Thinkin Bout You

Or do you you not think so far ahead?

The ramp up to the holidays is like...you are on a freighter heading for the shore of the New Year and you cannot stop it. Even if the motors are all off, and we are 15 whole days away, we are uncontrollably speeding toward the rocky shore of January 1. So just sit back and let it happen, right? Wrong. There's the feeling that you need to take care of everything before the end of the year. Why? Because of taxes. Or simply, because it's the holiday season. Or, because people expect that from you. Or, it's just what I do every year.

It's hard to stay cheerful, amongst taking care of all the 2013 things you were supposed to do earlier, and now there are not 15 whole days, but really 5 or 6 "legitimate business days" left, and you feel inevitably cheated by time itself. Time is saying, "I won bitch." You have to accept that you really have only five days left, including today, because you have to accept that when December 23 falls on a Monday, you can't expect anyone to be "working," except those who have to. Let's not even talk about the thousands of Wallmart workers and homeless people who have to work every single day of the year. Solution: Don't shop. If you take that out, there's a lot more time left. Five days might even be enough time.

I broke my own vow and bought two, tiny hand-knit items, one for a teeny baby girl and another for a teenier, yet-to-be-born baby of unknown gender. I bought them from the knitter. I felt good that I wasn't paying for shipping or for any middle-men or store mark-up profits, I paid the real cost to the person who raised the alpaca, spun and died the wool, just kidding, I paid the person who knitted the sweater and hat, so it was pretty expensive. It seemed totally worth it. I'm imagining knitting tiny things with small needles taking a lot of skill and concentration, so I'd probably charge a lot, too. After buying those things, I said, "I'm done..." Though City Target has a way of luring me in for things I did not previously know I needed until I'm inside and it's too late.

What do you expect from the holidays? It's good to figure that out so you don't get pissed. A feeling of closeness to someone? Or closeness to a whole lot of people? It's unrealistic to say, I want a feeling of closeness to everyone. Though I take that back. I was experimenting recently standing on the corner of 7th and Market, kind of a bad corner, or let's say a corner where you can expect the unexpected, and I decided to see if my own facial expressions actually changed the way people looked to me. I softened my facial muscles, and put on a soft warm smile, and what I think of as doe eyes, (not deer in the headlight eyes), eyes that are innocent, that don't judge someone as psychopathic right off the bat. During this short experiment, I swear to god, even the psychopathic ranters looked better to me. And on that corner at all times there are a few insane people, who can be quite scary. I watched people pouring off the 9 San Bruno onto the bus stop island to share it with the (probably) insane, and I was amazed that all the faces seemed kinder and gentler than usual. There could be something here...

I just googled "micro facial expressions" and of course the #1 link is a best seller I could order right now and have on by bookshelf tomorrow called Emotions Revealed: 

Renowned psychologist Paul Ekman explains the roots of our emotions--anger, fear, disgust, sadness, and happiness--and shows how they cascade across our faces, providing clear signals to those who can identify the clues. 

What I'm trying to say, which I have no idea if Ekman says in his book, (even though I did read some paragraphs, including the book's conclusion that Amazon so kindly provided) is that you can actually affect your personal experience of life based on facial expressions you can consciously change (or at least can change in short bursts of consciousness when you remember and observe, and until and unless you are too old and all your expressions are carved too deeply to maneuver much). If I change my face to "kind and accepting," not only do people (weirdly) look better, they react to my nicer face. It can cause a change reaction. That's what I'm saying. I'm going to keep experimenting, but experience tells me, for example, when I'm a bitch in line, and have Bitch Face on, even if I don't say anything, I'm just being that bitch, things tend to go badly and spiral into worse. 

I'm telling myself that it's worth a try to simply change my outgoing face. Especially during the holiday season, if say, one is buying gifts or not buying gifts, it might be a good experiment... anytime.

These are all reasons I think it's dangerous to get plastic surgery. When you botox your worry lines away, what happens when you want to express concern to your boyfriend or child about an accident or a bad thing that happened? Your smooth forehead says, "I don't understand why your bleeding elbow is a problem," or "Am I supposed to be sorry that you didn't get into that college you had your heart set on?" or "I'm so sorry you got fired." Your blank forehead says, well, nothing. Because the botox* is "temporarily paralyzing" your face. I just decided I'm firmly against botox. I know some of my best friends have done it, or do it-- because I guess it's like an addiction. You need to re-do it every three months or suddenly you look much older, or think you look older than before. 

