Life

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

“The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you’re uncool”.
~Lester Bangs, Almost Famous

I am as about as uncool of a person as they come. Seriously. And so I’m sharing some of the ‘currency of the uncool’ with y’all, my fellow passengers on this E-ticket ride called life. And here’s what I’ve noticed lately:

Every damn person, myself included, thinks they’re doing this pandemic thing wrong.

Not that there’s a “Living Your Best Life During A Global Catastrofuck” handbook, which I personally view as a terrible oversight on God’s part and I will have words with her about it when this thing is over;  but, you can get goaded by social media (which tragically, has been our only glimpse into the void) into thinking there’s a right way to be living your life right now and when I say ‘you’——I mean me.

In the beginning I pretty much winged it since it was my first pandemic and just like the rest of the world I was making shit up as I went along. I baked an embarrassing tonnage of chocolate chip cookies and distributed them to my neighbors— like life jackets on the Titanic. I mean, who doesn’t want to be discovered ten thousand years from now with the fossilized remnants of chocolate chip cookies as proof of their last meal?

It all felt very dystopian future meets apocalyptic end-of-times——if you’re living inside of a Nora Ephron movie.

Once my sweat pants got tight, I looked at Instagram and switched to gardening, and home improvement (you guys, my thumb has never been greener, my silverware shinier, or my back sorer) in-between Zoom calls.
Zoom.
Don’t get me started.
I could write an entire book on the way Zoom has simultaneously saved and ruined my life.
It has kept me connected in the weirdest way imaginable by lulling me into a false, Jetsonian sense of intimacy with one-dimensional images of people I used to be able to hug, smell and taste (don’t ask). It has introduced me, or rather my head from the neck up, to people I’ve never met; revealed my questionable taste in home decor to strangers I would never invite inside my house——and saved my ass as far as work is concerned.

Have you noticed? Some people are Zoom naturals. It’s a thing. 

They glow and effuse with breathtaking ease. Their ideas flow with an effortless acuity, in long, erudite monologues that sound like they were written by Aaaron Sorkin.
Not me.
I show up more times than I care to admit, tragically unprepared, mumbling and laughing inappropriately, with my hair styled by a helicopter, whitening strips on my teeth and an adult beverage in my coffee cup.

So yeah, Zoom.

And as grateful as I practice being for my health and life in general, I have to admit to a certain sense of Ground Hog’s Day claustrophobia. Every day has begun to bleed into the next. There’s not much to look forward to. There are no weekends anymore. Don’t ask me what day it is or the month, I do not know. It’s warm, there are flowers, and if I owned a bikini I could wear it—so I’m guessing summer.

 All I know for sure is that today ends in a Y.

Another thing I’ve noticed lately that I’m sure is probably true for you too— All I do is work.

I write, Zoom, shovel shit, paint shit, stain shit, clean shit, wash shit, cook shit, fix shit, edit shit, watch shit——lather, rinse, repeat. And if you’re someone who is home schooling kids, well, we are not in the same league, let alone the same zip code! And I thank you for your service and will insist you go straight to the head of the line at the Pearly Gates.

And all of this—since March!

My sister and I, agreed yesterday in one of our epic Karen bitch-seshes, not on the way California is handling Covid (because, oh bloody hell, we’re all gonna die!) but on the fact that we’ve forgotten how to have fun.
Fun. You know, that thing you do in-between work and more work and twice as much in the summer.
Fun. We’re not even doing THAT right!

But I am not alone. WE are not alone in our Narnia of despair. If you haven’t seen this already, it from Saint Glennon 0f Doyle, author of Untamed and patron saint of all women embracing their inner cheetah while confined to house arrest.

She gets it.

I think—somewhere in the middle of last week—I hit a wall.

I am sad. I feel lost and aimless in my home most of the day. I am cranky with my people. Even though we’re together all day—I’m somehow gone. I’m claustrophobic in this covid world. The news makes me terrified and so full of rage I want to scream. I wander around all day with this nagging feeling that I’m not doing enough writing enough helping enough creating enough parenting enough wifeing enough BEING enough—that I’m wasting my time, my hours, my days, my life.

Is it just me? And if so I was just joking I’m fine, totally carpeing the hell outta these diems and all that shit.

Crawling along.
Gonna keep going.
Love you madly.

“No feeling is final.” -the magical Rainer Maria Rilke.

~Glennon

In closing, I know this:
Stillness brings up so much shit!
Perfectionism kills.
Don’t watch the news.
You must march to your own damn drum.
Nap if you’re tired.
Try to belly laugh once a day.
And cookies and pie are essential to our mental health (which is the reason I’m telling myself I couldn’t find flour in a store until June).

