Matera, A Gem Of Italy

"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes." - Marcel Proust

I have never had an easy relationship with my country. Until the "American period", when I moved to Washington DC and taught Italian for three years, I had lived in Italy my whole life. My hometown is Bergamo, a city close to Milan, where I studied, made intimate friendships, met my husband and lived happily with my family. Yet, when I graduated, I felt the urge to leave. It was a strong feeling, something from deep inside. I needed to find my own way, my way of thinking and living. I am happy I left for a while---America was a land of opportunities to me, a place where I felt free and happy.

As weird as it may sound, during the time in the United States I grew to know that country much better than my own---I was living every day like a tourist, surprising myself like a baby for every doughnut covered in chocolate, cinnamon, sprinkles, maple iced, lemon filled and so on. Places like Barnes & Noble were new to me---could I really take a magazine from a shelf, read it for a while and then place it back? In Italy, that was (still is?) quite unimaginable. And what to say about sports---I am a couch potato, oh yes, and seeing all those people running at all times was a kind of culture shock. I was about to convince myself to go running, too (not sure I could survive a mile!) but well . . . I made it back to Italy before even trying.

In the last couple of years my family of two rooted between Bergamo and Milan. Husband and I made a promise to ourselves: stop thinking that traveling means going to the most faraway places, and start exploring Italy a little more. So this past Halloween we left the north and drove all the way to the south to visit a real gem, a place which is unknown to most of the people who visit Italy, and a little out of the main routes. The city is Matera, and this is why I call it a gem . . .

We arrived in Matera in the evening, and here is what we saw, a landscape that at first sight was very similar to Jerusalem.

At night, the cathedral's tower jetted out in the black sky, and the rest of the sassi glimmered in shades of yellow and orange. Have you heard of the movie "The Passion", by Mel Gibson? It was shot here.

We dropped our bags at the Hotel in Pietra and asked the receptionist, a very nice lady, to recommend us some good restaurant to taste local food. After a few minute walk, I had already fallen in love with Matera, and there was still more to see the next day! We spent the night in a tiny and beautiful room at the hotel (by mistake, Husband had made reservations for a single room, and since it was too beautiful to give it up we squeezed a little!) and the next morning we had breakfast with homemade cakes and foamy cappuccino. Everything was so delicious, and the atmosphere was quite relaxing. Imagine a 12th-century Benedictine church converted into a hotel, where the rooms are dug in the rocks.

After breakfast, we explored the sassi and the cave churches. The sassi left us speechless and in awe of its beauty. It’s hard to describe the feelings–when you see such places, you can’t help but thinking there must be something beyond this world, some holy entity that gave us all this beauty to enjoy.

Matera was a gift, and now it is one of my favorite places in Italy. I can’t recall having met such wonderful people elsewhere. Everyone was smiling and ready to help, the food was great and the sassi were so unique and beautiful you could easily get lost in the small paths by looking up and around all the time.

This trip to the south helped me to recall that Italy is an amazing country. We struggle with politics, unemployment, financial crisis, but still we find our way to smile broad smiles and treat each other with welcoming hospitality and warm hearts. I’m happy I took this trip. It opened my heart and mind to places I didn’t know, that felt so far but were yet so close.

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More or Less Like Family, Part I

By Molly Bradley The village Mouit was like living on a beach without the water: just a vast expanse of shore with buildings spattered here and there on the sand, with no logic to it.

We were there for a brief stay to explore another part of Senegal. The group of students I was traveling with would reunite in the nearby town of Saint Louis at the end of the week, but for now, we were scattered in separate families in the village of Mouit. We’d left our host families in Dakar to be hosted yet again: a home away from home away from home. Instead of feeling further removed, it all started to feel pretty much the same. Family became a very relative term.

Aside from my parents, I grew up with just one sibling (and, only later, a dog). My family is by no means quiet, but it’s not large. Four people can only be so rambunctious.

Unexpectedly, the family that adopted me in Dakar was even slimmer. I called my homestay parents Aunt and Uncle, Tata et Tonton, because my ‘sibling’---twelve-year-old Malik---was their nephew. It felt more or less like family.

So it was alarming when approximately nine and a half flailing sets of limbs accosted me as soon as I walked in the gate of my Mouit homestay family. Nine of them were chattering children, spanning roughly seven through twelve years old. The half-set of limbs only constituted half a set because it belonged to a baby carried by one of the girls, and the baby didn’t quite have control of all her components. Her eyes stuck to me that whole first night.

They dragged me to meet my homestay parents. Neither spoke French, but both were all easy smiles and steady nods. The village was Wolof, but my language still wasn’t up to native speed. I tried to gesture a Hello, Thank you for having me, I’m very grateful, but fell upon no convenient mimes for those words, save a wave for the Hello. We stood smiling a few moments, motionless. Then my father left the fenced complex. As chief of the village, he presumably had better things to do. My mother smiled, shrugged and shuffled off.

Good to be home.

The complex was made up of a few small rooms, each a separate low boxy building. My siblings indicated my room, where I could put down my bags.

“This is Binta’s room,” said one of the girls, in French. Only the girls had accompanied me into the room. They were all watching me.

“Her room,” another girl said, pointing.

Another person had materialized. This girl was older: it was in her height; the way she held her face; her body. This fifteen-year-old (I asked her age later) was more womanly than I would probably ever be, judging by my own body at twenty years of age.

Binta watched me with a slightly curved mouth. Either that was her neutral face or she was smiling just a little, watching the adopted tubaab try to clumsily inhabit her bedroom. Binta commanded the space. I felt flustered by it.

“Thank you,” I said to her. “C’est vraiment gentil.” That’s really nice of you.

She just curved her lips and walked out.

 ***

I spent the evening with more siblings than I could count in what functioned as the family room. It was where the kids spent all of their time when they weren’t in school or doing chores. This was because it had a TV. Mouit was a unique village in that regard: it was typical of rural Senegalese villages in most ways except for the fact that it had electricity. Like most places in the world, the TV sapped not only electrical but human energy. It had most of us hooked most of the time. There was no end to the soccer and the Senegalese soap operas.

I finagled some conversation out of a few people. For the most part, any questions I asked were met by a rush of eager voices that I didn’t have time to distinguish before they fell abruptly silent again.

There were a few older teenagers, mostly boys, already in the room when I came in with the younger kids. They occupied the mats to the right of the television, backs against the wall, alternately watching the screen and flipping open their cell phones. Every now and then, when they got their phones out, a few of the younger ones would look over with obvious envy.

Toward nine in the evening, a man walked in. He looked relatively young. He stood in the doorway awhile, watching the screen. No one glanced his way. I was at the very edge and toward the back of the mat where all the kids crowded. Eventually he sat between the door and me, his back against the wall, on the concrete floor.

Given how close his face was to mine in the dark, it seemed odd not to acknowledge it. I turned to him and said hello in French and asked his name.

His mouth moved, and he let his breath play in and out of his lips before he said, “I’m Mamadou. I don’t speak French.”

Was that English? It was definitely English.

“I’m from the Gambia,” he added.

“Oh,” I said. “I’m from---well, I’m American. But my family lives in France. I grew up there.”

“America, France,” he repeated. “It must be beautiful.”

He asked me my name.

“Mama,” I said with a wry smile. “They named me after the other Mama.”

“Oh, yes, the baby,” he said. Host families commonly named their tubaabs---white people, or foreigners---after an existing family member. Ordinarily this family member was one older than the tubaab, which made chronological sense---you name someone new after someone who’s been around longer, right? I, however, had been named after the baby, who was still staring at me in the dark.

“But, no,” Mamadou said, “I mean your American name.”

That was a first. We’d become accustomed to giving out our “Obama names” whenever anyone cared enough to ask. Obama delighted people here. It was the most recent great thing about America today, amid all the other great things, thought most Senegalese. Obama was now synonymous with America.

“I’m Molly.”

“Molly,” he repeated. “Molly.”

He was silent awhile, but in the glow of the TV I could see his lips still moving, playing with the name. Even though English is the official language of the Gambia, the names are mostly the same as those in Senegal. After all, it’s just a little crumb trapped in Senegal’s big gullet. It sits there small and quiet, almost blending in.

