The Beautiful Answer

Never Too Late

Just got through watching the first episode of Push Girls, an interesting new reality series about four attractive wheelchair-bound women living in Los Angeles. Sure, it’s great that they’re smart and spunky and directed. It’s great that they can do a lot to smash stereotype of ableism ,and show that people in wheelchairs can do all sorts of things, even be independent. 

My only question is: Why does a reality series always have to focus on the most vapid traits in us? 

Think about it. In Push Girls, there’s a quadraplegic trying to make it as a model. OK, not a problem. If you’re willing to break down those walls, more power to you. 

My issue is that she’s 36. That’s paleolithic in model years. To this character, it seems like there are two jobs: working in an office, which she’s dismissed because of the lack of mobility in her hands and fingers, and modeling. Heaven help the rest of us. 

Maybe I had my expectations up too high, hoping to see, say, a woman in a wheelchair who was a mechanic, or a teacher, or a member of the clergy. I was hoping to see paraplegic restauranteurs, travel agents, movie critics, and bankers. In short, I was hoping to see “real” people doing real things with their lives. 

I live in Los Angeles, and I know there are a lot of body conscious, model and actor/actress-wannabee people here. I’ve just grown weary of everyone on earth wanting to be a model. I don’t wish this woman ill — not at all. I just wish the spunkiness in these women extended to doing things that — let’s be real and honest here — are just as valuable as having your picture taken, or showing up to auditions. 

Why does seemingly every reality show have to start out with every single character launching a tour, putting out a record, getting their headshots taken, or heading to a high-powered meeting with an agent? Perhaps all the naked striving and jockeying for attention, even if it’s negative, was what lost me the first time around. 

Hey, it’s never too late to turn the channel, I suppose. 

The Bubbles of Eagle Rock

Sometimes, life takes you by surprise. You’re driving along a sunny Los Angeles street one afternoon, kind of spacing out, just enjoying the light bleeding over the horizon as the sun makes its way southward again. The radio may be on or off, it doesn’t really matter. Your fingers may be tapping the wheel a little, as you coast to a stop at the light. 

And then you see the bubbles, luminescent in the afternoon sun, a multitude of colors undulating back and forth as they make their way across the street. You see the kids then, doubled over with laughter, blowing as fast as they can until the entire street is filled with bubbles. You see them drifting across one lane then two and three until they’ve covered the cars in both directions. 

And the kids keep laughing, and people are actually making eye contact now, smiling at each other in their cars, at the kids giggling and blowing bubbles for their lives on their way home from school. There are so many of them, you can’t quite believe it. All those fragile bubbles, managing to stay together at once, almost like a squadron of little colored balloons. 

The kids have no idea what they’ve just done. They’re just trying to have a little fun between the boringness of here and the relief of there. Maybe you imagine that it’s the last day of school, and they’re looking forward to a summer of not much at all. 

But they crack our hearts open a little, and widen our surprise at the way life has a way of making us laugh and wonder and know there’s some force up there pointing out our innate connection, just so we don’t miss it. 

Confessions of a Buddhist Psychic

I’ve always known I was a little “different.”

A vivid imagination and near photographic memory of my textbooks saved on hours of study, making it easier to pass tests in school. Finding creative excuses for why I’d done this, or failed to do that, were as simple as tuning in to the wildest impulses of my mind.

Spiritually, my explorations were all over the place as I was led by curiosity to the study of Buddhism. I was trained in Mahayana, sitting in traditional Tibetan style shamatha vippasana meditation for a minimum of 20 minutes per day, then 30 or more. Dozens of lectures, sutras, teachings and chants later, I was a Buddhist, trying not to cling to the idea of being anything at all.

But when I found myself jobless in Los Angeles, I landed a job as a phone psychic, using my scant knowledge of tarot cards to gain the position. Far from being a haven for out-of-work actors or charlatans drunk on woo-woo juice, I found myself surrounded by gifted intuitives, each with his or her own area of specialty.

I soaked it up like a sponge.

Read the rest here, on Elephant Journal. 

Look Closer

Sometimes when it rains, it’s great to get out of the house. Since I have a little curiosity but not much desire to see The Hunger Games, and I figured everyone else in L.A. would be there anyway, I chose to see some art. LACMA had a few exhibitions I was interested in, including one by photographer Robert Adams and a collection of female surrealists from Frida Kahlo to Louise Bourgeois. 

Everyone was there to see the surrealists, of course. It was the bigger, more advertised and flashier of the two exhibitions, hung on canted walls separated with rope sculptures that looked like a cross between something Helena Bonham Carter would wear in her hair and some nautical mess someone had found on a dock. It was cool enough, but very crowded, and full of chin-stroking, um, people looking like they had come to get out of the rain more than enjoy the work. 

