50 Days of B.I.R.T.H.D.A.Y.

Fifty days of B.I.R.T.H.D.A.Y. begin tomorrow! Fifty days of Beauty. Intent. Respect. Thoughtfulness. Happiness. Delight. Attentiveness and (saying) Yes! On February 20, I complete my 50th year. Finish another trip around the sun. Turn 50! It’s a mile stone no matter how much I pretend it’s not. Over this past year I have found myself musing on all sorts of body-, career- and age-related thoughts such as: “I’m almost 50. Can I still wear my hair in pony tails?” or “I figure I have about 20 years for another career – I better get started figuring it out!” and “I feel like I’m invisible right now. Is that for real?” I have also had multiple instances of being the the oldest person in the room. It’s an odd sensation as I am more used to often being one of the youngest in the room…

And then there’s pop media – always problematic in itself. Never a big reader of women’s magazines anyway, they repel me even more with their constant harping on how the best years of life are behind me, even if they’re trying to pretend it’s not: “Living it up after 40!” “How to turn back time in 55 easy steps!” And then there’s casual “age privilege” in the form of phrases in books which  reference such gems as “She was a  woman in her late 40’s, vestiges of her former beauty still evident,”  or the ever popular comment on “fading beauty.”  Unfortunately, some of these words have sent me running to the mirror to peer at my own face. Is the vestige of my beauty still evident? Have I faded!?

The endless array of beauty products pushed on older women is depressing in and of itself. “Fight time!” “Look years younger!” “Miracle worker.” “Choose your favorite for the ultimate anti–aging arsenal.” Ugh. (Feminist side thought: Of course, the endless array of beauty products pushed at all women is pretty gross too – that endless message that your natural self is somehow gross and unacceptable and it’s only through the array of products that cover, push up, flatten, enhance etc. make you a “real” woman, i.e. sexy to a man,  is a whole ‘nuther topic of discussion! End feminist side thought!)

The great thing about being 50 is that I really don’t give a shit any more. My fore mothers, those brave feminists, did a lot of trail blazing which provided me permission to have my own relationship to being a woman and how I present  to the world. I’ve always had my own style, my own approach to loving my beautiful, round, hirsute self and I do not intend to diminish that in my elder years. In fact, I intend to expand it! Rumor has it that 50 is the new 30 or something like that. All I know is that it is another day to celebrate, spread love, receive love and enjoy being alive!

Which brings me to B.I.R.T.H.D.A.Y. and how I will honor the run up to my birthday. For the next 50 days, I will apply the principles of Beauty. Intent. Respect. Thoughtfulness. Happiness. Delight. Attentiveness and (saying) Yes. Through poetry, art, friendship, blogging and whatever other tools present, I am indulging in a celebration of Me, of life, and of honoring this particular mile stone, this particular turning of the year of the wheel.

Won’t you join me?

Free form Friday – not imagining the worst

I track your progress through the action in the bank account. Logging on to take care of daily business on the home front, I see the payments and withdrawals made by you on your travels:  A stop in Metter for gas where I know you get out and stretch your legs, possibly buy a diet Coke for the last hours on the road, a visit to CVS suggests some mundane need like batteries or gum. Dinner at a steakhouse in Savannah where you enjoy fried oysters and read your book while eating, enjoying your solitary time.  With perfect trust I observe your progression through the hinterlands of Georgia as reflected in the bank account.

But what if it wasn’t?

In an alternate world of secrets and lies a la Walter White, this bank account map could tell a very different story. What if the stop in Metter was really to meet a contact for a drug exchange? In the innocent parking lot of the QT, you  pull up to pump number three. You start the gas flowing and open your back door, seemingly to rummage around for a jacket or new CD. The car on the other side of the island is a nondescript white car, dented right fender. The driver starts his gas flowing, opens his back door. In your rummaging, you drop a packet on the ground, a brown lunch bag. The guy very graciously picks it up and hands it back to you. You nod your thanks, finish pumping. You get back in your car and drive away, heart pumping like the gas through the hose. On your back seat is now a different brown bag then the one you dropped. This bag now contains meth, oxycontin, heroin, or crack.