 ***

He was from the Gambia and he was making his way upward, traveling steadily toward the top of Africa. He’d left his family three, four years ago, he said; what was left of his family, anyway. It sounded sinister when he first said it, but he clarified that several of his brothers had already left to do what he was doing now: working to make a little money to send back to their family, and a little money to get themselves somewhere else.

Mamadou wanted to go to Europe. Or America.

“England. I think England is nice,” he said. “Maybe I will go there, then America. Or maybe France, but I don’t think I will like France so much as England, or America.”

“Why?”

“I was told it’s very like Senegal,” he said.

He kept saying that he just had to get to Europe, and then he’d list the places he would go: Germany, maybe; England; America. . .

I began to suspect he may have thought they were all next door. I had neither the opportunity nor the heart to correct him. A few times I said, “Well, America’s really far from England, so. . .” He only paused, said “I see, alright,” nodded a little, and went on.

I noticed that a few of my siblings were glancing over at us from time to time. Not really when Mamadou spoke, since a lot of the time he spoke it was to no one, commenting on a character in the soap, or to wish---somewhat rhetorically, since he said it so softly and was paid no heed---that the television were tuned to a different channel. But when I replied, a few bright eyes in the dark flitted our way, then briefly about the room as though to see if anyone else had heard, then back to the TV. No one but the two of us, though, said a word.

We talked intermittently through the few hours we sat there in the family room. My host family was hosting him, too, for four months while he worked in the onion fields owned by my host father. There were a lot of fields, he said. My father, the chief, owned several. Mamadou worked and watered them from five in the morning until about five in the evening. Then he came home for dinner and a night’s good rest. I went to bed around the same time he did---nine-thirty, ten---while the rest of the family sat up later. It was a little embarrassing that, at the end of a day during which I had not exerted myself at all, I had no more stamina than a man who’d worked twelve hours carrying heavy buckets of water in the hot sun. I decided it was mental fatigue, the Wolof and all. Yeah. I had to believe I was doing some pretty challenging stuff in Senegal.

Looking Forward: Solitude.

I landed on the North Island of New Zealand in November 2008. I was alone, except for a mammoth North Face backpack, stuffed to capacity with Dr. Bronner’s peppermint soap and two dozen chocolate-chip Clif Bars. I planned to spend the next four weeks by myself, farm-hopping, if you will, as a participant in an organization called WWOOF (“Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms”).

For seven nights, I slept in a trailer on the lawn of a couple in their sixties, who sold produce at local farmers’ markets and ate only raw food. Bedtime came early at this particular household, and I spent hours each night reading by flashlight in my bunk, a hot water bottle nestled at my feet. I felt fragile---emotionally, because the quiet made me nervous, and physically, because I was too unsettled in my new surroundings to stomach the mountains of raw vegetables that were served for dinner each evening.

The next ten days were spent on a small family farm so implausibly lush, I was certain I’d found Tolkien’s Shire. There, I met Jo, a single mother who---on a daily basis---baked bread, practiced yoga, milked goats, trimmed roses, tended an unwieldy flock of chickens, and kept a vegetable garden. She taught me to make pavlova and strawberry jam, clean chicken coops, care for the animals. And at the end of each day, I retired to a cozy cabin in the backyard. I was alone, but exhausted. My body ached in a way that felt satisfying, even pleasurable. I slept soundly.

I ended my trip on Great Barrier Island, where I washed dishes at a local fishing lodge in exchange for a bed and free meals, many of which happened to include lobster. The people there were patient, generous, relaxed. The fishermen---who wore rain slickers and thick white beards, just as I expected fishermen would---took me to sea and taught me to properly cast a line, never batting an eye when I ultimately chose to eat gingersnaps on the boat’s deck rather than participate in the unsavory task of gutting the day’s catch.

One morning before I left, the lodge owners allowed me to take their station wagon to the beach (a terrifying experience, as I’d had no prior experience driving on the left-hand side of the road). When I finally arrived, nauseous and a little shaky, I found the sands deserted, with not a single other beachgoer in sight. And so I spent that afternoon alone, with a book and a sandwich and a sweater to guard against the wind.

I might, at one time, have found this solitude frightening. But on that day I felt adventurous. Like a daring traveler. A wanderer. A pioneer.

Today, as a writer, I spend an inordinate amount of time alone. Depending on my mood and the rhythm of the day, I find this both liberating and lonesome---there are times when I can’t stand the quiet; there are others when it’s nothing short of sublime.

Solitude, I’ve found, is its own kind of wilderness. Becoming familiar with the terrain requires a certain amount of exploration, and a bravery I can’t always find.

But what a pleasure it can be to surrender sometimes---to wander, to get lost, to accept the challenge.

On finishing what you've started

I started thinking about resolutions early in December, and I finally settled on something specific just in time for the New Year. I knew I wanted to dig deeper and put down roots. I wanted to focus on paying attention and following things through. I had a sense of what my intentions would be for 2013, but I knew I needed something a little more tangible to measure my progress and keep myself on track. Our little dining area is crammed with shelves and shelves of books, a combination of the two libraries and reading histories we brought into our relationship. Over the course of a meal, it’s not unlikely that we’ll pull out one or two, a bilingual dictionary or a novel or a theoretical tome, and mull over its past or flip to a familiar passage. I love our little library, but I’m always aware that it’s laced with a funny little secret.

The truth is, there aren’t so many books on those shelves that I’ve actually finished. Sure, I’ve read zillions and zillions of pages, if you consider them all together, but finishing one whole book is another thing entirely. If you pull out any of the books that are my own, you’re likely to find a bookmark stuck halfway through, or a worn first few chapters followed by crisp, untouched pages through the end. In some cases, I even stopped just a few pages before the end.

It’s not that didn’t love those unfinished books—in fact, I’ve claimed many of them as my favorites. Mostly I’ve just been drowning in reading assignments for the past few years and never felt like I could give my full attention to one whole book before sailing into the next. And maybe, in some cases, I liked those books so much that I didn’t want them to end.

Whatever the reasons may be, those unfinished pages are calling to me, especially now that I’ve got a little more time to attend to them lovingly, rather than whizzing through their pages in a race to some imaginary finish line. I think I set each book aside with a pang of guilt, but also with a glimmer of hope that I’d come back to it sometime in the future and finally do it justice.

A change in my reading habits is just one small example of the attention and depth I hope to cultivate this year, but I think it’s a good place to start. I’ve left plenty of loose ends dangling over the past few years, and I think it’ll feel just right to return to those characters and stories and ideas, one by one, and find out how things turned out.

How to See in the Dark

Sibyl, In the past few months, my family has suffered two major tragedies, and a few minor ones.  Now every time my husband leaves the house and doesn't answer his cell phone I think he's dead.  Most of me knows this is irrational, but until he gets home or contacts me, I'm a bit of a mess.  I can't afford the $170/hr to see a shrink, but sometimes I don't know how I'll move through the world without feeling at any moment someone I love could die or be hurt.  How can I move past this?

Sincerely,

Irrational

Dearest Irrational,

I have good news and bad news.  Since I know it would calm your anxiety to get it out of the way, let's start with the bad news.

You are not going to get past this.  It is going to become part of who you are.  These traumas, whatever they are, are changing and shaping you.  Who you become in the face of them is up to you.

We'll get to that.  Before you can worry about who you're going to be, you have to survive these first traumatized months.  First of all, explain to your husband that for right now, you need him to answer the phone every time you call.  He doesn't have to talk, he can answer with a text that just says "I'm here".  But for right now, that is what you need -- to know that he is alive.

It is perfectly okay to be Irrational right now, when life makes so little sense.  It’s okay to be a mess.  It’s okay to put your hands on his face every time he returns to you, and say, “I thought I lost you.  You’re back.  We’re home.”

If he really objects to this imposition, put a time limit on it, "I just need this for the next 2-4 weeks.  Then we can reassess."  Trauma is a huge relationship litmus test, so if he can be there for you in this, you will only get closer.

