A Year of Living Dangerously

2010 was the year I decided to date again. Date consciously, that is. As opposed to accidentally -- like sleep walking -- which inevitably results in a few mysterious bruises the next morning. What I discovered in 2010 is what I already knew from dating in 2009, 2008, and, well, all the way back to 2002, when my life of serial monogamy came to an abrupt end:

Dating is dangerous.

While this discovery does not put me in the camp of Einstein, I do feel beholden to share my experience because dating is too often haloed in the shimmering light of sliver-screen fantasy. Especially when my married friends wax ridiculous about what a great life I must have as a single gal.

The truth is, dating is the work of a secret double agent skulking through enemy territory with no map and very little facility in the enemy’s language.

Put another way, dating is like waiting for the College streetcar. After five have passed going the other way and your toes have become rectangular ice cubes, you realize you could have been at your destination half an hour ago if you had just walked. When your streetcar finally does arrive and you sink with relief into the cold, red vinyl seat, the driver invariably announces that the streetcar will be short turning at the next stop. In other words, patience may be a virtue, but you’ll still likely pay a price.

If all my rich metaphor is still not getting my meaning across, let me explain it this way: The paradox of dating is that you have to spend time with someone in order to know if you want to spend more time with that someone. But the more time you spend with that person, the more dangerous dating becomes because if you discover that you don’t want to spend more time with that person, time has already been spent, and entanglement has already happened, and now you have a history with this person that you wish you didn't, leaving you a lot of regretting and re-visioning to do.

I know what you’re thinking: Jaded much?

Maybe, although jaded people don’t dust themselves off and try again. They simply stop the insanity. The activity of dusting off and trying again is the province of stupid people. And I am that province’s most patriotic citizen.

Nevertheless, when my married friends say they envy my single life, I no longer take offense, even though I know what they mean is that they think I have the freedom to try people out like an omnivore at a free steak-and-salad trough. But if my marrieds really wanted to honour my lifestyle, they’d give me a freaking medal.

"Let it be known that he who wears the Military Order of the Purple Heart has given of his blood in the defense of his homeland and shall forever be revered by his fellow countrymen." That’s the tag line for the Purple Heart medal, which one receives for courage in times of war, the medal I deserve because the war analogy is not an overstatement for dating, where advances are either too fast or too slow but always involve bloodshed.

To wit, let’s examine some of my own personal battle sites:

Battle at Mount Manipulation

I have a bad habit of falling for the wrong guy. Whatever the reason (which only my therapist really knows), it’s a battle I’m now consciously fighting, eyes open, bayonet pointed in the right direction this time – i.e. with pointy bit aimed away from my own chest (who knew?).

The only reason I have had to learn this lesson a bajillion times is that the lesson never arrives the same way twice. In the case of B at MM, a colleague spent five months ramping up his romantic rhetoric to the point of full-blown purple prose in an effort to get my attention. On one particular day, seemingly astonished by his own loving feelings, my suitor declared, “It’s funny, Liz, I don’t even want to manipulate you!”

A stupefied schoolgirl inside the enemy’s foxhole, I, at least, had the presence of mind to ask, “Why would you want to manipulate anyone?”

Based on his blank stare, I’m guessing he suddenly forgot how to speak my language. It was at this point I should have reviewed all my previous conversations with him, noting that they had revolved around his work dilemmas, his separation dilemmas, his family dilemmas, his dilemmas - him.

To his soldierly credit, my foxhole mate did mount a quick, if unsuccessful, defense: Didn’t I get that he was doing me a favour by telling me how he normally operates? Wasn’t I honoured that he had decided to put his manipulations aside for me? I mean, didn’t I get that I was the special girl he would NOT manipulate?

Gosh!

Thank god I had enough wits about me to not be flattered. I’m proud of that. But I’m not so proud of the next bit. Because for no good reason, I cut him some slack. His admission seemed self aware. And nothing seduces me more than self awareness. So, instead of wiping him out on the spot, I suspended my disbelief. In other words, I kissed him. And that’s when he went into full retreat. In less time than it takes to bayonet a gullible girl, I offered up my heart for a good skewering.

What did I learn from the Battle at Mount Manipulation? People say things. But they don’t necessarily mean them.

Always one to try to take a lesson from tragedy, what I gleaned from the B at MM was confirmation of what I consider to be a pretty healthy pattern, a new pattern I have worked hard to create in recent years. While other people prefer to go slowly, attenuating the truth of failure for far too many months before a relationship collapses, I have always preferred my truth delivered by FedEx. I’m with Malcolm Galdwell on the value of first impressions. They happen in the blink of an eye and they’re rarely wrong. So why waste time waiting for the details when you saw it all a flash? You could be out dating someone else instead! Or watching Mad Men!

