Writing with Rox Weekly Prompt—Auld Lang Syne, me Dears!

young Dad

Like Harry and Sally, this song never made much sense to me other than the raw feeling it generates every time I hear it. It's one of the rare things in life I enjoy along with the masses, perhaps because my dad liked it so much and played it on the piano, along with Both Sides Now, Send in the Clowns, Holiday for Strings, and Country Roads while I did yoga and watched the boats go by.




I have a love/shame relationship with my deep love of this song. I own several covers of it and tend to sing it when doing the dishes. It works when I need a lift or when I need a good cry. I am trying to encourage my little kirtan and music community to somehow work it into a chant.... Auld Lang Syme, Krisna Krisna! Syme Lang Auld Hare Hare!    A few weeks ago my fiery, brilliant, state-the-obvious, ninja girly friend suggested that perhaps I love it sappily so because it is seen in like every movie there ever was that takes place on New Years. "You know," she said, "it's so cinematic."  





Well. There's a thought.

There's a thought I never wanted to think.

There's a thought that means I have been duped by Hollywood along with everyone else even though I have written a memoir about how not to be duped by Hollywood because I was duped by Hollywood growing up there.

What's your auld lang syne story? Excuse?



Today in Friday Writers we wrote "what I don't want to forget from 2012." I emphasized "what I don't want to  forget" verses "what I want to remember" because it adds a subtle spin on the focus. They could take it anywhere it went. To a memory. A rant. A moment in time that lasted a lifetime. A lesson learned. A laugh. A midnight summer thunder light show by the pool.  The results were gorgeous.


What do you want to not forget from 2012? Follow the trail.......... And don't forget to come write with me in 2013! Raising a cup of kindness and a thousand pens to you all, ROX                                 xoxoxo

Writing with Rox Weekly Prompt—Christmas in Hollywood

I love the holidays, always have.  Perhaps it's because we never really celebrated them growing up, which created a nostalgic mythology about the whole season, especially in LA. I tried to get Ma into it. I'd beg for a tree, to which she'd argue "We're Jewish for Christ's sake!" and besides, it would kill my grandmother if she ever found it. Did I really want to live with that guilt? 

"It's enough that our menorah is from Mexico," she huffed.

"Well, how 'bout a Channukah Bush? I think they do that in Israel, don't they?" Not that we celebrated Channukah, either. We usually just lit the menorah on the nights we got presents.

"Now that's absurd, Roxanne!"

One year I was so desperate to celebrate Christmas like all the other LA Jews that I cut a branch off one of the cypress trees in the backyard, put it in a vase, and decorated it with cheap Christmas tchotchkes I got at Newberry's. 

"You're dragging that fucking tinsel crap all over the house," Ma complained, which was true. 

"Yeah, but it's pretty, isn't it?" I was proud of my little tree.

"It's low class," she said, picking a piece out of her hair. "Get rid of it!"

"After Christmas. I promise! Can we go back to Newberry's and get some more orgaments?"

Ma frowned. How I knew she hated that "fucking store." But I reeeeely wanted a few more candy canes and lambs for the little cypress. "You can get more of that Almond Roca stuff that you like... Or, I know! I can get it for you for Christmas! I mean, Channukah!"

At some point she'd give in and we'd head down to Pico Blvd in the fat red and brown station wagon.  After a bit of browsing, she'd even get a little excited,  enjoy looking at all the cheap Christmas crap with me. "Look at thooooooooooooose," she'd say, pointing behind the counter. "Pretty." 

"See Ma?" I'd say, "isn't Christmas cool?" My body flooded with hope every time Ma played along with my holiday fantasy. Maybe this time. Maybe this year it will be just like it is on TV. Maybe the family will appear, the snow will miraculously fall upon us here in the desert, and Santa may come down our chimney the same way he does at Kenny's house.

Inevitably Ma's patience would run out and it would be back to the usual,  "this is just cheap crap shit and we don't celebrate Christmas and let's get out of this fucking store, I got work to do!" 

But by then I was coasting on the high of hope.  On the drive home,  I held tightly to my little bag of shiny ornaments and basked in the parade of Hollywood Holy-Jolly that never quite looked so beautiful as it did that December twilight. The SoCal palm trees proudly wore their tinsel high in the azure sky, leaning their exotic necks toward the ocean. Santa and his reindeer flew across Santa Monica Boulevard in the 75 degree sunshine while Sinatra crooned swingin' Christmas songs out of all the rolled down car windows, gridlocked, but beautifully happy. 