Now for some good news: you don’t have to go it alone.   Of course you can't afford $170/hour for a therapist.  Who can?  That fee is absurd.  I don't know where you live, but I bet there's a clinic or a graduate school nearby that has therapy interns that could see you for as little as $25/session.  If you live in California, and any of your recent tragedies are from violent crimes, you can get therapy through a program called Victims of Crime.

So, with a little bit of research about clinics, schools, and resources in your area, you can see a therapist that you can afford to help you through this time.  You'll have to go through this dark period of your life no matter what, but you shouldn't have to go through it without a guide.  Therapists are trained to walk alongside folks who have experienced tragedies while holding the lantern to help them see the way.

So, with your supports in place, you'll be able to dive in to the crux of the matter.  These recent tragedies have pulled the veil off of your life and you are seeing humans for what we really are: ephemeral.  Our lives, no matter how bright and beautiful, will one day pass away.  It is a horrible panic attack-inducing truth.  But it is also what makes our lives have a sense of urgency, what propels us to ever do anything of consequence, what gives us something worth fighting for.

When my beloved father died, I spent a grief-stricken winter laying face up on my bed, immobile, staring at the one lonely snowflake I had hung from my ceiling, reciting my favorite poems and feeling the chill of a world in which my anchor had been pulled up.  I was adrift.  And terrified.

So, when it came time to register for classes at my university, I signed up for an intense course in Death and Dying, in which we read 12 books about death; theological, philosophical, and personal texts.  The professor's father was dying as he taught the class.  He and I spent several afternoons in his office, laughing at the absurdity of death and sitting in silence at the horror of it.  It was insane to immerse myself so fully in my grief, but I had a therapist I trusted and my fiancee by my side, so I dove in.  I needed to make sense of the world before I could commit myself fully to living in it.

Perhaps you are not about to take such an undeniably intellectual pursuit.  However, do something to make sense of your world, or you will find yourself trying to control it in odd ways.  Pulling out bits of your hair and lining them up in straight rows, restricting certain foods to cheat death's knocking, calling your loved ones obsessively -- I've been there, I know this behavior.  But how you face these tragedies will direct a good portion of your life.  Don't judge yourself for however you experience grief, but strive to get the better of it.  Just the fact that you wrote in to this column shows you are ready to face these fears.

Finally, do something that makes you feel really alive.  Take up boxing, write a poem every day, hike the hills behind your house, sing at a monthly open mic night.  Whatever it is, choose something that brings you close to the core of life, but does not throw you over.  Grind your feet into the earth, finding your shoring beneath you.

Remind yourself why you want to remain a citizen of this world.  Give yourself visceral experiences of the beauty of this life, despite the pain we inevitably incur.  Love so fiercely that death has no lasting sting, just a dull ache that reminds you that what you’ve lost lives on in you, propelling you to further bravery in loving.

Love,

Sibyl

Reflecting on milestones: 2012

This column first appeared on Stories of Conflict and Love earlier this week. I have always been attached to the process of documentation and the rituals of recording memories. Different notebooks have held disparate thoughts across eras of my life, with their pages threading together class notes on violent conflict in Africa to poetry to to-do lists to workshop outlines to endless nights of worry. For the past four years, I have lived out of a suitcase, shedding belongings and an attachment to 'stuff' and hoarding memories instead. The notebooks have been the only possessions of mine that have traveled everywhere, truly everywhere, stretching suitcases till they bloat. And even though they now sit neatly on a shelf in Boston, there was no arrangement or system to how they were organized. The only rule was that every page had to be filled before a new notebook was commissioned to be my wandering companion.

January 16, 2012 was the beginning of a new notebook, for no reason other than its predecessor running out of pages. On that day, I copied down Mary Anne Radmacher's poem, "Living Eulogy:"

Under that, inspired by Katie, I started making a list. Every year, Katie tracks goals she'd like to meet before her next birthday. Page 1 of this new notebook mirrored that format and, below Radmacher's poem, I started outlining my own hopes for 2012.

Some were laughably simple, almost thrown in there the way you write "laundry" or "grocery shopping" onto a to-do list: for the painless joy of crossing those items off. #12 on my list was "throw a party." There had been plenty of parties in my nomadic life. There was the table dancing in Guatemala---ceaseless dancing on tables, it seemed. There were the nights in Cairo when we all gathered in that penthouse apartment and sang our lungs out to Queen. I remember the night Elijah walked me to Tahrir to hail a taxi and I could still hear Bohemian Rhapsody in the background. But then the moving, the ceaseless moving, took its toll and the parties were mostly farewell parties, for me and for others. #12 on the list was not (just) about buying Solo cups and cheap wine. It was about being embedded in a community long enough, feeling its grounding enough, to host snippets of it in my home "just because." Not because anyone was leaving, not because it was a birthday. Because it was community.

And there were parties. #12: done.

#15: Take a night photograph I am proud of. You see, this one correlated to #25: Learn to shoot my camera on manual. I "knew" how to use my camera on manual. I taught photography workshops for crying out loud. But it always felt a little foreign. The photos always felt nicer on 'automatic'---as though anything nice in life ever came out of automatic. The night photos, in particular, always felt shaky. All of me felt shaky at times this year. Shooting the camera on manual, dragging it along and having the weight of its strap tug on my shoulder at night, was a challenge not because of its mechanics, but because of my own wobbliness. And then Milos happened. Greece and I have the kind of relationship that melts anxiety, such that this photo can be taken, such that elbows can sit steady and skirted legs can plant themselves firmly on salty ground and hair can billow in the wind and I can hold my breath long enough to defeat the blurriness.

#15: Take a night photograph I am proud of. Done. It is not a particularly original image. Add a cat into it, a skewer of souvlaki, and some cheesy reference to "Greece is for lovers", and it's a generic postcard. But it is clear, unshaken, and taken by me, and that makes it a cherished first. Done.

Then there were the trickier dreams. #21: Create a home. This is not a to-do item of the "laundry" and "grocery shopping" variety; it is not the kind of goal one can fulfill by focusing hard enough or trying harder or by finding the perfect rock on a Greek island onto which to perch her elbows to take a not-blurry night photograph. The irony behind this wish is that I did not expect it to be fulfilled until the fall came, and the suitcases were unpacked and put away, and I lived in Boston with the ability to firmly derive my identity from being a graduate student. Jerusalem snuck up on me. It insisted on not being ephemeral. It demanded lasting love. It required commitment: the purchase of the space heater, the unavoidable conversations with everyone on the street from the baker to the laundromat operator. The evaporation of any desire to avoid conversation. I did not think 2012 would hold two homes, but it did. Some would argue that the very existence of multiple homes speaks to the lack of a solid, meaningful one---but, in this case, I'll take the polyamory.

I cannot pronounce #21 done; no home is ever 'done', the process of making one is never complete---let alone the process of creating and sustaining multiple homes in one's heart. But #21 is the kind of item I would never like to cross off a list and pronounce 'done' in the first place. I simply wanted to know it was possible.

Some of the items on my 2012 wishlist stand unfulfilled, but I am determined to give them another try. See #14: Keep an ideas notebook. I have a noisy brain, the kind that I am trying to make peace with, rather than silence. Particularly in moments of euphoria, ideas zoom through it and most of them remain uncaptured, evading me in the moments of calm when I try to revisit them. When Kim sent me a notebook with "Ideas" scribbled on its cover in February, it seemed like the perfect moment to slow down and start jotting down the thoughts born out of elation or enthusiasm before they become too fleeting to ground. The pages of that notebook are still blank. I still want to try in 2013, because I want the mornings after ideas to be just as alive and enlivening. #14: not done, decidedly not done. But still salient enough, necessary enough to stay on the wish list for another year.

Then there were the wishes that remained unfulfilled, but I am willing to let them stand as such. They either became less relevant as the year passed or I grew readier to live without them. I never entered a contest (#7) with my writing or photography in 2012, nor did I send 12 handwritten letters (#25). I wrote new columns in 2012, including this one, and I published photo-essays, but I never quite went through with clicking submit and having my work evaluated by a panel of seriousness. I penned endless cards and thank you notes and Christmas wishes and Congratulations on your marriage, but 12 handwritten letters never quite happened. I could dissect why that was, I could investigate the desire behind those items in the first place, but they do not burn brightly enough any more to necessitate that. As such, #7 and #25: unchecked, peacefully so.

