reflect and renew and a few wishes - hello 2013

kissing goodbye 2012... for better and worse...

I've been on a tear to finish a manuscript which means long days and nights at the computer in between anything else I might be doing.

And I've had a head cold (doesn't that sound old fashioned?) for weeks. A two week + head cold.

And, of course, there was the little matter of the holidays.

Which is my way of saying that my thoughts are disorganized and discombobulated and I feel unready to make my usual resolutions.

Yet, I feel the year end is an important time -- an opportunity to reflect, and a clean slate to renew.

So, I thought I'd at least take a few minutes to reflect on a very few of the highlights of my year (honestly, there have been MANY)

and to renew my determination in a few of the areas I didn't quiet live up to my own hopes and expectations this year (honestly, there have been MANY).

Happy Reflection:

Highlights (these are MY personal highlights, not those of my children - that their highlights are my greatest joy should go without saying):

• selling my next novel to an amazing editor at Algoquin;

• attending my first big book festival as a published author;

look, I even got my own star... :)

• completing a five mile open water swim;

the title page of the script.

• holding a movie script for The Pull of Gravity in my hands --

-- and (yes, it's still totally pie-in-the-sky at this point, so the truth is, I'm not so much "excited" as I am flattered and enjoying the fun of it).




Of course, there were other wonderful highlights too,

a school visit in Pennsylvania, and a few in NYC, as well as a bunch of Skype visits to classrooms around the country giving me a chance to connect directly with my readers;

the day to day humor and joy of connecting with my friends -- both virtual and in person;

and the blessing of living near the water, and extending our open water season to nearly seven months of regular daily swims...

West Neck Beach where I frolic with the Pod

 

to name a few.

But there are places where I've failed miserably and hope to do better this year.

Renewed Commitment:

• More writing, less facebook. Sad, but true. I love my shiny facebook friends, but I need to be more focused and less distracted from my writing. I had hoped to have my "next hopeful" manuscript [working title In Sight of Stars] revised by the end of the summer, and have a new one I started that I was liking in rough draft by year's end. Instead, I am still trying to finalize the former and haven't touched the other. It's nobody's fault but my own.

Not to mention that I hoped to revise Swim Back to Me, and maybe send it out there once again.

Yes, I've done some good writing, and had revisions due to my editor in between, but the lampost and I both know I've procrastinated a great deal, and I'm not getting any younger.

• More yoga. Less almost going to yoga.

• Less talk, more action. Helping people. Contributing to the larger world.

• More reading, less mindless TV;

                                                                                and, dare I say,

• I've got a few bigger swims to tackle...

Well, I've got a lot more where that came from: disappointments that I want to turn to opportunity and personal improvement, but the bewitching hour of my headcold is getting the best of me.

I can't end 2012 without making a few wishes:

• gun control
• a kinder gentler nation for my kids,
• and that you all have a year without suffering.

Happy New Year to all!

Please don't drink and drive. Pretty please, with a cherry on top. <3 p="p">
xox gae

where water and wonder meet

i love artistic people.

i love the creative spirit.

i love when i connect with someone's work so deeply that I try to inhale it, internalize it, make it seep in through my pores.

(although it simultaneously pains me that i can't possess it wholly, wrap myself in it, make it happen through my fingers, or my lens).

no, i am not above coveting.

speaking of which,

this is lori.

photo credit: lori landau

she is where water and wonder meet.

she is, among other things, a poet, an artist, a friend.

i have known her since i am 15.

as teens and college students, we wrote poetry together as we pined for boys, made sense of the world, yearned for more. i have always coveted her words.

now, i also covet her art.

i admit this. oh, how i do.

last night, i was lucky enough to attend the closing of her show Works in a Series at the New York Open Center  (a meshing of her work from Elemental Soul and Nature of Mind). Did I mention the photographs are all of water?

Truth is Nameless, archival print
credit: lori landau


that was one of the many that made me hyperventilate. . .

you can imagine how i was mesmerized. . .

this is also lori

At the end of the show, lori spoke a bit about her creative process and what moves her as an artist and a photographer:

"Every photograph, every painting, and every drawing I do starts from the same place: that small, nameless force inside that seeks connection to myself and the world around me. . .