Even Ma swearing at the "idiots" ahead of us in traffic as we drove away from Newberry's couldn't touch me safe in my holiday dreamland. I knew we'd be back next year, maybe sooner. Someday, Ma might even say yes to everything.

...

Childhood holiday stories? Snapshots? Fantasies?

Writing with Rox Weekly Prompt—A Hug from my Son (your everyday grateful)

This morning something wonderful happened before I drove Jude to school. In the spare hurried moments before we headed down to the car, I suddenly, rather whimsically, kneeled down on the kitchen floor and gave my boy a hug. Wonderful is that he hugged back. There, in the narrow space between the sink and the stove, we hugged each other, leaning in, cheek-to-cheek, resting, being.

Moments prior, we found ourselves in the usual morning routine of  standing in the kitchen, him a good few feet below me, milling around on his kiddie plane, every bit as busy as I am a few stories up, packing up his lunch, filling my Dunkin' Donuts coffee mug, reciting aloud what I need to remember to do next, to write down, etc. Amidst that stream of morning ritual, I suddenly remembered that about eight hours ago, my boy awoke in a flurry of tears, eyes wide and aching for understanding. "Okay Mama? Okay?"

Okay, what? But sure, honey, okay...whatever you need.

I was afraid the screams might wake the neighbors. When I attempted to comfort him, he recoiled. He scratched at his dinosaur sleeping bag like a cat to the leg of a couch. "I want to go first HERE!" he said, pointing at his sleeping bag for emphasis.

"Jude, it's okay, honey... you're dreaming. Come back to bed..."

"You come back to bed!" he demanded, standing in the doorway.

I did.



"Do you remember last night, Jude?" I later asked him. "Probably not," I answered, grateful when his playful morning eyes revealed no recollection of the nightmare he'd been wrestling with at midnight.  His big blue wide wondering eyes, deemed once "blue headlights" by his dad, were back to normal.

Was it that I never noticed before? Never noticed how soft his young cheek skin is? Never felt his little tough boy body surrender and soften into my open embrace, into the center of my heart? Never noticed his tiny little fingers wrapping beneath my curls and twirling them around for comfort? Had I never truly seen his softly falling blue eyes fighting to stay open just to catch one more sight of me before the next blink? Had I really never recognized that the little hands reaching back for me were outstretched all along?

Like many parents, it's easy to doubt my value and competency as a mother, especially when little JJ is screaming at me, fighting me, calling me "snothole," resisting my parental discipline and affection. It's easy to take all his five-year-old moodiness, anger and confusion personally, and to berate myself, at worst, believing someone could be doing a much better job at this. This morning I realized the toxicity of that doubt and why I must never doubt my role again. I am grateful that I took myself seriously as a mother this morning. It reminded me that I have missed way too many hugs from this young, much too-rapidly growing boy, who could easily outgrow the need for hugs like this if I forget how much he needs them. How much we both do. How much we all do.



What is your everyday grateful? What have you forgotten to be grateful for?

Writing with Rox Weekly Prompt—Raw Writing Live!

Yesterday in therapy I sat down with a foggy brain and said "I just don't know today." I just don't know. I told her I was sleep logged which happens only once in a very blue moon since i never get much sleep at all, but I said I just don't know.

"We don't have to do anything," she said.

That's funny, I said, because I was wondering if we could do some kundalini yoga together...or...

Did you hear what I said? she said, "We don't have to do anything."

Fancy that. Fancy that.

I'm just not feeling very...I'm foggy, I said. It's the perimenopause, the adrenal fatigue...

What is foggy she asked, "describe foggy."

I did.

Huh, she said. That's beautiful.

So there we sat with my fog and my content doing nothing. Not thinking. Not feeling. Just sitting. In the fog.


...

Shto etta? This, loved ones, is a sample of my raw writing from last week's Friday 
Writers. And, thanks to one of my gals in Friday Writers reminding me, I finally launched the new blog on raw writing so we can post any and all raw writings that come out of our writing together during class/groups/retreats/anyevers. 

So, what is raw writing, exactly? 