A cheaper answer: smile more. Soften your jaw and your eyes. The worst that could happen is your smile lines deepen. I think I'm going to try to remember that today: to notice my facial expressions, even when I'm sitting at the computer staring at the screen. Right now I'm trying it. This seems like an excellent and even marvelous place to stop.

*Botox is one of the many trade names for the neurotoxic protein called botulinum toxin that is produced by the bacterium Clostridium botulinum. In large doses, the protein causes botulism, a rare paralytic illness often linked to food poisoning. 

Everybody Daylight

Local 123.  Every face lit up by LED screens. Headphones on while sucking up Four Barrell.

Holiday parties encourage gluttony, obsessive trying of potluck dishes, toasts to survival, drinking excessively and therefore hangovers. Last night I only made it to two holiday parties of the four I had planned to attend. Perhaps meeting that overly ambitious schedule meant not trying every dish or drinking three glasses of wine at the first party. Kind of messed up the plan, but was good for end-of-year toasts. To want to go to four parties was gluttonous. And stupid. Especially when it meant traversing the Bay. Oh well. Will I figure it out next year?

Once again I am boycotting holiday traditions--not all, but the ones that have to do with shopping. Gave my whole family of origin copies of Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg for Thanksgiving, more than I've given them in a couple of years -- in terms of material gifts. Maybe one or two of them will read it and change the way they communicate with their kids, their spouses, their siblings (including me), or with our parents. You can shove a book into someone's hands and turn on the light, but you cannot make them read. Or get it even if do they read it. No one else but me can help me get something. I have to want to get it. And be ready to get it.

Nonviolent communication or NVC has revolutionized conversation in my family. When conflict arises, which of course happens almost everyday, one of us will invoke our shared language and ask about the feelings and associated needs, so we can re-state our requests, and maybe even talk about strategies to address this particular issue differently in the future. It transforms shitty moments into, "Okay, I think I understand why I was acting so shitty, and thanks, yeah, for helping me figure it out." Then we move on about our business. Four out of five Benders have been practicing NVC now for two years or longer.

I gave a copy of NVC to my nephew who is a heroin addict. His addiction started with Xanex or "bars." He's only 19, and on his fourth or fifth rehab attempt. Or more. But something has changed in him. I saw it when we visited him two weeks ago. I don't know what changed. I wonder if it helps knowing that not only do his mom and dad and brothers, but his aunts and uncles and cousins all really want him to live. It's hard to break out of your own little nuclear family bubble and your own overwhelming work and personal needs to reach out to your struggling 19-year-old nephew who lives in another part of the state. It's hard to know what to do. I decided to start texting him, asking him how he is doing, and telling him how much I love him. He doesn't always write back, but I don't mind.

I hope that my beautiful nephew decides to live among us. He says he has to take it one hour at a time.

Hank to Hendrix

Hello Friends. I am up early waiting for Zoe, so we can take some stuff to storage. Then she gets on BART for SFO and Mexico to stay with Carolen and Wind for a month. Then I get on BART to go back to Berkeley.

Zoe just canceled the storage trip. "XXX decided at the last minute to go on an adventure, so no truck. I'm just gonna call it good," she said.

The struggle is more or less the same. I'm just a little older. On the outside. What is five months? Five years? Doing what I do.

I always expected that you would see me through. 
Can we get it together, can we still stand side by side?
Can we make it last, like a musical ride?

I talk. I write emails. I recently wrote a 200 page piece that I hope to share with you someday. It's about struggle.

I struggle to be a supportive parent to adult children. A supportive partner. A supportive friend. A supportive lover. But not too supportive. Not so supportive that I resent people and am so drained that I have nothing left. That is my biggest fear. That I don't know how to stop giving when I've given enough. I am a compulsive giver. It's not always a bad thing, but I think I am possibly disabling my kids, to some extent. (My secret hope and rationale is that I am modeling generosity.) I am a "needs-anticipator." I "move so quickly that people don't even know they need something before I have filled it." I am a "let's-do-it-right-now" kind of person. Why wait? I don't wait. I do. If you are too busy, I just do it myself. I don't like lists, because that shows future needs. I don't like "needs build-up." I like to take care of it.

