Pagan Hugs for Gypsy Jews

The best writing teacher I've had thus far has told me a lot of that intuitive advice that I thought I knew but that was driven home by her words: write every day. Even if it's shit. Write, write, write. When I was a little kid I used to think about being a great artist and my drawing teachers would always tell me to draw every day, draw, draw, draw. We are these creative monkey machines that need to practice our crafts all the time every moment so that the engineered beauty of our minds may find a voice in the coupling of talent and a hell of a lot of practice. Practice, practice, practice.

I had so many jumpy dreams last night. I'm torn between doing my research in two different countries, not too mention my sudden consideration of the fact that moving for my work will and does involve personal upheaval and I should consider that. I've been so reckless with my own emotions. Pick up and move like a gypsy and act as if this is a natural path, the path, my path, as if wherever I am will just fall into place from simple gravitational pull.
I saw a really informative personal documentary last night and for anyone who's interested in the shifting flows of time, culture, and blood it's a very interesting sketch. The film is called Sholem Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness. According to my grandfather, we're related to this lovely poet, Sholem Aleichem...a pretty light in a past I can only see through the recollections of others.

Speaking of films, I'd also like to plug my friend John Ullyot's film in the making: Mulligan. It's looking creative and wonderful as his work has always been and I'm looking forward to seeing a character I've read in so many stories come to life on the screen.

Today's my father's birthday. Which is a good bit more important to me than Jesus' birthday could ever be, but it's a happy day in the US...I like how eager people are to congratulate each other with it, I guess I just like human warmth and it can be touching from strangers. Maybe that's why I like countries like Brazil where it feels like American Christmas every day.

Maybe that's my answer? Brazil. Brazil? Brazil?! Either way there's a warm tropical spot near the equator of my heart and it's spreading. Happy warmth day to all!

Hello Radio

Last night, I had a silly spat with my darling. This turned into a malfunctioning alarm clock situation which turned into a late but nevertheless live and real as whoever-is-up at-that-hour-tuned-to-the-radio and to my wakeup voice situation. Domino effect and now I'm processing my absurdity. It's all good. If you want to listen to the fun in which Rick Kogan hilariously calls me "good old Marianna" help yourselves: http://www.wgnradio.com/shows/sundaypapers/wgnam-kogan-uncut-111211-university-of-chicago-writers-adam-rosenthal-sophie-werely-marianna-staroselsky,0,539501.mp3file

Perhaps the public humiliation combined with incredible fun will teach me to set five alarm clocks and time my love spats better. I have to say I did enjoy it very much it was really a wonderful feeling. (Live) life is a damn mushy mess sometimes but make the best of the...eggnog popcorn?

absolutely obvious things that take forever to learn

Ok, so I have spent fall quarter taking writing courses and indulging my soul, both academic and creative. In both realms the wisdom acquired boils down to the same key point:
DO WHAT YOU LOVE AND DO IT AS BRILLIANTLY AS YOU CAN!!!!
Oh and don't get too bogged down with politics about what's the thing to do to get a certain kind of job or to please a certain kind of audience or to fit into a certain kind of category. Because that's all bullshit and it will slow down this incredible gift of life and opportunity.
With my creative work the message was...if it's good, ultimately it will get picked up by a publisher. With my academic work it was...if it's interesting and relevant someone will value it and you will find a job.
Does it sound like I'm high? I really don't think I am. I think hard work and using your talents to their fullest capacity can and does pay off and ultimately I'm a believer, baby.
If this sounds too American dreamy, I don't care. The best part about the American Dream is owning the damn thing. OWN IT.

chocolate almond butter and peer pressure

Peer pressure, the good kind, is oh so good for you. Pick your peers and pears carefully. The good kind will be full of stimulation juice.

The good kind will show you that the person in the mirror is entirely up to what you make of her. And then you take a succulent bite and find yourself running down that yellow brick road seeking whatever magic man or treasure lies past the horizon and just around the corner.

I listened to a rabbi last night who didn't have much to say. He was blowing air out of his lungs and lips beautifully like an air-breathing fish. Metamorphosed into a creature that produces oxygen-filled, meaningless words.

Breathe it in and breathe it out, good mojo in bad mojo out.

Eat good food, drink good beer, enjoy Sukkot or whatever holiday haven you happen to find in your life.