Battle of the Energies:

Always one to choose adventure over good sense, I agreed to reconnect with a boy from my childhood who lives in the American west. We agreed to meet on neutral, exciting territory. I had already been in touch with him through Facebook for over two years, during which time we shared stories about our dating lives, getting into intimate detail and cheerleading each other with hopes for our respective happinesses.

What I actually knew about this man was this: 1) He studies alternative medicine. 2) He's into Buddhism. Two things into which I read a world of meaning, creating a human being who resonated in perfect harmony with my very own soul. I have nothing if not a really good imagination.

Within the first five minutes of our respective arrivals at the airport, and eager to fill the space of a thirty-year hiatus, Past-Life-Date-Boy (PLDB) tells me that he’s just spent the last ten days at an Ayahuasca ceremony. If you don’t know what that is (I sure didn’t, which is why PLDB explained it to me on the spot), it’s where shamans cast out peoples' demons with the aid of a very powerful and very illegal drug -- Ayahuasca. Turns out PLDB is a shaman-in-training, not to mention a dedicated Ayahuasca imbiber.

Huh.

And then . . . OH. MY. GOD. For real???

Kudos to me, though, because in that moment, I saw the flash. Un-kudos to me, however, for fishing my sunglasses out of my backpack and putting them on indoors.

Before I go any further, I have to admit to something that will become important to the story in minute. Two days before I left for that weekend, I dated someone in Toronto. By accident. When I told this to a friend, she politely said, “Oh, did you slip?” Well, kind of. At any rate, it was exactly the type of thing PLDB and I would have talked about via Facebook. In fact, I was looking forward to sharing the story with him because I knew he’d be thrilled for me. And I knew it would have no impact on our weekend.

An hour later, we were seated in a restaurant where I thought the time was right to lighten the mood. So I said, “You know, I’m so glad you did not arrive with shiny, white running shoes!” I was thinking of Seinfeld. Now I’m no fashion plate, but I do like a man in a good shoe, and PLDB arrived in beautiful brown leather brogues that made my knees buckle. As if to prove my observation was, indeed, funny, I threw my head back and cackled. But what I heard as my head lolled behind me was this: “That’s not funny.”

I immediately returned my head to its starting position and searched his face. Surely I misheard. Surely he was being ironic.

“No. For real,” he said. “That’s not funny.”

So, I stopped laughing. But he kept talking. “How would you feel if I had said that I was glad you were not 10 pounds heavier, or that I wished you wore Tommy Hilfigger, or that your shirt was ugly? I mean, if you are that superficial, Liz, then we really have nothing to talk about. I am a spiritual leader and I spend my time keeping my energy pure because I need to be present for the people who have demons that need casting out, people I am healing, which means I don’t have time for superficiality…” etc. and so on for about ten minutes as I sat there chin trembling, willing myself not to cry.

When he was done, I excused myself and went to the washroom where I did just that. Cried. Hard. Then I returned to the table and apologized. “You know, everything you said is true — superficiality is not cool.” A good beginning, I thought. “I was joking,” I concluded with confidence. I guess he didn’t know me well enough to understand my humour, which is why it’s important to remember that it can take a long time to get to know someone. Or, according to my fast-track approach, my insensitive joke revealed PLDB for the humourless jackass he is.

Back at the B&B twenty minutes later, PLDB says he has a few calls to make. I am in the same room, so I can’t help but hear him warning the person on the other end of the phone not to say the “A-word” (i.e. Ayahuasca). Why is that? Could it be because . . . IT’S A FREAKING ILLEGAL DRUG???

After he gets off the phone, he asks me why I look so tired. Here is my opening. It’s now when I deem it best to tell him about my accidental date, a story similar to ones I have told him on other occasions, ones he has previously enjoyed. This will really break the ice, I think. He listens, a grim look on his face, and then goes to take a bath. The next thing I know, it’s morning, and he’s sleeping on the floor.

Always quick locate the nearest exit (despite the fact that it takes me far too long to use it), I realize I have two very good friends in this city who would gladly put me up. When PLDB wakes up, I offer him the B&B, saying I will cover my half of the cost for the next two nights. But he is one step ahead of me. He tells me texted his friends the night before -- from the bath! -- informing me that he will be staying with them for the next two nights, not offering to cover his share of costs. Then he takes a shower (how did he get dirty between the bath he took before bed and the morning?) When he emerges from his shower, I boldly say, “I think things are going south . . . ” and that’s when the battle begins . . .