Raw Writing, which I also might sometimes call intuitive writing, spontaneous writing, flow writing, on-the-spot-writing, not being in your head writing, writing from your heart writing, etc, is a term that evolved out of my writing together in community for fifteen plus years. I must have been using this term of raw writing enough in classes, etc, that it sort of caught on as an actual thing and now, here it is, an actual thing. What it basically is, is the process and result of writing in the moment on any given topic/prompt, thought, word, name, memory, etc, that we all do together for about ten-thirty minutes, giver or take. Then we come together and share. This is usually everyone's favorite part of writing with me and why, I truly believe, they keep coming back to write together with me.

 I have been writing and sharing (reading our raw writing aloud) in groups of all ages, backgrounds, dynamics, purposes, etc and have come to realize that by sharing our raw, unedited stories in the safety of community, we are revealing our truth, our unedited imperfect truth, which is what writing should truly aim to do (if we are at all concerned with doing something honorable with our work). For the most part, this raw writing makes the best, the very best writing. That's not to say you can't fiddle with it or add to it later, but more often than not, it is just perfect on it's own.

Moreover, witnessing the Raw Writing of others is one of the greatest gifts we can ever know. A gift you will remember sooner or later, sometimes much later when you need it most. Aaaaaaaaaah, you might say, so that's what so and so was talking about in her story about getting lost at the beach. I'm so glad I have that story to guide me...


Want to try it? 

What was your latest experience with raw? Raw food? Raw beauty? Raw truth? Raw fill in the blank?  Write it out, follow the path, see where it goes...follow the raw energy! And if you'd like to share it here, or there, please do. And remember: no edits. Not even the grammar or lack thereof. Just the raw words translated on the page. Enjoy it. 

Hope to write with you soon! Raaaaaaaaawks

Writing with Rox Weekly Prompt—Fun Dip, anyone?

Halloween candy that Ma took from my pumpkin every year the day after Halloween

Snickers
Baby Ruth
Almond Joy
Almond Roca (if I got any)
Heath
anything with nuts










Last night after Jude spilled his Halloween loot across the carpet, the same way we did as kids (is this really genetic?), I couldn't help but greedily eye the treasure. "Nice job, JJ!" I said, recognizing some old familiars I'd long forgotten: the single white Life Saver from the nearing elder man who answered the door in a gray sweatshirt, white hair atoss, the always reliable Smarties from the big FUN PAK, the plain M&M's, as well as the latest in candy fashion: bloody brain gummy, yummy earth organic lollipop (?), Halloween colored Kit Kat, laffy taffy...

What candy did you take from your child's pumpkin today? Which did your parent take from yours?

Writing with Rox Weekly Prompt—Crock Pot Poetry

One of my oldest bff's since junior high stayed with me for about six weeks this summer and insisted on buying a crock pot while she was here because, like me, she doesn't know how to cook.

"What do you mean, no crock pot?" she said, stumped that first week in the kitchen.

"I've got a blender," I offered.  "Oh, and a bread machine from Saver's that sort of works......Since when do Jews do crock pots?!"*

What luxury! Our joyous reunion delivered days of  eternal sunshining, long bike rides, and lake swims which repeatedly returned us ragged and hungry back to the Beach where the heat and nutty goodness of  slow cooked vegetarian stews awaited us. Eventually, sadly, fall days gave way to her departure back to Austin. She did not take the crock pot with her.

I'm fully aware of it beneath the counter next to the rice cooker. It's calling out for use, especially since I've gone back to doing things the hard way since Paula isn't looking. I kept asking her to show me how to use it because we both knew she was going to have to leave some day. "There's nothing to show," she said, "you just turn it on."

"But what do I put in it? How much of everything?" The concept totally baffles me. I am suspicious of things that promise to make something out of nothing by putting everything into something by pushing  a single button.

"Oy, Roc..."she mused, "what are ya, living in a cave?"

Some might say.

Last night I soaked a pound of chick peas (or as Ma would call them "gaaarbanzoes," note the hard Minnesota a and o) and I haven't a clue what to do with them now. It occurred to me I just might maybe use the crock pot, but jeez-oh-dear, where to start?

...

Please send your support in the way of recipes and crock stories* at once! And for fun, turn your recipe into a poem. Play around with line breaks, add words, memories, anything, spice it up, make it up... whatever it takes to get these poor chick peas to finish living out their life's purpose!

...

5 garbanzoes
             husked
                            squeezed
picked from the gardens by  an unknown hand

3 cups
                water             A lemon

parsley
sage
not thyme
no time.....

