I was covered in prickles
The barbs of life's sharpness
Had entered my peripheries
Pierced underneath, to my core
In time, I grew around them
As a tree around wrought iron
In my humanness I adapted
They became part of my selfscape
Then one day, one fell away
I felt the freedom remaining
So I extracted with care and love
Each well-known thorn, reborn
Out of chaos and confusion
She cobbled out a plan
She organized her feelings
Wiped the shit off of the fan
Cleared away what wasn’t hers
Took a shine to what remained
Now there’s space for life to thrive
And freedom to be, unrestrained
Inspired by The Daily Post Daily Word Prompt: organize
One of the longest and most satisfying relationships I have had in NYC has been with Phillip, my postal delivery person.
I have lived in NYC since 1987, thirty years the past July. (Wow!)
Since 1995, I’ve had a rental apartment in the West Village, near Bleecker and Christopher Streets.
Over those 22 years, I have gotten to know many of the “lifers” in the building by face. Watched them (and myself) grow older as our stabilized rents slowly rise.
I just know two of them by name, probably only from necessity. My neighbor Orlando, who, in times of unexpected need has helped me over the years in countless ways (and vice versa.) And my super, Sam, who has also helped me greatly in times of need. I have not reciprocated Sam’s help (due to the nature of our relationship,) but I do tip him generously, and I treat him with kindness and respect. I appreciate both of these men.
The neighborhood I live in has changed dramatically over these 22 years. When I moved in, the West Village was iconic: an eclectic, character-filled neighborhood filled with history, grit, spice, color, and diversity. Real New Yorkers lived there. There were grocery stores, corner delis, “Mom and Pop” businesses populating the streets.
Then things started changing in the late ’90s. Many of us blame “Sex and The City” and those damn cupcakes from Magnolia Bakery for the neighborhood’s demise.
Slowly, but surely, high-end fashion stores began taking over leases on Bleecker. Rents started rising, often astronomically. The “Mom and Pops” couldn’t afford them and were pushed out. The people who serviced these businesses with whom I’d developed working relationships disappeared with the neighborhood’s uniqueness.
In the last 17 or so years I’ve seen an ever-changing sea of young people who seem to be fairly affluent come in and out of the landscape of my building. We are now a mainly transitory residential building. The “lifers” have started to die off of move to supportive care.
There are some of us still there, adapting, as we humans do, to the changes in our environment. Holding out, and on, to our apartments.
We grumble about missing the West Village From Before. It had authenticity. It felt alive, pulsing, slightly dangerous, but in a good way.
We curse under our breath at the hordes of people who now walk on the Bleecker of today that looks just like Madison Ave. (At least before the tourists who came were interesting.) Fork out bucks for Starbucks or French coffees and steer clear of the obnoxious lines that still form in front of that damn bakery thanks to food and “Sex and the City” tours.
But one thing has withstood this tsunami of development.
Philip, my mailman.
He initiated our relationship years ago. I’d be out and about running an errand in the ‘hood and hear my name and a friendly hello. There he was. Philip.
I learned his name, and over the years grew to really appreciate him. Not just for his warmth. He always puts the mail in my box in a very organized way: no cramming or stuffing items willy-nilly.
When I go out of town, without me having to do anything, he holds the mail for me, leaving a test item to see when I am back.
He is an excellent mailman who goes above and beyond, and I reward that as best I can at holiday time.
But the best part is running into him in the ‘hood or in the vestibule. Something fills me when I see his welcoming face.
I don’t think I am alone. I sense that we both cherish the personal, familiar connection, the moment of old neighborly warmth, as we navigate the changed waters of our West Village surroundings.
When I hear my name and that “Hello!” or when I see him and call out “Philip! How are you?!” I am flooded with something I can’t quite name.
When I walk away, I feel lighter and happier.
Philip matters to me. I am so grateful I am on his route.
Together, maybe we can keep the spirit of the Old West Village alive, as best we can.
“Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds”
Thank you, Philip, for being not just the greatest postman in the world, but my neighbor.
