nakedjen

Phew.

Sundance continues.  I was blessed to have sweet wonderful kind generous amazing friends shelter me from the crazy storm that socked Park City in piles of snow on Monday night after I helped with the British Film Commission party at High West Distillery.  That party was a huge fun noisy party, as all parties at Sundance happen to be, but I have to confess that the parties that combine Brits and distilled whiskey are especially fun. 

I don't think I've slept since before my birthday.  I'm still celebrating.  I've seen lots of really wonderful films and some films that made me cock my head sideways and wonder who on earth decided that making the film was a good idea in the first place?  But then, you know, not all of us like the same flavor of ice cream.  Which is why the aisles of the supermarket are filled with so very many choices.

Kudos to my dear friend, Ann Greenberg, for that photo.  I think it captures me, at Sundance, pretty perfectly.  It should be my calling card.  I've got boots on the ground every single day.  More soon.  Promise.

White Knuckles

"Have you been hospitalized?"

"Not yet."

"I'm concerned that you want to just disappear."

"I just want to go somewhere other than here.  Somewhere other than Utah.  I'm really allergic to Utah."

"So, the thing is that you FEEL GOOD.  Who the fuck cares what it is that helps you to do that?  I'm calling in a prescription for you, but if you don't take it, it can't help you."

"Can't you just write me a prescription for Maui, instead?"

"Well, I could.  But I don't think your insurance will pay for it."

 

See Jennifer Aniston Naked

Marching Off the Edge of My Map

1.  "We feel that medication is not effective for the treatment of your specific condition."

I really could not believe the words that I had just heard, so I asked the woman at Humana to please repeat what she had just said.

"We're declining to pay for that specific prescription because we do not feel it is effective for treatment."

"Can I just ask, please, when you became the doctors and got to decide what might or might not be effective for treatment of my very specific medical conditions?"

The woman at Humana didn't even pause and continued, "We're partners in your excellent medical care, Jennifer.  Your prescribing doctor will need to call us to discuss and authorize that medication for you."

"The same medication that I have been taking to help control my seizures for the last ten years?  That exact same medication?  The one you have decided with my excellent medical care in mind is not effective for treatment of my medical condition?"

"You will need to have your doctor call us.  Is there anything else I can help you with today?"

It's no secret that for a lot of my life I haven't even had medical insurance.  I happen to have it right now, but I'm not even certain how it is helpful when the people who are in charge of actually providing it get to make decisions about what is and is not appropriate in terms of medication for my specific condition. 

How is this good medicine? 

I do understand that there are profit margins to be considered, but the health and well-being of our fellow human beings should always come first.  I do not believe that allowing a computer generated data program to decide that one drug is more effective for treatment than another drug just because it costs twenty five cents less per pill is the best possible treatment for anyone. 

I have paid for my drugs out of pocket for a very long time.  Last week, I paid for my drugs out of pocket, again, simply because I couldn't wait for the insurance company to have a conversation with my doctor about what might be the best course of treatment for someone in my condition. So I'm paying insurance premiums for drug coverage that I really do not even receive. 

God Bless America.

 

2.  "I'll pray for you."

J is sitting across from me in the very crowded waiting room at our public mental health facilities.  I'm there because life turned upside down, as it sometimes does.  A trip here to find an angel in torn jeans and an ancient Ramones t-shirt and paint splattered shoes who can help make sense of the cacophony of voices screaming in my head just feels like a better option than another manifesto written in sharpie on the walls.  At least this time around.

"What are you here for?," J asks me.

"My head is full of all kinds of noise. I need help."

"Oh, are you schizophrenic, too? I am. But they're really good here. They'll help you. Do you do drugs, too, to shut everyone up?"

"No. Not anymore."

"Oh, that's so lucky. I try to not do them, but it's so hard."

"Are you here to get off drugs?"

"I'm here to stay off. I've been sober for five days. But it's so hard.  I was on Meth and I don't want to do Methadone.  But they're really good here.  They're going to help you so much."

"How were you paying for all those drugs?"

"Prostitution. I am always terrified I was going to get chopped up by a chain saw.  Getting in cars with strange men.  I'm usually so high, though, I don't even know what I'm doing.."

"I'm so sorry."

"Don't be sorry for me. My mother did it, too. I've been out there since I was 16.  Do you read the bible?"

"I have read it.  I don't have a lot of faith in organized religion."

"You need to find religion, Jennifer.  It's the only thing that's going to save you.  Well, it will help you save yourself."

I hear my name called.  Intake. To sort demons from angels. To hear my own voice the loudest.  To love me.  Again.

"I'll pray for you."

 

3.  He slammed his fist on the counter and erupted.  In that instant, in that single moment of his anxious frustration, everything changed.

I had to leave.

In the leaving, in the walking out, in the moments of deciding that it was safer for my heart to not be there with him than to be there with him, I was so hurt and confused and small and broken that I lost all parts of my voice and could only barely whisper.

"I don't know."

I really did not.

Know.

We walk, in each relationship that we choose, on a fine edge between all that has come before and everything that we're choosing and hoping will be. We're not alchemists, exactly, of our hearts, though the wishes for just that can be bigger than either of us dancing the dance. 