The stop at CVS is not for batteries or gum but for condoms.

The dinner at a steakhouse is not a solitary affair at all.

The Air B&B rental  is not owned by a nice elderly lady at all.

The 10 days that I think you are doing shows could be very different. The bank account only shows the form, not the substance. Those deposits coming in could be for anything;  sale of drugs, or your body, or someone else’s body. Or even if you are doing shows, maybe you’re not doing them alone. Twenty days a year in Savannah is enough to build on. The BFF librarian in Midway really could be a BFF. A BFF with benefits. The possibilities for daily betrayals are endless.

Secrets and lies. According to the tabloids they happen all the time. Infidelities, secret lives,double families, hidden addictions. How do we ever really know? 

But with perfect trust I observe your progression through the hinterlands of Georgia as reflected in the bank account. Smiling as I count down the tanks of gas and the diet Cokes in the small towns you pass through until  you come back to me.

 

A Quiet Ecstasy – Day 5

Ah ecstasy. How I love it! Ecstasy in the studio – what a concept! It presupposes a studio which is nowhere near my reality. My studio is the living room floor, the office floor, a computer on my lap, a chair at a desk, the couch – a moveable feast of packing and unpacking whatever tools I need. Sometimes it is easy – a computer and a cup of tea. Other times it is grazing through the shelves to pull down what I will use, spreading out then cleaning up a shared space. Not for me is the gift of leaving work out to contemplate, gaze upon, muse over. My creations have to be done in an hour, maybe two. If not, it may never be returned to. Knitting, OK, easy to pick up and return to but it is also not my art. Jewelry, same thing though I usually finish a project in an evening. Writing is delicious because I can start, return, muse and post when I feel like it.

So ecstasy in the studio? Not sure I can relate. But ecstasy in art or inspiration? Ahh, not that I can relate to! The sheer thrill of stringing words together, aligning thoughts, intent, concept and vision. Poetry streaming out of my fingers as they fly across the keyboard, contrails of typos in the slip stream of my passion made visible. Words are my ecstasy. A well-crafted sentence makes me rejoice – whether my own or others. Practically writhing in appreciation of the perfect description. The old days saw me with pen and paper, crossing out, inserting with circles and arrows. These days how easy to cut and paste, delete and edit. Taking pleasure in the tippy tap of the key board. Delicious. Usually crafting in the in-between times – early morning, late night when the world is asleep. I sit propped on pillows with computer perched on knees. The only sound the light breathing of the dog and the rhythm of the house – hum of the refrigerator, whir of a fan. The red eye passes over, carrying its cargo of weary souls to their new destination. A train howls in the mournful distance. I tap out the rhythm of my life, my thoughts.

Ecstasy is a quiet thing in my writing and artistic life, perhaps slightly louder thing when I sing with the chorus, walk in nature, appreciate my community. But this quiet ecstasy is important. Sustainable. Highs are great but as the wise best book I never read said “After the ecstasy, the laundry.” I seek balance, not skewing between incredible highs and crashing lows. Rejoicing in the everyday flow of my life. Rejoicing in the fact that I am writing, that I am creating, that I am intentionally creating time for my artistic self. Not that I have to make a living at it, not that it has to produce money but because I am not whole without art and creativity and because I am constantly exploring new media – jewelry, collage, knitting, writing, a rich toy box of the content dabbler.

So for me, the wish list is for more time to create, to explore. Perhaps a space dedicated to art, but at the very least, a continually expanding toy box of fun things to play with, people to be inspired by, words to thrill me and the quiet ecstasy of art for art’s sake.

Lists

 Day 4: List of goals.