Unlike those items, there were those at which I failed abjectly, and disappointingly. #1: Worry less. In my final Gypsy Girls Guide column, on January 3, 2012, a mere day after my birthday, I wrote that I wanted 2012 to be the "year of the exhale." I knew then, as I know now, that a human being cannot go on worrying at the level and meticulousness that I do. I was aware that it was time to let go of some of the anxiety, of the post-traumatic stress, of the grief, of the intensity of conflict zones, of the emotional minefield of work that I did not know (or want) to do unemotionally. I wrote then:

It is not journeys I long for this year. It is not novelty or fireworks I crave, though I welcome all of this into my life and am open to it if it comes. In 2012, I am willing a quiet mind. In 2012, I want to banish Ray LaMontagne for Damien Rice and his belief that I can “look into my eyes and see that noone will harm me.” Some former smokers say that months after quitting smoking, an exhale comes and they breathe deeply, making it all worth it. In 2012, I am living for the exhale.

2012 endowed me with journeys, novelty, fireworks---and some exhales, too. But I was naive to think that those would come without more moments that cut an inhale short, trigger a gasp, or make me hold my breath till I turn blue in the face. Exhaling was beautiful and needed, but if I am to keep writing, and reflecting, and living with intention---as Mary Anne Radmacher would have it---then I need to learn not only to wish for the exhale, but also to master creating it myself and living patiently with the moments that render it elusive. I failed at worrying less this year. In the scheme of life, this is a more costly failure than having failed at other items on the wish list. I am slowly realizing that in my life, item #1 from year to year will continue to be Worry Less, until it, too, is rendered unnecessary. Until this wish has been scratched off the list, edged off by other priorities, sufficiently conquered, or---perhaps more realistically---until I make peace.

Needing the New

Growing up, whenever there was a school vacation (regardless of length), I felt compelled to be different upon my return.  A three-day weekend prompted me to scavenge the mall, seeking out a perfect GAP t-shirt that would make all of the other seventh graders drool with corporate envy.  A week over Easter meant a new haircut or an unhealthy amount of time spent laying in my pool, trying to cultivate the perfect golden brown skin-tone (I am half Irish; this is not easy).  Summer break?  I needed to travel to far-flung places to build my sophistication arsenal.  I needed an accent, or at least a fake one.  I needed to lose weight or gain muscle, to learn gymnastics or grow three inches.  I needed, on that first day of school, the look in my friends’ eyes that said, “you’re a better you.” The world we live in, of course, both helps in creating this need for change and makes achieving it all too easy.  A quick perusal of the magazines on newsstands right now showcases too many “new you!” headlines to count, whether it be how to lose 10 pounds fast or reverse aging or try a new hairstyle that will change your life; flipping open the same magazines reveals advertisements and articles geared towards becoming your best self, over and over and over again.

And now, the pinnacle of the makeover madness, the holiday designed to remind us, yet again, that we’re still striving; that we will, in fact, always be striving: New Year’s.  Stressed and strung out from too much family time and too delicious gingerbread men, bloated from the eleventh eggnog cocktail and bleary eyed from waking up to play Santa, we look at New Year’s and think, “yeah, that sounds good. I’ll resolve to be better.”  Because who couldn’t stand to be a little better?  And because, of course, the resolution is the easiest part.

My need for drastic change has subsided over the years.  I remember distinctly returning to the hometown I’d moved away from when I was thirteen.  I was now sixteen.  Since leaving, I’d spent a summer abroad in Germany.  I’d stopped wearing bell bottoms (so unfashionable!) and moved on to bootcut jeans.  My hair was longer and less frizzy, my skin was beginning to emerge from under its sea of zits.  I rang the doorbell of an old friend’s house and stood on her porch, trying to cock my hip out just so.  She opened the door.

“Liz!” she said, flinging her arms around me.

“Hey,” I said, my irrational teenage heart sinking.  “I thought you’d hardly recognize me.”

She pulled back and looked me up and down.  “Nope, I recognize you perfectly.” She caught the look in my eye and frowned.  “Why?” she said.  “Did you not want me to?”

“I just wanted to be, you know . . . different,” I mumbled.

She swooped me into her arms again.  “But I,” she said, “wanted to see Liz.”  While I was disappointed, she got exactly what she wanted.

The ten pounds, the red hair, the black, brown or green hair, the tan, the pale skin, the contacts, the new dress: all of it is to get you that much closer to a person you like, not change you in the eyes of anyone else.  My friend would’ve recognized me no matter what.  The question was if I had become the person I wanted to recognize.  If I had become a person I could like.

This New Year’s, I’m resolving to stay the course.  Like many people my age, I’m learning to love myself a little bit more every year, and any drastic left or right turns might impede that journey.  I resolve to enjoy exactly who I am right now, and exactly who I may be in a week, or a month, or a year.

Happy New Year’s to everyone.  May your night and all the subsequent ones be bright.

A Christmas Present

A lovely video by Molly McIntyre

When We Are Older This Will All Make Sense and It Will Be Too Late

Sibyl, I have spent a significant amount of time pursuing one career direction, and now I am unsure if that is the right way for me. This is not unusual, but I am unsure how to decide on a new direction. Early 30's still feels too old to just try out some other career paths. I have worked in religious institutions or social services or both or 5 years. Now I would like to try something more creative . . . yet I am unsure where to go or what to do. How do I explore options while still affording to live? What can I do to both explore and survive?

Sincerely, Ummm

Dear Ummm,

I am so glad you brought this up.  True confession time: Sibyl has no idea what the heck she is doing with her life.  Like you, I have invested a considerable amount of time, energy, and debt in following a life in the "helping professions", only to find that it is an unsustainable way for me to live.  So, I am striking out into the world with writing and other creative pursuits, terrified at the outcome but totally sure that it is what I need to do, anyway.

I have learned some things along the way, which I will now share with you, dearest Um.

1. A life of service will suck you dry and spit you out when you have nothing left.  

My father was social worker, and when he would get home every day, I would ask, "How was your day?"  His one word response was invariably, "Crazy."  Whenever I pressed him for more answers, he just said, "It's a thankless job."  And that, my friend, was that.

Despite this harrowing harbinger of the life to come, I idolized my father and followed his footsteps, pursuing a life of helping others.  It just seemed like the right thing to do.  In college and graduate school, I heard a lot about the way the work feeds you from within, and how your thanks is in the process of helping others.  This was enough for me, in my twenties.  I worked my ass off at low-paying jobs, and did indeed find the work rewarding.

However, I realized that although I enjoyed this kind of work, I had some life goals I wanted to complete, namely, having a family.  So, I set out to get knocked up and have a child.  This is when I found that having a job that pays you very little to take care of other people's emotional needs does not work well with being a parent, which consists of being paid absolutely nothing to take care of another person’s EVERYTHING.  Like you, I realized I needed to create or I would be left with nothing.  Art poured out of me like my desire to "save the world" once did.  But for whatever money work in social services provided, art provides even less.  What to do?

2. Make a list of all your creative interests, no matter how foolish.

Let yourself really dream here.  Do you want write, paint, be a film critic, cook, front a band, report the weather?  Be ridiculous.  Write, "I just want to be Vincent Gallo."  Okay!  Now we're talking.  Look over your list.  Where do you find the MOST energy?  It is important to tell your inner critic to go take a nap when you do this.  Instead of listening to that nagging voice that says "You'll never make a living that way!", listen to the one that tells you that what the world needs is more people doing what they love, what makes them truly come alive.

There are tons of practical exercises like this in the book The Artist's Way, by Julia Cameron.  I suggest you pick up a copy and start the twelve week program she outlines, as soon as possible.  It's a great way to start your explorations while still living your day-to-day life.

3. Get water from a stone.

Have you decided on what creative path you're most interested in exploring?  If you chose filmmaking, you don't need to know what you want to make films about, you just need to start researching film schools, and go from there.  Look up unpaid internships (I know, I know) at your favorite magazine and write for them in the time you used to spend watching sitcoms.  Volunteer at your local artist collective and talk to people who actually do make a living as art-makers.  The way they’ve pieced together their lives could surprise you.  For instance, it may make a lot of sense to combine your helping profession efforts with art-making -- they could inform each other in beautiful ways.

