.
Other rejection counts: Gone With the Wind, 38 times; Dune, 20 times; A Wrinkle in Time, 29 times; Lord of the Flies, 20 times; Kon-Tiki, 20 times; Watership Down, 17 times; Jonathan Livingstone Seagull, 18 times; Chicken Soup for the Soul, 33 times; James Joyce’s The Dubliners, 22 times; Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, more than 100 times; MASH, 21 times.

I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care!

I believe in FALSE HOPE. I love FALSE HOPE. I spread FALSE HOPE on crackers and eat it.

All of those people had hope, false or not, that they would succeed—or they would have given up. The same goes for those who survive past their expiration date. They didn’t listen to the statistics and I can guarantee you they mainlined FALSE HOPE.

I for one, think we all should all believe in FALSE HOPE. About everything. All of the time.

I shudder at the alternative.

Carry on,
xox

I was going to write about what a very alright, really great day I’m having.

How last night I dreamt of witches and Donald Sutherland and the vague memory of my dog offering me a pork chop and donut smoothie.

About how I had the stamina, not just the stamina, the desire to put on the false eyelashes and leave the house. (If you know me at all you know that if I’m rocking the eyelashes I’m firing on all cylinders.)

That fact that I drove myself somewhere BY MYSELF for the first time in ten days without falling asleep at the wheel, ricocheting off other cars or hitting puppies and babies in crosswalks.

Then I got a parking space right in front of my destination (which came in handy because I’m still walking like a toddler with a full diaper.) Not only that, the meter still had and hour and fifteen minutes of time left on it which always leaves me in a state of awe and wonder when I see it—like someone has just pulled a diamond out of their ear.

That’s all good and well but while I was sitting and waiting in a bright blue linen chair that was too deep for me to dismount in any kind of elegant way, I read this.

This. 

This beautiful essay by Anne Lamott that sums things up. Big things. Little things. All things. Government, hopelessness, getting gutted by a well-meaning doctor…Every damn thing.

“I think they are a tiny tiny bit tired of hearing me say that grace bats last, and that in the meantime, we practice radical self-care, pick up litter, flirt with old people. They’re probably sick of hearing my secular father’s Golden Rule: Don’t be an asshat. And above all, listen. Listen. Listen. Hear each other.”

I’m not tired of hearing it, Anne. I needed it. Like a mango margarita on Taco Tuesday.

I Love you, Anne. I Love you guys. xox

“I have been traveling around the country for nearly two weeks on book tour, and without exception, my audiences have been filled with lovely bright people who feel doomed. In New York City they were too sad to be ironic, just devastated, and in the Deep South, where they pet me and give me home baked cookies and pocket crosses, and where I develop an accent, their eyes tear up.

People do not feel “anxious” or “frustrated,” or doomed-ish, in a mopey Eeyore kind of way.

They feel cursed, cut down, scared to death, like during the Cuban Missile Crisis. It’s as if we’re all waiting for biopsy results for someone we love. We try to be brave.

No one has a clue how we are going to come through this fever dream. They come to my events because I am usually a cranky optimist who believes that if it seems like a bad ending, it’s not the ending. They hope I have found some spiritual, political or psychological tools to cope and transcend.

Yeah, right.

I think they are a tiny tiny bit tired of hearing me say that grace bats last, and that in the meantime, we practice radical self-care, pick up litter, flirt with old people. They’re probably sick of hearing my secular father’s Golden Rule: Don’t be an asshat. And above all, listen. Listen. Listen. Hear each other.

I think they are tired of me repeating that the only things that ever help are Left, Right, Left, Breathe.

I think they are tired of me saying around Easter that the crucifixion looked like a big win for the Romans. The following Monday, Caesar, and Herod were still in power. The chief priests were still the chief priests. (And meanwhile, in a tucked-away corner, the 12 were transformed. And some women, too.)

It’s amazing to stop pretending that things are not as bizarre and dire or hard as they are, in the marriage, for your grown child, in the nation. To be where your feet are, and to feel it all: the swirl of doom, of gratitude, of incredulous fear, of wonder, of hate, judgment, love.

Doctorow nailed it when he said writing fiction is like driving at night with the headlights on–you can only see a little ways in front of you, but you can make it through the whole journey that way. That is true about every single aspect of life. Maybe people are sick of me quoting that, too, but it’s true.

It doesn’t make sense to stay fixated on what we don’t know–say, hypothetically, whether we will nuke North Korea over our special friend’s feelings getting hurt, or who turns state’s evidence first, or what crazy scheme might save the mountain gorillas from extinction. We only know now. We have all been through long stretches of feeling truly doomed–deaths, divorces, breakdown, failure. They call it the abyss because it’s pretty abysmal.

Maybe the Obama years were like this for you. Whatever.

But we know the precious community that kept us company. We know sacrifice, mercy, the arc toward justice. We know that the love and solidarity were real and profoundly, eternally true; and it is now, where your feet are, abundantly.

And hey, Hallelujah, y’all.”