PLDB: Well I’m not sure what you expected, Liz. When I arrived, I could see that you were COVERED with someone else’s energy.

Liz: What?

PLDB: No judgment. But I’m talking about the guy you dated back home before coming here. No judgment.

Liz: Oh that? It’s nothing. I mean I don’t know what it is yet. But I thought you’d be happy for me.

PLDB: Listen, Liz, let me tell you something. Your energy is really dirty – no judgment – and I am a spiritual leader who needs to keep my energy clean. You are covered with that guy’s energy from back home, which is also really dirty by the way, and I can’t have that around me – no judgment. I need to stay pure. No judgment.

Liz: . . . I just assumed you had a girlfriend and friends with benefits back home …

PLDB: Sure I do, but the difference between you and me is that I compartmentalize. No judgment.

Liz: (Ohhhhhhh, I see how this works . . . )

PLDB: Listen, Liz, let me give you some advice: when you plan a weekend with one guy, don’t date another guy just before you leave -- no judgment.

And there it is: The Truth. Something I can actually understand — his ego is bruised. Fair enough. So, I apologize for my assumption that just because we live a continent apart and have not seen each other in over thirty years and are not, in fact, a couple, that I thought it would be okay to date another man in my own city. I was less sarcastic in person. In fact, since I generally assume I’m wrong about most things, I actually grovelled.

PLDB: I’m not upset, Liz. This is not about being hurt. This is about your dirty energy — no judgment.

Liz: Um, would mind refraining from using the word “dirty” because, in fact, there IS judgment in that word.

PLDB: Oh yes, I’m sorry. I forgot how important words are to you . . .

Rightly or wrongly, I’m always willing to take responsibility for whatever I have contributed to a situation and, therefore, always willing to put things right, if I can. So, I canceled the MoMA date I made with a friend while PLDB was in the shower because when I told PLDB about it, he asked, incredulously, “Aren’t you even going to give us a chance to recover?” So, I agreed to spend the day with him. And that's how I learned that a day spent with [insert appropriate expletive here] is a day lost.

After breakfast, Mr. Spiritual Purity bought a pack of cigarettes. And throughout the day, Mr. Non-Superficiality peppered his stories with all the people he hangs out with in Hollywood, including Harrison Ford and Melissa Ethridge, as well as casually mentioning the role he’d be getting in Nurse Jackie next season. And all day I did what I do best: I asked him questions about his work, his life, and his thoughts. And he asked me . . . nothing.

Just before the day ended, I posed PLDB a question about a woman he’d been seeing back home. Well, you’ll never guess. Turns out they met at an Ayahuasca ceremony. He was casting out her demons. Also turns out she was some hot, young darling of the Hollywood crowd who, for some mysterious reason, fell in love with PLDB. Huh. Could it have been the drugs??? So, they start dating, but she becomes so addicted to the ceremonies — I wonder why? Could it have been . . . the drugs??? — that her “wounding” surfaces and, guess what? she “dirties” PLDB’s energies. So he dumps her. Surprise!

I tried to find a way to explain my failed weekend with PLDB to myself all the way back to Toronto, but it was a girlfriend who put it most succinctly, “That’s just a drug addict.” Another friend added this clarifying nuance, “That’s just an asshole.”

There’s no question that some poor boy out there -- well, many boys, if we're going to be honest -- are cursing the day they met me, cataloguing all my faults, insensitivities, crazinesses, etc. But that does not make me feel any better about my wasted air miles and the fact that the MoMA was closed the day I finally jettisoned PLDB.

I share with you these little morality tales because I do wonder about dating as an enterprise that demands enormous time, usually more sums of money than I’m comfortable with, more often than not fattening foods, and, of course, exposes one to some truly fucknutty fucknuts. Which is why I like to move things along at lightning speed. I don’t want a potentially time-wasting and fat-making activity to clog my Mad Men schedule for more than a night, even when the show is not scheduled to air again until 2012.

But then comes the dusting off, as always, which I did recently, because I’m a glutton for hope, if not punishment. This time, however I met a man who . . . wait for it . . . asked me a question! On the first date! In fact, he asked a zillion questions that night. And for the past three months, he has asked a zillion more – a quality I have not seen in a man since 1996. Also, he pushes me . . . to excel at the things he recognizes are valuable to me: writing and painting. And although his background is not literary, he has taken the time to read my book draft and give me feedback. Honest feedback.