Again, tell your inner critic to take a vacation while you're researching artist residencies in Maine.  Or, better yet, sit that critic down, and say, "You're RIGHT.  I'm never going to save for retirement and buy a house if I follow my creative goals now.  But giving everything I have to others has not made me millionaire either.  So guess what?  I'm going to do what makes me happy.  And when I'm drowning in debt, you can say, 'I told you so', and I can go make a masterpiece on my canvas.  You're right, but I win."

Here's what you need to do, Ummm.  Figure out the very least that you can live on.  One fancy coffee per week instead of five?  Awesome.  Brown bagging it every day instead of eating from food carts with your friends?  Excellent.  Turning on the heat in only the direst of snow storms?  Pull up that blanket!  I know that you've probably been living a life of almost-poverty taking care of others for so long.  But believe me, this is different.

Investing your time and efforts in art-making actually is enriching, in the way that all our professors told us that lives of service would be.  Okay, so you don't have a living room that could be featured in Ladies' Home Journal, and you can't go on vacation and post a picture of your feet with a fancy drink by the ocean on Facebook, but guess what?  You get to be you, and you get to be awesome.

You will always be that interesting person at a party who is not just talking about what milestone your baby has reached, but has a new project or idea you're working on that you want feedback from your friends about.  You'll always have something to do on a Friday night, because you'll be in your studio.  So, you don't have all the material bullshit and security our culture seems to uphold so much, but look how that's working out for those folks?  Rich, secure, and absolutely terrified of losing that wealth and perceived security.  Be bold, risk big, and yes, get mad about the fact that art-making doesn't pay actual dollars.  Do it anyway.

3. Don't go it alone.

So, you've spent all this time taking care of other people, and you're ready to follow your own dreams for once.  Guess what?  All of that time you spent caring for others spiritually and physically was not wasted.  It was all a part of your creation as a soon-to-be artist.  You not only became a person of substance, who actually has something to create art about, but you stored up a ridiculous amount of good karma.

Being there for others means that they are now going to be there for you.  They'll say, "That Ummm, what a good guy, he came to the hospital when my dad was sick, and now he's striking out as an artist and needs a leg up, why don't I buy one of his pieces, or, at the very least, invite him over for Sunday dinner."  You've got to find your people, and chance are, you already have, since you've devoted your life to loving humans.  Lean on them now.  Let them take care of you in the ways you've been taking care of them.  Help comes from the most unexpected places.  Reach out, and see the lovely (and materialistically helpful) ways your community responds.

It will not be magical, it will happen because of all the work you have already put in.  Everything is not going to mysteriously go your way once you set your mind to what you want to do, don’t buy that bull.  However, it will flow back to you proportionally to what effort you put forth.  You want to explore?  Really excavate!  Don’t hold back.  You get out of the creative life what you put into it.  Stop ummming and start risking, give up the fallacy of security, and be who you are, big time.

When we are older, all of this will make sense to us, and we will say, “Oh!  I should have started this or that sooner.”  But it will be too late.  Right now, contrary to what you are being told, is not too late, because it is all we have.  Dive in right this second.  I can’t wait to see what you come up with.

In solidarity,

Sibyl

Home

Faded ticket stubs, dried rose petals folded inside notes of high school love, gleeful photos of attempting to blow out candles on childhood birthday cakes, and journals describing firsts---the first time away from home, the first crush, the first heartbreak, and the first encounter with grief. A whole life, a full life, is contained in the dusty leather photo albums and journals, remnants of a world before Facebook and iPhones. This past life, which I visit upon coming “home,” feels distant. I associate with the girl in the photos, whose memories I find in my childhood bedroom---the one smiling in the photos, wistfully blowing dandelion seeds off a dark green stem; the one who scribbled “BFFs” on the back of pictures and saved notes secretly passed in class, attempting to immortalize friendship; and the one with the mischievous grin of adventure-scheming, creating imaginary worlds in the backyard. Yet, she feels distant.

Home is now packaged with the holidays and my trips are fewer and shorter. At times it astounds me that over ten years ago, I packed my bags, ready for a new world in Boston. Without fail, upon returning to this bedroom, my attention is drawn to the old photo albums (which I aptly called “memory books”), scribbled notes, and journals---each full of its own memories. Perhaps by searching through the past I can find answers to the persistent questions of the present. Perhaps simply reigniting the memories, the feelings, of a life contained within a single community and countable friendships, will bring resolutions to questions in a life not contained by space and experiences.

What pulls me to these photos and scribbles is the inability to return to these cherished moments---childhood, a past sense of friendship and family, or, in many ways, the version of myself that existed here. As the brilliant article in the Harvard Business Review, How to Move Around without Losing your Roots notes, “. . . home is where we are from---the place we begin to be.” Home is where the “self” I began with is.

As a wise friend told me recently that we carry the “versions” of ourselves from the past with us.

The self in the photos is confident in belonging; joyful, yet naive to realities beyond her world; and, yet this self longed for understanding beyond her immediate experience. While the current version feels distant from the photos and scribbles, so much of the searching, creating, and defining in my life was born in this mischievous grin and the very first iteration of home and self. The notion of home, even if it is past, challenges me to assess changes and growth, while tying my current life back to the Colorado landscapes, the house my father built, and friendships helped me define who I was in the beginning. As distant as I may ever feel, my current self is rooted in this past narrative of home and place. If home is an experience of “belonging, a feeling of being whole and known,” as the HBR article describes, it is not my current self in the place that “I began” that feels at home. Yet, the self I remember when I visit may hold joyful child-like insights and mischievous adventure schemes to inform my continued search for this notion of “home.”

Would you like that book in print or pixels?

Armed with a shiny new gift card, I set about fulfilling my reading wish list this week. There was only one problem. For each title, I hovered over the “add to cart” button, wavering unsteadily between two options: print or ebook. In the past, the print vs. digital decision has always been an obvious one. I wanted to feel the weight of a book in my hands, inhale that new (or used) book smell, and wander my way through the geography of its pages. My Kindle library, on the other hand, is made up largely of books I couldn’t find at the university library two hours before a class. The sensory aspect of print always won out; ebooks were second-string.

Lately, though, the gravitational pull of digital has dragged me right into the center of the debate. It used to seem as if digital libraries were isolated ones. When all of our recent reads drift into the abyss of the cloud, we lose that particular intimacy of hovering over a friend’s bookshelves, running a finger over the titles, and uncovering the stories behind the stories.

That’s the thing about personal libraries. They bear witness to the places we’ve been and the people we’ve loved. The collective provenance of our books is like a time capsule. Where were you when you read this one, and who were you with, and where did you get it, and who had it before you? The used books and those with personal inscriptions are of particular interest. They remind us of our connections to friends and strangers.

And anyways, have you ever had an author sign your ebook?

But despite the compelling arguments for print (and I can think of many more), I am beginning to glimpse the possibilities for reading in community with ebooks. You can read together long-distance and share impressions in real time with 24-Hour Bookclub. You can share favorite passages with Readmill, and you can even browse your friends’ digital libraries with Goodreads. I’m just touching the surface of these and so many other possibilities, but I’m excited about reading as a communal sport. I hope it lands comfortably somewhere on the spectrum between very quiet alone-time reading and social media overwhelm.

In the end, I bought one ebook and one print. I’m devouring the former while I wait a whole forty-eight hours for the latter to arrive, in all of its weighty, book-scented glory. As for the rest of my list, I’ll let you know how it goes.

