What to do with one's inner life?

The post below might seem like it's 10 years too late. Truth be told, I have been working on it intermittently for about that long. I never really knew what to do with it since it started as a personal piece of writing - a way for me to sort out the events surrounding September 11, 2001. At the time, I was living on Allen Street, very close to "ground zero." Unlike so many people in New York, I was not injured and I did not directly know anyone who died. That said: my story felt too little and unimportant to share anyone else.

In September 2010, I began a writing class at Santa Monica College. Since I didn't have any "new material," to turn in, I printed a draft of "Allen Street." That night, the teacher called on my to read my creative writing. I read my story out loud for the first time ever. Afterward, the students are allowed to offer feedback. I was very touched my the classes response. (Of course, one girl thought I was selfish to write my own thoughts when others had died and suffered so much on that day.) But, most of the class responded in a way that touched me. After class, a number of students came up to me and told me that my story made the events of that day seem real to them.

Biking home from class that night, I was moved to tears. I guess I didn't think anyone else would want care to read a fairly undramatic version of the events of September 11. I also was reminded of how greatly September 11, 2001 affected me.

Last night, before bed, I read an article by Dani Shapiro. I found her words inspiring:

"As a writer, my inner life is my only instrument. I understand the world only by my attempts to shape my experience on the page. Then, and only then, do I know what I think, feel, believe. Without those attempts, I am lost."

There are other short stories that I have written, based on my inner life. I hope to find a medium for them. I have wondered what to do with "Allen Street," and after reading the atricles that came out for the 10 year anniversary of 9/11, I am content to share my story with anyone who wishes to read this blog. (This blog entry contains the other writing I did around this topic.)

Allen Street

The radio’s capacity to receive NPR’s signal disappeared, so I got up from the worn leather workman’s stool that I was using as a desk chair and fidgeted with the dial. As I turned up the volume static and fuzz cracked though the speakers.

Moments before, there had been an explosion or a crash or something. I had never heard that sound before. It wasn’t like a gunshot or like any fireworks – not even really good illegal ones you can get at the border. When I peeled the homemade red polka-dotted curtain away from the window, I noticed a big black cavity in the middle of the North Twin Tower. The side of the tower facing me was a black hole. This hole had jagged edges and flames the color of American cheese dancing out of it. Immediately, I wished I had film in my camera.

I wrestled with the radio antenna, but I managed to get the station back just in time to hear the announcer say “It appears that a passenger plane has hit the North Tower.” Then, my radio fused out again.

I turned on the dusty P.C. computer in the living room and adjusted the rabbit-ear antennas. This was Joel’s old computer from God knows when. I switched the button to “television mode.” I moved Joel’s ceramic cactus ashtray off the keyboard and tossed his unopened pack of Marlboro Reds onto the coffee table. I put the station on New York One, the local news.

The phone rang. I picked the cordless receiver up on the first ring.

“Joel?”

“Yeah. It’s me.” He sounded out of breath.

“Did you hear that?” he asked. I could hear him inhaling from his cigarette in-between questions. He must be on a break, I thought.

“Yes. I thought a bomb went off” I said.

“I heard the plane go right over us. It sounded pretty fucking low.”

I could hear Joel sucking in another Marlboro. I imagined his squinty eyes wincing as he slowly inhaled. This action always exaggerated the premature crow’s feet which had developed around his eyes at the early age of 26. I had always assumed that the hardened look of his face wasn’t from sun damage, but from spending long days standing over an industrial grill, poking at lamb chops and pieces of organic baby goat. I imagined him throwing the cigarette into the gutter on Thompson Street and then stomping on it a few times with his black work boots.

“I have the News on. I think I am going to get some film,” I said.

“Yeah?”

His tone changed from concern to surprise as if it was cruel of me to step out for a minute to buy film. There was silence. I walked to the fire escape. I looked out at the Tower, which reminded me of an enormous cigar with smoke pouring out of the tip. On the other end of the line, I cold hear pots clashing. Joel was speaking a combo of Spanish and curse words to the kitchen crew.

“I will talk to you later,” I said.

We hung up.

Looking out the window, just beyond the iron fire escape, I could see voters lined up around the block on Allen Street. Voting suddenly seemed like a priority. I flipped through file folders in search of my voter registration card. The bedroom floor was blanketed with dirty laundry, farm press kits for my freelance writing assignment, and an old New York Times whose lines were now blurred by misdealt sips of coffee.

The phone rang again.

“Hello.”.

“Hi, it’s me,” Joel said. “Did you see that?”

“No, What?” I walked back to the window. I hadn’t heard a thing.

“The South Tower was hit by another goddamn plane.” Joel was upset and serious. I rolled my shoulders back and listened to the rhythmic crunching beneath my shoulder blades. This is what I do when I am tense. The act of rolling my shoulders back confirms that, yes indeed; there are crunchy marbles of stress in there.

“So, the first crash was not a mistake.”

“It was a fucking plane. I watched it fly though the building. I watched the front of the plane come out facing me on this side,” said Joel.

I knew Joel was standing out there on Thompson Street with his crew of prep cooks.

“I stepped out of that windowless dungeon of a kitchen with my guys to get an iced coffee. I saw it. This is some fucked-up shit.”