And when I get twitchy and snarly, I will report myself to whoever is in charge of me (besides my husband who has been my quarantine roommate and is struggling with combat fatigue) which is usually my sister or my BFF—for an attitude adjustment and yet another virtual hug.

Find your people and report in as much as needed.

I love you. Carry on. Crawling is fine.

xoxJB

This morning while I was in my courtyard, obsessively planting flowers in pots, with every door and window wide open,  letting the cool, late morning springiness inside, Little Miss Hummingbird flew into the house.

I only know this because on one of my way-too-many visits to the bathroom (coffee) she buzzed thisclose to my head on her way to the ceiling. Panting frantically at the staggering altitude of nine feet, she tried her best to find the sky by repeatedly banging her wee head into the drywall. Meanwhile, I attempted to calm her by pointing out all FIVE available exits, in my best flight attendant voice——and then sat patiently in a chair nearby waiting for her to figure it out.

Throughout my time on planet earth you guys, hummingbirds have brought out the best in me. They reinforce my belief in magic and tiny birds with neon feathers who zip around powered by wings that beat a gazillion times a second yet seem chill and wise and speak a lyrically chirpy little language that I’ve only recently forgotten. Dr. Seussical in all the best ways, when they deem me worthy of any visitation——I want to scream with glee and grab a frilly pink skirt and my best party shoes.

As an aside, she’s the first visitor I’ve had in eight weeks, so…yeah…

Anyway, in between desperately searching for her freedom, Miss Hummingbird rested on a pussywillow branch in a vase by the window and clearly channeled my mother by finding every cobweb in every freaking corner of the living room ceiling (in our family that is called cob-shaming you guys!) Circumnavigating my living room wearing the webs on her head like some kind of Quinceanera veil, she eventually found one of the five doors while I had my back turned making her a cup of tea.

As happy for her as I was, I couldn’t help but feel a tad disappointed.

Number one, she didn’t even say goodbye. Number two, I selfishly wanted to spend more time with her, you know, so she could impart some of her hummingbird juju and tell me what the energy was like out there in quarantine-land, and number three, I was curious about her inability to see her way out. I mean, how do I say this in the least judgie-Mcjudgerson way possible?

All she had to do was look around.

Which she did eventually, but in the meantime she got visibly overwrought by fixating on the ceiling.

Uh…WE do that, you guys!
I totally do!

As hard as I try, and as much practice as I’ve had at advocating doing THE EXACT OPPOSITE, sometimes often, I am completely incapable of turning my head that three inches to the left where the flashing red, EXIT is beckoning me home.

Why? Why do we do that sweet Lord?

Fear? Inability to focus? Laziness? Wanting things to be where we want them to be (ie) where they’ve always been?

I was about to say human nature, but maybe it’s just…nature.

I wonder how Ms. Hummings (how I imagine she refers to herself) tells the story of her morning adventure? Is it framed around her chance encounter with a woman in sweats and dirty hair but a nice smile—or is it a horror story centered around a room with no way out? I’d be curious to know.

As I’m writing this you guys, there’s some kind of giant fly or winged insect circling my tiny she-shed, totally mistaking my right ear as their way to blessed freedom while completely bypassing the WIDE OPEN DOOR less than a foot away. Trying hard not to kill it but thinking maybe natural selection is in order.

Carry on,
xox

Okay…so…

Since my nature is one of impulsiveness, learning discernment did not come easy for me nor did it happen overnight.  

Decades.. It took me decades to learn.

And since discernment can look like hesitancy, indecisiveness, and, on its best day a bad case of whishy-washy — well, those are words NO ONE would EVER use to describe me, and yet…

These days, when I read something, see something, hear something, or enter a room—I seldom get carried away by the “consensus” otherwise known as “the peanut gallery”.

This tends to frustrate people because people like you more when you get carried away by their enthusiasm, whether it be about a book, a person, a trend, a great idea…or perhaps a cure. But I don’t. I check in with myself. I get still, wait for the noise to subside a bit, and see how this particular thing feels to me.

If my ass does a Kegel—it’s a hell no for me—even if everyone loves it!

I’ve been speaking to lots of women these days and I adore the conversations. And maybe that’s the key-word here. Conversation. We have conversations. Not monologues. Not lectures.

I’m usually brought into these conversations by another woman with waaaayyyy more street cred than I could ever hope to accumulate in this beautiful life of mine and her generosity makes me feel honored. Humbled.