Hope to write with you soon! Chef Roxy

Writing with Rox Weekly Prompt—It's Alright to Cry

I was lucky to grow up in the "express yourself" decades of the seventies and eighties. Even though being on the receiving end of everyone's free-for-all expression could be painful at times—especially when I wasn't afraid to express myself by wearing leg warmers to school in the heat of LA—I regret none of it.

It was wild wonderful times for parents and children alike. Self help, "I" statements, empowerment, CHOOSE LIFE, call-in advice radio shows (remember Dr Toni Grant?).......everyone was invested in getting better somehow, working on themselves, doing some sort of personal growth. Ma was constantly attending "workshops," "seminars", est, intrigued by crystals and shamans; even dad was driving up to Esalen to find himself, which usually meant he was finding himself in a new relationship, but I give him credit for trying. He once described an encounter group he attended up there as the scariest thing he ever did. Self help was on the rise for us kids too; at the beachfront "open school" I attended in 6-8th grades, we regularly had "feeling sessions," which was essentially group therapy. 

One of the best things to come out of this age of trendy soul searching was FREE TO BE YOU AND ME, which we would listen to over and over again and act out in front of the relatives or stuffed animals or whoever'd care to see us be part of that "land that I see where the children are free..."   

One night we were all sitting around on the big paisley pillows in the living room with the newly pulled up hardwood floors--bye bye stringy white carpeting--and doing our weeknight thing. Ben and I were likely fighting or playing soccer in the hallway or wrestling while Ma and her boyfriend Jay lounged on the gigantic pillows, smoking cigarettes, just hanging out, literally...before video games, cable, etc—a huge round heaping ashtray in the center of the pile of pillows. Then Ma goes over to the record player and turns it up real loud to a song I'd never heard before...A big cuddly football player voice booms out of the big brown speakers..."It's alright to cry... crying gets the sad out of you..." The melody swells with a rich melancholia that my body seems to recognize at once... "Raindrops from your eyes... washing all the mad out of ya..."

I'm not sure who went first, but almost immediately we were all sitting in that huge heap of huge pillows crying our eyes out. Sobbing. Gushing. At one point Ma looked over at me and said, "it's alright to cry, honey," which made me cry even harder. Even my brother was crying because... why not? It's just what you did. It got the sad out of ya. It made you feel better. It was raindrops from your eyes and that was cool.   

                 How hard or long this went on or how deeply it ran, I cannot recall. I can recall the little hills of kleenex that fortressed around us, around our pillow mountain. I can recall Ma getting up a few times to set the needle back in place so we could hear the song again and I can recall the longing and relief my body experienced to hear it sung just one more time. 

               I can recall the calm afterwards, how we drifted quietly in our own little islands, eventually downstream back into the flow of life. 

I like to believe that in that age of self-help all the tears we shed that night were begging to come out, freed at just the right time. There was a lot going on for us and given the okay to release the depth of our feelings must have been a huge relief. I have mixed feelings about them being coaxed out by Hollywood, but that was the times, our life at that time. Our tears were supported, allowed, even invited by the times. It didn't even matter if Ma had the entire thing planned and was trying it out on us to see if it worked. 

I think it did. I'm not sure if I've ever cried that hard again.

When was the last time you had a good cry?

AND...    AND...AND...AND...AND...AND...AND...AND...

If it's been a while and you're feeling a little dried out, please consider crying into my bowl of tears here at the Beach at my upcoming WRITING GRIEF RETREAT on November 3 for a day of healing, community, and letting go. It was a powerful and loving retreat last year and promises to be the same this year. I have a few spots left!

... raindrops from your eyes...    Hope to write (and maybe cry!) with you soon!

Writing with Rox Weekly Prompt—"Here's 50 Cents and You Two F*ckers Can Take the Bus Home!"

A few weeks ago during Word Jam, we were writing about funny childhood stories and as usual I found myself writing the story about the time Ma got so frustrated with twelve-year-old me and my best friend Lisa, manic on Fun Dip and trouble in the back of the tan Volvo Wagon, that she slammed on the brakes a few blocks from the Santa Monica Pier and started yelling. She'd had it. "Here's 50 cents and you two fuckers can take the bus home!"