Some Thoughts on Bangladesh

Bangladesh:  cyclones, floods, poverty, George Harrison sang a song about it.  Maybe if you’re a little older than me you remember news reports from the seventies about the liberation war.  More recently perhaps the name conjures thoughts of a Nobel Prize and micro credit.  None of which has anything to do with everyday life, with the possible exception of poverty.  But even that, I would wager that whatever vision or perception you have, the reality is incomprehensible. [gallery]

Bangladesh is an incredibly poor country.  So much so, that I’m not sure I can put it into words.  UNICEF  estimates that 50% of the population is living below the international poverty line of $1.25 USD/day (2009 stat).  I expect that to be a very conservative number.  The fact is that the people likely to be missed by such a survey including the homeless, rural farm workers, and gypsies, are likely to be many of those living below the poverty line.  Begging is a way of life, a day job, especially in the city---and it breaks my heart a little almost every day.  On my first visit to Bangladesh one of the things I taught myself was that there is no shame in closing your eyes.  It took some convincing, but I came to the conclusion that it is not cowardly or hiding, its protecting my psyche.  As with anywhere else in the world where begging is rampant, it is impossible to tell who is asking because they truly need and who is just looking at it as a job---if there is even a difference.  And there is no magic wand or fairy spell.  I could give away my entire savings, and it would make no difference here.  Until there is sustainable employment, the pattern will continue.  Dhaka is crushed with people.  Villagers travel to the city hoping that they’ll find a job, a better situation, something to send home to their families.  The city is bursting at the seams; there is no room for the crux of humanity.  Aid organizations flock to the country.  Maybe they do good---I certainly hope so . . . but I also know that for every $2 that comes into the country in aid, $1 lines someone’s pocket.  Everyone here knows it.  Corruption is the name of the game.  I recently heard that Bangladesh was ranked as one of the top, if not the number one, most corrupted government/country.  The response of people around me---not surprised at all.  Not even a little. Politicians are getting ridiculously rich off of the suffering.  Aid organizations are building themselves bigger offices.  Nothing is accomplished unless you know someone in the right circles.  And in my ear, George Harrison is still crying.

Since You Brought It Up: New Traditions

By Ashely Schneider This year’s Christmas is shaping up to be a quiet one. We opted out on a tree and have yet to firm up any plans. With family on the other side of the country, it’s just the two of us here in Oregon. My husband actually has to work on Christmas, so the past few days have been sad for me as I picture myself alone in our house on a day that’s meant to be cheerful and merry.

I’ve given myself a number of pity parties full of Neil Young songs (Helpless is my go-to), chocolate, bad movies, and tears. Deep down, I know that the emptiness I feel is nothing compared to the pain and suffering others are experiencing. I can’t help but think of heart broken families in Newtown, Connecticut, soldiers stationed in Afghanistan, or men and women living on the streets.

Don Miller, author of Blue Like Jazz, says it perfectly: The overwhelming majority of time I spend thinking about myself, pleasing myself, reassuring myself, and when I am done there is nothing to spare for the needy. Six billion people live in this world, and I can only muster thoughts for one. Me.

So today, I have decided to put on my big girl pants and do something good for others this season. I’ve signed up to volunteer at a local church where we’ll be serving meals to 200+ homeless people on Christmas Day. I’m not accustomed to spending the holidays this way, but I’m certain it’s the right thing to do. Perhaps in this quiet time of my life, as I wait for new things to happen, my thoughts have been centered too much on me. By choosing to let the spirit and meaning of Christmas live in my heart, I can turn to face the needs of others and focus on bringing them joy.

***

We believe we can find more joy in the holidays by squashing the little voice that tells us bright spirits and good cheer are only possible when we’re perfect.  The magic of this time of year comes from connecting with loved ones near and far, reminding ourselves of all we have to be thankful for, and . . . covering everything in twinkling white lights. 

We’re embracing our present lives—foibles and all—so we can spend more time drinking egg nog and less time worrying we’re not good enough. Imperfect is the new black; wear it with pride.

Want to lighten your load? Read the post that kicked off the series, Ashely Schneider's Down, Not Out. Add your story to the “Since You Brought It Up” series by submitting it here. 

Naughty or Nice?

Dear Sibyl, My older brother has a girlfriend for the first time in years. I'm super psyched that she's going to be around for the holidays. I've already got her gift lined up. I'm looking forward to being able to hang out with her and get to know her. I've only met her once so far.

Earlier this week she texted me about a Christmas present for my bro. Super sweet. But here's my worry: I pretty much know he won't get her anything. He is always broke by choice and quite cheap. Love him anyways, of course. I'm aware that I might be projecting my own fears onto her (no gift = no love), and I know in my heart things just don't work that way. But I'm still freaked. Part of me wants to just buy a gift for her from him without her being the wiser. I know my bro would approve (unfortunately). But something tells me I shouldn't do that.

Should I say anything to her? Should I do anything? If this is all my own problem, what can I do to get over it?

Thank you! Santa's Elf

Dear Santa’s Elf,

First of all, congrats to your brother on his new relationship, and to you on your connection to her.  I can understand your excitement, relief, and hopes that big bro will be loved in the way that he deserves.  However, I have to advise you to pull that elf hat off right this instant, and burn it on sight.  It’s not a good look.

Here’s the thing: YOU love your brother despite his Scroogey ways.  What makes you think she won’t do the same?  Is it because it really, really sucks not to receive in the manner in which you give?  Yes, Sibyl knows this feeling well.

Love is fucking disappointing.  At times it can be wonderful, but at others, it makes your heart so sick that you’re sure it’s detaching from your chest.  I remember that I was several years into my marriage when I realized that marriage is even more heartbreaking than the cycle of getting together and breaking up that makes up the dating scene.  I spent a sleepless night with a pile of old love letters, crying over what was lost and what might still be.

Your brother is going to disappoint his girlfriend.  She is going to let him down, as well.  What will be most important for them to work out as a couple will be: is the way in which they disappoint each other inherently traumatic to them, because of things that have happened in their early, shaping years, or can they survive the disappointments and grow stronger because of them?

It is good that she is learning now that your brother does not really value gift-giving.  If it is something that is very important to her, hopefully she will tell him that, and he will either be able to change and grow, or he will say, “Well, I’m never going to get you anything, that’s just who I am.”, which could be the end of the relationship.

Listen, I know you would do almost anything to make this relationship stick.  You love your brother and it sounds like you desperately want him to be happy.  But if you interfere here and give his girlfriend what you think she needs and wants here, you're writing an emotional check for your brother that he may not be able to cash.  It's love forgery.

So, if you can't get his girlfriend a soy candle and tie it up with a raffia bow and do your best impression of his handwriting on the to-from tag, what CAN you do?  Well, you can tell him that she contacted you, and is planning to get him something nice.  You can lay your cards on the table with him, and say, "I really like this girl, and you seem happy for the first time in a long while.  I think you should consider getting something for her for Christmas.  Perhaps you don't have any money, but you can do this.  You can make her something, you can give her a coupon for a great date, or you can be really frugal for the next few weeks so that you can afford to buy something.  I think it's worth it, and I hope you do, too."  Then, you can buy the girlfriend that soy candle, and put your own damn name on it.  It won't erase the awkwardness and frustration of not getting anything from her boyfriend, but it will express to her that you are excited about her presence.

After all, if you swoop in and compensate for the ways his expression of love falls short, not only will you be making promises that you can’t really keep, but you are taking something else away from them—an opportunity to grow as a couple.  It is through feeling lack that we change.  Without the chance to feel loss, we’d have no impetus to look within ourselves and see what needs work.  Will your brother step up to the plate and find a way to show his girl he wishes her all the best this year?  I hope so.  But if he doesn’t, I hope even more that they find a way to talk about expectations and disappointment, an important conversation for any couple to have.

Wishing you and your family Happy Holidays,

Sibyl

Do you have a quandary that you'd like Sibyl to help you with? Submit it here!

What Are You Reading (offline, that is)?

Nina Sovich is an American writer who lives in Paris. She is releasing a travel memoir in July 2013 titled To the Moon and Timbuktu. She has written for Reuters, the Wall Street Journal, Time magazine and the Patriot Ledger. She blogs on travel and raising children in France on www.thesestolendays.com/blog. Every year, at this time, I find myself rereading books I loved as a younger woman. It might be that the holidays make me nostalgic. It might be too exhausting to discover great new fiction or it seems too selfish to buy a present for myself. It may have to do with the fact that I drink more than usual around Christmas and if I don’t read something familiar at night I’ll lose the plot.

