Pi Love

Someone I knew who always brightened my path -- and that of everyone he met -- passed away a couple months ago.  His name was Jon.  He was sunshine.  It made sense then when I found out after he died that one of his favorite flowers was the sunflower.  I'm pretty sure they bowed to him whenever he passed them in his travels.

The person for whom his soul shined the brightest was his wife, Mo.  So when he died unexpectedly, suddenly, at far too young an age, it was most jarring for those of us who loved how they loved each other.  The solar system was thrown off its axis.  All hell broke loose in all of our hearts for her enormous loss.

A gathering was set for just several days after he died, so that everyone could somehow join hearts and heads together to try to rearrange the solar system in order to move forward. 

It rained all through the night and day leading up to the event. And then, just before the memorial began, the clouds parted and His Sunshineness came out to make his presence known. Many of us took it as a clear sign of Jon tapping us all on the shoulder in his elf-ish way: I. Am. Here.

Jon was famous for something other than his sunshine spirit, something tangible, edible.   People begged him to make his famous cheesecake.  So I asked Mo if I could make several for the gathering.  She led me to the fridge where she revealed all the main ingredients sitting waiting for me.  Jon had been scheduled to make one for a friend the day he died. 

Mo gave me his recipe with the warning "I'm sorry but they just won't be as good as Jon's because he made them with so much love."  So I mustered all the love in my heart to do his cheesecake recipe justice.  But my heart was less full of love than angst. I was not only worried that they wouldn't be as tasty as his but I was also concerned they might make people miss him even more. I was getting far too serious about the whole process.  Jon would have jumped up and down in the kitchen waving his hands encouraging me to lighten up about the whole thing in a playful sing-song: "Let's have fun baking!" he would have screamed. 

And "scream" he did -- with the symbol you see in the photograph above that I took just after I pulled the third cheesecake from the oven.

Why the Pi symbol, you ask? A few days before I baked the cheesecakes, I saw a cartoon on Instagram:

Setting: a couple's therapist's office.

The patient couple: the number 4 and the symbol Pi. 

The complaint: 4 is bitching that Pi "goes on an on..."

The cartoon stayed with me for days and I remembered the punchline as "He goes on and on FOREVER."

So when I pulled the third cheesecake out of the oven (with a witness at my side who can attest to my not having manipulated it in any way) and saw the above perfectly etched Pi symbol, I had to bow like every loyal sunflower to the Mighty Sunshine Jon.  "Yep," he would have said "I will go on and on forever, so stop your fretting and get back to the fun part!"

If you have lost someone you loved dearly, take a moment this Pi Day to give yourself the gift of make believe: pretend you pulled this cheesecake out of the oven yourself and got this reminder from them. 

Happy Pi Love Day, Superheroes! 

Trumpland Dreams: The Art of Acting v. Reacting

Ever since election night almost two weeks ago, I have been having nightly Trump related dreams, each so startling and vivid that I got up and spoke the details of them into a recording. I hope I'm ending the cycle by getting at least one of the lessons today.

One of the first dreams had me living in my dream home, a beautiful modern house, , not unlike the one Tom Marble and his wife Pae White built for themselves, with a courtyard in the center of the design, all rooms surrounding that open courtyard: Paige Street House by Marbletecture . I fell in love with this design when I first saw it in Sri Lanka when I was 20, and it's been my dream house ever since. Apparently my soul took that quite literally. In my dream, I had a ginormous rendering of the design.

The center courtyard in this version of my house was a zen garden. In the dream I woke up hearing people bustling around, and walked out of my bedroom to find FBI agents swarming all the rooms Most of the agents were inspecting the courtyard which was now far from zen, as it was full of huge anti-semitic sculptures. The sculptures were all several feet tall and wide, heavy cement, all different modern designs, but not beautiful because they were covered with swastikas and other hate-filled graffiti. They were so large the only way I could figure out they had been placed there was via a crane. They were all far too large to come in a door or window. I was baffled by the efforts made to make their point.

 I sat quietly on a chair contemplating that point, as the law enforcement teams roamed noisily around me. I thought "I'm not Jewish," and thought this must be happening far and wide, if it had happened to me. Then it dawned on me. Technically, I am Jewish! My mom was not raised Jewish and has been Catholic most of my life. Her mom was Jewish, though, and therefore I am technically Jewish, as it passed through the mother's lineage. Then I realized that in this horrid Trumpian dreamworld, someone had ferreted out this info, which I barely remember myself, and attacked me because of it.

I sat paralyzed, watching the mouths move of the well-meaning agents as they confessed to me that it would be hard to find who did this, but they would work very hard to do so. They were angry and a few of them wanted me to be too. They looked at me as if waiting with baited breath for me to raise the cry for retaliation, and were dumbfounded when I just sat there. I wasn't "with" them in any way. I thought of those who had far worse done to them. Maybe neighbors? People down the road?