While I wait for his other, very sexy man-sandal to drop, I am enjoying the peace this dating ceasefire has brought. My new guy does not make declarations, never mind purple declarations, he can't back up with actions, which, so far, have been honest, sweet, consistent, and solid. He has never made mention of my dirty energy, not even when it might have been appropriate to do so (I’m thinking of the minor hissy fit I threw in Mexico when our tennis instructor lobbed my guy all the balls, or so I thought. Turns out, my guy thought I was getting all the lobs. Perception is everything. But he didn’t throw a fit. He put his arms around me and said, “You were so great out there today!”)

If dating dangerously for a year – or ten – means I had lessons to learn, I’m really hoping I’ve learned them. Choosing someone who actually takes an interest in others is definitely worth a few battles lost because it could mean I might actually win the war. Or, even better, change my fucked paradigm completely so that I no longer see dating as the enemy. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves . . .

Still and still . . .

Technically, what I’m doing is not ashraming.

First of all, ashram is not a verb, although I’ve made it one (the way I did with pretzel, as in do NOT pretzelize yourself to please someone else. It never works).

Second of all, an ashram is a place where one goes to find seclusion in order to undertake close spiritual study, often including yoga and meditation practice. I did not go to such a place. I stayed home, which is why my friend Kim refers to it as "homeshram." But I did meditate during homeshram. Not daily. Just once with a group.

But the overall Lizshram plan was most definitely to undertake close study. Of myself. Of how I'm doing. Of what I need in order to be okay. To make this so, I unplugged from Facebook and emails and chose not to see anyone socially for a week. I wanted time to write, paint, think, cry, and maybe even finally hang the one piece of art my fire did not consume.

The piece survived my fire because it was in Toronto. I had been storing it with extended family while at grad school but wasn't able to retrieve it when I later moved to Montreal because it wouldn't fit it into my packed-to-the-gills truck. It never occurred to me that the quarter-inch thick (i.e FLAT) art work leaning against the back wall of the extended family member's garage, which is the size of most people’s houses, would be a big deal. It wasn't. It was a HUGE deal to him. And since I couldn't get it out of his garage because I had no money to transport it, he took matters into his own hands and simply gave it to his son, who was too young at the time to see why this was tantamount to theft. I can write about this now because the issue did finally get resolved and the love was restored all around.

The art piece – a blurry image of what looks like two figures standing on a beach, the tension between them palpable and moving – was made by a divorcing friend who gave it to me after I gave her refuge in my home before she was deported back to England. When my own so-called life partnership ended, I got the piece in my own so-called divorce. So, as you can imagine, having something of such symbolic import then taken from me by my family caused a lot of heartache. Feeling helpless, I decided to get all Buddhist on my own ass and told myself it was better the piece hang on a wall than languish in a garage. But, the truth is, mostly what I thought was, How could they?

Today, however, I realize that this so-called theft saved my art from burning in my fire. The fact is, sometimes we don’t see the reason behind things for years and years. That’s why I have learned to wait things out a little longer.

It also reminded me that there's always more than a few ways to tell a story. When I’m overwhelmed, I tell it like a horror movie or a soap opera. When I have had enough time to feel, cry, and heal, my heart opens and I become more grateful, which makes my stories more generous.

The last few weeks have been overwhelming. And I’ve been angry. Correction, the last few months. Since Andy died. And before that, too. Facing the thought of re-building after my fire often sent me to my bed for days of weeping, movie watching, and popcorn scarfing. In contrast, Andy’s death didn’t make me cry for months on end. Or even weeks. In fact, after the first few tears, it stopped them altogether. His death has been so big that I have gone numb.

So much so I can still barely look at his pictures, although I did recently force myself to tape a pic of Andy in his plane to my wall because I was convinced I’d paint my way through the numbness. But I can no more paint him than I can look at him.

I think of Andy more now than when he was alive. Correction, I think more about our childhood, during which time I became myself through him. I am putting emphasis on our childhood because anything that belongs to my childhood belongs to Andy as much as it belongs to me. Andy formed my thoughts and ideas. He was my teacher, my tormentor, my refuge, my other half. With barely two years between us, it never occurred to me that he was anything other than my own brain and beating heart.

When we were around 9 and 11, Andy hatched a plan to get up at 5 am so that we could go exploring our gated community in Manila. We’d walk around the well-kept streets lined with Spanish-style houses, also walled and gated, with bougainvillea and oleander spilling over concrete or edging between iron gates. I can’t remember what we talked about. It didn't matter. We were a tribe.