One of my favorite Frog and Toad stories is called The List. Toad wakes up and a makes a wonderful list that includes Wake up, Get dressed, Eat breakfast, Take walk with Frog. As he goes through his day, he crosses off each item. Frog and Toad are on a walk when a gust of wind blows the list out of Toad’s hand. Toad is bereft and frustrated – he doesn’t know what to do! Frog says “Run after it!”  “That wasn’t on my list!” Toad replies. They sit in silence for a long time, Frog occasionally interjecting advice or suggestions to which Toad always replies “That wasn’t on my list!” I think Frog ultimately gets up to go home and Toad remains sitting, just sitting. Finally, Toad figures out a solution: he takes a stick and writes “Go home and go to sleep” in the dirt. He draws a line through it and goes home and goes to sleep.

The end.

Faves

 

My current favorite work – mixed media paper and tulle.

I was hoping to capture the perspective of someone watching someone leave and it worked.

My last favorite work done last year when I first started playing more seriously with collage. Mixed media paper and yarn.

It’s faded now; the colors not as vibrant because it’s been in my window but I still like it.

I managed to capture the texture of the skirt in the application of the tissue paper and the serenity of the moment in her body and face.

 

 

Five Years

We’ve got five years, stuck on my eyes
We’ve got five years, what a surprise
We’ve got five years, my brain hurts a lot
We’ve got five years, that’s all we’ve got

David Bowie

I’ve always hated the question “What will you be doing in 5 years?”  I know that theoretically it’s a good idea to set intention and plan etc etc but I hate being asked to “envision myself 5 years from now.” It’s not that I don’t plan, I do! I really do! But I always come back to the idea that “Humans plan and G*d laughs!”

Perhaps because I work with refugees. They had plans too and I don’t think their plans involved being uprooted and cast adrift into the universe due to war, brutality, oppression and general stupidity of other humans.

Perhaps because I have a dear friend whose husband died too young. She said to me “I can’t make plans anymore. Mark and I had plans and they didn’t involve him dying and now I can’t make plans.”

Perhaps because I have ultimately always believed in the general unfolding of time and the way that one thing leads to another fairly effortlessly and organically. Which I think also explains my checkered career path.

I have always taken the risk to accept the next adventure presented. I drove through Wyoming on my way out West after college and met a volunteer wilderness ranger. “Sounds cool, ” I says to myself. “Maybe I can do that.” The next summer found me there and there I stayed until the next adventure happened.

I met a traditional birth attendant in Kenya who taught very wise women who could neither read or write how to deliver babies safely. Through her I learned what a midwife was. “Sounds cool,” I says to myself. “Maybe I can do that.” I found my way to Texas after Wyoming and became a lay midwife. And there I stayed until twists of fate brought me the next adventure.

But these musings are looking backward. Let me look forward a moment. What is the next adventure in store for me?

We are undergoing a strategic planning process at work and the friend guiding us through it asked me to present “Statements of Observed Reality” as a starting point. So here, in my own 5 year strategic plan are the statements of observed reality:

The concrete reality:

• I have a tween and a teenager who have deep roots and deep relationships and for whom I have a deep need of providing life’s basic necessities as determined by living in modern-day America.
• I am pushing 50 and my beloved is in his  mid-50’s.
• I have a house which needs work.
• My beloved is self-employed in a physically-demanding, creative profession.
• My mother is getting older ( a fact for which I am grateful as it sure beats the alternative!)

The abstract yearnings:

• I am beginning to feel the call of moving on from my current work.
• I would like to travel overseas more.
• I am curious about the process of “change management” and the work of community building.
• I would like to explore to see if there is a viable way to make a living in working with refugee (and American-born and immigrant etc) artists in a cooperative and fair trade model in the US (or elsewhere) and connecting people to arts opportunities.
• I would love to re-create a John C Campbell-type of school in Clarkston drawing on the skills and talents of the local creative folk.
• I am fascinated by place-based development but am not sure I want to stay in one place long enough to invest the necessary time!
• I love to write.
• I love to teach.
• I love to tell stories.

And here I stop. Vague stirrings of change on the horizon but also deep contentment for the shape and structure of my life. I know how good I’ve got it. I am present in my life. Do I want more time in nature? Sure. Do I want more travel? Sure. Do I want to completely disrupt my life and pick up and go off on some new adventure… Not sure! Am I focusing on creative expression? Most definitely!