I held the cordless phone to my ear. I looked down at my bare feet and noticed a huge chip of nail polish had peeled off of my right big toe. I picked more at the section that had peeled away.

“Joel?”

I was waiting for him to say something. Holding the cordless phone between my ear and shoulder, I walked back over to the window. I opened it up and stood there. Mr. Kitty, our black and white alley cat brushed his side up against my left calf. Mr. Kitty climbed out onto the fire escape. The sound of sirens was overwhelming. I could hear siren in the background on the radio, and the real sirens driving down Allen Street. The south end of New York City was in “siren surround sound mode.”

“I have to go.” Joel said.

I had forgotten that he was on the phone.

“Oh yeah, Um, okay. Call me later if you can. I am going to return those computer labels I bought for the printer and get some film.”

We hung up. It took me about six minutes for me to find my keys, my receipt for the labels and a purse. I walked down the stairs. There were a lot of people on Allen Street; people were sort of wandering. They weren’t walking with their normal sense of purpose. I exited the apartment, walked down Allen Street to Grand. There, a construction worker had his truck door open. A group of five people were surrounding the open door. The radio reporter was not up to speed with current information. He was suggesting the “accident” was some sort of bomb or explosion that had gone off in the base of the tower. People were shaking their heads in disbelief with their eyes fixated on the burning tower. Even from two miles away, the flames were visible. The air reeked of ash. I kept walking, made a right turn and headed toward the stationary store on Delancey.

The store was owned by a tall Hasidic man. Just yesterday I went to the shop to get one those Composition notebooks with blue and white leopard print, a red ink pen, and resume paper. On a whim, I had purchased $30 pack of printer labels. Why? I am not sure. Once home, I thought the cost of the labels to be a bit extravagant.

When I entered the store, a little bell rang. The owner was also listening to his radio. The volume was turned up so that it could be heard from anywhere in the store. He looked up and nodded, acknowledging my arrival. The store was organized the way it always was, but it felt like the wrong time to be shopping.

A women in a long navy blue skirt walked in.

“Isn’t this awful?” the Hasidic store owner said. His back was hunched over a bit. He was restocking the Rubber Cement and putting little price tags on each orange bottle.

The little bell at the front door rang again. A woman with static black hair and a paper medical mask walked in. Apparently it’s never too early to bust out your home emergency kit.

“Isn’t this awful,” he kept saying while shaking his head from side to side. I couldn’t help but watch the two ringlet curls on either side of his head sway back and forth with each turn of his neck. Distracted for a minute, I imagined myself grabbing a pair of scissors that were for sale near the cash register, and cutting off each perfectly curled lock.

The store owner took his time walking over to the register. When he got to the register, he folding his hands together and placed them on the counter.

“Will that be all for you today?” He asked

“Yes,” I said, pushing a pack of Wintergreen Trident a little closer to him.

“Um…I guess I will hold on to the labels for today.” For a man who sells Steno pads and Number Two pencils, the labels were a significant sale.

“Try them, and if they don’t suit your purpose, I will refund the sale – no questions asked.”

“Okay,” I said.

I walked farther east on Grand Street. I bought film for my camera at Dragon One Hour Photo. The development center smells like a combination of processing chemicals and Joe’s Chinese Food, the restaurant next door. I walked back around the corner to Allen Street.

As I turned onto Allen I saw the hole. One tower was gone. Where it had been just ten minutes ago, there was an empty cavity of smoke and ash.

“The first one folded!” said a man in a hard hat who was doing construction next door. By now, more people had gathered around his construction truck. I wiggled my way into the group. Standing around the truck was an odd assortment. There were about four Chinese men, two African American ladies, one Japanese woman, and two white construction workers (a medley that typically doesn’t huddle, but something felt comfortable about standing among a group of people.)

I caught a glimpse of my reflection in a tinted window of a parked taxi next to the construction truck. I was still wearing the Mount Sac T-shirt I slept in. On my face, I wore remnants of my pasty face mask and the vitamin E cream that I had applied before I went to bed. My hair was greasy. Over my shoulder was a hand-sewn purse. It was all ready frayed and ripping. My appearance didn’t matter to me. It felt comfortable to just be there in this group. We were all silent.

I kept moving south, toward Hester Street. As I walked home, I made up a mental “to-do” list since I had deadlines to be meet and housework to finish. It felt sort of sickening to think that at the very moment my country was enduring a great act of terror, I was trying to methodically cross items off my “to-do” list.

I felt it necessary to vote. I walked over to the Chinatown YMCA. The entrance had changed since the November election. A man directed me with his hands to go around a courtyard to an auditorium door. I was the only one standing on the red linoleum floor. Crinkled in my hand was the voting slip, proving my residency and registration data. A middle-aged, heavyset woman at the front door told me to go around the building again.

As I walked around, I must have walked the wrong way. There were a lot of community people on the grass. They were watching the buildings burn the way I watched footage from a Guns N’ Roses concert in ninth grade - half in awe, half horrified. Reaching into my purse, feeling like a sick-o for wanting to take a picture, I reached for my camera. My pocket was empty. I must have left it upstairs in the apartment. I forgot about voting and left the grass to retrieve my camera.