On one particular morning when we got home from exploring, Andy put on a record and told me to listen closely to the lyrics. "Billy Don’t be a Hero." When the song ended, I asked Andy to explain it to me. He told me it was about a soldier going off to war. And that he died. I burst into tears. I thought of Andy going to war, and of him dying. What would I do without Andy? He probably laughed. Not mean-spiritedly. Andy was not mean or insensitive. He just didn’t cry his emotions.

A week before ashram, my friend Abi gave me Tracy Emin’s sort-of memoir called, "Strangeland." In it, Tracy traces a trajectory from being the daughter (and twin to a boy who ends up in jail) of an eccentric Turkish businessman who loses his fortune and more-or-less abandons his family, to surviving her childhood with her English mother who is forced to squat in her husband's abandoned house while working a series of terrible jobs in order to care for her kids, to Tracy chain smoking and drinking and fucking her way through her constantly breaking heart, only she breaks it a thousand times more through her own misguided attempts at cauterizing her childhood wounds.

I am not a chain smoker or a drinker or compulsive fucker, but I do have other unhealthy ways of numbing my pain.

Tracy writes about one of her loneliness dreams – (I have those, too!) – in which a boy she loves invites her to go with him to the sea wall in her home town. Tracy is so moved by the wall's beauty she says, “it’s beautiful,” just before the boy plunges a knife into her stomach. As blood pumps into her hand, instead of describing how she feels, she writes, “The sea is begging to disappear.”

[Thank you, Shawna Cooper, for this most evocative pic]

My bed has also begged to disappear. That was a few years ago, long before Andy died. But that thought is no longer possible. Andy has effectively saved my life by losing his. We can’t have another death. Even me.

Tracy wakes from her loneliness dream and says, “The fucking bastard: tricked by my own loneliness, and it fucking knew.”

Yes, loneliness does fucking know – it knows where you live and which doorbell to press and which dark alley to take you down in order to finish the job. It comes looking exactly like the love you crave and then it laughs as it beats your once-beautiful face into something no one could love.

Tracy writes, “Have you ever longed for someone so much, so deeply that you thought you would die? That your heart would just stop beating? I am longing now, but for whom I don’t know. My whole body craves to be held. I am desperate to love and be loved. I want my mind to float into another’s. I want to be set free from despair by the love I feel for another. I want to be physically part of someone. I want to be joined. I want to be open and free to explore every part of them, as though I were exploring myself.”

Yes. Tracy. Yes.

I feel it still, but I fear I also lost the ability to long, to believe, to hope. I have longed so hard for some people that I wonder if have spent not only all my longing on them but my innocence as well – my eye-popping belief in a love that would be transcendent, connected, and divine, while my stupid heart stopped at nothing to give, give, give, and give.

A few weeks ago I remembered how I used to make gifts for people I loved. For a man I once loved, I made a series of shadow boxes with his first book of poetry inside each box. In the first box, the book was pinned to the back wall like a butterfly specimen, and a small key hung on a nail beside it with a locked padlock on the outside of the box. It was called Fetish Object. In the second box, the book was flayed open with each page cut into petal shapes, every two pages glued together with a copper wire in between that helped me shape the petals once the glue had dried, the excess wire curling out from the pages like golden stamens. Transformation. In the last box, the book was again at the back of the box, but in front of it were layers of acetate hanging at intervals, and on which I had photocopied my love letters to him, a kind of palimpsest of love you had to look through to get to the picture of us I had glued to the cover of his book. It was of us dancing at his book launch. Love Letter.

For the next lover, I made a painting of his son.

And the one after that, I made a painting of his daughter.

After that, there was no one I wanted to make anything for.

When I was ten, my mother finally let me get my ears pierced. Andy bought me a pair of earrings from the grocery store just outside our village. Even then I knew I could not wear them and never did. The posts were not made of good-enough metal. The fronts were flat, white plastic discs with green leaves printed on them. I loved them because Andy bought them for me. But I didn't think they were pretty, and that made me cry. Secretly. Almost like I knew I would be punished for that thought.

Later, back in Canada, when we were teenagers, Andy had his best friend make me a pendant in shop class. It was silver, shaped like a telephone. I loved talking on the phone in those days (not anymore). He gave the pendant to me for Christmas. I wore it constantly. I kept the earrings and necklace right to the end.

It occurred to me the other day that my fire spared me anything that would remind me of Andy. Earrings and pendant gone. Not to mention all the love letters from people who once loved me, and all the art books they gave me. The fire made it as if I have never been loved at all. Where is the concrete proof? Andy gone. Letters gone. Dedications gone.