This well known and beloved line stands out not only around here at the Beach, but among childhood friends and family, Ma included. It's become so well known around here that it's often recited in unison, like church or some such. I've written about and told this story so many times that the truth of it is beginning to dim...was it two quarters or fifty cents? Did we actually get out of the car and take the bus home (which was not uncommon) or did we shut up and drive on? Did we catch the quarters when she threw them? 

As I was writing this story, yet again, likely for the hundredth time (I think every one of my students or healing groups had heard this story in some version over the twenty plus years that I've been doing this), it occurred to me that I had the perfect title for my memoir: Here's 50 Cents and You Two Fuckers Can Take the Bus Home!  which more or less encapsulates the story of me and Ma. Of course if you know Ma, whether in person or on the page, you know this also encapsulates exactly what makes Ma both so lovable and unlovable. The memoir is about my utter devotion to this dichotomy.

Folks, I've been struggling with "what is this memoir about?" as long as I've been writing. Seriously. And all of us who write memoir have the same struggle: what is this really about? It's hard to know, especially when it's your story you're writing, your life you're living, for Land Sakes! Because your story is about you.."all about" you, n'est pas? 

So how do I finally know this so clearly? Raw writing. Intuitive writing. Once again the power of raw writing, especially in community, is a never ending, always giving gift. Infinite! I've written this story so many times raw that it's recurring theme and consequent recurring response among readers, etc,  finally added up. I had no choice but to listen to myself. Listen closely. Listen again.

What's the title of your memoir? Your life story? What's the first thing that comes to mind? Even if you are not writing one or never wish to, what would the title be? It's sort of like "what's the soundtrack to your life?",  a question my dad loved so much he used to ask it of callers on his outgoing answering machine message back in the mid nineties. So, what's the title? Titles? The happy version? The corny version? The comedic or the melodramatic one? 

You'll be amazed at what you can learn from a title.

Please share (you can't copyright titles, remember?)!    Hope to write with you soon! 

Writing with Rox Weekly Prompt—Ode to the Rotary Phone

A few weeks back in Friday Writers one of the gals wrote about the dark red rotary phone of her childhood. Her mother, like most of ours back in the day, clutched the horn between neck and shoulder, the thick spiraling chord stretching to follow her from kitchen to backyard threshold, allowing her to double-task phone talk and mom duty. It was a sweet image, this homemaking mom stirring a pot of steamy soup or toothpicking a baking apple pie while laughing on the afternoon phone, kids playing in the yard...

And then there was Ma.  Of course I instantly remembered her tugging along her mauve rotary by the receiver, the clanking of the bell inside ringing in short tortured burps as it bounced against walls and abrupt corners she hadn't foreseen in hurried escapes to hidden rooms. I at once heard the familiar slamming down and the resonant hissing bell of a conversation that did not end well. I remembered the thick chord twisted into and through itself and the tangled knot it became on certain days and how for some reason I needed to chew on that knot with an inexplicable hunger. And I remember how her Marlboro smoke rings and curls of smoke followed and married into that thick mauve chord, curl on curl. And I remember the sound of that phone when I tried to call it... the endlessly base toned busy signal—ah-ah-ah-ah-ah— mean and loud and unforgiving.... and then, hours later, the freefalling relief I felt in my body, blue skies smiling at me, when at last the phone would ring, ring, ring...breathe, breathe, breathe....

Back home, sick with fever,  I heard the thick labor of dialing the number nine.


Your Rotary Phone stories if you please?

Writing with Rox Weekly Prompt—Back to School Special!

You heard me. Jude's starting kindergarten. While I'm going mad with emotion, Jude seems fairly indifferent. Tonight at the dinner table my friend asked him if he was excited and/or what he was going to do at KG and he answered, rather flatly, "I don't know."  If only she'd fit the word "wizard" into the question, he'd still be talking.

"Oooh... it will be lots of fun," I cheered, not sure to whom exactly I was directing said cheer. I asked my friend if she remembered her first day of kindergarten. She did not. Did I?

 Of course. How could I not? And before I could stop them, the words soldiered out of my mouth, landing right smack in front of Jude's tofu.

"What was so scary about it?" Jude asked. And here I thought he wasn't listening. How soon I forget. He's always listening. Silly, Mama. Think quick. Very quick.

"Well...it wasn't scary as in blood scary, but... it's just that Grandma forgot what time school started and I was extremely late and had to walk in front of everyone to my place in the circle on the hot concrete."

"Why Grandma was late? That's not scary!"