On the way home I passed a teenager who was walking at a brisk pace. He was eating a Chinese bean pie. I wondered if it was appropriate to be eating. Are those within a one mile radius allowed to break for lunch? For a few moments, I paused and looked around the streets. The terror was not registering. Just one mile away; I was too far from the epicenter to feel. It seemed like all of us on Allen Street were too far away. How could he eat in public? Maybe a banana or a granola bar, but not a pastry – no, not today. Death was in front of us. They were dying. Those people in those buildings were dying. I knew that much. I could feel it. Then, I overheard the unthinkable: “People are jumping from the top of the twin towers.” It was this that I couldn’t wrap my mind around.

A sense of urgency took hold of me. I hurried up the five flights. I could hear my radio two floors before I reached the front door. My apartment still smelled like peculated coffee and the cigarettes Joel had smoked before work. I felt unworthy of showering. For some reason, it seemed rude to be hygienic while others were trapped. I felt like I didn’t deserve a shower. If the people in the towers didn’t have options, neither did I. I decided to put on lipstick. I had survived for no reason. Then, moving quickly, I grabbed the binoculars and took a look out the window. I loaded the film and took a picture of the remaining tower.

I walked back into the kitchen, a little confused as to what to do. I still felt it was a priority for me to write the two articles; one about Cate Blanchett and the other about vineyards in Upstate New York. I ate a granola bar and instantly hated myself for eating. I looked out the window again and watched the one tower stand there like a huge distress signal that I could not ignore. I just stood doing nothing.

The phone rang. Joel’s voice was different.

“Hello.” He said.

“Hi.” I answered.

We were both silent. Again, both of us were listening to the radio.

“These people are really fucking sick,” said Joel.

He was mad, but not the way most people get mad. He was sad, too. I could tell. He seemed out of sorts. I could tell that he did not feel up to butchering, casing sausage or making sure everyone else was behaving the kitchen.

A plane hit the Pentagon, and then the newscaster’s voice warned that perhaps the plane was aiming for The White House. I thought about how the morning had been so clear - a perfect fall day. I thought about Pamela Heart, the photographer I worked for last year. She lived on John Street. She had photographed the 1983 World Trade Center bombing. Was she okay? Last year, I got to her place at 9:15 AM. I sometimes got off the subway down there, but usually I was running late and would take a taxi.

“They said there is another plane in the air,” I offered.

“I know,” said Joel.

I switched to CNN. NPR was unavailable since antenna had been on top of the South Tower.

“Okay, I have to go again,” said Joel. “Don’t panic or anything, but you never know what is going to happen. Will you go buy some water and food and get some money?” said Joel.

“Yes, call me in a while. I love you.” I said.

“I love you. Bye,” he said.

I locked the apartment door behind me and walked back downstairs. There was a lot of foot traffic. I was in a dazed state. I went to the bank and took out $200. I stuffed it in the pocket of my denim skirt. There was one other girl in Citibank. We both talked about how this particular Citibank never has a pen. It was small talk and it, for once, didn’t matter. Small talk was calming.

The grocery store had the News on overhead. The store was surprisingly empty. Saltines and bottled water were an end-of-the-isle special. A coincidence? I somehow doubt.

I bought plenty, more than I could comfortably carry. In the checkout line, the woman in front of me was sent home because the credit card processing machine had been turned off. Several customers stepped out of line. I was trying not to look worried or scared with my bottled water. The truth of it was that I felt really selfish. I mean, just 20 minutes prior to my shopping spree one of towers had fallen. The radio announced that an estimated 6,000 were missing. I couldn’t process faces. That mass of human life couldn’t possibly disappear in a single swoop of terror. Planes should never fly so low.

I felt ashamed that I was buying potatoes, canned food, peanut butter, milk and two half gallons of water. On the way home, all I heard were sirens. My arms drooped down to my knees from the weight of the bags. People looked at me trying to walk with all of my heavy grocery bags.

I was ashamed to be thinking of myself. I hated that I was the one who was buying food “just in case.”

When I opened the door, I noticed the answering machine was blinking. The first call was from Joel. He said he would be home shortly. The second call was also from Joel.

“Hi. Call me when you get this. Okay, Ade?”

I called him back.

When he answered, he was a bit breathless.

“Hi, are you okay?” asked Joel.

“Me? Yeah. I went to the bank and got some stuff. I couldn’t carry very much though,” I said.

“Oh, I got worried. I told you to go out and then the second tower fell. That was stupid of me.

I think the restaurant is staying open today. So, I have to stay here,” said Joel.

“I am going to go out to get some more water,” I said.

The television’s volume was on extra loud. Perhaps I wanted it to compensate for my own lack of words and emotion. I could hear from the fourth floor on my way up the stairs. We listened. There was another airborne plane. We both held the receivers.

“I have to go,” he said.

“Okay. Call me in a while,” I said.

“I will,” he said as he hung up.

Being home all day was strange. Having the news on in the background reminded me of weekends when the football game was left on in the living room even though my dad was in the back yard mowing the lawn. I just sat at my desk and looked out the window at the smoke and dust.