But I’m always clear about one thing: I was vetted and that got my foot in the door.
The rest is up to me.
And you.  
I’m gonna talk, with absolute candor, about the stuff I love. Magic, energy, self-empowerment, and the cheat codes I use to make my life easier. If it resonates with you, that’s great! If not, that’s great too. Seriously. Because another thing I’ve learned is—concentrate on the people who like what you’re saying not the ones who are looking at their phones.

To me, its kinda like a dinner party at a friend’s house.
I love my friends and I trust their judgment in food, wine, and the people they surround themselves with, so if I meet you there, I’m prone to love you at first sight. But, and this has happened on rare occasions—even if you’re renowned in your field, a massive celebrity or someone everyone wants to be seen with—if I find you acting like a bitch faced howler monkey or everything coming out of your mouth makes me feel like I want to stick a fork in my eye—I will, in the most polite way possible, distance myself from you.

And the next day when I talk to my friend we’ll both have a good laugh because you got your foot in the door (you were her sister’s last-minute date) but you most certainly were not a match to the delicious energy going on at that party.

One last tidbit. What’s the difference between skepticism and discernment you might ask? Good question, because I confused these two for years.

Skepticism is me walking into the party with my mind made up that I’m not going to like you.

Discernment is meeting you with an open mind and a giant helping of “benefit of the doubt” and coming to my own conclusions about how I feel about you after we’ve met.

With all of the madness, the endless Facebook and Instagram Live’s that stream constantly, we’re being bombarded with confusing and conflicting information that’s being fed to us by “experts” and people with “credibility” these days more than any I’ve witnessed in my entire life. We’re being asked to make life and death decisions for chrissakes, which is turning discernment into a fulltime job!

So, when somebody speaks I do a “butt check” which is just like a “gut check” only lower. Anyway, I invite you to do the same.

Even here. Even with me.

Stay well my friends & carry on,
xox

I’m sitting in my den watching the news when the phone rings. Someone I love wants to be soothed. By me. I feel ill-prepared which always leads to me shoveling raw cookie dough. 

By far the question most asked of me on week one of the pandemic was was :
“Are we going to be okay?”

The uncomplicated answer was…

“Yes. But, I don’t know how, and I don’t know when, and I don’t know what that’s gonna look like.” 

Silence.

Some people who weren’t already crying started. The ones who were crying continued. That’s what happens when you ask a question you can’t imagine the answer to. You hear something you may not like, or even worse—be emotionally prepared for. 

I suggest not giving anyone, even me, that power. 

I believe in deferring to the experts. My gut and my heart. 

And I’m not gonna lie, even they had a hard time finding the truth inside all of the fear, adrenaline and cortisol coursing through me that first week. I mean, they told me I would be okay even if I got sick and died. But no matter how much you believe it in theory, that’s not something you want to put into practice— and it’s certainly not a truth you pass onto your friends when they text or call. 

So I didn’t. 

“Are we going to be okay?” They asked.

“Yes.” I simply said. “Yes, we will.” No further explanation offered. That’s when the crying stopped. 

Weeks two and three: Shit gets real.

I’m making cookies for the neighborhood. I’m answering the unasked request for cookies that came to me in a dream.

It’s barely 8 am.

A friend is talking to me on speaker-phone. “I had to delete some of my fears, she says. “I just don’t have the room for them in my head anymore!” She exclaims over the sound of my mixer. “They’ve been replaced by bigger, life or death ones now.”

Which got me to thinking; I’m sorry if I’m a bit indelicate here but don’t the things that triggered you previous to the pandemic (a sentence I never imagined writing) don’t they seem, well, ludicrous?

I mean, come on, hasn’t this put all of our pre-pandemic fears (which I won’t list here for fear of embarrassing us) into perspective?

Listen, I think we can all agree, global shaking of the Etch-A-Sketch on this level hopefully only happens once in a lifetime, and since no one can tell us for sure what the future will look like, our fears have an unbelievably limited job description these days:

Kill the virus. Do I have enough toilet paper?

And all the Karens of the world with their free-range outrage, doesn’t what you were on hold to complain to customer service about only one short month ago seem ridiculous?

People are scared, Karens.

People are dying. 

People are lonely.

People are worried and hungry and need more masks, and gowns and hand sanitizer! 

For the love of God, Karens, make yourselves useful, rage on that!

————————————————————————————————————————————————————

Week four: Adaptability.

I’m waking up…happy. What. The. Fuck. 

Who am I to be happy amid all of this death, uncertainty, and sorrow? I go immediately to the place in my brain to shut that shit down when I get stopped by curiosity. How did this happen? Three weeks ago I was waking up terrified. Am I suddenly brave? uh, no.

You know why? Because human beings are incredible creatures. 