~Anne Lamott
https://www.amazon.com/Hallelujah-Anyway-Rediscovering-Anne-Lamott/dp/0735213585/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1492046942&sr=8-1&keywords=anne+lamott

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is.” ~ Albert Einstein

So, you guys, this is a video that I saw on my Facebook homepage ONCE. One time, (if you can believe that, because when does THAT ever happen?), a few months back and it moved me so much I wanted to tell you guys about it.

I wanted to tell you the story of Chloe, but, and I’m embarrassed to admit this, when I looked at my notes I couldn’t make out the name I had scribbled while I watched. I tried everything. But it didn’t look like Chloe AT ALL! Curtis, Caitlin, Cody, none of those were right and without the name, well, I was screwed because the name plays such a huge role in this story. So, not only was I unable to write about this amazing story, I couldn’t find the video either!

BECAUSE IT’S CALLED CHLOE!

Then lo and behold, this past Sunday, Oprah ran it on Super Soul Sunday because it’s that good. Hallelujah! Mystery solved and here it is.

I’m showing you this on the weekend so you’ll have plenty of time to watch it. Really, you must watch it.

Okay, maybe not.
But…how about this? Maybe if, and only if, you’ve gotten tired of waiting for something you wanted with your whole heart.

Or, if you’ve questioned or even cursed God/Universe/The Lord/Bob, whoever, because it was looking like the thing you desired most in the world was being withheld from you.

Or, have you ever felt that horrible feeling that washes over you on those days when you lose your faith and you think “Yeah, this thing ain’t gonna happen. Never in a million years. What a complete and total FOOL I’ve been!”

Have you felt any of these? I have. All of them.  You need to watch this.

Carry on,
xox

This is my latest Huffington Post piece and another in my unintentional series on the way hope, gratitude and optimism have become dirty words these days. What do you think my tribe?
xox

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/janet-bertolus/i-may-be-a-pollyanna-but-_b_11265326.html

It’s become terminally “uncool” to be hopeful and optimistic; and if anyone so much as gets a whiff of it, you are laughed at, belittled and shouted down.

That being said, I have a confession to make—I am proud to admit that I am a card-carrying “Pollyanna”.

Just to clarify, “Pollyanna” is a derogatory term for someone who remains excessively sweet-tempered and optimistic even in adversity. This may sound like it’s all fairy dust, rainbows, and unicorn balls, but I’m here to tell you, it can be difficult to maintain, especially surrounded as we are by the current apocalyptic zeitgeist.

Optimism is not for crybabies or the faint of heart.
Neither is hope. It’s an audacious act.
And fucking hard work.
It takes focus, grit, grace, a thick skin and the ability to unplug.

Hopelessness has countless outlets these days and it broadcasts its tale of woe 24/7. Like a spoiled, bratty child it yells at the top of its lungs all the while keeping its hands over its ears, lest it hear something uplifting—like the truth.

Here at the Pollyanna channel, we eat fear for breakfast—because we know the truth.

College graduation is at an all time high.
Teenage pregnancy numbers have continued to fall.
Violent crime is at an all-time low.
There has been a drop in domestic violence and drunk driving-related deaths.
Around the world, deaths from infectious diseases and child mortality are at an all time low.
Just to name a few.

I’m not blind, I still see huge room for improvement, but as an optimist, I believe the solutions come to us when we stay centered in hope.

It can be damn hard. I get it.

But like I said, optimism is not a fair weather sport for weaklings. It is for warriors. It’s so much easier to complain and blame, be furious and scared.

This pollyanna shit is not all kumbaya—it takes work!

By-the-way, if a doctor, therapist, teacher or pastor told me that the problem I was struggling with was a hopeless disaster, I would seriously run for the freakin’ hills. I expect even more from someone campaigning for the highest office in the land.

Please tell me one time that that kind of thinking has brought lasting, positive change.
One time. Tell me. I’m waiting.
NEVER.

I can guarantee you that throughout human history while some fraidy-cat fear-monger was running around like a headless chicken screaming about a falling sky, the Pollyanna’s in the bunch were calming the crowd and building a roof.

I swear to God, Noah was a Pollyanna.

“What devastating flood?” he said, over the deafening shouts of rain! Rain! Flood! Flood! Death! Disaster—and worse, no flood insurance!

“I’m building a boat” was his reply.

“What an idiot you are!” they all shouted after him as he sailed away.

Pollyanna’s unite! Be strong in the face of constant ridicule. Use your hope, use your faith, keep your optimism high and calm the crowds. Stay in the arena! We need you in the game!

Carry on.

Sounds counterintuitive. Right?

But if we armour up, we fall prey to exactly what the cruel ones want. We turn on each other…

What a fucking nightmare of a week this has been.

But remember.

The world is not cruel. Only a few.

Say that again.

The WORLD is not cruel—only an angry few who view things as so hopeless that they see no way out other than violence.

Anger is sad’s bodyguard, remember?

Be courageous. Try to stay in your heart.

Get angry—then get back to your heart.

Be sad—then find your way back to your heart.

Feel hopeless—then search for love. That’s what I’m attempting this weekend.

Carry on,
xox