The nightly Trump lessons all have the same struggle: how can I make a difference? And the dreams always say the same thing: Act, don't react. Let them do their thing, the dreams say. Don't react with matching energy. Simply act. Matching their energy never works in the dreams.

 Last night I woke up three times and each time the message that Trump's attacks are only revealing his fear -- to millions around the globe. His Twitter feed is like a long confessional of that which scares or intimidates him, that his Twitter attacks don't make him look tough, they make him look weak. I repeatedly got the instruction to tweet to him that great leaders manage their fears behind the scenes and he should try to follow suit. They can even admit their fears to those they lead -- which is healing for everyone -- IF they work through the fears, so the fear isn't dictating their actions. But that is mighty work that those leaders do behind the scenes. It used to be that bullies were feared far more.

Anti-bullying groups, teachers, schools, Lady Gaga and other artists have all done so much for this conversation. Natalie Hampton's new Sit With Us App is doing even more. The curtain is being pulled away to reveal the bully as the fearful powerless one he or she really is behind the bravado.

We don't need to cut down the bully. The bully is cut down, hence the bullying. The bully has forgotten his true power. We just need to reach out and share the real power -- love -- with those who need support, bullied or otherwise. They've got it already, but sharing ours allows them to remember their own.

When we re-act with in-kind energy, we are falling into the volcano of fear too. If we stay in the fear of how we can possibly protect our brothers and sisters who are being currently verbally threatened, we are far less powerful ourselves. If we stay in the love that inspires us to protect them, and we take positive actions to buoy them up, give them what they need to feel safe and to stay out of fear, we all get to become more and more powerful.

 React. Re. Act. Re. It's been done. Over and out, good buddy. Re is the past.

 Just act. Acting out of love, all the more powerful.

I have a long way to go myself.  Anger is definitely an enticing drink to sip. So is paralysis.  Yummy, intoxicating, seemingly-relaxing-but-oh-so-not paralysis.

I'm trying to take a positive loving action every day. Calling lawmakers to take a stand for our brothers and sisters. Reaching out to those I know are in fear. I'm smiling more at strangers. Anything to calm the fear fires with love. I have a long, long way to go in my own heart, but every day an action helps.

Don't Let Your Shadow Self Drive the Car: It's Probably Not 16!

As I typed the word shadow above, a crow landed right outside the patio door!  I always think of crows as a playful shadow reminder.  This one was particularly shiny and elegant, strutting his dark shadowy self.  He then flitted over to the tree where two endlessly-chasing-each-other squirrels were un-phased by his presence only inches away.  The shadow and the light in a lovely dance.  

I wish it were always that way inside me.  The little kid in me wants to say "Can't I always be the squirrel? Can't we just play?"  Yet those shadowy crows are nestled inside us right next to the light and playful squirrels.  The bullying, domineering, sometimes attacking crow is inside me, as is the hilarious, jokester squirrel.  But it always seems like way more fun to deal with light than shadow.  Recently, though, I'm finding the hugest relief in dealing head on with those shadows. 

If we don't acknowledge that the shadow is there, it will silently, stealthily, move into position behind the steering wheel of our car of life and start driving, shoving the light over into the passenger seat without even being noticed until he crashes the car.    That happened to me last week -- FEAR drove my car right into the FLU.

After a few months of dealing with buying a house and getting settled, I have been delving back into rewrites of my book, getting comments from friends, strangers and writer's groups.  Soon my head was spinning from the feedback and I was so afraid I had to check out.  Perfect solution: stomach flu.  It allowed for unabashed complete check-out.

Once I figured out I let the shadow drive me into a wall, I got out of the car, looked through the debris and pulled that shadow self out from behind the wheel.  Who was she and why was she so afraid?   We had a good chat and I realized she was the little girl who felt incredibly unsafe when my parents divorced.  I had never realized that I felt "unsafe" during that transition time.   I didn't want to be alone with my mom who I sensed, even at that tender age, was not completely stable.  Nor did I want to be alone with my dad, because he wasn't a mom.  Neither option was completely safe, each held its own sense of danger.  As a 53 year old adult, this transition time with my book was feeling equally unsafe, and that that shadow self who was born when I was 7 years old, was crying out in fear.  I'm glad we got to talk.  Of course, as soon as we did, I was on the road to swift healing.

Doing shadow work takes far less effort than pretending the shadow isn't driving you into walls.  The more you do it, the faster you get back into the driver's seat.  I can't more highly recommend Debbie Ford's work which I've been practicing now for over 4 years.   I mention it a lot in this very fun interview I did with Ted Lyde who is himself very adept at the brave work of looking at his own shadows while making us laugh about the whole game of life.   