First, we freak out, cry, hide, or run. Then we adapt. 

Eventually, we fall into a “new normal” because it’s how our brains are wired and seriously, what other choice do we have? 

Because I’ve never witnessed a “disturbance of the force” of this magnitude I’ve also never seen this level of adaptability.
It’s mind blowing. It takes my breath away. 

The creatives are back to creating.
The inventors are hard at work, as are the big thinkers and the innovators.
Zoom is connecting us in ways that were incomprehensible six months ago. 
Easter services were streamed online. Andrea Bocelli sang Amazing Grace in an empty cathedral in Milan and we all saw it. Same with the Pope holding mass in St. Peter’s. 

At seven PM every evening entire cities gather at their windows to cheer doctors as they change shifts. 

Food is still being delivered to school kids in need.
Classes continue for most students online.

My husband’s Dermo was able to diagnose his hives over the phone via a video chat. 
My doctor sent me a similar link.

People are holding happy hours on Zoom. There are video yoga classes, video meditation, video AA and mental health care. The list goes on and on and on. 

Ben Affleck held a video poker game for charity. 
Chris Martin and John Legend to name a few, have held video concerts.
Birthday caravans drive neighborhood streets with kids and balloons and singing.

The farmers market and local bakery in my sister’s neighborhood are offering $25 and $40 boxes of veggies and baked goods a couple of times a week and donating the rest. 

Adaptation—the ability to change with new conditions. To change you’re expectations and pivot. 

It looks to me like we’re all starting to get the hang of this. 

Who knows what the following weeks will bring?

Carry on and stay well my friends,
xox

This is from back in 2015 when all we had to worry about was the threat of a nuclear holocaust. Awwwww…the good old days! But it’s still really good advice.
Stay well my dear friends.
xox

It never occurred to me that I might die in a thermal-nuclear holocaust. 

A motorcycle accident, sure. Choking on my gum or a large mouthful of  Raisinettes, huge possibility. But turned into toast at the hands of two man-babies with weird hair? Not so much.

I grew up during the Cuban missile crisis, we had “duck and cover”  drills twice a week in an effort to convince us we’d be safe under our desks. Like radiation and fire would skip over our grade school. Or Catholic kids dressed in their Gawd-awful uniforms with their hands clasped tightly together in prayer wouldn’t die. I knew even then that the whole thing was bullshit. I also knew that if the bomb dropped I’d die without ever kissing a boy, getting boobs or being allowed to order Coca Cola at a restaurant. 

You wanna know what really scared me as a kid? Nuns, clowns and math tests. The end.

So, now what? What if Kim Jong What-the Fuck picks California to nuke? Will the world even care? Will it miss Kombucha, man buns, and hot yoga? I tend to think not. My guess is that us whiny, liberal, coastal elites will not be missed.
At first.
I can only imagine how the political pundits will spin it once the radioactive dust has settled. “Good riddance giant blue state.” the headlines will read.  “One less thing to worry about in the 2020 election.” 

I bring all of this up because I read this recent Facebook post by one of my favs, Anne Lamott, who wrote about her concerns starting off with “We are so doomed.”

Are we?

My immediate thought: “Well, if that’s the case I’m done shaving my legs.” 

Then I remembered being a kid and watching all of the grown-ups wringing their hands with worry and how I knew, even five decades ago, that worrying wasn’t going to make anything better. So, instead of joining the hand wringing circle,  I grabbed my “bug jar”, ran outside to the field on the corner, and looked for more ladybugs. Because ladybugs are good luck (especially the rare ones without any spots) and being a kid gave me permission not to worry. To not know how to fix things. To just be in the moment, enjoying life.

That’s what Anne is saying below, and seriously, you guys, I know it sounds trite and you probably want to pummel my face—but that’s all we can do. 

Well, that and bury ourselves in a giant puppy pile while wearing that expensive dress we were saving for a special occasion and eating any carb that isn’t nailed down.

I give us all permission to be childlike.  Innocently oblivious. Also, it feels like the right time to tell anyone and everyone that you love them.

Now. Don’t wait. 

xox Love you guys. Who’s with me?

TAKE IT AWAY ANNE…

“We are so doomed. There is nothing we can do. We are at the mercy of two evil ignorant syphilitic madmen, the two worst people on earth. I mean that nicely.

Where do we even start?

We stop trying to figure things out. “Figure it out” is not a good slogan. We practice trust and surrender, and attention to what we know is beautiful: dogs, art, the Beatles, each other’s eyes. And we don’t give up hope. Emily Dickinson said that hope encourages the Good to reveal itself. We need all the Good we can summon in these Locked and Loaded days.