Art making is not an act of doing—it is a way of being in the world, a way of filtering all of those ordinary moments we all have—of being mindful about the little things: the way the light touches the top of the mountain when the sun is coming up. . . the sound of the ocean when you realize that it is breathing just like you are."

the audience listened, rapt, as she continued:



Breath of Light, archival print
credit: lori landau

"I don’t think you need to make art to get this. You just need to open to the experience.  

Both making art and viewing it are acts of deep listening, of deep feeling.
I know that you get this . . . 

We are all vulnerable. We all want to understand a little more about mystery.

We want to touch it. We want to be it.

We all want to matter."


when you look at lori's photographs,

you feel,

you connect,

but moreso, there is a certain tranquility, coupled with a stirring,

that allows you to open yourself, breathless,

to be moved.

in this way, her art matters.

***

If her photographs are tranquil, her paintings demand a bit more,

they pull and push,

they promise comfort, but house pain.

they evoke our own discomfort

but offer a path to calm.

top left Yama; top right: Dharana
middle left: Vyadhi; middle right: Tapasya
bottm left: dhyana; bottom right: Samadhi
4 x 5 paintings acrylic on canvas

credit: lori landau

". . . my desire is to do something with my feelings, to rise above them, to transform them, to transcribe my own interior. I consider my camera, pen & brush an extension of my hands, a translator of the “everyday me” a way to evoke the idealized part of myself. . . The photographs and paintings here rain into my heart and my hands from somewhere other than self, but I recognize myself more clearly when they arrive."


This particular show of Lori's closes today, but there will be more, trust me, and when there are,

you should go see them.

connect,

reflect,

be moved.

"Photography and art remind me that

like water,

everything is constantly changing. . . 

(they) are a visual documentation of where I have been,

the only way,

other than memory,

to hold on to something. "

 

 

- gae

---------------

More about Lori:
 

Writer, artist and photographer Lori Landau’s work explores the intimate connection between meditative and creative states. As a certified yoga and meditation teacher, Landau is deeply inspired by the Buddhist concept of interconnectedness. A spiritual nomad at heart, her work
symbolizes her exploration of sacred mystery.

Her articles and poetry have been published in a wide range of magazines, books and blogs; most recently, in the upcoming An Anthology of Babes: 26 (or 30) Women Give Motherhood a Voice." In addition, Landau is a visual artist, whose work has been exhibited in several group and solo shows. Her concept-driven and interdisciplinary art spans a range of mediums, including photography, drawing and painting. Landau regularly uses her art and words as a platform to raise consciousness about both global and meta issues.

You can find more of her work on her own blog,

www.consciousnesscreativity.com, as well as the women’s section of
Technorati.com.

Finally, her new monthly column for iPinion will debut this Sunday! 

 

Missing Loehmann's

The good Loehmann's used to be in Huntington, a solid half hour west from my parents' house, where I grew up in Smithtown.

If you don't know Loehmann's, you are not a Jewish girl from Long Island.

If you don't know Loehmann's, you are not your Jewish-from-Long-Island mother's daughter.

Loehmann's was a dream maker: the place you could spend hours trying on, crying, laughing, until you found that perfect item or six that made you feel pretty, presentable, ready to face the world with your new wardrobe. The place you shopped for something to wear on your first date. The place you wept over braces, glasses, thunder thighs, too-big-boobs, unruly shopping hair, or the dilemma of finding something that would nicely mask the mild curvature in your spine that would require you to wear a scoliosis brace.

Loehmann's was the place that patient men -- fathers, husbands, unwitting boyfriends -- sat waiting, lined up and uncomfortable, in the hard plastic penalty chairs by the door, as the women they "represented" disappeared for painful hours into the bowels of the dressing room, only to reappear occasionally wearing the same item in a different color, or a size up or down, to ask the dreaded questions, "What do you think? This one, or this one? Does this look good on me?"

mom and me, undoubtably that sweat suit was my
80s idea of high fashion, but the sneakers are cute, no?

Remember, these were the days before iPhones and iPads. How my heart bleeds for those men...

Now, I say there was a good Loehmann's. . .