Andy will never stand up for me at my wedding as he did for Justin. This missed "milestone" seems to be not only about how I wanted to impress Andy, to show him that I was capable of succeeding at life (however conventional, and however much I challenge those conventions), but also about how I wanted him to see me joyous, blossoming in the light of a beloved. With their wives and children, it seemed that Andy and Justin now belonged to their own tribe. I wanted to belong with them. But mostly, I wanted Andy to tell a room full of people that he loved me. Yes, that's what it's about: to hear Andy love me. I know he did. But still . . .

Andy will never again spend time thinking about the perfect gift for me. But what does that matter when what is given can so easily be taken away.

I'm almost done my ashram, but I am not sure I am any further along. And that may be because I am not sure where I am going.

But despite it all, I am grateful. Or try very hard to be. Because I don't want to spend whatever time is left feeling bitter, or numb.

I am grateful for the message another Liz Phillips sent me the day before ashram began -- a young woman almost exactly twenty years my junior, who bears my name, who friended me on Facebook for fun, and who wished me well, almost like receiving a message from my younger self.

I am grateful for Dawn, my sister-in-law, my soul sister, who sent me a bouquet of Lisyanthus (pronounced Lizzy-anthus, funnily enough) – flowers that look like A-line organza skirts circa 1920. Dawn, who makes me feel feminine when most of the time I feel like a bull in a china shop.

I am grateful to Cody, my chosen brother, who makes the kind of jokes that Andy did and Justin still does -- perfectly timed, always off colour, ripping the laughter right out of me in spite of myself. Cody, always there when I need him, and most often when I haven't even noticed a train barelling down the tracks. He has restored something I thought I had lost along the way: trust.

I am grateful to Abi for always recommending exactly the right book. But exactly. And at the exact right time. Like she knows what my heart needs and when. "Strangeland" was made for Lizshram.

I am grateful to Zane for Herman Hesse's "Siddhartha," which I also read this week, and which reminded me that in everything there is both sinner and saint, lightness and dark; and that what binds all things and all people, joyous and painful, is love.

I am even grateful to the men who have loved me and left me because I honestly believe they protected me from themselves.

And I am grateful for Shy, who always knows when to crawl into my lap and curl up into a little ball of safety, cracking my chest wide open with a love I am only beginning to learn -- the unconditional love of caring for another being.

I am especially grateful for all the unconditional love that has come my way from my embarrassment of family and friends -- my father, Justin, Jacline, Mark and Tonya, Kim, Lilly, Diana, Rosemary, Freyda, Sara (all the Saras) and all the hundreds of childhood and adulthood friends who have crossed my path to lend me a hand, to give me refuge, to love me no matter what -- my definition of riches and my very reason for living.

A close friend of Dawn’s in Ottawa shared a story with me a few weeks ago about her grieving friend. This friend was told that in the Jewish tradition it is a sin to spend your life with the dead. In other words, you must grieve. But not for too long. Because while you are alive, you are supposed to live. You can't follow the dead to where they have gone. So don't try.

Being a terrible Jew, I have no idea if this really is Jewish folk wisdom. But I am grateful for this story, which I pull out each time I feel the pain of being alive when Andy is not. The thing is, Andy was always the first of us in the family to live -- to really live! I still don't know how to live like he did. But even from where ever he has gone, he's still showing me the way as he lives through Dawn -- who has become as much a part of me as my own brain and my own beating heart.

Elephants

There are two in particular I want to bring into the room. Because if I’ve learned anything from my life as an-experiment-in-trying-to-repress-my-most-neurotic-fears-in-public, it’s that the resulting eczema of the soul is not worth a nanosecond of social acceptability.

[This is from http://www.wandelmaier.com/]

No need to fear that I am about to now reveal something so humiliating that you will feel obliged to be humiliated on my behalf. Nay, the elephants I want to invite into my blog’s game park are not the kind to charge a crowd (although I wish they would, because I could really use the ticket sales right now). The kind of wildlife I’m talkin’ ‘bout are more like freak-show midget pachyderms sourced straight from Lilliput and put on stage at Liz’s Internal Circus of the Neurotic and Insane. To you, this tiny elephant can do as much harm as a fairy pinned to the back of a glass display case.

To me, however, this captive little beast, when hidden behind my curtains, can cause untold damage to the whole backstage area of my psyche.

Elephant #1. Let’s call her Anxiety of Influence, or Annie for short.