I need you now more than ever.
I grew up singing. From pre-school, I was in choirs, and I loved it.
Throughout the chaos and confusion that is childhood, middle and high school, chorus was my lifeline. It was where I found my people. It was what helped me stay as connected to myself as I could be given the trauma of my early life. It saved what sanity I had.
I auditioned for musicals, playing mainly chorus roles. (Except for the role of The Ghost of Christmas Past, which was awesome!)
In college, chorus continued play a crucial role, but I also got more deeply into theatre, which was like finally finding my true “home.”
I had my first lead in a musical, and then a drama. That was it. I was forever hooked.
So after college, I moved to NYC to pursue acting. I trained heartily, and I began to pursue.
And in the course of my training, which required me to delve deeply into my young and perhaps fragile psyche, I found and opened a Pandora’s Box within. And my whole life changed course.
And in the course of that change, I lost my singing voice.
Or perhaps, it was that for awhile, I could not use it.
I would miss singing and try to go back to it, but when I began to sing, my throat would close off and I would feel choked. I would feel overwhelmed with emotion, and I literally could not make sound.
It was terrifying. For something that had always been so central to me to feel unavailable was horrifying.
I entered into therapy, and in time, that was happening to me began to make sense. I was moving through the early trauma and there were memories in my body having to do with holding things in, “not telling anyone” and so forth. I was re-living a time when I literally felt choked.
Later, I came to understand that singing connected me to my breath in such an intimate way and allowed for the expression of my internal experience in such a direct way that while I was moving through that time of awakening and healing, it felt dangerous to my body system to communicate that way.
At a certain point, I once again decided I would try to sing again, as I had tried many times, to no avail.
In a way that I will forever consider miraculous, I found a singing school, in what seemed a fairly random way, in the way that often things of incredible significance can appear to be randomly found.
I had seen a school advertised over and over again in the acting trade paper Backstage called The Singer’s Forum, and one day I finally went in and spontaneously committed to a group class.
That action, which took tremendous courage for me, turned out to be perhaps one of the most important actions of my life.
With that action, again, the course of my life changed.
With the help of several incredible voice teachers and a very supportive environment, with tons of patience and love, I found my singing voice again.
There were many tears. I would feel overwhelmed when I sang. But at the encouragement of one teacher in particular, I learned to accept and relax into it instead of judging, fighting or being afraid of it. And eventually, the tears lessoned. I felt other things. And eventually I felt incredible joy, and I was “home” again.
Then, at this same school, I found miracle number two. I found a mentor, Mr. Johnny King.
Johnny had been a very successful singer and dancer in the 50’s – 80’s. At the time I met him, he had been retired for years but loved nurturing talent and passing along his decades of experience as an entertainer.
I started taking his Get Your Act Together class, and I fell in love. With him, with the art of cabaret, with the Great American Songbook.
He taught me so many things, and he became my biggest fan. He took me under his wing, and he helped me learn who I was as a singer, what gifts I brought to the stage. My own presence. How to be on stage. Phrasing. How to tell my stories through the song.
He changed my life in innumerable ways. He was incredibly generous. He became a kind of surrogate father, and through the way he loved me, I came to understand a healthy male authority figure love.
And I was not the only one! There were a slew of us. We were “Johnny’s kids,” all talented singers whom he took under his wing and gave all he had to so that we could fly as performers. His wing had no limit or shortage. We all felt special under his tutelage.
One of the many things he did as a director and teacher was to suggest songs, and one song he gave me in particular became one of my “signature” songs for a time. A signature is a song that audiences come to identify as “yours” because of a strong connection you have with it so that over time it “becomes” yours in a way. Not every song is like that. When you find them, it is an amazing experience.
I believe songs find me for a reason. When I begin to sing a song, to live it, it changes me, it deepens and expands my life. It is a kind if a marriage, the union between singer and song. And this one was such a special gift.
It was a song called “Mr. Snow” from the musical Carousel, by Rogers and Hart.
