Then and now

Did I ever really look like this? Good lord. As far as I can tell, I was about 22, working at Annie's Santa Fe in Kansas City, a Tex-Mex theme restaurant on the Country Club Plaza. It was around 1974 or 1975, my first restaurant job and the first time that people called me "Ruby," a name so enduring that I still have friends who refer to me that way.

I have no memory of the picture, or (surprisingly) of the dress. I can see that I was wearing one of my hand made pins but I don't remember what it said. I produced lots of hand made pins back in the day. My favorites were my "It's not my fault" buttons and (as my brother reminded me today) the "Learning to love cheap things" pin. I was a cartoonist, too, in my early 20s. The one thing I recognize in this picture is the bra - the inspiration for a series I called "Strapless Bra Comics." It was a strip about a mousy girl who, when she placed her strapless bra beneath her pillow, had crazy psychedelic dreams about exotic adventures, spy intrigues and passionate love affairs.

The last panel of every strip featured me, waking up in the morning, remembering the dreams. The bra strap was always visible from under the pillow.

My favorite part was drawing my hair which was much as it is now except hennaed a deep shade of purplish red.

Certainly I was stoned when the pic was taken. Smoking weed figured heavily into my day to day routines at that age. Probably I had been drinking, too. When I worked at Annie's, if we wanted to get high, we would stick our heads through the dishwasher window where the dishwasher was inevitably always smoking a joint. We would take a hit, then keep working. The bartenders presented us with shots of tequila on demand. Oh my god, what an era!

I look at this picture in awe. I was so juicy. Bloody hell, look at those lips! Though I'm no longer beautiful like that, the thing is, I'm so much happier now. The woman in the picture above was incredibly anxious, angry, bitter, full of roiling, unresolved issues, fear - and unfortunately - raging with hormones. I had no idea, yet, that my life's path was to be a healer. I didn't know which way was up or down. In other words, I was a hot mess.

I was exactly like a character in a Woody Allen movie: really smart, cynical, funny, sharp, wounded, neurotic. And I loved sex. Boy did I NOT enjoy my life at that time.

How funny to see this snap. I've never laid eyes on it before. Someone who worked with me at Annie's posted it to the FB page of a friend of my brother, who immediately recognized me. This is what I love about FB - the impossible connections we make there. When I first saw the pic, I thought, "Oh, that woman looks a lot like I did as a young woman." It actually took me a few minutes to realize it is me. Wow. Or should I say: whoa!

59 suits me so much better than 22 - on the inside. On the outside, well ... wow.

Shalom.


The real me.

Portents of a good year ahead

A column of light in Lincoln Park.

Hanging out with the ragged edges of my life was hard work! I hardly had time or energy for anything else,perhaps because most of my loose ends exist at the furthermost edges of the tapestry of my life. It's lonely out there in the hinterlands of my experience, like going to the North Pole. Every ragged edge represented something unresolvable, like friendships that dropped off for no apparent reason, like the Holocaust, my disastrous marriage, hence long ago I put these issues aside. Taking them up again to examine and wonder about them was like being exiled to Siberia. Yikes.

Did that make any sense?

Since Yom Kippur I am returned to a place closer to the center of this flying carpet of my life. I'm calmer, not dreaming about my ex and Hitler, returned to more normal life rhythms. My cooking mojo has reappeared, which is always a good sign. I've been hard put to make myself a salad in the last few weeks, but yesterday I made an apple pie which is - may I say - absolutely delicious. Tonight I'm making cod based fish cakes with cilantro and fresh ginger and garlicky greens for Shabbat. I even invited my Tennessee Avenue brothers to come for dinner.

My energy is returning!

Other promising signs include the lovely thunderstorm last night that cleared the last of the ugly Aryan Nation march energy off East Capitol street and out of the park. Whew! The energy was so rotten, it almost literally smelled bad. But it's gone now and the street feels clear and refreshed. Lovely!

Life is good and I am grateful. Onwards and upwards. Shalom.

The fish shake

I love the image, the idea, that the Day of Atonement is so powerful, so harrowing, that even the fish in the sea shake in fear and awe. Oh yeah. I feel that level of awe on Yom Kippur, I do. If I were a fish, my fins would quiver, definitely.