Wow, world, wow.

Say I to you world. um. I have had an amazing first two weeks back in Chicago. My mother knocks on wood in my head, superstitiously as I say this and so do I. Why be so superstitious about the good things btw? Is it post-Soviet Jewish fear that everything nice will be taken away from you by Big Brother or some kind of looming omniscient totalitarian force? When a people have been terrorized the scars show even in the minds of their children. Fear is a contagious thing we can learn and learn to live with and breathe with...inhalation and exhalation laced with it. If there is no trace, you must be doing something wrong, indulging too much, they're about to take it away from you...knock on wood!

Ha. Happiness like a tap, tap, tap. I just discovered it inside of me, this ability to be happy. Is that weird? Yes. Better late than never? Absolutely.

Not that I've never been happy...of course I have, oh so many glorious times that I have poeticized about. But that was just the problem, there was languish and pain and emptiness between those spaces of goodness and it was as if I did not know how to sustain it. I do now, somehow.

Maybe all the pushing and pulling of myself like taffy across the crevices of the universe have finally paid off. I like to think so. I like to think that my open mouth finally found itself.
:) The lips closed and smiling, like the dog who finally stopped chasing her own tail.

Post Number 100

I'm back in Chicago, convoluted with strange weather patterns and too many decisions to make. It's a wet day, and there's a chilly white sky peeking through the window. I've been meaning to go to a capoeira batizado today and I will, (I was there most of the day yesterday and it was wonderful,) but too many thoughts/emails/pressing things (like computer keyboard buttons and jumpy jumpy thoughts) have kept me home for a bit. My favorite is of course working with a really good cup of coffee in my hand and anticipation that something lovely will happen just at the tip of this sentence.

I've been watching a few Meg Ryan movies lately to fantasize and smile about the "good life."

She makes me smile, has the appeal of a child and a woman in her innocent yet conniving expressions, and is one of the more joyful actresses you can watch on the silver or dusty laptop screen. I watched "Addicted to Love" and "Prelude to a Kiss," which are both very feel good and warming. Prelude to a Kiss is pretty strange of course, because Alec Baldwin ends up making out with an old man carrying the soul of Meg Ryan, but isn't that the fantasy - that it's her soul he loves best?

Anyway, I best pull on my sneakers and brave the wet pavement, lest Mestre Acordeon and crew finish off the day without me...too much fun, I have to say. Though I tried the berimbau for the first time yesterday and realized that my tiny child's hands are not exactly equipped for this instrument, "you just have to get used to it," said the man with giant man hands next to me.

Ah well! My raouls rock at least.

Manifest

Comfort. In your favorite wine. In your sister's smile. Comfort zone...I want to wrap myself inside of you, I want to venture forth into the world while wrapped in the sturdiest of coats...I want that love to cradle me while I cradle the rest.

I marvel at my life for it is a marvel. What can't I do? I can fly. I can read minds. I'm working on my x-ray vision and my time travel but I'm getting there.

I'm so crazy proud of my little sisters. They are all grown up (well mostly) and considering I've watched them grow and become since day one it feels like such a victory. They are shining, they are taking the world into their confident little hands and making what they wish of an existence that seems overly complicated most of the time.

I love drinking with my parents as if we're out on a date. Or just that we're really old and sophisticated. Or just that I've earned their respect at some point in the game. It makes me happy.

How on earth did I manage to work with such incredible people already? Have I earned it? It's been wonderful. Sometimes life does give back and you should just rejoice because you probably did something.

Home is a set of plane tickets

mainly because I don't have one location that is the traditional concept of "home" for moi. And really, I'm lucky enough to be able to jet around all over the place and piece together the puzzle pieces that make me, geographically scattered as they are.

I found a dish towel hanging from my mother's oven that reads "Home is where my mom is." And really, home is where my loved ones are, it's true, therefore home are where they are. Home "are" there or maybe "is" like a spilled bottle of wine or juice that trickles into different crevices but is still part of the same whole. Maybe in measurement, home is more of a liquid, divided in fragments but part of a whole.