I loved singing it. Like any well written song, it was a beautiful journey, a story I got to live each time in a new way.
I sang it hundreds of times.
It’s the story of a woman who ends up falling in love with a fisherman, a man whom some might not consider an obvious catch, but whom she has come to know and love for all his unique ways.
Johnny was an incredible teacher and director, but as we all are, he had his flaws. He could be tough. He was a bit of a gossip. Occasionally, he’d talk out of both sides of his mouth.
One of his flaws was not taking as great care of himself as he took of us. He became sick after ignoring a kidney issue, and never recovered. We never knew how old he was, so I am not sure at what age this happened. He was at least in his 80’s. It was hard to see such a force of the stage in a hospital. He never lost his sassy edge throughout the tribulations of kidney failure and dialysis.
The last time I sang “Mr. Snow” was at Johnny’s memorial service. It had a whole other significance, singing it on that day. He was my Mr. Snow after all, in a way. He taught me how to love a father figure, flaws and all.
As it happens, today when he is so on my mind, I took a break from writing this about him. And I happened to read of the loss of one of the great singers of all time, Barbara Cook. Johnny was a huge fan of hers, and often referred to her performances as teaching points.
I was also a fan, and went to see her as much as possible at Carnegie Hall, at the Met and The Carlyle.
Barbara starred as the character Carrie who sings “Mr. Snow” in Carousel in 1957 on Broadway. She was a true master of the stage, and she will always represent the very best of what the art of cabaret brings to the music world (or to the world at large, really.)
Thank you Johnny King. Thank you Barbara Cook.
You are both in me every time I sing and perform.
I continue to lovingly charge myself to bring all that you’ve taught me and given me to all I do and to give back and share all that you taught me whenever I can.
I leave you, reader, with Barbara’s incredible rendition, later in life, of “Mr. Snow.”
His name is Mister Snow and an up-standed man is he
He comes home every night in his round-bottomed boat
With a net full of herring from the sea
An almost perfect beau, as refined as a girl could wish
But he spends so much time in his round-bottomed boat
That he can’t seem to loose the smell of fish
The first time he kissed me the whiff of his clothes
Knocked me flat on the floor of the room
But now that I love him, my heart’s in my nose
And fish is my favorite perfume
Last night he spoke quite low and a fair-spoken man is he
And he said, “Miss Pipperidge
I’d like it fine if I could be wed with a wife
And indeed, Miss Pipperidge, if you’ll be mine
I’ll be yours for the rest of my life”
Next moment we were promised
And now my mind’s in a maze
For all it can do is look forward to
That wonderful day of days
When I marry Mister Snow
The flowers’ll be buzzin’ with the hum of bees
The birds’ll make a racket in the church yard trees
When I marry Mister Snow
Then it’s off to home we’ll go
And both of us’ll look a little dreamy-eyed
A driving to a cottage by the Oceanside
Where the salty breezes blow
He’ll carry me across the threshold
And I’ll be as meek as a lamb
Then he’ll set me on my feet
And I’ll say kinda sweet
“Well, Mister Snow, here I am”
Then I’ll kiss him so he’ll know
That evry’thin’ll be as right as right can be
A living in a cottage by the sea with me
For I love that Mister Snow
That young sea-faring bold and daring
Big bewhiskered, overbearing, darling Mister Snow
Inspired by The Daily Post Daily Word prompt: carousel
How easy was it for you? Did you ever once falter or regret as you took
the multitude of actions that led to that day on the sidewalk
in front of your restaurant (where I worked too, helping to make your food a success?)
You seemed so casual that day – that day I finally knew something was up – happy, even.
I was intense, laser-focused (because that is where I go when I am terrified)
but inside I felt like my hair was on fire, my gut was being ripped apart,
as I pressed you for details of who, what, and for how long.
(Really? That blonde you had me wait on the other day?)
You were so cool, so blasé, as you easily dropped the bombs that exploded my world apart.