Yom Kippur, for me, is a day that's almost too bright, too well illuminated. The Day of Atonement feels like taking a walk on Brother Sun. Naturally I always think of poor Icarus, even as I dare to draw closer and closer to the indescribable dissolving brilliance and mystery of God.

That's what's going on inside me. In the "real" world what happens looks like any other day. I see clients sometimes, go see the Sufi acupuncturist (as I did yesterday), that sort of thing. My inner life is vivid and very entertaining. I'm not saying it never spills out into the "real" world, but most of the time I appear to be a cheerful, quirky old lady, just living out my life, nothing more.

Last night I joined a group of Capitol Hill people who gather to break the fast at the end of Yom Kippur. They are all members of Temple Micah where I studied Judaism a few years ago. Some of them I see only once a year.

I love listening to them describe the sermon and the mood of the congregation. They complain about the parking situation which is always awful because Yom Kippur is the Easter of Judaism, the day when everyone comes to services. They arrive for the break fast dinner cranky and diminished, shriveled. They are hungry and dehydrated (as one would be after walking on Brother Sun, hey?) First they drink juice. As they hydrate, the way they plump out is almost visible.

After that, we sit down to a dinner of breakfast food - bagels and lox, deviled eggs, pastries and such. As they eat, they come back to themselves, they begin to laugh, their voices get louder. After a glass of wine or two, they are again fully clothed in their usual energy. It's as if they've been brought back from the land of the Dead. I love watching that process. It's miraculous, it really is.

I haven't fasted in many years. What I finally realized about myself is that my relationship with God is so intimate, I don't actually have to fast to get closer. God and I are like this (fingers pressed together). In my day to day life I have to work not to get too close. The years I fasted, I came out of the experience with the spiritual equivalent of a third degree sunburn. It wasn't good for me.

Divine energy is miraculous and it's wonderful to touch it every now and then, but too much of it makes people crazy, and I am crazy enough already. Indeed. Still I admire the devotion of my friends and neighbors who keep the fast. Wow.

The new year has arrived. I have put aside my life's ragged edges and loose ends and am ready to start anew. Hallelujah! And shalom.

It'll all be over soon **

Am I nervously tapping my foot? Drumming my fingers? Am I exhibiting every symptom of impatience? Am I? Well, yes I am. This is the last day of the HHD and I'm really tired of contemplating the uneven, frazzled, ragged edges of my life story. Yes, of course I will stick with this work until sundown tonight because this is the task set before me this year, to make space for grief and frustration about all the things for which there is no resolution, no completion - not even understanding. But when the sun sets today, I will be almost giddy to welcome Kol Nidre.

That's an oxymoron if ever I heard one - happiness at the onset of the day of atonement? What? Truth is, at its core (in my opinion), always paradoxical. This year's work has been a rather spectacular experience, but I'm over it. Bring on the atonement! C'mon God, jump in the ring with me - let's duke it out. Better to face God than to sit patiently and compassionately with the ragged edges, I think.

Of course I could be wrong.

Not that God ever dukes it out with me, as God (the one I worship) has no personality, no need to fight, and no fists with which to fight.

As you can see, I have had it with this year's experience. I'm working today. It will be a good thing to focus on other people. Tonight's forecast includes a sundowner manhattan and a simple dinner as I remember my beloved dead in accordance with tradition for Yom Kippur.

Onwards and upwards. Shalom.



**My favorite line from the film Titanic.

Some days I wake up early

I am a morning person. I love the brand newness of morning, I love knowing that the whole day is stretched out ahead, full of potential. After a cup of coffee, I'm ready for anything and in my heart of hearts I believe anything is possible. Oh man, I love mornings.

Some days, like today for instance, I wake up very early - probably too early in terms of getting enough sleep. When I do, though, there's no point in trying to go back to sleep.

Today I got up while it was still dark, meditated and prayed, stretched, ohmmed, then put on my clothes and went for a walk. It was almost chilly, gorgeous, crisp. The sun was just coming up over the horizon as I set out. It was a wonderful way to greet this day.