Just hours before, I had looked out the window at the towers and now, both were gone. I made another cup of coffee, but I didn’t drink it. I just sort of sat in the apartment. My thoughts honed in on pictures of the aftermath of the A-bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima from my fifth grade history books. Even if I didn’t remember the picture very well, I remember it well enough to say that the ball of smoke and ash lurking out my bedroom window was the closest thing I have ever seen to that caliber of destruction.

The sirens resonated through the city all day. I wasn’t sure what to make of them. They were as ubiquitous as the air, the sky and the smoke. Everyone who has meaning in my life called me, wanting to know if I was all right. Everyone who called me mentioned the background sound of the sirens through the phone line. The presence of the sirens could not go unmentioned.

Dust-covered office workers paraded past my apartment. Some of them wore face masks. Someone must have been handing them out as people evacuated. Some of them were talking - all of them were agitated, inconvenienced, exhausted and traumatized. There weren’t a whole lot of tears. I felt better about this because I couldn’t cry on September 11. Nothing, not even the date, seemed real to me.

Usually I write in my journal every day, and to be honest, the date never seems important. Sometimes when I am tired or feeling particularly lazy, I guess at the date. On September 11, I failed to record the facts accurately. I have my journal entry recorded as September 10. The date isn’t memorable or important when I am writing about the coffee shop customers, my own frustrations about having little money or no hot water in the apartment. In my journal, I write about larger ambitions than my daily grind of making cappuccinos and of taking panini orders. I write about friends in California and about my newest career ambitions. Mostly though, I write about how I am going to escape waitressing once and for all. But, when people are being evacuated, the date becomes of importance.

I pulled out the journal for a second time that day. This time, I wrote the real date: September 11, 2001. Then, I sat in my apartment alone. I thought about how one of the biggest events in my lifetime just dropped before me, and like everyone else, I watched it, as though it were a movie. All I had done was run errands and buy canned food. Afterward, I just sat in my bedroom, trying to concentrate on Cate Blanchett, press kits from upstate vineyards, and e-mails from long-distance friends. I was feeling a bit guilty for not being helpful. I couldn’t contribute beyond giving blood. The Red Cross did not need blood. In fact, the soonest I was penciled in for a blood reservation was mid-November. “I suppose the date would have to do,” I told the receptionist at the Red Cross.

The families of the city’s victims needed money. So that is what I gave. However, I seriously doubt the check wrote to the “E-24 Family Relief Fund” could sustain the appetite of one person for more than a week. But, the reality of my financial life means that coffee tips are all I have to offer.

In the New York Times, I read one reporters account of the tragedy. “I could not tell bodies from steel.” Immediately, I asked myself, “What bodies?” Perhaps the reporter was suggesting too much by reporting that there were bodies.

---

It wasn’t until three days later that I thought about the firemen who had to climb nearly 100 flights with heavy equipment. I read the stories of the firemen that were falling over, staggering up the stairs from the heat, and the steepness of the climb. I didn’t think of women who couldn’t run in high heels or of handicapped people that worked in the building. I forgot that someone’s pregnant wife was a secretary and that it had to have been someone’s birthday in the office that day. Someone was supposed to have dinner prepared for her children that night. Perhaps she was going to walk to the market on her lunch break.

On September 13, I was glad that I had to return to work at the coffee shop for no other reason than I wanted to be around people. Sitting at my desk, watching the dust fly around in the air for the past two days was making me numb. I needed to hear stories, to see people, to become as vulnerable as I was supposed to be at this time of loss. I needed to discover that other people didn’t feel like brushing their hair and that other people were questioning why they were living in New York City. Really, I couldn’t be the only one asking myself these questions.

September 13 was a Thursday. The night was particularly gloomy. Both the US Army and the NYPD had blocked off the West Village below 14th Street. I had a tax statement, an old paycheck and a Visa bill crumpled in my pocket just in case I needed to prove my Chinatown residency.

Joel came to pick me up from work at midnight since there were no taxis to take me home. Our walk home felt strange. The streets were empty. I didn’t realize how hollow the site - newly named, "Ground Zero" - was until I saw the hollow glow hovering over a pit of rubble. There was nothing but a ghostly blob of dust blocking my view of what used to be the twin towers. Never before had Houston and West Broadway seemed so ominous.

About three blocks from Lafayette Street, thunder and lightening cracked the silent sky. We walked fast and in silence. By the time we reached the Bowery district, the rain was pouring down. The two of us were drenched. We started running fast. I let the rain pour off the shop awnings and onto my face. Really, nothing seemed to matter. My blue clogs became waterlogged. My tube socks felt super thick as they squished between my toes. My pants retained water and threatened to drop from my waistline. I held them up with my free hand as I leapt over pebbles.

The water felt good. If I had them, tears could have secretly welled up in my eyes. Maybe yesterday tears would have done some good. Lord knows, tears would have made me feel human. At that moment, running made me feel very alive. I suppose it was the vacancy of the streets that caused such unprecedented silence. The storm seemed to be saying, “Never forget this.” I felt like Joel and I were the only two people in Chinatown. I wanted to get to the apartment. My speed wasn’t really important, but maintaining fast legs felt good. Really, getting wet didn’t matter.