For a long while I would look back, wish I had slapped you – said or done something –
to wipe that tiny smile at the corner of your mouth right off your guilty face.
Now I know that that little smile was not you being smug,
it was because you knew what a coward you were,
and you knew that now, I knew it too.
Inspired by The Daily Post Daily Word Prompt: casual
Sometimes I really want to be single again.
Don’t get me wrong. I love the man I married.
The Universe brought a man into my life who is almost perfectly designed for me in so many ways. He makes me think: really think. I love talking to him. He challenges me intellectually and emotionally. We both share certain childhood wounds that allow us to have a kind of understanding of the other that is quite exquisite and profound. We “get” each other in a way not many could or would. There is a shared language of our hearts. And there is that physical chemistry as well, that makes for deep passion and sweetness.
But I never planned to marry. To be frank, I always thought I was too f’ed up and so had written it off in my early adulthood.
Then I met the man who was to become my husband. For the first time, I had thoughts that maybe marriage was for me, after all. But I wasn’t sure, and I wasn’t in any hurry.
And then, circumstances in my life created some shifts in priority (aka: My own personal Armageddon. My mother and brother died and my whole world exploded.)
And when the smoke cleared, and I was finding my way again through the rubble that was the New World of my life, I found that something in me had shifted.
So when the man-who-would-be-husband made the proposal, I said yes, unequivocally.
But let’s just say that my expectations of what marriage would be were practically non-existent.
I was more than pleasantly surprised. I took to marriage quite well. It astounded me (and still does at times.) It is a mysterious and wondrous thing: creating a home together, a partnership. The closeness. The sharing. The laughter. The tenderness. The challenges. The compromises. The deepening sweetness.
I am also deeply grateful that I have a partner for this part of my life. I have many friends who long for a boyfriend, a husband, a wife. I promise you that I rarely take for granted the incredible gift of this person, this marriage we co-create.
Being an actress, I tend to relate all things back to acting. So for me, marriage is a bit like being in a production of a play you love and care deeply about. You gladly revolve everything around it. You embrace that you are in a collaborative art.
Sacrifices are made willingly for the greater good of the whole. You are willing to live through the hard parts of the process because you know it is all a part of the creation you are making together. You trust in the process. You are diving into the unknown. You expect to feel lost at times because it is in the getting lost that you find something new, together.
You bring your best, he brings his best, and, together, you create something greater than the two of you.
But unlike a production that has a time of completion, a day when you all agree to move on to the next project, marriage is a continuing production. It is an open-ended run.
Those peaks and valleys that are a natural part of it…the moments of feeling lost in the unknown…well, to be honest, there are days when I want to say, “Screw it” and just literally up and leave it all.
Part of the problem is that the Universe was really having a field day when our stars were designed to cross paths. One of the most important qualities that I need and want to have in my life, freedom, just happens to directly rub up against one of the most important qualities that he wants and needs to have in his life. Makes for some critical moments of decision for one or the other of us. And some heated conflicts (aka awful fights.)
I grew up in a household where the father was autocrat. Our world revolved around his needs, opinions and moods. He was a big ‘n tall Texas man with a booming voice. He was intelligent in many ways, but as was true of many of his generation, less so in terms of emotional intelligence.
There was a show on TV in the 70’s, “Wait Till Your Father Gets Home,” a cartoon. The opening theme was a song by the same name, and the visual was of a family anxiously awaiting the father’s return home.
That kind of sums up my experience of our house. But on the TV show, Father was a softie.
Not so in my house. I was always waiting to see whether or not my Dad was mad. He had a mean temper, and a cruel tongue. And he used his physical presence to instill fear in those weaker than he. I guess that means he was pretty much a bully.
Which has always made me wonder what in the hell had happened to him to make him capable of that kind of behavior towards his family: the people he most loved in his life. I will never know. All those who could fill in those blanks are gone now.
I don’t believe it was his essence to be that mean. He learned it somewhere. As is true of many perfectionistic personalities, he was hardest on himself. I’m not making excuses for him. He could be a bastard, and it was not a healthy atmosphere to grow up in, being afraid all the time, walking on eggshells. But I know there is more to the story than just my experience of him.