His interview with me:
Learning Not to Swear with Ted Lyde

Move Over, Abe

I get to D.C. a couple times a year and never leave the city without visiting my Boyfriend Abe.  As was confirmed a couple of years ago by one of the park rangers who watches over him, he is IN THERE!  I always take a million pictures of him, because like anyone we love, we can never get enough of them, right?

This time it was dusk and coming up the mall toward him I shot a million photos because he just looked so exquisite in the fading light.  The rain had just stopped, and it was late enough that the kiddie population had thinned.  

Somehow this time it looked like he was waiting for me.  I, of course, silently told him how much I adored him, and like any insane lover of a dead man, I attempted a selfie with him towering over my shoulder.  I will spare you that one.

Standing at his feet I said "Hmmm....what messages might you have for me, darling dearest?" and -- again like any insane lover of a dead man I heard him reply. 

He said "Great things are coming!"  Lovely.  A while later I skipped off into the night with the loveliest misty rain showering down upon me and walked for about an hour through the quiet D.C. streets. 

Seventy two hours later something truly great did happen.  I was reconnected (by a very special friend) with a man I had a mad crush on almost 30 years ago.   The most extraordinary thing about him is that he shares some of Abe's lovely traits, the most important of which is that he thinks my above-mentioned insanity is adorable.   

I imagine that Abe thought Mary Todd's insanity was slightly adorable as well.  

So, while Abe will always have a huge chamber of my heart permanently carved with his name, I have a lovely man looking for his own piece of real estate in the same neighborhood.

Some Superheroes of Love Have to Face Some Mighty Battles

I went to see Noel Coward's A Song at Twilight at the Pasadena Playhouse last night. Brilliant: Roxanne Hart, Sharon Lawrence and Bruce Davison. I get there a little late which forbade me from reading this "Note from the Director" in the program prior to the play. I don't always read these. I think perhaps from now on I will. 

In the play Sir Hugo (played by Davison) is confronted by Carlotta (played by Lawrence) who is threatening to out him with letters of a long ago love affair with a man. Married for 20 years, and having become quite a famous writer, and yes, even knighted, the thought of having the love of his life revealed is terrifying.

I had previously read and forgotten the details of Gielgud's arrest mentioned below. Shame on me. Shame on all of us that gay men and women have to continue to fight to love who they wish to love.

Art Manke writes:

Love Will Be Found the Sweetest Song of All

After a couple of post-rehearsal drinks one evening in October 1953, the great English actor Sir John Gielgud (1904-2000) paid a visit to one of Chelsea's infamous underground lavatories to seek out companionship for the evening. Before gay clubs, bars, and online dating sites, this was a common practice among men seeking men in this west London neighborhood. On this particular night however, the man who smiled back at Sir John was a member of Scotland Yard's so-called Pretty Police: young recruits picked for their good looks and stationed there to entrap homosexuals. The next morning, Gielgud - who was identified as "John Smith" on the charge sheet -- was let off with a minor fine and urged to see a doctor. At a time when 12 to 18 months in prison was considered a lenient sentence, he was able to walk away virtually unscathed, or so he thought. Unfortunately, Gielgud's inimitable voice was recognized by a journalist who covered the arraignment, and by that afternoon, "Sir John Gielgud Fined" was the headline in the London Evening Standard newspaper. This led to the most sensational coverage of homosexuality in print since Oscar Wilde's trial in 1895.

Although he was able to continue working in the English theatre because of the staunch support of his fellow actors and producers and his adoring public, it would be another four years before he could travel to the United States due to the "moral turpitude" clause in its entry visas. He suffered a nervous breakdown, seriously considered suicide, and endured ongoing humiliation at the hands of conservative journalists and politicians who called for him to be stripped of his knighthood. Although attitudes about homosexuality started to evolve during Sir John's lifetime, and the United Kingdom's 1967 Sexual Offences Act decriminalized homosexual acts between consenting men, he carried the shame of the arrest to his grave almost half a century later.

It is important to know that A Song at Twilight was written and first performed in 1966, one year before the British Parliament ended its draconian punishment of homosexuals. So in the play, it is no wonder why Sir Hugo Latymer responds the way he does to Carlotta's proposition. Sir Hugo's every moment of existence is colored by fear of exposure, which playwright Noel Coward knew only too well, as did Somerset Maugham, Terence Rattigan, Emlyn Williams, Michael Redgrave, and countless other gay artists who carefully and methodically avoided "outing" in their lifetimes. The real loss for Sir Hugo is that he allowed that fear to prevent him from ever experiencing real love and true intimacy.

The play's title comes from the popular Victorian-era Irish song, "Loves Old Sweet Song (Just a Song at Twilight)," and the lyrics tell us:

So till the end, when life's dim shadows fall,

Love will be found the sweetest song of all.