Peace…

Let the Blogathon…Begin!

Thus begins the 15 day Blogathon! Daily prompts, inner searching, shared community, and a daily blog. Today looks at the big question of “Why?” From the larger question of “why do I exist” to the slightly more prosaic questions of why write, why create, why spend hours staring at a screen trying to put words together?

For me, life is a creative action and creativity is our human birthright. Creativity, curiosity, innovation, exploration – these are the traits that got us down from the trees and into the world we have today – the good, the bad and the ugly. In the jumble of souls crowding up this big blue planet, everyone is creating something. Whether it is art, tools, words, technology, processes, food or even children, the act of being alive is a creative process. Not everyone approaches it as such, of course. Some create mindlessly and miserably, eking out the daily existence in a soul-draining, mind-numbing monotony of struggle, their only contribution the shape of their life; others gloriously and publicly, splashing their creativity across the universe to great effect. These select many fling their work into the public for all to admire, or use or consume, or (hopefully) appreciate.

Most of us are somewhere in between I would suspect. My creativity is small scale: very personal and very local. And, though often squeezed in to the small spaces in-between, I feel I bring my creativity into nearly everything I do. I approach problems creatively, dress creatively, write, make jewelry, felt, knit, collage, sing, and look to the world for inspiration and with appreciation. I look at the world with an artist’s eye,  appreciating the bends and whorls on a gnarled tree, the glitter and arrangement of pebbles on a path, visualizing the tapestry of street life as a weave of colorful threads, crossing and re-crossing.

But in the great folly that is comparison, I do not call myself an artist, I did not choose to focus on the arts as a career, I do not create a multitude of works for the public, I am not as creative as him or her or them…

And thus comes the voices that detract, judge and limit. The great bane of creativity.

And the real reason why I started a blog just a wee while ago. To silence those voices and fling my creativity into the blogosphere to whatever end. Primarily just the act of creating. Just the act of writing, of delving, of exploring to see where it will go. Without comparison.

And that is the interesting thing about creativity as a human birth right and how the act of being alive and creating and leveling stops people from creating. There is always someone more talented, more driven, more creative. There is always someone who gets first place and always someone who gets last. And those rankings track people in and out of options. Many people say “I used to [create something] when I was young or in college or earlier but I stopped.” When others didn’t value it, perhaps they stopped valuing it as well. Yet to live a creative life is itself a satisfaction. To surround oneself with beauty, share poems with friends, exchange photos on Instagram, write funny or provocative Facebook posts, sing songs in a circle, that can be enough.

We are taught that to create has to be for a purpose and an end, often fame and fortune. We are taught that the business of art is brutal and very few make it. (Too true – the struggling artist stereotype exists for a reason – it’s hard to make a living as an artist!) We are taught that you either “make it or you don’t.” And yet, what does it mean to “make it?” Let’s just say that “making it” is the act of creating and if you make it, you made it! Forget the whole fame and fortune, ranking and judgement and just create! Everyone is an artist! Release your inner artist! Fling your life into the slipstream of all that is and claim your birthright!

And that is the “why” of why I create. To hold space for the daily practice of living life creatively, creating for the sake of creating. Living an artful life. And if I had to sum it all up on a tee shirt, it would be Live Artfully!

Calculated Risk

For a brief and wonderful few months in 2012 I had a scooter. It was given to me by a friend and I loved it!

My friend who gave me the scooter, and my son

I had great and glorious adventures learning how to “scoot commute.” I learned that you can ride in a mini-skirt though it is not actually desirable and may get you some interesting attention. I learned that few things made me smile more than hopping on my yellow and blue scooter to go wherever. I learned that if you ride in a windbreaker made for riding bicycles it will flap painfully on your arms and feel rather much like stinging nettles. I learned that few things are more fun than riding with a fellow scooter rider to a business meeting. I learned that if you pop the wheel over a high curb that is not actually a handicap ramp, you will lose control and crash into a brick wall.