Here’s her story: When I was at grad school making my Chuck Close painting adaptations, I had this vision of Chuck’s head encircled in daisies. To say I obsessively thought about painting daisies on my Chuck Close paintings 24/7 is an understatement. If I could have invented more hours in a day in which to think about this, I would have. But I didn’t put the daisies on him because I couldn’t justify it to my peers or committee. And at grad school, you have to justify everything if you want to be taken seriously as an artist. If you can’t theorize it, you’d better not go ahead and just do it, because then something really terrible might happen, but I can’t tell you what because I never found out. I didn’t put flowers on a pair of Chuck Close portraits until the summer before my fall graduation when it seemed safe. They surely couldn’t kick me out at that point.

The only person to see the Daisy Chucks immediately asked to borrow them for his office. He was a prof, and also one of my closest friends at school, a guy my age, but with an art career and a wife and a kid. (That should be beside the point really. But this tiny detail might explain my ensuing bitterness.)

When I finally painted the daisies on the Chucks, instead of making a crown of daisies, as was my original plan, I painted them growing out of his flesh, like a disease, obscuring his face in quite an original way since you’re not really supposed to obscure faces in portraits.


Cut to a year later and this prof/friend, who had been developing a career out of making drawings of brushstrokes from old famous paintings, was suddenly not only now making portraits, but was painting faces obscured by what looked like flowers or snow flakes!

I was outraged. Sickened. Hysterical. But mostly, I was pissed at myself for not putting my own project out there first.

[This is from a wonderful illustrator, Bill Peet, at www.billpeet.net]

The anxiety of influence is no joke, my friends – people really do take your ideas and run with them. And this possibility is so frightening, it’s enough to choke out even the hardiest bud of an idea. But anxiety of influence is also silly because ideas cannot really be owned. (Although I’m guessing a few Americans might argue this point.)

But more to the point, there is no real way to police idea theft anyway (although some Americans think there is). But even if there was, I am far, far, far too lazy to be chasing down idea thieves, and far too vain to wear one of those polyester police uniforms. I have better things to do (and wear). Like wallow in self pity in my coffee-and-egg-stained pajamas while one of my great ideas is made even better by a painter who is far more accomplished. Mostly because he actually bothers to paint. And because he bothers to have shows.

I’ve been turning this story over in my head for a few years now, wondering what to make of it, because the truth is, beyond its value as a self torture device, it actually holds little power. I don’t believe this prof/friend meant to be an asshole. I honestly don’t think he tried to scoop me. I think my paintings, staring at him in all their Liz-infused daisy glory from the wall opposite his desk, simply influenced him. And isn’t influence, if not outright plagiarism, one of the highest forms of flattery?



Why am I dredging all this up? Because I’m back at it. I’m making paintings of men with flowers. And I’m scared. I’m scared that if I don’t do it quick, someone else will do it before me. It seems patently obvious to me that now that I want to make these spectacularly original portraits again, every other painter on the planet is going to want to make portraits of men with flowers, too. And they will likely do it faster, better, and for more money. I just know it.

At art school, no one seemed to express a shred of anxiety when we all sat in one room painting from the same model, even the people on either side of me who had more or less the same view as I did. All the resulting paintings were different because no two people had the same interpretation. Duh! This is one of the biggest clichés of art school, and yet its lesson rarely gets absorbed. Or, maybe every other student did absorb this lesson, just not me. That’s entirely possible. In my better moments, I like to think of myself as a late bloomer. In my worst moments, a complete moron who would rather contemplate fearful thoughts than put some colourful goo on canvas.

[This is from http://floridausaimages.com]

So, I’ve decided to drag Annie, my tiny fear freak, out from behind the curtains and off the stage into the audience where everyone can see her – for free! I can’t keep Annie hidden away in the hopes that no one else breeds a tiny freaky elephant named Fanny or Tammy for their own personal Circuses of the Insane. Because they just might. And I can’t stop them. I invite those people to make their own men-with-flowers paintings and then show them and then sell them. I double dare you. It won't stop me from making mine (today). Because I know that Annie is still my Annie, even if she gets cloned and the clone is named My Annie. My Annie will always be my Annie, my furless fearful friend, until the day I finally kill her.

So, with you all as my witnesses, I’m officially putting a stop to Annie’s tiny marauding parties into the painting retreats of my soul. I am going to do what the Thais did when the Japanese were poised to invade during World War II. They simply let the Japanese in. They called this strategy something like “bending with the wind” (which sounds a lot like a Kama Sutra position I’d like to try, which bring us to our next elephant . . . )




Elephant #2: Anxiety of Spinsterism, or Spinny for short.