Not everyone operates this way. That's difficult for me. I like working with people who, like me, like "right now." I like "taking the first step," even if it's leaving a message after business hours.

It's dawn on one of two of the eighth-shortest days of the year.

My adult children can hold forth in highly intellectual discussions with friends our age who have perfected their arguments. I feel good about this. Everyone agrees that "the system must change." That "capitalism is over." Then some of us go off to jobs, and others stay home and make art and think about capitalism changing. I often buy dinner. And plane tickets. I anticipate that I will be doing so until the day comes when they will have to buy me dinner and plane tickets. When I am too old for capitalism to support me anymore. When I can't "do it right now" without their help.

Blind man

I took the bus to San Rafael for an appointment. On the way home there was a guy sitting a few rows in front of me carrying on the most annoying chat with the driver. The guy went on and on the entire ride about bus service and how his day went and where he was going, which BART train he was going to take. I thought at first he was a fellow bus driver who worked for AC Transit. I wanted to shout, "Please shut the fuck up!" I was calculating whether I was going to make it back to SF in time for a crucial bank deposit.

But as we neared the Civic Center, where this guy apparently was also getting off, I saw he was holding a white cane. I felt bad for my judgment of him. Buddy, you can chat all you want!

There was a kind-looking old lady smiling next to him that I assumed was his mother. She got off the bus before him though and went her way. Then a few people pushed in front of him as he tried to get off the bus.  I let him get off in front of me. As he stepped down he was asking the bus driver again, “Did you say I turn left or right to get to the BART entrance?”

“Left!” the driver shouted as the blind man stepped down into intense Civic Center pedestrian traffic. “Cross one street then turn right and the entrance is down on your left!” the driver continued.
I took the man’s arm gently as I stepped down. “Do you need assistance getting to BART?”

He took my hand like a child. “Yes. After my AC Transit experience this morning I’m a little nervous about finding the right entrance.” I held his hand and led him down Hyde and across McAllister, warning him about every transition. “We’re stepping down into the street...We’re going to walk up the ramp. The escalator is coming, here, grab the handrail on your right. Step onto the escalator- now.” He obeyed helplessly and with total trust. I stood next to him as we descended into the station, and the person behind me said in an annoyed voice, “Could you step aside so we can move a little faster?” 

I looked behind me and moved so that she and the people behind her could hurry down. “I know..” the lady said as she pushed by me. “I see... but I’m a mother...”  

A stream of people hurried past. I thought about how I can be in such a hurry sometimes, how I nearly hit pedestrians sometimes when I’m driving a car. My banking urgency seemed so trivial compared to this man’s journey across the street.

“I just had to visit my friend in Santa Rosa," he told me. "He’s a paraplegic. I hadn’t been to visit him since 1989.”

“Is he blind, too?” I asked. I had met a blind couple recently, and learned that the blind often only associate with each other.

“Yes. We met in school. He had an accident, a car hit him, and left him paraplegic. He travels with his cane, but Hayward is just too far for him to come see me.”

“Wait, he’s paraplegic and uses a cane?”
“Yeah, he uses the cane and his electric chair.”

“Wow.”

The BART station was so confusing as I imagined it from his non-sighted perspective. “I’m going to take you to the entrance."

“What train are you taking?” he asked.

“I’m not. I live around here. I can walk you through the station towards my place.”

We walked by some buskers. “He sounds like Cab Calloway,” the blind man said.

“Yeah, they are good. We have to walk a little to the left to avoid them,” I said and steered him around.

As we got to the turnstile, which seemed like miles from the entrance, he pulled out his ticket. “I just hope to God I have enough on here to get to Bayfair.” He handed me the ticket to confirm. I extended my arm as far as I could and squinted to read the blurry print without my glasses.

“More than enough. Nine dollars and forty five cents. You’re golden," I said. "You’re going to go down the escalator, which is about fifty paces on the right - past two stairways, and when you get down there you are going to turn right to the platform - the Dublin/Pleasanton or Fremont trains will pull up on your right.”

“Okay...” he said tentatively as we got to the turnstile, busy people rushing by. I changed my mind and pulled out my Clipper card as he was fumbling with the BART ticket.  “There is it!" he said proudly. "The hole in the BART card has to be in the upper left corner!” he held up the card and I noticed the tiny hole for the first time. He felt for the slot on the metal turnstile and inserted it, floated his hand along the top to retrieve it and started forward. “Which way is the escalator?”