I rode a scooter rider all through my year in Denmark where it is a common method of transportation for teens and adults. In DK I rode all year long, at night, alone, after a few beers, in the snow, in the rain, and with a bicyclist skitching along. I was, of course, 16 and in the countryside so there wasn’t a lot of real danger. My stupidity was probably the greatest danger!

Not me but that style of moped

 

I also had a small motorcycle back in …well, I don’t know the year but the when was when I lived in the buff-colored building on the corner in the apartment on the ground floor with the copper-colored walls and black trim with my boyfriend. I bought the bike in Daytona, Fl when we lived in the house on the beach with his mother where the metal hinges and mechanisms had to be changed out every year due to sea corrosion. I think we might have had a VW van too; there was definitely another vehicle, though I am not sure which of my many vehicles it was. We caravaned the bike and the possibly-van up through central GA on a long road trip. When a bike is only a 250 (maybe it was a 150) long road trips are not that fun. Fun is breaking it into small bits and stopping for picnics. Staying overnight in some Victorian house in Eastman GA with uncomfortable people. Riding in Spring. That’s fun. Not fun is arriving in Atlanta in a torrential rain storm at night with your boyfriend an indistinct vulnerable blur on a tiny little machine on the freeway trying to get safely up to Sandy Springs. I was driving the possibly-van; I was not experienced enough to handle the bike in those conditions. No one should be handling small bikes in those conditions. But we were so close to home that we had to keep going. We were “smelling home” as my mom likes to say.

 

This may have been the bike – it was small and it was red.

The bike sat more than it got ridden. It’s insane to have a small motorcycle in the middle of the city. But on the few occasions when I rode it, it was blissful. The best road trip I didn’t take  was a journey up to North Carolina for a medical EMT training test. It was Summer; it was glorious; it was curving mountain roads. I was in my car, or my mom’s car, or some vehicle that wasn’t my bike. My bike sat at home. I bowed to parental pressure and did not ride my bike. Even though I was well into my twenties. I still regret that non-ride and allowing other people’s fears to sway me.

The bike (and the boyfriend) receded into memory.

My uncle had a motorcycle and I rode with him a couple times. His was a massive machine that I couldn’t even contemplate driving.

When I was in high school, a bad boy-friend and I skipped school and rode up to Talullah Gorge on a motorcycle. We had to sit in a laundromat wrapped in gross towels given to us by the kind woman who took pity on two shivering under-clad idiots who got caught in a chilly rain storm while our clothes dried.

Women on motorcycles are hot. Everyone knows that. Men aren’t bad either. Boots, denim, leather. Not hot is covering up head to toe in protective gear and being safe. Then you kind of look (and feel) like Robo-cop or something.

The only piece of pornography I ever wrote involved a motorcycle.

I will never have a motorcycle.

But I may have a scooter again.

Calculated risk:

Pros: Hundreds if not thousands of people ride scooters around town In Atlanta. Scooters get excellent gas mileage. Insurance is surprisingly cheap. I know every back road in about half of the metro area and never need go on Ponce or DeKalb or other scary streets. It’s fun.

Cons: You are vulnerable. Very vulnerable. Other drivers are idiots. You are vulnerable. Sometimes you are an idiot. You are vulnerable.

There is an old adage about motorcycle riders: You have either had your wreck or you haven’t had it yet.

But the real calculated risk has to do with fear and how you live your life. There are a million ways to die, many of them gruesome and unexpected. There are things you can do to enhance your risk of dying: drugs, cliff diving, trying to pet lions, riding motorcycles… But we will all die in some way and at the end of the day, what have you not done out of fear? I don’t do drugs, cliff dive, try to pet lions, and I don’t ride a motorcycle. But I do want to ride a scooter around town. I know there are risks but there are risks to getting in the car every day. There are probably a million things I haven’t done out of fear – some of them prudent, some of them because I am a mother and my kids would like to have me around, some of them because I am simply afraid. But in this instance, I am calculating my risk vs fear ratio. And though I have a million reasons to justify getting a scooter (environment, cost of gas, cheap) the real reason is because I want one. And I’m not going to let fear stop me. 