Of course I left out the part about the huge circle of strange, unfamiliar faces, eyes like boulders, weighting me into place. Don't even think about starting something.  Multiple hands reaching for my long blonde hair. A tall teacher with a whistle. Ma looking smaller and smaller as she walked away from our class, her soft, white, gauzy cotton like the soft white cotton clouds surfing the angel blue sky above. Ma leaving with the clouds. My voice rising above the singing, "Mommy! Mommy!"

Mommy gone.

A friendly stranger. Tight curls. Wire glasses and toothy smile. Not the teacher, but the teacher maybe in eighteen years from now. "It's okay, child. Don't cry for your mama. Why you finna cry for your mama?"

What do you remember from your first day of kindergarten/school?

Wild Woman Writing & Yoga Retreat

Wild Woman Writing and Yoga Retreat

Loving Your Wild       a day of nurturing

Saturday, September 15, 2012 

10am-4pm                       $69  

or what you can/scholarship/barter

        

Calling all Wild Woman Writers of new and yore... Even the wild needs to take time to calm, center, and nurture the whirlwind... Integrative writing and gentle gentle very gentle gentle/restorative yoga workshop 

for women writers of all ages, genres of wild, writing, & yogaing!

* Connect/reconnect with your wild woman tribe!

*Reawaken and stretch into your free spirit, your playfulness, your truth  

* Nurture/embrace/love the wild fear behind negative old thought patterns "I am too out of control!" "too loud!" "too much!" "too anything!" "unlovable!"  and lovingly write those old thoughts away and release them through your body so you can...

* Stretch/write into new ones like "I am fully alive!" "I am authentic!" "I love the sound of my own voice and song!"

* Write and witness the combined creative voices, poems, stories, and  memories that rise up in wild sweet community

    

Again I have exceeded the character limit...

Howdy Writers! Here is a recent reply to the last prompt from a former Intuitive Writing student of mine at the Loft, a truly amazing warrior of words...Enjoy!



Again I have exceeded the character limit.

I ran into an old classmate who read the beginnings of my memoir on my blog. I was embarrassed initially but then inspired. It has occurred to me, sadly but necessarily, that there will likely never be a magical time in my life when I can "sit down and do all the writing I want to do." Still, I am making an effort to cobble things together and continually thinking and exploring. 

Incidentally, this weekend was monumental. Reunion with Mom after three months was highly emotionally satisfying but not particularly noteworthy in of itself. I am also highly grateful for the compatibility she and Marshall, the man I'm seeing, seem to share.

I had my five year high school reunion on Friday night. I didn't want to go. I was afraid people would ask about my disappearing midway through senior year on account of my mental health, or about what I was doing with my life now and judge me accordingly, forgetting in the process of course that I am not in fact the center of the universe. Ultimately I decided that going would be a great way to face fear in the eye and overcome it. I arrived about twenty minutes late to a party of five, two of whom were talking to each other and the other two were girls from remedial classes that I knew of but really had no working relationship with. We made efforts at small talk, mostly centered on where the fuck is everyone? I started catastrophizing that it was a cruel practical joke, that the reunion was really somewhere else and was preparing to leave. My friend Gigi came, along with some others, and we made more (albeit more pleasant) small talk. I pushed myself to talk to people that I didn't know as well and ultimately ventured outside to reconnect with Steph. Steph ran in more popular crowd than I did and it felt as though little had changed in the five years leading up to this, a cool distance acting as a barrier between myself and my classmates huddled together. Adam, a hockey player I had class with in sixth grade but hadn't talked to since, broke the ice against all odds and we carried on like the friends we used to be. Marshall came to whisk me away and we had fun telling people that he was a long-forgotten classmate, but not before I turned my life and legal rights over to the mechanical bull. I rode three times, each time progressively harder, before at last deciding that I better not push my luck or the operator's hospitality. The rest of the night was spent laughing at drag queens and gyrating against poles and each other to hair metal and 80s pop. 

Saturday night I went to my first ever gay wedding, excitement prevailing among a melange of less intense emotions. Watching Daniel and Brian watch each other and dance together brought tears to my eyes and everything was selected and executed so exquisitely. I ended up making nice with my table neighbor who I mistakenly and narcissistically assumed had a vendetta against me in allegiance to Frank. Dancing was a (literally) hot mess and hard to leave. 