I returned to Porto Alegre, Brazil, for a brief spell and then was pretty thrilled, anxious even to get back to the US. I was eager to retrieve my past you see. It all started with a dear childhood friend's wedding in Boston, followed by travel to DC and Colorado with another dear childhood friend/distant relative from Israel. All of the East Coast travels convinced me that I should just move back to the American East Coast because Home...maybe there are places on this planet that make me feel especially like "me" and maybe quite a few of them are concentrated over there. There's just a whole lot of juice in those parts and now my mind is working on that idea, of a wonderful return, a homecoming to a place that I love. How sweet.

Fresh Noons Blooming

All right, I've rolled up my sleeves and I'm cleaning house. Mentally, of course, and socially. I take out the spiderwebs, the spider veins that spread below, the pests. I weed the unnecessary creatures out, the pesky ghosts. My mind is a repository of bad sediment sometimes, the words and deeds of others stay with me - angry ghosts.
It takes a lot of courage to let go of a ghost, even an angry one. We are used to his voice, we think we need it. All along it was my own mind that fathomed you that fashioned you into significance. In the end, perception is almost everything it seems, at least when it comes to the power of reality and dreams.
The truth is, there's nothing wrong with anything that has happened. My only issue is moving on, moving forward and into the fresh light of a new day. I was held back a bit this summer by obligations and spoiled love like spoiled coconut milk in the Bahian sun. Sometimes are own obligations tether us to the wrong coconut. But that's ok....
I keep meeting little princes along the way and they are not the polite one fashioned by Exupery but the real whinging ones that are forever glued to the nipple. Oh Puer Aeternus, go find another temporary mommy to suckle. Ok? Ok.
In the meantime I'll go enjoy this Latin city properly with its European houses and mysterious ports.
"Follow your own star!" - Dante Alighieri

Clones and Buenos Aires

Should I get this haircut? That's my doppelganger right there. I'm wearing that same red shade of lipstick right now and it goes with all of the Audrey Hepburns and Marilyn Monroes that hang on the walls of hostels and restaurants in this city. Little kitschy items with their faces in the markets, old magazines with movie stars and fresh babes advertising cars. There is a repository here from the 30's-70's, a collection of odds and ends. Old children's toys, terrifying and dirty in their market stalls, the most fascinating little personalized postcards that parents used to send between countries of their children dressed up in the latest fashionable getup...I found most of this in the Feria de San Telmo.

My heart is heavy light at the moment. Flavored with Brahma Chopp bought at the corner store, unrefrigerated. I'm weighed down only by my own penchant for roller coaster boyfriends. Audrey how did you wear your love? And you Marilyn? Two opposite ends of the feminine spectrum it seems...both adored and salivated after to this day. Phantoms.
Are we stronger in flesh or in after-flesh? Sometimes the answer is less obvious than it seems.

I am not the woman of your dreams. I seem to wish to make that very clear very quickly. Maybe because fantasy is terrifying? I overdo it. Fantasy is what we need to survive. We need Audrey and we certainly need Marilyn. Buenos Aires has a point.

Grey sky calls for writing

Although actually I'm starving. How wonderful that I trained all over the campus of Rio Grande do Sul today, on a gray warmish Saturday when most people were out and I practiced capoeira kicks in the windows of the buildings and did cartwheels across the lawns and did pushups on random cement blocks that lay on the grounds.

I had my palm read after the Batizado in Rio. It was a spontaneous thing, there was a sweet old woman sitting there, taking palms and telling their stories.
Mine seemed to cause a lot of emotion in the woman. My tiny soft hand had her exclaiming that I was feminine and delicate. At another point she kissed it saying I was very spiritualized. It was a sweet reading all in all.

I'm running away from Porto Alegre for a week on a beautiful trip to the Argentinian border...and at the moment I'm running away to the supermercado because my new amiga and I concur that food is pretty damn important.

calling on my orisha, my baba yaga, my hatikva

I found this incantation/prayer to Yemaya, goddess of the sea, who last year was identified for me as my orixa. The sea has always been the most powerful, soothing, and grounding force for me. It's energy peaks my own and when I am in it I am a mermaid.:

Yemaya. Mother, goddess of the Sea,
Be in this place, come forth unto me,
Lady of the oceans, the lakes, and the rivers,
Beautiful Queen, ebb and flow bringer,
Heal my mind, my body
my soul.
For with your sweet love, I become whole.
Ashe, Great Mother
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Even seeing that blue depth from my window is soothing and perfect. I have missed you so, sweet ocean power. The sea, seeing and not seeing it, feeling its energy near me. The sea, the sea, the sea.