To me, art museums have always been like cathedrals. I turn my cell phone off, I walk around quietly and try to just let whatever I’m looking at wash over me. I was an art major in school, but none of that matters when I’m there. I want to be affected, not told what to feel. So it was with some pleasure that I found my way over to the Robert Adams gallery, nearly empty of people, and slowly took in his carefully made prints of nature scenes in the American west. The blacks were rich and dark, the whites shocking. He captured the light and the land, and the tiniest moments most of us don’t slow down enough to see. 

And I noticed that when you get close, really close to one of his photos, you can see inside the thing he’s photographing, to its meaning, its purpose and its reason for being. A woman walking by complained that this tuff was just “all nature,” and huffed away. Your loss, I thought. Maybe if we all looked a little closer we’d see these types of deeply meaningful pictures in our reality, too. 

Baseball Burning

I never get used to living in a desert. Maybe it’s that L.A. hogs most of the state’s water, receiving it through miles of pipeline even from Nevada, and other reservoirs nearby. But once you leave the edges of the city, you’re in straight up sandy, scrubby desert, where the horizon stretches out endlessly flat and close to the ground. 

Our trip to Scottsdale was easy, even on three hours’ sleep, and soon (could it really be that last fall was only a few months ago?) there was baseball. It was boiling hot, with only a few scant breezes, but the baseball … the baseball. It was a sight to behold. The Giants almost caught up, but they dropped the game by a run — the offense was pretty anemic. 

Tomorrow’s another adventure, with hopefully more sleep behind it. More baseball, more lemonade and sunblock. What a great country we live in, with all this fun to be had. 

To Have

Though I live in self-involved L.A., I mostly manage to avoid that part of the city. I’m lucky to be in a multi-cultural area, where people of all kinds live together, work together and interact. So when I have to go to the West Side, as it’s called (anything west of, say, Hollywood to most people), or even the dreaded Hills of Beverly, it’s done with some trepidation. 

Today, I had to go over there for an appointment, in a penthouse no less in Beverly Hills. The view was nice, albeit a little smoggy, but I was reminded of why I love this city in ways no one who hasn’t lived here can. The others in the meeting were mostly emaciated, insecure people seeking the approval of others through constant mentioning of designer brands and claims of world traveling and cosmopolitan living. Now, some of that may be true. But I’m always pretty suspect of those who seem like they’re trying to convince you of their worthiness. Just be yourself, man. Relax. 

It had me thinking, on the drive home, about what it means to have. Sure, if you look at it the way the Buddha did, having means that anything — shoes, a home, and even your fucking life — are all impermanent. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t enjoy it. If you want designer shoes, or a fantastic bag, and you work hard for it, by all means, beautify your life in that way. But to think that it makes you cooler, or somehow different from other people, is ridiculous. And to assume that somehow the act of having makes you exempt from the facts of life — immense joy, awe, sadness, tribulations, suffering, sickness, happiness and fulfillment beyond measure and death — well, you’re kidding yourself in a big way. 

To me, the act of having had to be reframed over many years. I felt that I had to justify any item I had, even my own lasting happiness, for fear that it would be taken away. Now, I’m older and hopefully a tad wiser. I’m happy I live in a world where someone, a designer, takes great pride in craftsmanship and quality. I’m happy that I can work hard and buy beautiful, lasting things for myself or people I love if I want. And I’m happy, too, that I can buy nothing at all sometimes, because I am enough. 

Put It to Bed

Been thinking a lot about this phrase today, as most people were hell bent on making as much noise in the neighborhood and cheering for teams that aren’t located anywhere within a 500-mile radius. We’re in Southern California, people. Get over it. Football is a cold weather sport. 

For me, bed is associated with fun stuff, not endings. It’s a place of sex, rest and dreaming. But as I ended one chapter of my life last week, and beging another one this week, it’s hard not to think of what might have been. 

What is it, that human need to hold on? We know it’s not the right person, or the right situation, and still we’re afraid to relinquish what little grasp we have on control. I know that this new direction is a better one; my guides have told me as much. But as the old energies leave, it can be melancholy watching them go. 

So I looked around in my files a bit, and found this quote: 

“Healing is a matter of time, but it is sometimes also a matter of opportunity.”

                                  — Hippocrates 

Makes so much sense when you look at it that way. Time of course is necessary for the letting go and healing over. But it’s the new opportunities that pave the way to faster healing, when they make you forget all about what might have been. 

Love Ray Gun

I know. When you type it out like that, it sounds a little porny. But I have a pretty vivid imagination, and am always on the lookout for new ways to be playful with energy, to not buy into the tired old ways that many of us express our emotions. I mean, does everyone scream when they’re mad?  No. Some people steam, other people drink, while still others hug it out. 