“I’m going to take you down to the platform,” I said and held his hand again. 
We walked across the long distance to the escalator. This time I stood behind him so people in a hurry could pass. But the blind man kept groping for me. “I”m afraid of falling down when I get off,” he said, so I moved in front of him so he could keep his hand on my back as we descended. As we approached the bottom I saw the long lines of commuters waiting for various trains. I wondered if they would be kind to him. I worried about him. Then a train pulled up just as we were nearing the bottom of the escalator, and the sign said it was a Fremont train.

“I’m going to help you get onto the Fremont train that is pulling up right now.”
“We might miss it.”

“We might. But I think we are going to make it. We are stepping off the escalator now.” I took his hand and the train doors were still open. People in the line got on and we followed. Just stepping across the raised yellow warning dots--which I now have a new appreciation for--and onto the train itself is a huge leap of faith for a blind person. I got onto the train with him. “Okay, you’re on!”

“Thank you so much for your assistance. I really appreciate it.”

I said good bye, stepped off and the doors closed. I will never know his name. 

My fucking problems are nothing, I thought as I pulled out my phone and started opening up the Credit Union app to check on their hours of operation, see if I was going to make it or not. I was briskly walking and tapping my account number into my phone and not paying attention to my surroundings when I realized, fuck it. Don’t be an asshole. If I make it I make it. I’m not going to rush and be a dick. I rush way too much.

I made it.

Last day in Cerritos

Yesterday: Lovely morning of meditation, reading, long walk north along the dirt roads with Carolen and Milo the dog. Met Wind and the kids at Baja Beans and sat in the shade of the mango grove eating gorgeous baked goods and frittatas and sipping coffee. We moseyed back to the compound and I let myself into my room, thought I'd check email before heading to the beach.

The first thing I noticed was that my bedside drawer was open. Then I scanned the room for my laptop.The black cord was not plugged in. The bed was unmade, so Cheppie had not been there.

My phone is not on the counter. The screen is pushed open, the window is ajar. We've been ripped off.

Before I had a chance to panic, I thought, "It's all in the cloud." I would only lose the 785 pictures that I hadn't yet backed up to PhotoStream. Shit. It doesn't matter. I turn - my drawers are all open. I rummage through my lingerie and find my wallet where I'd hidden it, and my passport. Okay then. I can still get home.

I walk out to my balcony. Wind is walking out of the restaurant looking alarmed. "I was ripped off," I say calmly.

"Yeah, they got our phones."

Somehow, when I left for the walk two hours before, after meditating, it hadn't occurred to me to recheck all the window latches and hide my laptop and phone out of view. Now I was already letting them go. They were gone.

Long and insane story short...Grayson (9) and I went to get the police in the nearby town (no phones). The police station in Pescadero was closed (Sunday?), but Gray directed me to picked up Feffo and his sister Brenda at the billiard hall, who were able to reach their auntie Carmen who knows the police in Todos Santos, and they came right away. They helped Wind catch five teenage kids from La Paz that were camping on the beach and who had been robbing people all morning. The police arrested them and miraculously recovered all of our stuff.

The amazing thing for me is that I did not get upset during any of this. I truly thought, Oh well. That stuff is gone. And when they caught the kids and I saw my laptop and iphone get stuffed into a duffel bag and leave with the Mexican police, I still thought, Oh well. I've already said good-bye to those things.

Today was all about observing the grinding wheels of justice in Mexico (with little attachment to the outcome - none of us wanted the kids to go to jail). The Todos Santos concrete block "police station" did not exactly inspire confidence...A funeral service calendar dangled on a string from a curtain rod, advertising "Servicios 24 horas per dia 365 dias per ano." Just to give you an idea. Rusty Soviet-era filing cabinets that looked like they hadn't been opened in decades. A dusty bouquet of artificial flowers buried among files and boxes in total disarray. A decorative owl next to a ski mask. An oxygen tank. A stainless steel sink leaning against the window.

Police officials slowly took down our statements, all separately, typing them in ALL CAPS. After hours of amusedly watching the busy officials hunt and peck onto the ancient keyboard to get all the stories exactly right, I realized they were just talking to each other telling our story the way they interpreted it, in first person as though they'd been there themselves. I thought I'd get up. I asked where the bathroom was. "No sirve." (Doesn't work.) So I held it.