I give thanks. I don blue today and in my heart, the blue of endless possibility, and believe that the world will open its depths to me if I just give it a little patience, a little care. I believe that there is poetry out there, and it awaits me. Poetry on the doorstep of my heart. Poetry that will tear us clean and new. Words that strip the pain and bring the light, I believe in hearts that heal each other and hands that warm each other and minds that help each other. I believe that some day we will be without a catch, ready for a better day. I believe that in this path we wretch, there is a better hand to play.

This imperfect thing we love so much.

About a week, A WEEK, until I fly off to Brazil. It's sinking in and is a little terrifying. I'm terribly excited and as usual I'm finishing up a paper, getting last minute things together, and have not started packing. I lived in denial for 2 days this weekend during which I mainly slept and watched weepy lovesick episodes of Grey's Anatomy. I am a master hibernator, especially when there's work to be done. Ok, I also managed to go on a date on which I had fun stepping outside of myself and pretending to be some random hot woman in a pretty dress on a date, (dates are good for that because the role-playing is such a game), cleaned out my fridge, and had my first yoga class in years. Now I'm drinking some kind of coffee called "European" that consists of egg white and half-and-half and vanilla and attempting to plan a passable paper on the history of childhood in Brazil. (The coffee in my favorite local Chicago cafe is always really funny tasting but I'm mainly here for the calm, studious atmosphere and the soothing young Russian couple who runs it anyway...the caffeine boost can come in odd flavors and I don't mind too much.) Hardly easy considering kids aren't exactly anyone's focus most of the time historically unless considered a problem. My idea wasn't to write about pedophiles or child abandonment...though there it is, entire chapters dedicated to poverty and perversion.

I did however manage to find a subletter within about a day of advertising my place. It is a lovely apartment and made me feel so good to find a thrilled tenant in oh, about 5 seconds.

I also have a sperm donor in case I decide to have a child on my own. I like him a lot, I may be in love with him in a way, whatever that everlastingly loaded term means. God knows I freak out enough for my potential sperm donor and I and our beautiful unborn multi-ethnic babies combined. No committed partner as of yet, but hey Cinderella did you know that modern life would be so darn difficult to navigate for women with standards and brains?

The shoe might fit but we're a little past comparing men to shoes aren't we? Unless you're looking for a two-dimensional life, and some people do of course, a consumer metaphor is hardly appropriate. Fuck the fairy shoe and it's fatalistic implications. Of course, I'm a terrible shoe shopper though when I do find shoes I like they tend to be awesome shoes complimented by strangers so maybe it's not the worst metaphor in the world. But it's not just about taste. It's not just about a Bourdieun understanding of choice and class. There is something else some of us seek, something like the soul that cannot be pinpointed in music and food and the societal niche occupied by the Prince or the Pauper (whoever you happen to fall for.) There's something deep and terribly poetic and painful and inappropriate at the bottom of it all. Your mother probably wouldn't approve of it because it isn't right. It's uncomfortable. The connection with those we have that funny feeling for is somewhere in the neighborhood of the Id and some fairy space called Romance Fantasy and this fairy space is only somewhat rooted in practical teachings and tangible truths. We try not to Peter Pan into the great wide unknown but we do anyway, we have a mutual drugging experience that feeds into the fairy space. We float off. Things don't make sense. We try to explain it to our friends but we can't. We're self-fulfilling madmen.

On that note I'm going back to work, good evening fellow fruit loops. 

chocolate pie ...and this title is complete

I'm wearing a goofy shirt that reads "I <3 Capoeira". It's for a 7-8 year old boy and so it's a tiny bit tight around the sleeves. It reminds me of how when I was a teenager it was popular to wear itsy bitsy shirts and show off your midriff. I have backpedaled into my teenage self and my midriff is slightly on display in this way too small thing I'm not sure why I bought it (except that the mestre with the Arnold Shwarzenegger accent who sold it to me has a charm about him, so if he says it's woman's shirt maybe I'll believe it for a little while,) but maybe I should cut the sleeves off....my little sisters wouldn't approve. It's a high school thing, it's a petty thing, it's a family thing, how to display myself, it's a fashion thing, it's a bullshit, bullshit thing. They always judged me so harshly, my mom and sisters, ridiculing me like a gang of popular bossy girls on the playground. I always succumbed, if not in action, then in hurt feelings. Very hurt feelings and a very sore ego.