It came to me when I was driving, as we so often do here in L.A. Some guy was riding my buper, even though I was in the slow lane, about to get off at the next exit. This type of behavior irritates me for the obvious reasons (which is that it just sucks), but also because it’s the epitome of greed. I mean, seriously? You’re so concerned with getting what you want right freaking now that you can’t, I don’t know, ease up a bit? After all, we were in bumper to bumper traffic. Not exactly the Indy 500. 

Luckily, I caught myself in the next moment. OK, so it was very little skin off my back, and who cares anyway, right? But I wanted to try something a little deeper. And for some reason, the image of a ray gun came into my mind, the ones you see all the time in cartoons blasting someone’s face off and leaving them in a cloud of ash. Then I loaded that baby up with some love pellets, planning to fire them behind me into the guy’s car. Hey, it could work, right? 

I’m sitting there giggling to myself, imagining firing away with these imaginary love pellets, and probably anyone who looked inside my mind at that moment might have thought that I was batshit crazy, but it made me laugh. I can’t be sure if this is what made him ease off my bumper in the next few minutes, but it made my commute a little easier, and a lot more fun. 

On Being Polite

Why is it that every time I go to Whole Foods, someone literally almost knocks me down trying to run to the conveyor belt at the check stand faster than me?  This has happened to me three times in a row, if you count today, and I’m not competing for anything. Really. This is just my regular speed, people. 

It got me thinking, when I was trying to figure out what could possibly make the person behind me, who shoved his stuff ahead of mine on the belt for some reason, want to rush that bad. On the streets of L.A., I expect this. We’re not the politest city in the world. But in Whole Foods? The bastion of awareness and enlightenment? Seriously? 

The thing is, being polite means being aware. It’s as simple as that. You need to be able to exchange your feelings for those of others, cultivate empathy, and get over yourself. Your needs can’t, by necessity, be more important than those of others. Unless you’re rushing to the hospital with a pregnant woman or a stab wound of some kind, I’m not sure why you’re acting that way. 

So to reframe this semi-permanent annoyance, I tried to tap into their needs. Maybe these people did feel that getting ahead of me, or someone else, was so important to their perceived arrival time (where, I wondered?) that they couldn’t risk the luxury of human interaction. It wasn’t working very well. 

Then I tried drawing an imaginary line between us, and meeting this guy halfway. I hung out like a neighbor at a fence, hoping to have a cup of tea and talk about it. In my mind’s eye, he kind of lolly-gagged over, thinking it was showing some kind of weakness to even engage with me. I saw in that moment that it wasn’t about being rude at all. It was about fear of connection, fear of looking someone else in the eye and dealing with them on that scary, vulnerable level. In essence, it was about social anxiety more than anything else. And even though it may not stop people from cutting me off in line at Whole Foods (I usually let them go ahead anyway), at least I understand it a little more, and that’s just polite. 

The Waiting is the Hardest Part

I think it was Tom Petty who drawled about how difficult it was to sit around the wait for things to unfold, to allow the natural course of events to take shape. I, like many people, would prefer to shape my own life, and sometimes I’m not that good at waiting, even after 15 years of steady meditation practice.  

I got my final proofs of my book cover, which I’m pretty sure I’m gonna go with: 

Not bad. Not bad at all, and that’s part of it. I’m excited for my new book to come out. Though it’s largely a story of my own life, with a few other things thrown in for good measure, I actually feel like other people might enjoy it or even be able to benefit from the struggle with being different, trying to fit and finally embracing your difference as something inescapable and even positive. But I have to wait until April 24th for it to come out, so I have to get used to that. Sigh. No use wishing time away. 

I also have something pretty important happening tomorrow, something pretty big for the book itself, and for me as its writer. I’ll write more about how it goes tomorrow, but for now, the waiting really is the hardest part. 

You know how your mind just starts to do the weirdest things, creating all kinds of positive scenarios, reaching into the future to see what will happen, and then reaching back into the past to see if you can really trust what might happen? And never staying around much in the present moment? I suppose I should be used to this after watching my mind for 15 years. But maybe you never get used to what it does when you’re lot looking. 

To reframe my need to wait, yet my desire to do nothing of the sort, I did some yoga. OK, part of that was fitness-based, but I wanted to see if it also had a bit of a patience boosting effect. It did, a little. Then, a few hours later, I still had some energy, so I went to a Pilates class. These are hard, as anyone who’s one them will tell you. But I wanted to see if moving my focus to my body would get me out of my head. 

This actually worked. And I’m ever so slightly fitter in the process. My body is sore, but I’m sure I’ll sleep tonight, which will come in handy. And from there, all I can do is watch my mind, work with my thoughts and cross my fingers for a good result.

Wish me luck.