So scoot commute 2014, here I come!

Human Resources

Being the boss means making the hard decisions. Everyone knows that. I suppose some people enjoy the human resource part and enjoy having the power to hire and fire at will and to make life hell. You hear a lot about bad bosses and G*d knows I have had some bad bosses! I  try very hard not to be a bad boss. I am generally accommodating, kind, supportive etc. I feel like I  lay out my expectations pretty well. I am, however,  not good at taking people to task  because I generally expect people to do what they need to do, be professional and act like grown ups. So it is always a bit of a shock when that is not the case and especially when I  have to let someone go. It gets me up at 4:30 in the morning running scenarios. T0day is one of those days. I am running scenarios, making plans, getting ducks in a row, figuring out what I need to do. And generally feeling bad about it. However, my spine is strengthened, I am pulling on all of my inner resources to ensure a good end.

My main flaw is waiting too long. Because  I am not a rigorous task master, I let things go when it comes to people’s lives. Justifying how they just need more time to grow, to get it together, they’re just going through a rough time. But there generally comes a time when the time has come! Today is the day! I am marshaling all my psychic resources to be strong. I have my internal dragon ready  behind me. I have my imaginary steel pole implanted in my spine. I am a still pool. My heart is soft and open yet resolved. At 1:30 I will march in and do the deed. Wield the axe. Swing the hatchet. Here we go!

I think I’ll just stick my head under the pillow and hope the problem goes away.

Can I do it by email?

Can someone else do it?

Does it have to be today?

Is it really that bad?

Back to the internet for reassurance on handling the process. All the professional articles are very reassuring. Lots of good resources. They take care of everything except for the act itself…

Back to the internal resources. Dragon, steel pole, still pool, soft and open yet resolved heart…

A pep talk:

Like pulling a bandaid, it’s better to just do it fast and clean.

I’ll feel better when it’s done.

With such a small staff, everyone has to pull their weight.

Worrying about it for so long is not good for me or my family.

Better a short, sharp shock…

Hyperbole makes everything better.

So in the journey of being a good boss and a good steward of the agency, I will do what needs to be done. And I’ll feel better when it’s done. Dragon, steel pole, still pool, soft, open yet resolved heart.

Love Affairs

I have been instructed to have a love affair.

In the words of a  fabulous, passionate woman named Veronica, “I love love!”  Veronica exclaimed this at hearing the news of my engagement to my soon-to-be-husband. Her 3 year old child toppled head first into the hot tub at that very moment but that is another story. This story is about love affairs. Specifically one that I have been ordered to have.

I am, and have been, blessed with much love in my life. And not a few love affairs as well. The traditional kind with pounding heart, bated breath and tangled bodies. The kinds of love affairs that are fraught with anticipation, tension and delight, both physical and emotional. I have been sharing a love affair with my life partner of 14 years that includes all the quickened tension combined with the slow familiarity of intimacy. I have had love affairs with friends that exist solely in the heart and mind and are never made physical:  the hours on the phone with best friends when I was 12; the passionate intimacy of best friends in college where we woke to come together and share the day in all the excitement of being young and alive and exploring; current friends whom I anticipate, looking for their calls and texts, wishing for the extended hours of my youth where we could unfold our thoughts together over unrestricted time, but, alas, must parse out between the demands of home, work and children. Those friends who, maybe in a different time would be a different way, but now are held close over solid boundaries. 

I have also had love affairs with places:  in New Mexico where the breeze caressed my sun warmed body by a hot spring;  in Malaysia where the lush flowers and vines stroked the water of a deep pool; in Wyoming when I lay breathing in the songs of the glacial rivers on a full moon night . I love love! I have also had love affairs with ideas: wrapping my heart and mind in the sweet immersion that is Taoism; my bad girl love affair, fortunately brief, with revolutionary communism; taking deep within myself the Goddess and Her magic. But none of those are the kinds of love affairs that I have been instructed to have.