I had my first Batizado this past weekend. Mestres and students flew into Chicago from all over the country and world to teach workshops and to graduate students in an order of dancefightloving....I somehow passed, graduated into a level. A white-yellow cord signifying that I have some level of skill: totally unexpected.

I'm in from the "beach," the Lake Michigan Shore...this whole Chicago summer thing is a new and interesting experience for me. It's the first time I've experienced it at all...I'm meeting a lot of nice, fun people in this warm version of Chicago. Well I can befriend for a little while before I re-Brazil my life. Chicago will never be Brazilian or tropical or warm enough anyway. A part of my heart has given up on it even as I discover lovely new nooks and crannies and finally meet the kind of folks I could enjoy myself with.

Things, in some way only have substance if you believe in their thingy-ness. If you believe in them. And I make-believe my own things all the time and that's a good escape from the confines of a mostly senseless world. The only parts that matter are the warm ones. Not their substance but their temperature. Touch my forehead. 

back to the people planet

As if this reconnecting with what I care about meant coming back to Earth. Which it does. As if the sun warming my heart and hopes meant that I could wish and feel empowered on a daily basis about the things that push me out of bed in the morning, that stimulate me into engaging with the world.

When a man in a light pink shirt sat down across from me a minute ago and started staring as if I'm his lunchtime entertainment, I thought, maybe this is my cue to go?
This feels like a weird, unfathomable day/week/something. Span of time punctuated by the kind of heat that usually stays behind shower curtains in Chicago.

I feel, slightly, like I'm bouncing around in one of those pinball machines, back and forth in a frenzy to win points and make contact with momentary discotheques. Ok, it's definitely time to change locations, bump into other silly frenzied points of contact.

Ritual or not

Skiing, like flying, changes my essence. I can soar down a mountain and I don't feel quite so mundanely human at that moment. I'm another species, and I've torn out of the mold of my daily routines and boxed spaces. My body is curving down gorgeously white slopes, and I'm singing to myself. The rhythm is just too good at those moments. It's at those times that I know that this life is so excruciatingly worth it. 

I spent today at home and slept in, slept off some booze and a jazz-filled first date, nursed the cramps that rock my body into submission. At least the timing is good. A Red Tent phase between my travels and work days and lovers. I call my grandmother who has severe Alzheimer's. She picks up and we have essentially the same conversation that we've had for the past year or more. But it never gets old because it's still her voice and we love each other ever more painfully and well, sometimes you find that you are a packaged little matrushka set of emotion. I'm the little doll inside my mother inside my grandmother inside my great-grandmother. Inside of me is a painful little empty space waiting for a doll I suppose. Thanks for the Cavity within, Woman-Maker in the Matel Sky Factory.

I should really be writing or something so this is a low-commital kinda start....

Vanilla Whipped Honey in the Twilight Zone

The sun doesn't really exist today. The sky is just an impenetrable white blur of snow and the snow comes down and sweeps over everything, a ghostly kind of snow. A ghost. 

Somewhat solution? Coffee as can be seen in the picture below, plus honey, plus brand spankin new chalk pastels with which I smudge happy colors onto whiteness. I look at a beautiful photo from Pelhourinho last summer and I draw. It's Carnival there right now, it's the white ghost of nothingness that keeps on giving here right now. 

Send me a serotonin boost or a flower...smile against the white 

unprecedented chill

The more I remember my melancholy imaginings of what this Chicago winter would be like, the sillier it seems. Ok, so I imagined it would be this poetic misery, me sitting alone in a cozy apartment, huddled over a laptop with a glass of wine with enough memories to pretend to be an old geezer writing her memoirs.

Except the problem is this: to get to the poetic, the sweet nostalgic poetic, you have to get past the misery. And the misery my friends, the frigidity that covers the Chicago streets and penetrates the soul, is awfully hard to get past. You have to cross a frozen Styx to get to a place where you can have enough hope to express yourself.

Misery. Misery. Misery. 