Doing my best Sound-of-Music-style leaps, I jumped over puddles and leaped off of curbs. On that night were no cars to honk at me. It would have been okay for me to fall on my face. I wouldn’t have cared one bit. The police guarding Allen Street let us though with the wave of the hand. ID cards seemed dumb. No one was trying to come downtown.

When Joel and I got to the top of the five-floor walk up,I walked to the window. The curtains were violently blowing into the bedroom. Outside there was that glow that insisted on staying in the sky to mark where the towers had stood. Not even the thunder the lightening could shake the smoke and ash that hovered above “ground zero.” Men were out there digging. Nothing mattered in whole city, but those digging men and those sopping-wet “missing persons” signs. I wondered, “Does Scotch Tape stick to street lamps in the rain?” I feared the missing signs would also dissolve. Then, I must have fallen asleep because I don’t remember anymore.

(names were changed in this story)

Bike Riding

Since I found out about my pregnancy, I retired from my routine of biking to work. Yesterday, I biked down to my friend Marikje's house. She suggested with go for a bike ride instead of a walk. I agreed that pedaling along the boardwalk sounded fun. Biking felt wonderful! We biked from Rose Avenue in Santa Monica to Will Roger's State Park and then, back to the Rose Cafe. What a loop! By 9 pm last night, my muscles were complaining. And, ironically, at my OB appointment last night, my doctor said she didn't want to hear about anymore bike rides since she thinks my balance is about to get "whompy." I still really do love my bike.

Silent Treatment

January, especially January in California, is a month that has grown on me. In the past, when I lived in New York City, it meant colder days to come. Before that, the beginning of the New Year symbolized another session of being back in school. So, it's been only in the past few years that I have come to appreciate January as a time of renewal, resolution and intention. This January has been particularly pretty due to the sunny days and spectacular sunsets. Just last week, the night was bright with a whole moon, and, at last, the daylight seems to be outlasting 5pm.

In the beginning of the month, I was a bit reluctant to take down the holiday decorations. Josh asked me, "How long is it going to be Christmas in here?" That was just the kick in the rear I needed to get out the ornament boxes and take down the vintage silver trees, which neatly go back in there boxes after making their annual curtsy. I knew the holidays were over and that a bit of cleaning up was in order; however, the task of taking down the tree doesn't have the same appeal as putting it up. Christmas had to come down sooner or later and because these daytime hours seem better suited for gazpacho than mugs of hot tea, heavy soups and butter cookies, I willingly "undecked" the halls.

January is a time for resolutions. Rather than making rigid resolution, I set the intention to "be more patient" in all areas. Mostly, I feel that I could be more patient while driving and while I am at work. I like the idea of being a very patient person, especially since I know a baby is on her way, and she will test my patience like no other.

Along with trying to be patient, I have been craving more "downtime." Maybe the need for more downtime is a side effect of yoga, long walks on the beach and hiking. Regardless, I have been less interested in Grey's Anatomy and ER (Season 14, thank you very much!). For some reason, I have been looking to books, blogs, photos, music and recipes for inspiration. When I discovered "The Joy of Quiet," an article by Pico Iver in The New York Times, I was thrilled. Iver touches on an upcoming trend - silence! Can you believe it? In the article Iver writes:

"About a year ago, I flew to Singapore to join the writer Malcolm Gladwell, the fashion designer Marc Ecko and the graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister in addressing a group of advertising people on “Marketing to the Child of Tomorrow.” Soon after I arrived, the chief executive of the agency that had invited us took me aside. What he was most interested in, he began — I braced myself for mention of some next-generation stealth campaign — was stillness."

It seems hard to believe that the "child of tomorrow" would want stillness. Adults seem to crave it, but in the same breath, they enroll their children in a sample platter of sports, camps, and scholastic clubs. Iver wrote:

"I noticed that those who part with $2,285 a night to stay in a cliff-top room at the Post Ranch Inn in Big Sur pay partly for the privilege of not having a TV in their rooms; the future of travel, I’m reliably told, lies in “black-hole resorts,” which charge high prices precisely because you can’t get online in their rooms."

Babies are placed next to noise makers and in vibrating swings and chairs. From infancy on, a child can easily be enveloped in the constant churn of stimulation. It is shocking to think that the next generation is going to carve out time to be still.

Iver states:

"In barely one generation we’ve moved from exulting in the time-saving devices that have so expanded our lives to trying to get away from them — often in order to make more time. The more ways we have to connect, the more many of us seem desperate to unplug. Like teenagers, we appear to have gone from knowing nothing about the world to knowing too much all but overnight."

As much as I agree with this statement and absolutely love it on so many levels, I also have to admit that carrying my i Phone around brings me relaxation and freedom. I think it allows me to be patient. For example: If I am forced to wait in line or for a friend to arrive, I simply pull out my phone and within minutes, I can "make good use" of my waiting time. Gone are the days of thumb-twiddling. Instead, I too, can text, send emails, read the paper, or create a virtual "to-do" list. With my phone, I have the ability to take care of my personal business from a remote location, like the beach or from the break room in the hospital. On vacation, I am at ease because I know that I am not missing calls or opportunities. Everything and everyone I need to talk to, can be reached quickly with a few strokes of my keypad. If we did not have such devices, I know Josh would not leave his desk for fear of missing a business call or an opportunistic email. The technology we so desire to unplug from, can also free us on many levels.