Having grown up in such an oppressive atmosphere, it is a very high priority for me that for the rest of my life on this planet I not live like that: that I not live on pins and needles, carefully holding my breath around my loved ones, afraid to make a mistake for fear of being shamed and made to feel like I am less than nothing.
Which leads me to value freedom of every kind. Freedom of expression. Freedom to do what I want to when I want to. And that is wonderful, and I honor that about myself. I do.
But. I am in a partnership. And that requires restraint and compromise and taking in another person’s needs and wants and values alongside my own. Sometimes, yes, putting theirs ahead of mine. (No, not in the old-fashioned template of the wife putting her husband’s needs first. But in the way that mature love requires.)
It means being a grown-up. Making The Couple an entity that has a value that is greater than the individual parts that comprise it. Being a kind of parent to The Couple.
Some days, this is easy, cause, well, it’s beautiful. (Remember this song? Well before Mariah’s high notes, there was Minnie…)
Other days, if I am especially tired or spiritually drained, or triggered, to consider compromise can feel like I am on the brink of losing everything that really matters to me. Those old wounds have a deep pull. They cry for me to fight for My Life. Run for the hills. Defend my Precious Freedom. (On no, he didn’t!)
I take a deep breath. Give myself a Time Out. (No, I don’t stand myself in the corner. But I do leave the room, sometimes even the apartment, to go get some air, some space, some present-day perspective.) Remove myself from the situation before I go all Beyoncé on his ass and say things I will later regret. (I am from H-town, after all.)
I go off and soothe that part of my heart: that little girl’s longings for a relaxed home and freedom of spirit and unconditional love. I am the only one who can give that to her now.
I parent my self first, attend to the wound. Then I can bring the Whole Mess that I Am back to the production that is Our Marriage. I am ready and able again to consider his needs, the marriage, Our Couple.
Being a flawed human, I am not always successful at this. When I am unsuccessful (aka I act out,) I take responsibility when need be and work to change my behavior, aka Make Amends. That is parenting too. And when he is ready to forgive me, then there we are.
Ready to make art again. Together.
#marriageasacollaborativeart
* Full disclosure: I really needed The Daily Post Daily Word Prompt of “partner” today. Things have been very stressed in my relationship lately. Between our impending new home purchase (and all that brings up and entails) and my “summer of deep change,” we are having growing pains.
So though I wrote this post lsat year, I really needed to re-read it and be reminded of it today.
And though I didn’t think I would ever re-post a post, here I am. My own heart needed to.
So what? So what if I am not up to “par?” What if I am “substandard?”
What the hell does that even really mean?
When I dissect the judgements I have revolved my life around, it is as if I pulled the curtain back to reveal the sweaty, little man who is the voice of the Great Wizard of Oz.
“Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!”
There is a Them I have made into a kind of God.
Others against whom I have constantly measured my worth, my performance, my right to be here.
Others who often know no better than what they’ve been taught to believe by the Them that they also believed was The Great Oz.
I’ve pulled the curtain back, and I see what I have been buying into.
It is time to ask different questions. Instead of “What’s wrong with me?” “What can’t I be more like that?” I now ask:
“Less than” …less than what?
“Unworthy of” …as decided by whom?
“Inferior” …to who’s idea of superior?
The standard. Who’s standard? Who sets the standard? The industry? Who is that exactly?
What if in trying too hard to live up to The Standard I overlook or even destroy something that could be truly extraordinary?
Pardon my French, but it has all been one big mind fuck if you ask me.
Well, the fuck stops here.
I belong where I say I belong.
I determine my own value.
I’ve been using the wrong gauge.
I’ve been using the wrong measuring stick, and I’ve been measuring myself against the wrong things. Random ideas I either imagine or have had impressed upon me by others.
No more.
I have another gauge within, one that runs truer than any other, and just like Dorothy’s power to go home again ended up being with her all along, it has been with me all along.