Oh, I’m Spinny alright. Or, at least I have been for the last few months, dragging my heart around like an extra limb that requires its own wagon. Remember my insane crush from the last post? Well, let me tell you, insane does not begin to describe the complete annexing of my brain that took place (less like a Thai bending with the wind, and more like a PMSing woman banging on the door of chocolate factory at 3 am. I was helpless.)


Spinny is an elephant on amphetamines on her way to a rave to score some ecstasy. She is so filled with delusions of love that she will do an all-night interpretive dance to prove it. Fear of rejection does not slow Spinny down. Just the opposite. It amps up her drive to locate the right drug that will bring on a two-month-long hallucination of requited love.


In my short-but-heartbreaking time on this planet, I’ve learned a thing or two about myself as Spinny. Such as, delusions are a great pain reliever. So are popcorn, cake and a rom-com movie marathon. But delusions are better because they cost nothing, they won’t make you fat, and you can invent stories ad nauseam without having to worry about what people think of you. And that’s because they all happen behind closed doors, with the eye shades pulled, inside your very own home entertainment system in your head, where you can access every delusional channel imaginable.



My delusions enable me to make up excuses for why a once-but-briefly-interested-in-me man has withdrawn, for instance. Here’s a classic: he’s intimidated by my searing intelligence. Or, he can tell that I will scale his emotional walls faster than the last record-breaking climber of Mount Kilimanjaro. Or, he thinks I’m funnier than he is. Or, he can’t compete with my dog, which is just silly. Because no one should even try to do that. Shy trumps everything.



But I’m tired of these delusions because all they do is stall the inevitable truth: He’s just not into me. And although I really am a whirling dervish of fear of rejection most of the time, the one thing I actually don’t fear is the truth. I only invent stories when I don’t know what’s going on. But I really shouldn’t count on others to just be honest because experience has shown me that people think honesty will hurt your feelings. I don’t know why. It would cause so much less damage if a man could just say, “You know, I like you. You’re OK. But I’m not feeling more than that.” That would be more than fine with me (after I shed a few tears, of course, but I would do that privately so as not to burden the truth teller with my self pity because, at that point, the truth teller would deserve a fucking medal.)

But I can’t control other people. So, I’m going to take matters into my own hands. Spinny, your days are numbered. And I mean that kindly. I know that you wonder why you keep dating men who explain irony to you during movies because they only just got it themselves, or who use the dog-ate-my-essay excuse, even if it does not apply to why he’s rejecting you (any excuse being good enough for you, Spinny), but I honestly believe that these men are wonderful because they keep showing you what you don’t want. And that’s just as important as what you do want.


In the last episode of the last season of 30 Rock, Liz Lemon has a moment of clarity during a YMCA singles dodge ball game she attends in the hopes of finding Mr. Good Enough. Finishing a conversation she started with Jenna the day before, she stops playing dodge ball to inform her hottie opponent (who was not privy to the conversation the day before, but no matter),

“I’ll tell you what I do want. I want someone who will be monogamous, and nice to his mother. And I want someone who likes musicals but knows to just shut his mouth when I’m watching Lost. And I want someone who thinks being really into cars is lame and strip clubs are gross. I want someone who will actually empty the dishwasher instead of just taking forks out as needed, like I do. I want someone with clean hands and feet and beefy forearms like a damn Disney prince. And I want him to genuinely like me, even when I’m old. And that’s what I want.”

Her opponent listens with rapt attention, but that’s because he doesn’t speak a lick of English.

Apart of from Lost and the beefy forearms, neither of which are on my wish list, I’m with Liz. Especially re strip clubs. SUPER GROSS. I'd like to add to her list: I also want a man who is as obsessed with Battlestar Gallactica as I am, and who does not explain irony to me as if it’s as opaque as a brick box sealed in a lead coffin. And I wouldn't mind a man who I think is the dog's ruff, who also likes me back. That would be nice. A tall order, perhaps, but I like to dream big.

[http://www.elephantjokes.co.uk/]

So, there you have it. Two neurotic elephants I am not so much bringing into the room as I am putting out to pasture. Sayonara, my wee fear-filled friends. May you find your tall, green grasses elsewhere.

Having said all that, I know that next month around this time, I will be banging at the door of the nearest chocolate factory at three in the morning, weeping loudly enough for the neighbours to hear – in Buffalo. But I forgive myself already. Because god knows one of the other things I’ve learned about myself in this crazy Sunday Night Movie I call my life: I never kick a girl when she’s down.