Several years after we started frequenting the far west (wonderful, wish-fulfilling) Loehmann's, a new Loehmann's opened east of us, a mere ten minutes or so from my mom's.

We were excited at first, but it quickly became evident that there was no comparison between the old Loehmann's (good!) and the new one: Bad. It was as if they were two different stores.

Disappointment, but no matter. We were troopers.
We would just have to continue to travel a half hour in the wrong direction to the good one.

There was this one time, however. . .

I was home for the weekend visiting (I was fresh out of college and, well, did I mention I could be an uber-bitch when I was younger?)

My mom and I donned proper shopping attire and off we went.

To the good Loehmann's.

The usual excitement popped and crackled in the air.

Our brains swam with images of hand knit sweaters.

That new-tag smell permeated the air.

Three-quarters of the way there, we got in an argument. Who remembers about what? Something stupid, don't ask me.

(total lie, I remember. . . oh, how I remember!)

Suffice it to say, things quickly decompensated. I mean things in the car got ugly.

My mother veered off the road into some other shopping center, and turned the car around.

We drove in silence toward home. Which was better than the prior screaming.

At the exit to our house, my mother kept going, the tension still thick in the car.

Tentative, afraid (was she dropping me off far from home where I'd have to hitch a ride back to the city?), I whispered, "where are we going?"

She turned and glared at me, the fury shining in her eyes.

"The bad Loehmann's," my mother spat at me.


And so we did.

We bought nothing.

A fine punishment, indeed.

This Sunday morning, driving home from dropping my son at Driver's Ed, I passed the old good Loehmann's, a sense of intense longing permeating my soul.

I mean, I know the store has been long empty. . .

But this time, as I passed, it had suddenly morphed into a mega Tool store.

A mega-fucking tool store.

Don't the Gods of all things good know that tools are the farthest thing from fashion?

There was something so bracing about seeing that tool store there. It left me feeling lost and old and forlorn.

I miss Loehmann's.

I love my mother.

Thank goodness for Annie Sez.

email exchange with my mom this a.m.
 

- gae

of space stations, and emails with my mother, and time that is fleeting

sometimes I can barely stay afloat.

sometimes I can barely stand how very fleeting it is.


- gae

Post-Hurricane Lamentations and Thankfulness

Bodies of water nearly merged where once they were separate
West Neck Beach, Long Island
Photo: The Water-blog, Carol Moore

Hurricane Sandy blew through here, razing homes, yanking down power lines, changing the shoreline forever.

Our power was out for 11 cold days (house down to 46 degrees by the end of the second dark week), and, yet, we were so very lucky compared to so many others.

Despite the downed trees lying across roads like so many dead bodies left to decay, lost of any of their once-magestic magnificence, and one hatcheted school vacation, there is little evidence of the utter destruction it left in its wake.

Go a few towns over, and that is not the case.

We haven't spoken in over twenty years, but I keep wondering after my high school boyfriend who I know has a family in Lindenhurst.

Here, things have gone pretty much back to normal.



Me, out front, getting an endorphin rush the other day,
with a few friends from the West Neck Pod. Photo, Carol Moore.

But for the occasional effort to donate non-perishables, warm clothes and blankets, my life has returned to its usual mix of parenting, writing, swimming, and entertaining my falsely-perceived masses on facebook.

Of fretting over how gray my hair has gotten (very), or how much more my knees can possibly continue to sag (hopefully, not much more).

And, over larger things, too, like the departure of my first child, in less than a year, to the cruel hard world of college.

How will he fare?

How will I fare without him?

Over my younger son's self esteem, having gotten cut from the high school basketball team. And, no, that Michael Jordan story holds no magic for anyone anymore.

And, yes, over which quinoa recipe I should make for this year's Thanksgiving Table.



My three boys at last year's Thanksgiving table.

I'm going with a fig, arugula, orange and goat cheese quinoa, drizzled balsamic reduction. I may toss in some pomegranate seeds -- a symbol of renewal -- for good measure.

I'm looking forward to Thanksgiving this year. Especially this year, though it's always been my favorite holiday.

I have a good, easy life of which I am endlessly cognizant, grateful.

For which I am eternally thankful.