Sunday marked my worst day of work to date and was largely unremarkable. I listened earnestly to a litany of Marshall's concerns and fears, said what I could with hopes of placation, and realized both my own powerlessness and the fragility of the push and pull that defines relationships. When I got home, I logged on to facebook to commemorate my first year of sobriety. While I do get validation in doing this, the primary objective is to encourage others in recovery. The server was automatically logged in to my new roommate's account. One announcement from the newsfeed was particularly salient: Frank M. Harrell is now engaged to Aaron Jaccard. It was almost an afterthought. Almost. Jesus, I mean you go to one wedding and it's like every queer has to marry. Intellectually I was able to convince myself that I don't want that to be me, that I'd be isolated, certainly uncertain, that I don't want to be engaged at this point in my life. I feel as though I'm on that trajectory, but I can't make that step today. (And don't think that I would be ready after six months of being back together). But obviously it is a bigger issue than that. I haven't seen the bastard in four months and haven't seen his new squeeze much more than that. I combed pages for details before my slow-ass server brought me back to some semblance of sanity. I began speculating that they'll wed or elope to Vermont next month. I glowered, seethed that they have the gall to marry without having lifted a goddamned finger in the campaign to secure gay marriage. Neither have Brian and Daniel, to my knowledge, but their integrity, commitment, and longevity absolves them of my wrath. I want to badly to let this go. It's not my battle, it's not my spoils. I want so much as for my peers to see, think, and feel as I do. I want to sleep and not think about this, to focus on the beauty that is my life and not hone on this minutia. I want more. I want absolution. I want closure and vindication.    

—James C.

Writing with Rox Weekly Prompt—The Story You Really Want to Tell

A million trillion things have happened to you this weekend. Thinking and feeling back on today and yesterday, which story do you most feel like telling? What story, however big or small, boring or exciting, do you have an urge (or urgency) to tell/share?

What do I mean exactly? Well...say, you run out in a few minutes and there you run into someone you know at Cub or walking in Uptown or meeting someone for dinner or on the bike path or at Book Club or wherever you are... or your best friend calls, mother, whoever... What is the very first thing you are going to talk about? If you'd like, begin like this: "... I've been dying to tell you that..." or "OMG, guess what?" or "You'll never believe this, but..." or "Hey, I need an ear... would you mind listening to a sort of weird story about what happened to me this weekend?"

Go for it. Tell the whole thing. Don't worry about being boring or sounding dumb. This is the story you want to tell, the thing that happened to you, or with you, or... the story of something you saw or said or did.  You cannot do this wrong. It won't be boring. The only thing to keep in mind is that it must be a story/incident you really feel in your body/mind that you want to share. Take your time. Share here, there, anywhere.

Hope to write with you soon!

Roxy Goes Bhakti!

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My experience at Bhaktifest Midwest

By Roxanne Sadovsky Leave a Comment

I finally get around to returning Ma’s call a few days after the Fourth.

“So? How was it?” she wants to know. “Was it fabulous? Were you totally blissed out? Did your boyfriend come? What’s his last name again? Was the Kirtan Rabbi there?”

“It” was (and is) Bhaktifest, a three-day peace-out rooted in yoga, meditation and Kirtan — devotional call-and-response chanting, mostly in Sanskrit. An annual event in Joshua Tree, California, since 2009, Bhaktifest producers responded to the Midwest’s call for consciousness and took the Bhav (spiritual emotion, bliss) on the road, debuting Bhaktifest Midwest June 29-July 1 in Madison, Wisconsin.

Venue-wise, Madison’s Alliant Energy Center is more fairground than folk, a somewhat surreal host for a festival in favor of “raising the consciousness.” A sign greets us late Thursday evening flashing “BhaktiFest Midwest” theatrically against a dark country road with subsequent flashing that KORN will be screaming into Alliant in late July. All the same, we could be in Kansas or Oz or anywhere, because when we park our bikes at Willow Island the next morning, beside two freshly opened technicolor pink lotus blossoms, I’m certain I’ve left the home country of my head and have entered Kirtan-Land.

“It was good,” I tell Ma, my typical response to her call, less melodic than Shri Ram, Jai Ram and Jai Jai Ram, but enough to satisfy Ma’s need to know if my birthday weekend was well spent. I liken it to a Dead Show or the annual Hare Krisna Parade at Venice Beach, stuff she can relate to. I tell her I have a new yoga guru, Mark Whitwell, who actually lives near Venice Beach, so maybe she could take a class? Sadly, this is how I dumb it down.