I let Grayson sit on my lap and we played goofy games, Carolen and Wind and Amelia (11) and I quietly smiling at the absurdity of it all. I finished a book and read an entire New Yorker. I stayed amused the entire time. Maybe a little bored at times, but mostly amazed. I tried not to think, "This is how I'm spending my last day in Mexico."

The officials kept at it with admirable diligence for, no lie, three hours, so five hours in total including the wait outside, and finally we heard the squeal of the tractor-feed printer churning out our statements in carbon triplicate on official looking dot-matrix letterhead. The wheels of justice were in fact turning, they were just a little gummed up by the carbon triplicates. Then they had us sign every single page (each carbon copy so three times per seven page statement times maybe three each- my hand was actually aching - more signatures than a mortgage). Who knows where those files went?

And here I am, less than 48 hours later writing on my laptop, Skyping, listening to Devendra Banhart on Spotify.

Me and Amelia, glad to be back in Cerritos.

"Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings." - Elizabeth Gilbert

Pescadero

Mexico. It has a way of washing away things that seemed so serious back in San Francisco. Like having a job. Or not having one.

Things move more slowly here. You take the long way without calculating all the minutes you are losing, because...where are you going anyway? You are going somewhere, it will be beautiful; it is beautiful here, so what is the rush? You are on a dusty dirt road that is also very bumpy and maybe going faster would not be a good thing.

What's even better is not going anywhere. Because it is so spectacular right here looking out at the blue Pacific, then walking right into it without a wetsuit. It's scours your lungs and your soul and you feel baptized.

I am eating like the Queen of Baja Sur. My chef friend Carolen and her husband Wind feed me things they grow in their organic garden...massaged kale or papaya and avocado salads, and bouillabaisse with shrimp and yellowtail from local fisherpeople (?). I order food when I am hungry. I make myself one margarita per day. A big one, with fresh limes and oranges. I eat an avocado custard thing with pomegranate molasses for dessert. Yeah.

I take long walks along the empty beach and swim in the perfectly cool ocean to work up an appetite for the next incredible meal.

The season is over. Gringos are mostly gone or somberly packing up to head north for the summer. It's very quiet, but now I hear a lonesome voice over an electric guitar echoing in the distance. The night is black and the stars are outrageous.

I've finished Wild by Cheryl Strayed (recommend), and am deep into a What Maisie Knew by Henry James (don't recommend; see the movie instead on Opening Night of the SFIFF April 25 at the Castro). I'm so worn out from all this that I'm sleeping 10 hours a night. Or am I worn out from year upon endless year of working for nonprofits?

It's been a long time since I've slept without earplugs to block out meth freaks or otherwise deranged and damaged souls talking to themselves outside my window in SF. It's been so long since I've done exactly what I want to do for days on end.

I feel my mind emptying out, and it is good.

Tomorrow I will refill my mind with how to upload pictures for you from my f-ing Chromebook that stores nothing. It is like my mind. In the cloud.

Things I am excited about

Writers who inspire me, distract me from future tripping, help me understand heartache, and give me hope:

Holly Goddard Jones - Her collection of short stories Girl Trouble packed a powerful and lasting punch. I can't wait to read her new novel The Next Time You See Me.

Cheryl Strayed - I have been a longtime fan of the Dear Sugar column, now reading her first novel Torch, and will read Tiny Beautiful Things and Wild ASAP.

Nicole Krauss - The History of Love blew me away, but Great House went to another level. She also has a very generous website with great exerpts.

Jennifer Egan - A Visit From the Goon Squad. I read it last year and still think about it. So ambitious. So successful. Hands down the coolest website. Gives so much insight into her process. Looking forward to diving into her other books.

****

I am excited about the community forming in our building. Last night's jazz event with young, super- talented musicians jamming and improvising for six hours made me feel good about life.

I have returned to freelance consulting, and I am very excited about that. Once again, I am able to decide how to spend my time. Starting to feel more human, less robot.

***

Walking in San Francisco, I mean everywhere, I get excited. Thursday I walked about ten miles. Stopped at Caffe Trieste in North Beach for a cappuccino outside in the 9:00am sun. Continued to the San Francisco Art Institute and walked to the edge of the campus to look out at the Bay, then looked back at the plaza and the theater/outdoor amphitheater. This very spot where so many memories took place, so many powerful scenes in my late teens, then again in my twenties and early thirties when I was a young mother.