Well, except for the sagging knees.

- gae

p.s. A very happy Thanksgiving to all my readers. I am so appreciative that you stop by here.

Submersion and reconstitution

me, emerging from the water on
November 11
a whopping 39 degrees. . .

Some days I could be convinced to move to warmer climate.

Write on the beach,

bask in the sun,

swim in the open water in nothing but a bathing suit and goggles.

New York, post-hurricane, is hell right now. People suffering. Moreso, on this gray, gloomy day.

A dead tree, toppled by Sandy, is blocking my view of the street.

I'll get back, but the hurricane knocked me off my path.

My revisions are due soon on the book still (temporarily) known as Frankie Sky. College apps are due for my oldest son. . . the man who is taller than I am, who sleeps in the other room.

How did he get big like that, my son?

How did his childhood speed through here?

I tried to stay alert, and present and focused, to soak it all in, to take my time and enjoy it and make it all last. But, alas, I find myself awakened like some aging Sleeping Beauty, to it disappearing beyond reach, the tail end fading off in the rear view mirror.

I know there is life after the kids leave home -- after 50 -- but, still, I don't know how I got here, on the verge.

Waving goodbye to a whole part of my life that was just stretched out before me.

How often in this blog do I long (whine? God, let me not whine) for the days and weeks back, to slow time down. To stop it from blurring by so fast.

How often do I douse myself in water, hoping the submersion will preserve me, reconstitute the days and years that have simply flown by. Or, at least my ability to ground myself, and the will to accept they are gone.

a few short years ago. . .

- gae

Honor, Remembrance, and How Time Flies. . .

(me, left on the windowsill, my sister, right)
The day my dad returned from
Viet Nam (Mash Unit Chu Lai, '66 -'67)

Yesterday --

two weeks after Hurricane Sandy raged through here flooding, destroying, changing the landscape of New York/New Jersey/Connecticut forever

(not to mention knocking out our power for 11 cold and difficult days)

-- I spent a "normal" day in the city with my parents, my sister and her girlfriend (who is like a sister to me now).

It was an invigorating, special, throwback day to my childhood/teens/twenties.

Two plays (one really stellar one)and a delicious dinner, all the treat of my parents.



The occasion, my sister's 50th birthday.

The last time she was taller than I am . . .

I can read that over and over again, but still, it remains unfathomable.

My sister is fifty, and soon, I will follow.



. . . and, us, horsing around recently
in my father's gardens. . .

Beyond that, my older son is 17, and next year at this time, he will be long gone to college.

My dad with me at my birthday, last July.

My father, ever strong and youthful, turns 75 this March.

To see him, you would not believe it.

But there it is. 75.

It is Veteran's day, a day that always makes me want to honor, yes, all veterans, but especially my dad. But, for a writer, I am, once again, at a loss for truly meaningful words.

Nothing I write here will ever come close to explaining the strong but gentle, capable, loving, generous man he is.

Nothing.

There is no father who ever loved his daughters more, protected them better, was more loyal and true to his family.

We are so lucky that he returned from a year of hell in a MASH unit in Viet Nam to raise us.

He is anti-war.

He is a Veteran for Peace,

and yet it's hard to imagine him without that year that so much changed and shaped him.

Time flies.

Damn, how it flies.

I honor this man in his uniform,
in his hospital scrubs,
in his jumpsuits,
and leather pants,
in his (leather) speedo bathingsuit who taught me how to dive and swim.

This man who came to every single recital, every competition, every play, every honor and celebration that mattered in my life.

This man who stood over the dining room table admiring, as my sister and I made endless arts and crafts.

This man, who put other people's children through college when they could not.

This man who fixed badly crushed and broken bones with hands gentle enough to heal flowers, with the patience and skill that embodied Premum Non Nocere,

this man who has always known there is No Free Lunch, yet always offers one.

This man that can find my sister and me in a crowd,

in a dark room,

in a snowstorm,

in a hurricane,

in distress.

This man, who always kept us safe and warm,

and still does.

My dad is truly the closest person I've ever met to invincible.

And so he will always remain.


- gae

p.s. thank you to all the Veterans who have so bravely served our country. May there be no more wars. . . and only peace and love.