But how do I explain to anyone, let alone my Jewish mother, that I spent the afternoon of my 42nd birthday in a tacky conference room singing to the Lord? I’m not even sure who the Lord is or which Lord I’m singing to — I don’t think Jews do “the Lord,” but this is just one of the things that bemuses me about chanting. The irony isn’t lost on me, but a quick peak at my blissed-out Bu-Jew boyfriend beside me in lotus pose confirms this is kosher and I’m back to the bhav in no time.

More concerning is why I am so achingly addicted to something I once wrote off as another empty fad, cloaked in woo. Plus, how does a spiritually challenged Los Angeleno raised tithing to Hollywood have faith in something — anything — without expecting to be disillusioned? I’m digging the bhav, but the bliss scares me to death. How can peace and love be so easy?

“Forget about your analytical mind,” says Pascale LaPoint of Kirtan Path, deemed “jewel of Bhaktifest Midwest” by emcee Shiva Baum, “allow yourself to be there.” The more she talks, the more stereotypical I feel. Our kirtan paths (and likely everyone else’s) are similar: you hear it for the first time and you “just know.” When LaPoint heard Krisna Das for the first time, she felt as though she was “coming home,” which is exactly how I felt hearing her chant “Jai Ganesha” at my inaugural kirtan last summer. Similarly, kirtan helped me out of a fairly serious funk; LaPoint says chanting turned her life around, and before she knew it, she bought a harmonium, taught herself to sing, found a couple musicians on craigslist and called up violinist, Nancy Lemke, with whom she happened to rideshare on a yoga retreat.

Like many of us, LaPoint’s gateway to kirtan was yoga and Krisna Das, “KD” to fans, whose pantheric rasp is pure liquid love, a jungle honey you feel in your spine. Ironically, I feel completely unloved upon meeting Das in person, following his afternoon workshop, the same one where I melodically consent to “find a way to live in the presence of the Lord!”

I even play the Jew card. “Come on Krisna! You had a Jewish mother, too!”

But it’s no use; he insists that it is not my job to change the world no matter how passionate I am or how messed up it is. Later I realize I’m upset because Das has (unintentionally) called me out on my tendency to seek external verses internal validation. He emphasizes what we all know, but rarely get: It’s not his or anyone else’s love I need — I need my own. And until we learn to cultivate deep self-love (through chanting, or whatever works), external love will never be enough.

Duh. I’m a therapist. I’ve known this a long time. I write about this stuff. I teach this stuff. But chanting, like yoga and the handful of other woo I do, is still teaching my body to know this.

Das also affirms that love is what chanting is all about — not religion, not God, not anything constructed by the mind. He says when we chant to all those Shris and lords, we are actually chanting to the deities within.

Recently, my therapist aptly likened my need for kirtan to an infant’s need for a response to her cry, in my infant case, a cry for hunger, love, holding…. Perhaps chanting provides the response to the call I have longed to hear answered for forty-plus years.

When I chant along to KD’s chant/love song “Heart as Wide as the World,” I cry huge weeping willowy tears of something mysteriously bittersweet, especially hearing “All I need is to be with you…all my prayers have been heard….” Perhaps the tears are not so much about the longing to have someone sing these words to me and truly mean them (though boyfriend take note), so much as me recognizing the sweetly ringing nectar of my own voice tenderly humming down my throat, before settling to safely rest against my own widening heart.

Copyright © 2012 Roxanne Sadovsky. All Rights Reserved.

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Category: Featured Tags: chant, kirtan, spirituality

Roxanne Sadovsky

About The Author | Roxanne Sadovsky

Roxanne Sadovsky, MA, MFA is a Twin Cities freelance writer, teacher and healer. She earned her Master's degree in counseling psychology from Antioch University Seattle (1998) and a Master of Fine Arts degree in creative nonfiction from The University of Minnesota (2004). Roxanne teaches Intuitive Writing and The Healing Memoir at the Loft Literary Center; her private healing practice (Writing with Rox) offers integrative workshops, healing groups, Wild Woman writing retreats/groups, classes in creative expression (memoir/intuitive writing/therapy; drama therapy, adult play therapy), and more in a safe, supportive, and playful community. For current classes, workshops, groups and healing work, visit writingwithrox.blogspot.com.

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