I continued to walk down Bay Street, through Fort Mason, the Marina, the SF Yacht Club, to Crissy Field, where I had lunch at the Beach Hut. Then walked to the Palace of Fine Arts and headed straight to the center of the rotunda and stood, looking straight up, and all around. I felt a profound awe.

In 1988, twenty five years ago at this very time, I was pregnant with Joseph and planning my wedding. I was working in the Financial Aid Office at the Art Institute and Joe was studying painting and printmaking. We decided to get married for two ridiculous reasons: #1: because Joe would get a significant tuition discount and still had two years to graduate; and #2: because I was convinced that after a second child was born there would be no enthusiasm left (for us or our friends) to celebrate our marriage. I was propelled toward marriage by these and more ambiguous reasons, practical and romantic, rightly or wrongly, youthfully, perhaps unwisely, perhaps very wisely.

So we got married. First at San Francisco City Hall with Zoe (18 months) and Heather as our only witnesses. Then, two weeks later, under the rotunda at the Palace of Fine Arts. It was a blustery Friday afternoon. We did everything ourselves with almost no money. We relied heavily on our many friends. Heather baked a layered cake and lent us her red VW convertible to drive up to the rotunda.

We were an hour late to our own wedding, so when we arrived at 6:00pm people had been waiting for over an hour. Everyone was shivering in the Bay gale, all dressed up in velvets and satins with shaved heads and blue hair, standing in a semi-circle, with Konrad and Alea kneeling to hold down the gorgeous 5' tall bouquets of flowers that the wind wanted to scatter across the reflecting pool.

There had been no rehearsal. Ian McColl, who was to step forward and introduce our wordless ceremony, was nowhere to be seen, so Joe stepped forward and made the introduction. Just then Ian ran into the circle, and restated the same introduction. Then, our rings were passed around the semi-circle of our close friends, and we placed them on one another's hands. And then we kissed. That was it! Champagne bottles were opened, and pictures were taken, all candid. No posing. No portraits. Caroline Blaire made a super-8 film of the event, and I still have it somewhere.

Standing in the center of the rotunda thinking about all of this on Thursday, I took a picture and sent it to Joe.

He wrote back: "We've shared so much life together since then...I love you madly!"

Then I kept walking. We are still married. Who knew?

Liberation Road

How to turn loss into liberation? When does the shock of absence begin to open to new freedom? It starts to happen when the gaping hole of grief into which floats the endless list of losses finally exhausts itself. The day arrives when you wake up and your chest does not feel crushed by a sun that brings the memory of everything that no longer is, and instead you want to drink some tea. When you start to want to read again, maybe just poetry here and there, but you are surprised to feel yourself laugh again. You feel the scar tissue building up in your chest allowing you to breath again. It will never completely go away, the chest pain, but there is a growing knowledge that the pain you have endured is what makes you a person of worth.

It could be for your grown manchild who hasn’t ever had his heart broken, but you know when that happens, he will come to you, and you will know how to hold a space for him to feel his pain instead of repressing it. It means that when your own first love calls you to exorcise his deep hurt about his young girlfriend, you will know exactly what to say. Because the pain that you felt 30 years ago is still in your heart. It’s right there, ready to serve you by giving you the right words to help a man you once wanted to marry be kind to someone he now wants to marry. It’s there for you when your old love’s young girlfriend, whose plight you know all too well, needs someone who will understand the exact nature her pain. You know that dream, and that loss.

The pain that has been refreshed by your own recent losses tunes you up for these conversations, enables you to say, “Take the high road,” and “This too will pass.” Each time you convince someone else that everything will be all right, you convince yourself. Then you start to feel what it means to be free.

See Zoe's Butoh performance. Butoh is about Liberation Road.

The Valentine goes to...

Joe Bender. The lover man that keeps on giving. The lover that holds me through dark winter nights when I writhe like a dying fish in grief over some loss that has nothing to do with him. Joe, who picks me up off the floor an tucks me in, brings me tea, tells me everything is going to be all right. That he still loves me. Joe, who believes in me when I don't. Who has evolved into the man of my dreams. Who stands up to my extreme bitchiness with nonviolent communication. Who recognizes when I'm taking out all of my feelings of injustice on him, even when I skillfully disguise my accusation against some small, innocent gesture as an injustice committed against all womankind. When I push Joe to the breaking point in a storm of confusing emotion that would lead most people to eject themselves from our ship to swim to save his own life, Joe finds his sea legs in the hurricane and sets me, and us, straight.