When I traveled in the 1990s, I remember carrying a backpack full of mixed tapes, magazines, and a Walkman. Technology has basically consolidated all of these goodies into a single capsule that one can easily slip into her back pocket or purse. This is nice, I think. But, as a society, we need to be smart about when and where we use our devices. When I see people texting and driving, I get anxious. It's scary to think of just how many people cannot unplug to do things of greater importance - like drive.

According to Iver:

"The average American spends at least eight and a half hours a day in front of a screen, Nicholas Carr notes in his eye-opening book “The Shallows,” in part because the number of hours American adults spent online doubled between 2005 and 2009 (and the number of hours spent in front of a TV screen, often simultaneously, is also steadily increasing). The average American teenager sends or receives 75 text messages a day, though one girl in Sacramento managed to handle an average of 10,000 every 24 hours for a month. Since luxury, as any economist will tell you, is a function of scarcity, the children of tomorrow, I heard myself tell the marketers in Singapore, will crave nothing more than freedom, if only for a short while, from all the blinking machines, streaming videos and scrolling headlines that leave them feeling empty and too full all at once."

Imagine! "The children of tomorrow will crave nothing more than freedom from blinking, streaming, and scrolling ... from feeling empty and too full all at once." I adore this phrase. The amount of information I have at my fingertips is thrilling and then, somehow, boring. I can get lost in tangents while surfing the web, and suddenly, it's noon, and I am in my sweats. The yoga class I meant to take is long over and I begin to feel frantic to "begin my day" - meaning the real things in real life that I plan to do. There I am, so FULL of information, yet EMPTY - longing for a hike, a run, a swim, an exchange with a friend.

The article continues:

"The urgency of slowing down — to find the time and space to think — is nothing new, of course, and wiser souls have always reminded us that the more attention we pay to the moment, the less time and energy we have to place it in some larger context. “Distraction is the only thing that consoles us for our miseries,” the French philosopher Blaise Pascal wrote in the 17th century, “and yet it is itself the greatest of our miseries.” He also famously remarked that all of man’s problems come from his inability to sit quietly in a room alone. ... We barely have enough time to see how little time we have (most Web pages, researchers find, are visited for 10 seconds or less). And the more that floods in on us (the Kardashians, Obamacare, “Dancing with the Stars”), the less of ourselves we have to give to every snippet. All we notice is that the distinctions that used to guide and steady us — between Sunday and Monday, public and private, here and there — are gone ... We have more and more ways to communicate, as Thoreau noted, but less and less to say. Partly because we’re so busy communicating. And — as he might also have said — we’re rushing to meet so many deadlines that we hardly register that what we need most are lifelines."

Reading this makes me wonder if this blog blurs the lines of public and private. However, I find that having a place to write, that is not intendeed for publication, but perhaps a peak or two from someone I know, makes me more fulfilled than if I was just writing for myself. When I blur the private and public sphere or, at least, engage in it, I care more about my form and word choice. Rather than spill my guts, I enter words with patience, intention and care. I can liken this process to cooking a dinner for someone else verses myself. I find that if I make a dinner for Josh and me, I set the table, and take care to put olives and pickles in a nice bowl, rather than pull them out of the jar. I try to chew my food more slowly, listen to music and have engaging conversation. And, on those nights when he is away, I pick at cold pasta from the fridge and eat too many crackers or drink the rest of the morning's smoothie. Then, feeling full, but strangely empty, I eat my "second" little dinner, sitting down alone. This is the meal that I eat too quickly, barely finishing a magazine article before clearing my plate and starting dishes. Somehow there needs to be balance. Yes, over communicating is exhausting. We all hate (but love) the frequent status update on Facebook, telling use what he or she had for lunch.

Iver writes:

"So what to do? The central paradox of the machines that have made our lives so much brighter, quicker, longer and healthier is that they cannot teach us how to make the best use of them; the information revolution came without an instruction manual. All the data in the world cannot teach us how to sift through data; images don’t show us how to process images. The only way to do justice to our onscreen lives is by summoning exactly the emotional and moral clarity that can’t be found on any screen. MAYBE that’s why more and more people I know, even if they have no religious commitment, seem to be turning to yoga, or meditation, or tai chi; these aren’t New Age fads so much as ways to connect with what could be called the wisdom of old age. Two journalist friends of mine observe an “Internet sabbath” every week, turning off their online connections from Friday night to Monday morning, so as to try to revive those ancient customs known as family meals and conversation. Finding myself at breakfast with a group of lawyers in Oxford four months ago, I noticed that all their talk was of sailing — or riding or bridge: anything that would allow them to get out of radio contact for a few hours. Other friends try to go on long walks every Sunday, or to “forget” their cellphones at home. A series of tests in recent years has shown, Mr. Carr points out, that after spending time in quiet rural settings, subjects “exhibit greater attentiveness, stronger memory and generally improved cognition. Their brains become both calmer and sharper.” More than that, empathy, as well as deep thought, depends (as neuroscientists like Antonio Damasio have found) on neural processes that are “inherently slow.” ... Nothing makes me feel better — calmer, clearer and happier — than being in one place, absorbed in a book, a conversation, a piece of music. It’s actually something deeper than mere happiness: it’s joy, which the monk David Steindl-Rast describes as “that kind of happiness that doesn’t depend on what happens.” ... The child of tomorrow, I realized, may actually be ahead of us, in terms of sensing not what’s new, but what’s essential."