It is my own heart. It is my own unique blend of desire, creativity, will, love, joy, bliss, determination, work, craft and passion.
I belong because I am. And I am. Worthy.
There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home.
Much of my adult life has been about coming to terms with lust.
Having grown up in a fairly conservative family with mainly Protestant roots, I learned early on to deny and repress my lust: for life, for sex, for fame, for love, for food.
So much so that I lived a kind of double life from my teens into my twenties.
I hid many behaviors that all revolved around my various appetites. Somewhere in my somewhat stunted emotional development, I had learned that being seen as having a need (be it physical or otherwise) was weak, unattractive.
And so I learned to pretend I did not have them.
And yet, at the same time, I also had a very strong need to be seen as a sexual object. (See Sexual Healing, my previous post on this issue.) This presented quite a war within me. I desperately wanted to be seen and treated like a sexually desirable woman – that was sort of the ultimate need. At the same time, I had shame and embarrassment around this and had strong messaging that that was bad, and that I should be a good girl with no sexuality, appetites, strong opinions or feelings.
And so I pretended to be one one way while in secret I acted in other ways.
I invested a great deal of time into creating the illusion that I was chaste, a normal eater, and had a very neutral opinion on just about everything. I monitored my emotions and watched myself around people, carefully choosing mannerisms and tones to project a good girl.
Meanwhile, I was living quite another kind of life, a life I hid from my family, my friends. A life of appetite and lust and danger.
There were certainly angels watching over me. I was often in the wrong places at the wrong time. Somehow, I survived.
At a certain point in my twenties, the jig was up, as they say.
My psyche demanded that I heal the split, and I began the process of recovering wholeness again.
Of uncovering my own genuine appetites from a place of love, curiosity and acceptance. Of letting go of the urge to keep my appetites hidden.
I began a process of embracing of my true nature and wants and needs as beautiful reflections of my own humanity. I began the shedding of the shaming nature that I inherited.
An unlearning of the social pressure that happens in middle school to put a damper on enthusiasm, to keep a lid on want to look cool.
I learned to let myself eat as I really wanted to in front of others.
I learned to let myself be seen trying, excited, wanting, sexy, hungry, angry, hopeful, happy, disappointed, frightened, messy, unhappy, empty, full, vulnerable, awkward, lonely, blissful.
I learned to let myself be seen. As I really am.
Today I value the self-honesty that I live from. Truth is of huge importance to me.
Though I am still in awe of the capacity I had within my own psyche to maintain such a dichotomy the way I did – that I could compartmentalize two such distinct worlds at once – I am so grateful that that is just a chapter in my story.
Today, I have one world with many parts: parts that co-mingle and bring me great joy in their diversity.
I celebrate my appetites, I revel in my enthusiasms and passions.
I love my lust. It is what lets me know I am human. And alive.
So today, I try to wear my lust like a smile.
Inspired by The Daily Post Daily Word Prompt: lust
Once upon a time there was born a little girl
Who was adored by all, like a precious pearl.
Her two older brothers, announced proudly to all
That they had a little sister now, too busy to play ball!
And so things unfolded, and all was well.
For the next few years or so, things were swell.
Until one day, much to the girl’s chagrin and surprise,
She somehow graduated from adorable to pest in their eyes.
She followed them around and pleaded to no end,
But they’d outgrown her and had other things to tend.
And soon she, too, had lots of friends and things to do.
Each had their own life, each had their own crew.
The years flew by and their lives flew on,
And came the time when their parents were gone.
And though they each had families and lives of their own,
The girl-now-woman came to know that their love was a keystone.
And she held close to her heart the years when they’d been young,
For she knew them to be the love from which all other love had sprung.
Inspired by The Daily Post Daily Word Prompt: pest
The weight of hidden truths
Bent her spirit years ago
Self-contained pressure
Wore down potential and hope
An undetectable scoliosis of the soul
Left a misshapen heart that strains to beat
Beyond the Skinny Branches 