Joe's love is especially commendable when I'm seasick and suffocating, flopping around on the slimy deck due to the loss of another love. I am in the best relationship imaginable, one that has withstood 27 years of tumult, finally able to rest on the smoother waters of parenthood alongside three magnificent kids--all artists in their own right, and who love us so much that they want to be part of our community--having spent so much time together we can be 100% ourselves... In a marriage built on complete honesty about everything under the sun, including our other lovers: for this Joe gets the deepest, darkest, bittersweet chocolate heart of my devotion.

Ash Wednesday. I stopped into St. Patrick's on Mission just in time for mass. Packed to the gills with people of all colors, all ages. I usually only go into a church when it's empty. I like Christ stripped down of all religion and rhetoric. I like most prophets and saints, in spite of their religious affiliation. I like rituals. For Ash Wednesday...I contemplated my transgressions. For lent, I am giving up a person.

Pic: In the Temple at Burning Man 2012, Joe guiding me on a trip that included a four hour, major dust storm.

Privacy?

I'm reconsidering privacy. The pleasure and sometimes shock of knowing there is an audience of readers both known and unknown in a world with no boundaries gives me serious pause.

I live in one big room with Joe. Almost everything in my "private life" takes place in this room.

My kids walk in and out. We've trained them to knock. Their friends walk in and out. They knock, too.  I love it. I'm used to it. I like lots of people around. I grew up in a big family and any privacy I carved out was hard-won. I remember going into the backyard at night when I was desperate to be alone and sitting in the dog pen along the side of the house away from all windows and smoking a cigarette. Just me and that lonely dog Laura, whom my Dad wouldn't let into the house. I think I started doing that when I was 11 years old... a soft pack of Winston's that I stole from my aunt Joanne that lasted a couple of years. I didn't need to be alone very often.

When I started this blog, I made a conscious decision to use my actual name. It took a couple of years to make that decision. It was a breakthrough to overcome my fears of exposure and rejection. Most of the readers of this blog do not make themselves known to me, but many come out of the woodwork to comment to me in person. Which is wonderful. But there are hundreds of others of you who return to see what's up, and as many who come for the first time each month. It's just a strange thing, this knowing and not knowing your audience.

I have found that the scope of subjects I'm willing to explore here has narrowed considerably. It's choking me.

Where once I didn't give a shit and felt the torrential flood of freedom when confronting the blank page, now numerous boundaries arise that I simply cannot cross. At this time. Sucks.

This requires of me the use of filters and circumlocution. But mostly results in silence. Forgive me. I'm working through it. I'm considering changing the privacy options...by asking people to request permission to subscribe. It' not that I need to know everyone who is following, but I need to know that a few people are not.

I'd like to ask, how would you feel about this? You can answer me anonymously, or with your name. Or by emailing me directly to engage in a conversation about it: kimbender7@gmail.com
Or by calling me. I'd really like some feedback before I make the decision.

Thanks.

Sundance

Saw 23 films. Went to some good parties. Drank a fair amount of really good whiskey.

Parties: Why am I'm always among the first to start dancing? Even though I'm "on the older side" (aka old), it remains a job I take seriously: getting the party started. It's like setting the table. Someone's gotta do it if people are going to eat. Talk, talk, talk. Who cares? I want to see people losing control. Highlight: dancing like a wild freak with Naomi Wolf, shouting into her ear about cervical orgasms. If you haven't read her book, Vagina, A Biography, get it. Order it. Make it your job to know all about the vagina-brain connection. I'm serious. Assigned reading.

The second half of the festival is always calmer. When you can really get down to business and see a shitload of films.  After half of L.A. has gone back home. It's all about seeing as many films as possible and finally spending real time at New Frontier exhibitions. But really, seeing films, taking chances, discovering a subject you had no idea about. A whole new world. Or a new way of seeing the world.