In the process of writing this blog entry, I have read this article 3-4 times. There's so much to take from it. It weaves nicely with my intentions for the new year. My best days off are my days with no plans. I like have an open schedule. Mostly, I like it because it affords me time to work at an "inherently slow pace." It's not like I am actually moving slow, but I am not rushed either. If I want to hike for two hours and then cook for the next two, I am so happy because I am not rushed - I am not pressured to fulfill my resolution "to be more patient." These free days (days without structure and plans) act as an intersection between my intention for patine and my desire to feel calm, clearer and happier.

Her Things

Ever since I learned that we are going to have a baby girl, I have been starting to "hunt and gather." I have made room for her in our apartment by relocating that beloved record collection of mine, as well as my behemoth-sized photo album collection to a cabinet that also can function as a dining table for 8-10 if need be. (Dinner party, anyone?)

Josh and I drove to this furniture warehouse in Highland Park on December 30th. We chose a dresser for our baby girl and the record cabinet. Because only one piece of furniture would fit in my Honda at a time, we made two trips through glorious downtown L.A. in one day. And because I am pregnant and cannot lift, we had to coordinate our drop-offs with our strong neighbor; (sorry, there is no web link for our "strong neighbor.")

The furniture trip was a great kick-off! I spent part of New Year's Eve day cleaning the dresser and record cabinet. Once the dresser was ready, I decorated it with a few baby books and gifts that family and friends have given "baby girl Argyle." At our New Year's Eve celebration with friends in San Pedro, I told Elida that our baby has a better dresser than I do. She said, "Get used to it! That's the way it's going to be from now on." I guess I better brace myself.

Since the arrival of the dresser, I have tie-dyed onesies and I have received two generous bags of hand-me-downs. As my neice Annabelle would say, "WOW! WOW! WOW!" .... The excitement is brewing.....

January Beauty

Happy 2012

It's a Burning Question

Until about two years ago, I was a devoted journal writer. In fact, from the age of 18 to 29, I wrote nearly every day. I have moved these journals with me from apartment to apartment - from Westlake Village, to Santa Barbara, to New York City, to West Los Angeles, to Brooklyn and then back to Santa Monica. The journals were a way that I released my thoughts, emotions and recorded my daily life as well as important events. Writing was my creative outlet. Now my journals collect dust and sand as they sit on the bottom of my closet.

Every once in a while, I pluck out a random journal. I admire my neat printing (a sign of the time before I could proficiently type). When I look back on my journals, I usually open one of my worn notebooks to a random page and read a few passages. Sometimes, if I am curious to see what I was doing exactly 5 years ago, I will flip back to the entry closest to the current date, but five years before. After a few pages, I admittedly, have had enough! The past version of myself annoys me on many levels. If someone was to come across my stack of notebooks and ventured to read them, I would be beside myself. Not because they document terrible things that I have done, but because they are my own evolution, and they were written for my eyes only. The movement from a self-righteous 18-year-old to a more humbled 36-year-old has required a lot of blood, sweat, tears, meetings, dumpings, firings, hirings, successes, failures, breakups, friendships and basically a whole lot of INK!

I have contemplated burning my journals. My sister has pledged to join me in this rite of passage. We discuss the buring of our journals as a ceremonious act - as a type of cleanse and purge. It would be a formal "good-bye" to our youthful scribble, tears and triumphs.

But, I have to say, there is something that holds me back from striking a match. I am not sure if it is merely Josh, who tells me not to burn them, because they are the chronicles of who I was. At times, he knows me better than I know myself, and he knows that an impulsive ceremony that involves burning evidence might be something I regret (like, minutes later). I have to give him credit. Sometimes he is right. For example, more recently, he encouraged me to keep my vinyl records even when I swore I would no longer wanted them. Sure enough, I have kicked off 2012 with new speakers and a stash of my favorite albums. Josh says he doesn't delete photos because they act as a visual time line of his past. In the same way, my scribbles are the blueprints of who I am today. (This, however, does not mean that I don't find them unbearable reading material.

I was delighted to find an article in the New York Times by Dominique Browning titled "Burning the Diaries."

Browning states: "There were plenty of people I wanted to smoke out of my life. Come to think of it, several months earlier, one of them, about whom I had written in my diaries copiously, tearfully, had recently popped unceremoniously back into my life after decades of absence, petulantly demanding to be returned to his pedestal, or at least to my bed. Perhaps a roaring fire would put to rest the Undead.

The urge to burn may have been born, long ago, of the old prayer I said on my knees every night as a child: “If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.” My soul lived in my diaries, and that weighed on me; by the time I was in my 40s, if I died before I woke, I wanted Someone to snatch my diaries before anyone else did.