I have been ordered to have a love affair with my voice. My voice and I have had an awkward relationship. I have always loved to sing but in my earlier years was never deemed good enough to make the cut for various chorus’ or solos. So I internalized not being good enough and pretty much stopped trying to be a singer. I kept singing but mostly in a limited, apologetic way; holding back in larger groups, never belting it out and letting loose, never confident around “real” singers” and “real musicians.” The only place where I was comfortable singing was in women’s sacred circles. In singing songs of praise, I learned to pray, but but I didn’t consider it “real” singing. Even though I was writing songs that other people sang and even though I was the song leader of our group, it still wasn’t “real” singing. I sang to my children. I sang in the car. But mostly I yearned to sing and I would say things like “In my next life I’m going to be a musician or a singer.”

In the ongoing  relationship with my voice, I took it on some bad dates a couple of times. Once we went to a voice class that was a dismal failure. Too much, too soon. It just didn’t work. I staggered through songs not understanding why I couldn’t make the sounds I wanted and not knowing how to be a voice student. I gave that up. Some years later later we went to couples therapy and tried group singing lessons. That wasn’t bad, it definitely got us closer and we at least recognized we had a shot at a relationship. We got a little more serious when we joined the chorus at my synagogue and started really working on our issues. But we were so uptight together! Constantly critical and nit picky and cutting each other down. It took two years before I could warm up in the group without feeling like somebody was listening and was going to criticize and tell me that, really, I should just quit the chorus. Each warm up session brought anxiety and criticism, my internal voice muttering “Oh my God, what kind of sound is that, you’re not hitting the note, you’re going to miss the note!” and on and on and on. I was fortunate to find sympathetic alto sisters to sing beside who, strangely enough to me, told me they liked singing next to me! My voice and I began to get a little more comfortable. Just a little.

And then I started attending a chant practice where for 30 minutes once a week a small group gathers to sing Hebrew prayers. As the group learned to soar and experiment, so too did my voice and I. We started to trust each other and our intent, and the music and harmonies we make, and the prayers we sing . And we got a little closer, a little more confident. We took a few more risks, got a little more intimate. 

Then we got a teacher, my voice and I. The first day when I had to stand in front of her and sing I did nothing but cry. I couldn’t perform. I was paralyzed with anxiety. Now it would all be revealed that I really can’t sing, have bad pitch, can’t hit the note blah blah blah. But my teacher loved me and my voice and was gentle with us. And reassuring. But when she told me I could do it, that I have a nice voice and can find the expression of my singing voice for the sake of just singing, I didn’t believe her. And that’s when she suggested a love affair.  She told me I should get passionate with my voice, let it flow through me, let it be one with me, embrace it as a lover. Actually, that’s not exactly what she said, but that’s what love affairs are to me. Flowing, deep, passionate.

I know the noises of passion. As a midwife, I encouraged women to open their mouths and let the song of their birthing move them. The deep groans and grunts common to both birth and sex. Songs that flowed through me in embracing my lovers and birthing my babies. 

So I am working on embracing my voice in the same way. Embracing the song of my voice, the birthing of my voice. Enfolding my soul into the love that lives within me and is expressed through singing. I love love! And I am learning to love singing in a different way. I have learned that it’s OK to sound crummy when you’re warming up, but more importantly, why even bother judging crummy or not crummy? It’s just warming up for heaven’s sake! I have learned that I can begin to trust my ear, to trust my body, to trust the process. I don’t have to overanalyze every note and sound with judgement.

Just like with a lover, or in the making of a long relationship, it’s about building trust. Letting it flow. Not analyzing and judging at every moment but putting energy in it. Working at it with all my senses, with all my passion. Letting it move me and move through me. Being vulnerable to it. Being present with it. Being relaxed with it. Being sensual.

And so I take her wise advice. Hineni. Here I am, loving love, loving singing and, most importantly, loving me singing…

with gratitude to  Gayanne and the chorus of Bet Haverim…