I liked Lovelace, a narrative feature about Linda Lovelace, her relationship with Chuck Traynor and rise to porn stardom. It was directed by Bay Area filmmaker team Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman. The structure of the film was effective: taking the audience through the major events in her life and career in the way the public perceived them, then going back to those events to show the abusive relationship behind those same scenes - based on Lovelace's autobiography entitled Ordeal published in 1980 - and her anti-porn activism. The film sparks an important, and relevant dialogue about porn, third wave feminism and domestic abuse. Big congrats to Rob and Jeffrey for an extremely well-executed and moving film. Really well cast and acted by Amanda Seyfried, with Peter Sarsgaard, Hank Azaria, Adam Brody, James Franco, Sharon Stone. The film sold the night of the premiere to RADiUS-TWC. Looking forward to healthy debate on porn. I think Naomi and I disagree about this film.

On the subject...Went from there to Interior. Leather Bar. directed by Travis Mathews and James Franco. The 60 minute hybrid doc/scripted narrative imagines scenes deleted from the 1980 film Cruising starring Al Pacino; it explores homophobia, transgression, radical queer subculture then and now. The piece was all shot in a day and half with both straight and gay men actors. Mathews eloquently spoke in the Q&A about wanting to show "non-simulated sex" in his films, using real sex to tell real stories about the human condition, and the importance of maintaining radical subcultures in a society that values "normalcy." That was the most compelling argument made by the piece, though so much verite footage of filmmakers shooting filmmakers making a film and talking about it was often tedious as fuck. Again, looking forward to more healthy debate about this film and the subject.

The Stuart Hall Project was an unexpected highlight. Directed by veteran British filmmaker John Akomfrah, the film explores the life of the U.K. intellectual and cultural critic Stuart Hall, matching Hall's ideas about the impact of cultural events on individual experience/identity with the music of Miles Davis. This is an absolutely gorgeous film, crafted from 50 years and 8,000 hours of BBC archival footage of historical events and Hall's television program about cultural phenomena. In the Q&A, Akomfrah was extraordinarily articulate about Hall (a friend and great influence), the film, his process, Miles Davis, and his goal  of "translating" Hall, who is now in his '80's, to keep alive his contribution to our understanding of self.

Sundance at its best provides a snapshot of the cultural zeitgeist - new questions, new information, new connections, and new enthusiasm about the role of media in catalyzing change. If you are lucky. I was lucky.

Club Bender

I've been busier than fuck but just read 50-year-old new dad Jerry Stahl's OG Dad #15 , so funny that I had to respond, in my own way, to this:

To her eternal credit, the difficult-to-ruffle E routinely talks me back from foaming, germaphobic paranoia to something like a reasonably cautionary posture. Meaning, essentially, that instead of freaking out when our Pompadoured 18 pounder puts the dog’s paw in her mouth, I simply remove it. And try not to obsess on what fecal smorgasbord the adorable, poop-sniffing Basenji has pranced through.

If he'd had kids 25 years ago like I did, his parental role would have shifted from poison control and helping with language aquisition to, for example, asking himself whether it's appropriate to dance at your kids' after-hours party. Then asking the kids.

Sunday I went next door to see what was happening. Why the bumping bass beat so early? It was around 2:00pm. I was on my way to the gym in my grungiest paint-covered stretchy pants. I popped my head into that dark room filled with people lounging and dancing. Ian was on the turntables. The air was, well, murky, so I brought an air purifier into that windowless after-afterhours shindig. A mom-ish touch that was very much appreciated. Then, since I was in my most comfortable clothes anyway, my grey hair tied up into a messy bun for the bike ride to the Y, I decided to dance my ass off to the pounding beat for a half hour. Warm up for my cardio workout on the elliptical machine? Of course I asked Zoe and Ian's permission first, and they gave it, still smiling and dancing though they clearly hadn't slept in quite some time. Youth!

So I was dancing mostly alone but a little with Zoe and other 20-something floor tenants in the green light that, I wondered, perhaps made my hair a color other than grey, in the room that makes it impossible to know the time of day or night. I really got into it. I love to dance. And there were some hella good dancers to keep me interested  - all shapes, sizes, colors, assorted known and unknown entities who, through some fashion, found Ian's studio with its nightclub-grade sound system.

A beautiful stranger says, "I'm right here." So I dance with him. He is an excellent dancer. Does he realize I am technically over twice the age of everyone in the room, literally old enough to be his mother? It doesn't seem to matter. Fun times. An excellent warm up for the cold ride to the Embarcadero Y.

Pic: Ian and Zoe after dancing all night in Berlin, July 2012.