So what do we hope for?

Pivot! A perfect time for the Pivot.

Just kidding.

We hope and pray for the return of sanity, or even sanity-ish. I do not hope for a successful Trump presidency or failed Trump presidency. I hope that he does not blow up the whole world.

Is that so much to ask?

What if he accidentally blows up a little bit of the world?

Well, these things happen. We’ll stick together. What has always lifted my spirits is a promise that I made to myself, that if it looks like the end of the world, I get to eat every single thing on earth that can’t outrun me: the last few days, I will only eat nachos and creme brûlée and Safeway carrot cake. Oatbags of M&M’s. No vegetable matter!

That’s something to look forward to!

One more question: how do we get to hope in these dark ratty days?

We don’t think our way to hope. We take the actions, and then the insight follows. The insight is that hope springs from awareness of love, immersion in love, commitment to love. This begins with radical self love: to save the world, make yourself a lovely cup of tea. Put lotion on your jiggly thighs, clean sheets on the bed, the most forgiving pants you own. On the possibly last day on earth, you do not want to be wearing pants that pinch or tug, or ride up your crack.

Trust me on this.

Radical self-love means you treat yourself the same way you would treat your favorite cousin, or even cranky old mealy-mouthed me. Watch the self-talk. You would probably use a sweeter tone of voice with the cousin or me, that you would with yourself. This will change the world.

Get outside, even just to the front porch, and look up into the sky and into the tree tops, and say the great praise- prayer: WOW. Listen for the sound of birds–or bird. Surely there is one lousy bird somewhere in the vicinity. Close your eyes and really listen. If birdsong was the ONLY proof we have that there is a bigger deeper reality than what transcends what we are seeing on the news, it would be enough for me. Eyes closed, breathe, listen: secret of life.

And lastly, take care of the poor–right now. In Hallelujah Anyway, I wrote that when I got sober, I was taught that happiness lay in going from big shot, to servant. If you want to feel loving feelings, which is hope, do loving things. Send a donation to a group that feeds and shelters and clothes people, in your neighborhood, or Syria. Don’t tell yourself you have no money–pack up clothes and shoes to take to a shelter. Or cash in the money in your laundry room change cup, and give it to people on the street. Give away three dollars to moms on the street with kids, and give the kids colored pencils and journals, or index cards, and say,”It is good to see you,” even if you have tiny tiny judgment issues involving bootstraps and combed hair.

If you have time, register a few voters. Also, maybe a ten-minute nap–the writer Robyn Posin says rest is a spiritual act. Father Tom Weston urges, “Left foot, right foot, left foot, breathe.” Ram Dass tells us that ultimately, we are all just walking each other home. Let’s get started.

Am sending you love, whoever you are, and as pastor Veronica says, God bless you good.”

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

Dearest ones,

I thought you might need this. It made me cry tears that were looking for an outlet to come up…and out and I know I’m not alone in that struggle.

Music heals. So does love, and I’m send both to all of you. This is my way of reaching over 110 countries around the globe while still practicing my social distancing.

Stay well, I’m thinking of you every day.

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

“First of all, fuck the future, stay in the NOW!” ~ Me

Elizabeth Gilbert, the author, speaker, and all-around wise-warrior-goddess, posted something on Instagram the other day that reminded me of an exercise I was taught back in the eighties when I was blindsided by debilitating anxiety attacks. Between gasping for air and literally feeling as if the sky was falling, I was advised to practice the 5-4-3-2-1 Coping Technique For Anxiety, and it always made me feel better even if I had to do it five times an hour.

Since basically everyone and their mother on planet earth is feeling a bit anxious these days, I thought I’d share it too.

It goes like this:

Stop whatever you’re doing and look around. Notice five things you can see.

Then take a breath and notice four things you can hear.

Breathe…and notice three things you can feel.

Breathe again and notice two things you can smell.
And then finally take a deep breath and notice one thing you can taste.

If you do this a few times a day you will literally bring yourself back to your senses!

What this does, is bring you back into your body, back into the present moment which, even though it feels uncertain and scary, is unquestionably better than living in that zombie apocalypse movie running on the endless loop inside your head.

And trust me, when you’re in your body you make better decisions.
You look out for yourself and those around you.
You’re somebody other people trust.
You call and check on friends.
And you finally, finally clean out that disgusting hall closet!

I know this sounds trite but I’m gonna say it anyway, because what are you going to do to me that sucks more than a pandemic?

Time is constantly moving forward. Nothing lasts forever. And this too shall pass.

I love you, stay healthy, stay calm and carry on,
xox