I list below the books I love to read, many of which I have read before, that I will inevitably read again. These are not happy stories, but there is a certain authoritative melancholy to them that works in the dark month of December. Many are books that center on the family and wonder on the notion of love.  Many have a strong moral voice or ask ethical questions, which I find acts as an antidote to all the hysterical cheer of the holiday season.  Most importantly, all contemplate escape—from an overbearing Russian husband, a large family in St Louis, the decay of a colonial outpost, even from the myth of African salvation. These books make me feel like myself again, giving me the fortitude to start the New Year.

Lie Down in Darkness. William Styron.  This book came out in 1951 just as the intelligentsia, if not the nation, was realizing the life of convention-bound, country club-going WASPs wasn’t all it’s cracked up to be. As Virginia gentry, the Loftis’s drink and fight, abandon each other, rip each others’ hearts out and then scream for protection. Love is the least stable element in this family, resentment the most. Styron writes with urgency, despite all the hot summer afternoons and gentle landscape descriptions, and every scene is filled with real terror. Who will save them? Why must they do this to each other? Will the selfish, beautiful damaged daughter Peyton escape, at least a moment, before her death? So much is at stake, yet nothing need be lost. For any woman who has marveled at her mother’s callousness and her father’s adoration, this is your book.

Mating. Norman Rush.  This book is told through the eyes of a smart, unnamed female graduate student who casts out into the Kalahari desert in order to find a commune run by a brilliant anthropologist. She is tough, smart, well-read and romantic. The professor, on the other hand, is a total phony. He spouts social theory, contemplates Marx and sets about the unwinnable task of creating an African utopia by eliminating African men from the equation. The book is both a discussion of obsession and a strong commentary on foolish white expats who try to save Africa. I read it in my 20s, as I travelled the world in search of a cause, and saw worrying reflections of my own life. Perhaps I aspired to escape ordinary American life for something cleaner, more structured, theoretical and moral.  But, in the end, there was always a man at the heart of it--calling the shots, talking about equality… doing nothing.

No Hurry to Get Home. Emily Hahn. This is a compilation of autobiographical stories from The New Yorker that Hahn wrote starting in the late 1920s. She writes a big life for herself, without ornament or hyperbole, and even the small family anecdotes lead to greater freedom. Mickey (Hahn’s nickname) and her sister wear knickerbockers to school, because skirts are impractical, and earn press attention. Mickey goes to college far from home, where she startles the professors by studying engineering. She travels across the country with a friend and gets a job as a writer. Every step is taken with the hope that the world will bend to her conventions and not the other way around. In the end, it does. Soon the girl from St. Louis is travelling alone through the Belgian Congo, recording the racism and hypocrisy of the colonizers. She is smoking opium in China and reflecting on addiction. She is in love with a British intelligence officer and watching the Japanese invade Hong Kong. She lived so many lives in this one book that any one of them would do for me.

Anna Karenina. Leo Tolstoy. The story is known--Anna Karenina abandons her staid husband and young son to run away with her the rich, handsome Count Vronsky. The great thing about this book (yes, I am here to tell you) is that the moral stakes are high, but Tolstoy doesn’t write judgment into the pages. As a young, single woman, I sympathized with Anna and felt she had the right to pursue happiness, even if she abandoned her young son. Now that I have my own marriage and children, I find myself wondering if old Karenin was such a bad guy after all. I read this book over and over again, always changing my mind. And if Anna’s poor choices and narcissism becomes a bit too much there is Levin, a sweet and conflicted man who falls for the lovely Kitty.  ‘Freedom what is the good of freedom?’ Levin thinks. ‘Happiness consists only in love and desiring; in wishing her wishes and in thinking her thoughts…” That’s a man I can get behind.

Burmese Days. George Orwell. The entire colonial enterprise and all its failures are laid bare here. There are vicious British colonial officials who live for gin cocktails and enmity. Dr. Veraswami, a cultured Indian doctor, whose only pathetic desire is to get into the European club. U Po Kyin the corrupt Burmese official who has money and power but can only see enemies around him. But the heart of the story centers on one British man’s loss of identity and faith. John Flory, drunk, alone, and high up the white man’s pedestal, the view has become blurry. His best friend is Dr. Veraswami, but he won’t admit it. He keeps a Burmese mistress but won’t love her. When the young Elizabeth Lakersteen comes to Burma he courts her, but he has forgotten the small-minded, provincial ways of his countrymen. Needless to say it goes horribly, unbearably wrong.

Gossip Girl is Dead. Long Live Gossip Girl.

Dear Sibyl, I'm trying to figure out how to be a supportive friend to one person (friend A), while not feeling like I'm talking trash behind another friend's back (friend B).  Sometimes A will get frustrated about a conversation or something else that B said/did.  She has a point, and I've often supported that, but then it felt like I was entering mean girl territory.  Is there a good way to be supportive, but not nasty?  I'm also trying to figure out how to not be the go-to person for these comments, since I feel like I'm betraying B.  Sounds like I'm back in middle school, uugghh!

Thanks, Gossip Girl

Dear GG,

Friend A is involving you in a fun little game of Triangulation.  That’s when you have something you need to say to one person, but instead of making a straight line between you and them, you add a whole new angle by saying it instead to a third person.

Relationships are confusing.  Everyone needs to express how they are feeling about their friends from time to time to someone else, for some reality testing and to work out how to address it with that person.  A simple conversation of, “Uh, that was whack when she made that joke about my kid, right?  Okay?!  How do I tell her to step off without just saying ‘86 your shit’ and dropping a sippy cup on the ground?” is sometimes necessary.

But here’s how you can tell if it’s triangulation, and not normal relationship processing:

1. Does Friend A plan to do anything about Friend B’s behavior?  If she is preparing to confront Friend B, or, at the very least, put some boundaries between her and Friend B so she stops getting hurt, then you can totally walk her through that.  But if she is just using you as a validating force to make her feel better about secretly hating on Friend B while she still hangs out with her, then we need to rename her Frenemy A, because what they have is less a friendship, more a bad romance.

2. Is Friend A saying things to you that she would never, ever, say to Friend B’s face?  If asked, “Hey, you’ve seemed sorta weird to me lately.  Is everything okay?”, would Friend A fess up?  If not, then this is at best a bitch session, and at worst, a weird power play to get you “on her side” against Friend B.  You’ve got to take yourself out of the equation.

So, if you’ve realized you are indeed in a triangulating situation, then here’s what you do.  You tell Friend A that you are no longer willing, under any circumstances, to discuss Friend B.  You can do it in such a way that is not judgmental of what Friend A is doing, by saying, “I’m working on my personal relationships, and realizing that if I say things directly, it really helps my peace of mind.  So, let’s talk about us and how we’re doing, and leave Friend B out of it.”

Will it be awkward to say this?  HELL YES.  But if there’s one thing I can encourage you, Gossip Girl, or ANY of my dear readers out there, it’s this: BE AWKWARD.  We must, as a community and as a culture, increase our capacity for awkwardness in human relationships.  When things are uncomfortable, perhaps it is because we are getting very close to them being real.

If you need a warm up, start small.  Bring up your dead dad at a cocktail party.  Go ahead.  Mention your impending divorce at the library, when someone sees the stack of self-help books you’re checking out.  With a couple of these chance encounters under your belt, having not been reduced to tears when the other person looked at you askance at first but then said, “Oh yeah, this book here at the top of your pile really helped me when I had to cut my mom out of my life because she was using crack”, you may have the courage to tell Friend A that you’re no longer interested in chats about Friend B.

You’ll have to reinforce it, probably a few times.  Friend A will fall back into the old patterns of discussion, will even say, “I know we said we wouldn’t talk about Friend B, but you can NOT believe what she did the other day when she got in my car, smelling like . . .” Cut her off right there!  Don’t take the bait!  Resist your olfactory curiosity and say, “Oh, let me stop you here.  I was dead serious about my request not to talk about Friend B.  I need to have my own experience of her right now.  Why don’t we discuss your job situation---did you say you were getting laid off, or getting a promotion?  I know it was something career-related, the few months ago that we actually got around to talking about you.  Let’s not let Friend B take over our catch-up time.  Fill me in!”