I love seeing people emerge from their houses first thing in the morning, before they've had the chance to harden against the day. Later on they'll be wearing the masks of professional demeanor, looking fierce - or bored - in compliance with urban public behavioral customs. Once people get into their commute, they are fully armored energetically. But in the midst of their first few steps out into the world, especially on a beautiful day, they look so sweet, unguarded, fully revealed. There's an authentic, honest openness about them (most of them) that disappears after a half block and/or as soon as they get into their cars.

A walk in the morning through my village of Capitol Hill guarantees at least a few chance meetings with friends, clients and neighbors. A quick exchange of great to see you and how are you? and let's get together does my heart a world of good.

It was a great morning to get out there. This beautiful morning reminds me that the HHD will come to a conclusion soon. The slate will be clean, the new year will begin. I will leave behind the tattered loose ends of my life (the work of this year's HHD) so as to move into the fresh, and as yet unwoven, warp and woof of 5773.

Bring it on, I say. Shalom.

Loose Ends

The High Holy Days, in addition to being cinematic in intensity, always has a theme running through it - at least for me. Some years, the theme has been about making amends. There have been years when I spent every day between Rosh Hashona and Yom Kippur saying I'm sorry! - at the conclusion of years when for some reason or another I've dropped deeply into Bad Behaviors. Yikes.

Some years the theme has been the opposite; I mean I've spent the HHD praying for forgiveness. One year I sat down and made a list of all the things I was angry about. I made a list of grudges I'd been holding, some of them for years. One by one I let go of the resentments. That was a really fabulous year, I should add. What a relief!

This year has had a double theme of highs and lows, along with a lot of grieving for the loose ends that can never, for whatever reasons, be tied up. It's a controlling behavior, of course, to think that every loose end in life can be neatly trimmed, knotted or knitted into a lovely design. Life by its very nature always has a few ragged edges.

This year I have been sitting with the ragged edges, feeling a lot of grief and loneliness, too, for the sad state of these uneven patches that (apparently) will remain frazzled and frayed into perpetuity.

I continue to dream about Hitler and my ex husband. My relationship with the Holocaust is one of those loose ends that refuses to be neatly tied up, even though I went to the Holocaust Museum, got the tattoo, went out and gave myself asthma staring at the neo-Nazis yesterday. I've been trying to complete or heal my relationship with the Holocaust. I've tried so hard, but it stays with me, in me, no matter what.

My marriage, too, seems unresolvable somehow. My ex and I divorced 17 years ago, but still I dream, as I did the night before last, for instance, that I'm telling him we must divorce. He is so sad in the dream, realizing it has to happen.

Good lord.

The extremes of this year's HHD have been striking. The Gold Medal ceremony AND neo-Nazis? My goodness. It has been like a Cecil B. DeMille movie.

Maybe that's why I'm so tired already (though I'm only halfway through the HHD). I await Wednesday (Yom Kippur) when I'll see the Sufi acupuncturist and a couple of clients, gather with friends in the evening to break the fast that I will not keep. I am so ready for 5773. Bring it on.

I wonder if other Jews experience the HHD the way I do, with so much intensity. Who knows?

Happy Sunday. Shalom.

The Real Me: Little Missy

If you want to see pictures of modern day Nazis, check my Facebook page. It's public so you can see them even if you haven't friended me.

I feel exhausted, discouraged and as if I'm having a little bit of an asthma attack after the march of the neo Nazis down East Capitol Street today. The protestors were likewise full of evil hateful energy. Only the police were nice.

Oh and the horses. They were nice, too.

The pics above are of the words I chalked onto the street early this morning. I think they look so cool. I might make a practice of this.

I am truly and honestly a pacifist, through and through. When the protestors blocked the Nazis, I felt they were trapping all the evil energy. Why not just let them walk past? Allegedly we are supposed to have freedom of speech in the U.S. I guess that includes everyone, yes?

Since I'm going to do a ghost clearing later today, I'm thinking of lying on the sofa for the rest of the afternoon, to gather my wits about me.

Oy vey. And shalom.


Four of the DC police horses on duty today. They wear badges, just like their human riders. Sweet.
Their names, from right to left: Thunder, Willow, Seamus and Sampson. Gorgeous, unflappable and really big!