I started keeping journals when I was 14. I was compulsive about it. I scribbled daily — and as I went through college, I filled hundreds of pages with dense, colorful ink, going right to the edge, ignoring the light threads of red margin markers, denying paragraphs their breaks, my nib flattening under the pressure of the stream of soul pouring forth. A psychiatrist once told me that I was obviously trying to psychoanalyze myself, which, professionally speaking, is considered impossible. But there certainly was — and has always been — a form of therapy in keeping journals. It is a way of self-soothing, as an adult, a way of rubbing the satin corner of your blankie against your finger when you’re anxious about separation, or too worked up to fall asleep.

As I raked up my burn pile that fateful morning, reaching for old journals secreted in hatboxes, piled in trunks, smothered at the bottom of dress bags, I riffled through the pages, reading. I was shocked that even things that had happened 20, 30 years ago felt as familiar and as raw as if they had happened yesterday. That so unnerved me that I stopped reading. I didn’t want to wade back into those depths, where a powerful riptide still churned. Worse, I was struck by the repetition of patterns over the years: the way hurt yearning in 1977 sounded like pained longing in 2007.

I wrote about the bad boyfriends, the mean girls, the lying and cheating knaves I loved. I wrote about the wrenching pain of postpartum depression, the confusion and fear of becoming a mother, when I didn’t have a clue how to do that gracefully, kindly, compassionately; I mulled over the unalloyed sadness of a dying marriage and the pure misery of mourning the passing of a hope that, before it fled, sowed the seeds of two beautiful boys. Certainly not the sort of detritus I wanted those boys to sift through if I died before I woke.

Life really is like a game of Chutes and Ladders, I thought, taking the long view while nosing around, and burning up, my life. You work hard to climb, and you get lucky, too; you’re ambling along when suddenly, wham, you roll wrong, you make a stupid move, and you’re perilously upside down the slide. You’ve got to pick yourself up and start the climb over again. It gets wearying after a while.

That’s the starkest pattern in all of our lives. It takes so long to get the hang of it, the slipping, sliding and starting over, that by the time we’re old enough to know that the climb is everything, the whole story, the destination doesn’t matter, we’re tired enough to let wisdom in, to move efficiently, thoughtfully, to finally stop and enjoy the view along the way.

Burning those diaries, I realized I didn’t want my sons to know how profoundly I had suffered from the slides down the chutes, the tumbles through the holes that gaped open in the scaffolding of my life. That would be too hard for them. I wanted them to remember me as one who clambers back. That’s the person they grew up with. A person who picks herself up and gets going again.

Back through the years, I threw journals onto the pile. I couldn’t stop. The fire became huge and hot and loud; the pages didn’t smolder but burst into lashing flame, the books buckled and popped. Embers rocketed across the hearth; ashes blew sideways and drifted into the room.

The heat became so intense I had to back off. It was thrilling, in an atavistic, cavewomanish kind of way. I wondered if I were going to regret my spontaneous combustion — when it was too late to do anything about it. Another old pattern.

I write memoirs. And I write about my life in a blog. But as I’m constantly saying to people who wonder how I can reveal so much about myself (especially as, at heart, I am a shy person), I’m not publishing my diaries. I’m not revealing so very much, when I write, that isn’t in all of us. It is kind of like the old saw about having it all. Readers never get it all. They get some of all of it. Everything I write is true. But I don’t write about everything true. I shape, I cut, I feint and dodge; I want to get to something that is uniquely mine, and at the same time ours, too.

As the journals burned, I watched in horrified fascination, as if it were some other person laying the books onto the fire, to entertain or torture me. The fire had a violent beauty. And I did think, whoa, there goes a lot of material. But I also thought, good riddance. I’ve made what I could of that material.

I’d like to tell you that it was a profoundly, mystically cleansing experience, that I laid a lot of pain and anger to rest on that funeral pyre. Oddly, I felt only a numb relief. And a certain amount of anguish that now it was time to clean up the mess I had made of my heart. I mean, my hearth.

After reading this article I thought: Numb releif? Hmmmm...Well, should I keep my diaries? I am not sure numb relief is something I want from burning my journals. From an epidural? Yes! I expect numb relief, but not from a so-called cleansing ceremony.

Now that I know I am going to have a daughter, I think I might hold onto my journals. Perhaps they will help me make sense of some of her more difficult stages. It's hard to remember how I was was at each age until I flip to an entry from the year I was 19 or 24 or 27. Then, suddenly, all too clearly, I see myself for the person I was at that time. As lost or as sad or as poor or as happy or as free as I wrote that I was in those moments, I have to remember that's where I was at that point and I had not lived past that moment to see where I would end up. And now, I am beginning to think that burning the pages of my youth might be a regrettable choice. After all, I might need to remember how I felt at certain ages. (Not now, but someday when I am even farther from the girl I was at 18, 22, 31 and 33.)

Maybe I am not far enough from those days to take delight in the postings. The honesty on those pages cannot be replicated by the person I am now. Burning those notebooks might be like burning the bridge to my youth. For now I will keep them, and perhaps make a pact with my sister. We will burn our journals when the time comes. It will be clear when that time is. Until then, together we have a nice library, chock-full of girl grit.