It will be surprising to find how this changes your friendship with Friend B.  You may find her delightful, without that worm in your ear of all the ways she pissed off Friend A recently.  Conversely, you may realize that you don’t even like Friend B, and you were just keeping the relationship with her because you were addicted to following the soap opera between she and Friend A, and it’s time to let that friendship go.

With all that time freed up from worrying about what Friend A and Friend B are going to do next, you may have chance to talk about . . . yourself.

xoxo,

Sibyl

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Slowing down (with Emma and Erin)

“She appears to write much of her poetry, as Americans eat their dinners, in hot haste,” said one critic of Emma Lazarus’s early work, according to Esther Schor’s biography of the poet. I had to laugh at how the 1871 comparison still applies today. We still eat quickly, and we write quickly too, jotting off breathless blog posts and status updates without looking back. Lazarus would have thrived in today’s digital world, I think. In sharp contrast to her contemporary, the reclusive Emily Dickinson, she was a determined extrovert, eager for her writing to make it into the hands of the literary giants of her time. She wrote letters to Emerson demanding feedback on her poems. She milked her “network” in search of literary success. Her persistence and tenacity were astonishing.

But even the talented, energetic Emma Lazarus eventually hit a wall of anxiety as the speed and the pressure to produce caught up with her. As she wrote to a friend, “I have come home to hard work—finding three books to read & review by Tuesday . . . as soon as I feel that a certain thing is expected of me by a certain time, I get a panic & don’t know how to do anything. How anyone lives by writing I cannot imagine.” I was nodding emphatically as I read along. Preach it, sister.

Beyond the usual deadlines and expectations many of us receive from others or set for ourselves, I think there’s a sort of insidious pressure these days to exist online, to be always on and constantly, consistently producing. It’s the marketing advice about “personal branding” and blogging every day and building your audience. It’s that feeling of needing to “keep up” with the internet, as Erin Loechner describes it in her post, “The Rebirth of Slow Blogging.”

Forgive me if I sound like a broken record. I’ve written about slowing down here and here and here and here. It’s been at the heart of my work with Uncommon, a growing slow web community. I’ve been writing and thinking so much about slow food, slow tech, slow everything, coming at it from different angles as a way of figuring out what slow really means, as an intention and a practice.

Something clicked when I landed on Erin’s post, because I think she helps explain something important about the idea of “slowness.” It’s not about doing things in slow motion, but rather taking time for depth and storytelling. It’s about aiming for quality over quantity. It’s about taking time for reflection and creative restoration.

As I head into the new year, I’ve got Emma and Erin in the back of my mind, and I’ll be wondering about the delicate balance between creative impulse and depth, busy production and quiet reflection.

Lessons from a Christmas Holiday...

Dear Clara, So many people think that once December 25^th passes, that the Christmas holiday has come and gone.  But remember that Christmas is not just a holiday, but a season.  It’s both a time for us to celebrate spiritually but it’s also a time to celebrate on a very human scale, when our families and friends take first place, and our work and worldly obligations move to second.

• Prepare yourself for the holiday season:  There is a reason why in many calendars there is an Advent season, in the sense of a time of preparation.  From the outside world, you’ll be tempted to leap right into things, but trust me, it becomes overwhelming.  Pace yourself, make lists, consider what you can get done, and carve of pockets of time for yourself so that you don’t lose the spirit of the season while barreling forward towards the holidays and the end of the year.  It’s an investment worth making.
• Write on your holiday cards: There are a panoply of technology options that make sending cards easier.  And they’re wonderful, and many have their place.  Take advantage of the things that make sense---addressing envelopes, for example.  But keep in mind that while technology can replace process, it can’t replace you.  It’s better for your cards to come a little later, and have your own personal writing on them that shows people that you took the time for them.  It’s only once a year.
• Make every effort to be at home: Remember, this is the time of year when those closest to us come first.  It won’t always be possible---sometimes practical things like money and geography get in our way.  But if you can make it happen, be in your home any way that you can for the holidays.  Eventually you’ll have your own home, and your own family, and you’ll have to figure out what works best for all of you.  But deep down, you’ll always know where exactly you should be.
• Set an extra place at the table: It’s our Polish tradition to say that there will always be room for one more, especially on the holidays, and many visitors feel that you could knock on nearly any door on Christmas Eve in Poland and have a meal waiting for you.  It’s pretty much true.  If you have an extra place (or two) at your table, an extra guest is a welcome addition and not anything else.  You never know when you just might need to reach out to someone else and welcome them to your table.
• Be on the lookout those sad and the struggling: We should always be on the lookout, I know, but pay extra attention during the holidays.  Different people struggle with different things around this time of year and they’re not always willing to talk about it openly.  Maybe they lost a loved one, maybe they had a falling out in their own family, maybe they are too far away from home, maybe they’re struggling to keep up with all the financial demands of the holidays . . . Watch for people, even those close to you, that might need a bit of additional love and care during this time of year.
• Make room for your soul: I guess this relates a bit to the very first part, but again, it’s easy to get caught up in all of the activities and trappings that come along with the holidays, even if we do them because of our good intentions.  But regardless of what you believe in, just remember that the winter holidays carry a sense of spirit with them; don’t let that spirit pass you by.  Prepare a little room in your heart.

Wishing you all my love this Christmas and holiday season,

Mom

Looking Forward: Gifts.

I spent the first seven years of my life in Los Angeles, in a little gray house on a tree-lined street called Cantaloupe Avenue. My memories of living there are hazy, dreamlike.

I remember the rusted jungle gym in the backyard. The smell of chlorine. Lemon trees, and the tiny gray dove that made its home in the rafters near the swimming pool. There were rose bushes that lined our driveway (I’d rip the petals off and run them over with my bike, thinking that, surely, this was how perfume was made), and a mishmash of flora in the garden. Potted plants lined the front porch. One, my favorite, was a single pink flower in a tiny terracotta dish.

Oddly enough, I remember this flower more vividly than most other physical details about that house, though its tenure on the porch couldn’t have lasted more than a couple of weeks. After having admired its impeccable posture, the elegant draping of its petals, and that irresistible rosy flush for what seemed like an eternity, I couldn’t help myself.

I picked it.

I never imagined that it might have been planted in a pot for a reason, or that it may have had weeks or maybe months of life ahead of it yet, or that someone — presumably my mother — had chosen it at a nursery because she loved it, and been caring for it diligently ever since.

With dirt still clinging to its stem, I presented her with my find. “It’s a gift,” I said proudly. “For you.”

“I know where this came from,” she said slowly, turning it over in her hands.

She paused.

Then, she said, “Thank you.”

 ---

I had mixed feelings this month, putting together a gift guide for my blog. After the year I’d had — which was full of challenge and adventure and emotional intensity — it seemed to me that the most meaningful gift to give anyone who mattered would involve not money, but time.

A handmade card as opposed to one that’s pre-written. A song. A meal. Plans to spend time together.

This year, in that way, I suppose I’ve become a kid again.

The purest aspect of a child’s gift-giving — when money isn’t a factor — is simple. I love this, I know it’s special, and I want you to have it because I feel the same is true about you.

And, perhaps ironically, the natural response — thank you — is a gift in kind.

XVII. états-unis

One Christmas, Clémence sends me a thin paperback collection of stories called Lettres de mon moulin. Letters from my windmill. I love French books, not just for reading but for the sake of the object itself---the spines are upside-down, the words going from top to bottom, which makes bookstore browsing feel simultaneously awkward and fun.

I read the stories not knowing anything about where they come from. Provence, as it turns out. The author, Alphonse Daudet, is one of the more known provençal writers. He had a windmill where he wrote these stories, a collection of tales about his life and experiences in the south of France. The mill is still tucked away in the countryside somewhere to the east of Avignon. But I don’t learn any of this until years later.

My favorite story, then and now, is “L’Arlésienne,” about a young man in love with a woman from Arles. He finds out that she’s married to someone else and he kills himself.

Il s’était dit, le pauvre enfant: “Je l’aime trop . . . Je m’en vais . . .” Ah! misérables coeurs que nous sommes!

It sounds melancholy, wistful, and it is. But the language is sparse and lovely and the ending always makes me cry. Just like this France of mine.