Self-delve

I'm not even remotely afraid of jumping into my own psyche. I'm a psyche-bungy jumper and have been since childhood. I will talk about the deepest, most seemingly embarrassing crevices of my mind and honestly, I just don't mind swimming through my id. An id scuba diver. Yes, I happily, enjoyably, speak Idish.

I know this is a language that for many seems too appallingly private. Why strip it all away and stand so naked in front of the planet? I'm an Id Nudist and I'm proud.

How can one write poetry or anything in which one strips for the reader, without being an Id Exhibitionist? I think this is simply part of the process. I yearn for the social mirror and damn it, don't we all seek a bit of this freedom where artifice is stripped to reveal the mess below?

I was in NYC all weekend. It's a kind of delving into friends that I adore and haven't seen in far too long, and yes there was a guy, a lovely one. The streets of New York, always magical, grumbling, full of possibility especially when the heart wanders, filled me with hope and excitement. I've never seen New York under so much snow. It was a mess but it doesn't matter, it's the same fantastic city full of every kind of person in every kind of establishment on every corner. I even heard a Carioca singing in a bar. Her voice was beautiful, I could tell almost immediately from her pronunciation that she was from Rio. I went to the New Museum for the first time and it was a little breathtaking. I saw an adorably painful play with Ethan Hawke about American middle-of-no-where blue collar family psychological dysfunction. Dysfunction and gaudy couches and too many phony kodaks on the walls. I reveled in my old friends. I felt a little overwhelmed because it never feels like there is enough time for the best moments in life. Moments need to be rewound, extended, slow-mo'd.

I had conversations that scurried and galloped into an enjoyment so high pitched it was excruciating. It was excruciating because I knew I couldn't put it in my pocket and bring it back out any time. Bring it back into my life...because some things are not portable. My old friends. A lovely guy who didn't turn out to be receptive to my openly emotional scuba world. Despite the conversation bliss. Or the clearly yearning kiss. A bit disappointing, this. Mermen welcome and wanted.

Life is a pale bitch sometimes. A scrawny bitch with dirty fingernails who scrapes your chalkboard and laughs like a mean little demon. Sometimes you have to wait for that bitch to shut it. You drink some wine, you get all artsy fartsy and try to write, draw, think your way out of it to some higher Platonic existence. Get me out of the fucking cave, already. Please?

Hope for the hopeful

Thank goodness for my eyes. I can see. And my fingers with which I type.
And my mind, my mind best of all with which fine words I write
thrilling sights I see
happy soul can be

Placing the placeless

Well December was eaten up by the country of Israel. A place so incredible and always so dear to my heart. I belong there, if I belong any where, if belonging has anything to do with looks and genes and the rage of jewish mothers.

I miss it again already. Like a brother, Israel is my brother - it is the most fraternity I feel for any particular nation of people.

My wandering heart, as usual, is torn by the people I have loved and love all over the globe. My heart has a map inside it, a spinning wheel of places that matter and sting with emotion, like a jeopardy wheel - who will I feel and think of next? Spin it. Not just places but faces that in themselves are placeless except that we all belong together, my virtual community of dear ones.

Moonlit nights in Jerusalem on the back of a motorcycle...I'm holding tight. I'm holding tight in my head.

I'm back in Chicago (a little over a week now,) where I have my own beautiful apartment and completely autonomous life. I feel a split inside myself...I'm opening the house of my soul up and letting a crying little girl walk out. The little girl has been fighting with her mother since she could speak. The little girl has been crying since she could make tears and screams and casualties inside her mind. It's time to love her. It's time to calm her down and let her play and enjoy being a cute little girl. I love kids and my inner kid, I definitely love my inner kid. Time to forgive my mom for thinking that little girl was less than awesome...it's that tiny, pained, dazed little fighter inside of me who still gives me much of my strength and insight.

There was a point when we were walking through several thousand year old ruins in the North of Israel that it became clear that I simply can't take it any more. Maybe this was the problem: I was used to heart break since childhood. My mom was always my heartbreaker. That's just how I saw and felt it for many years. I could never be good enough, I could never line up inside those blurry dotted lines, wherever they were. Mirror mirror on the wall, love me. Implicitly, heart break was normal. Not just heart break but the breaking of myself into little insufferable pieces. Painful little shards that just yearned to form a whole. Whole
some
of us are luckier than others. But in the end the power is in the hands of those who take it.