My edge has thorny branches that reach out and stab at the most unfortunate moments. His edge is unchartered territory for me and the guazy veil that hides it makes the navigation to leap from my edge to his, the alignment of our selves against each other, sometimes more difficult than I wish it would be.  We have our old maps that we're trying to use and they're failing us.

Wishing and twisting and trying to find North, though, doesn't make either of our edges any softer or the navigation any easier. 

These moments of breaking happen, the cracks appear in the surface, the veil slips and allows a better view of things that truly terrify us.

The very bad endings of old fairy tales should never be allowed to write the beginnings of your new romance.

I love my professor in ways I did not even know I was capable of loving. 

This is all brand new and un-chartered territory.

That is what I know.

 

 

It's Been So Long

How do you get the naked girl to show up at your store grand opening? 

You give her free clothes!

Happy Naked Friday! 

 

The Weight of It All

I lived last winter without a furnace.  Without heat. 

I slept with gloves and a fleece hat on, bundled with both dogs on the bed, under I don't even know how many down comforters in an effort not to freeze. 

I love my little house in Salt Lake City, but what I didn't bother to do before actually agreeing to live in it was to determine that it actually had heat.  I know it seems a tad improbable that a house in Salt Lake City, a city where winter hangs on and parties like an 80's glam rocker until well past the spandex and hair spray are out of style, would not actually have proper heating, but my little house did not. 

That is why my cat literally slept on top of the electric radiator I had running 24/7 in one room and why both dogs were curled like a yin yang around the bottom.  We all lived in one room last year curled around one another, our breath sometimes freezing right in front of our faces, and I know it was a sign of my own insanity that I insisted it just was not that bad. 

It was that bad.

Yesterday, I was informed that I was getting a proper furnace for my little house. The location for the furnace would be a closet that had, until this very moment, been used to hide the detritus of a much of my past.  Skeletons of all sorts.  Things better forgotten-- bones and trinkets and smudged half-burned dreams. 

Piles of ticket stubs to Grateful Dead concerts.

A copy of one of my plays. 

Journals and more journals.  Even more, after those.

Photos of me with a bunch a dirty hippies.

More photos and scribbled cards and notes and set lists from a long life on tour.

All the emails from my earliest days with DearSweetDave.

I should have known better.  I really should have.  We know where this is going, don't we?  Yes, of course we do.

I sat down on the floor and I read all those emails.  Every.last.one.

Our hearts made such promises, uttered such incredible vows, spilled such secrets in those first early days of our new love.  Every moment stretched for an eternity and it felt all so brand new, all so very special, so incredibly delicious and ripe with possibility.  I truly believed, in those very early days, everything we said to one another. We really did say all the right things.

We also crashed and burned in a rather spectacular fire.

The love I've found this time can't go hide in a closet because I've got no closets left.

Love is so complex.  It is so very easy to say all the right things.  Words are simple.  They roll off our tongues, right out of our mouths and into the hearts of another without so much as a pause for a yellow light.  It's the showing up, the living of love, the actual wrapping of your own heart tendrils with his without pulling too tightly, without tugging too hard, with a gentle caress that is the most difficult. 

It's that love that I'm showing up for this time around.

The weight of him, all of him, on top of me, inside of me, my heart changing shape simply because of the entangled and messy and beautiful and crazy love that keeps me wide awake with wonder even when I'm fast asleep, that's the love for which I've gone all in.

 

 

 

Reaching For The Gold Ring Down Inside

1.    1.    Who can stop what must arrive now?

I honestly believed that there was some sort of essential flow deep within me that had rendered me unlovable.  I know that even the writing of that specific sentence seems a bit absurd, filled with the ridiculous, but since the implosion of my marriage, finding myself a pile of tears and collecting broken pieces of my own shattered heart on the sidewalk, waking up in a brand new salty city filled with more tears and more frustrations and more misunderstandings and just more of everything that seemed so incongruous to who I believed that I truly was and what I wanted to be in this world, I did believe, I truly did, that there was a spigot of uninvited toxic pathogens flowing deep within that others could absolutely feel and see, that repelled even the very kindest of strangers.

I continued to always go all in, to love in the only ways that I knew how, in the ways that I always do with abandon topped with glitter, but it wasn’t working for me and you can only keep splaying yourself naked across the universe hoping for love to find you so very many times, over and over again, before even your own inner voices mention, or demand rather loudly, that maybe it is time to retreat.

And so I found myself for days that became weeks that became months that became years, even, where I was the person who had no people.  I convinced myself, or pretended very well to convince myself, that I was someone who just did not need anyone else. Ever. Never. Amen.

Then he arrived.  My professor. 

It is always impossible to know for certain the day that will be the first day of the rest of your life.  That precise moment he arrived, when he said hello, the shape of my heart changed and with it the very rest of my life.

 

2.    2.    Dark as the night

    You’re still by my side

    Shining side

 

I was prepared to be nonchalant about all of it.  I was even prepared for him to tell me he was married and was just intrigued by the photos he had seen in my online profile.  I was prepared for only one dinner.  Nothing more. 

I was not prepared, at all, when he told me he had googled me and already knew that I was Nakedjen.  It actually sucked the breath right out of my lungs when he said it and I had to take a few moments to sort out what to do next.

“Well, I suppose the fact that you showed up for dinner means that you don’t find it offensive, so at least there’s that….”  I trailed off still trying to sort out exactly how much he had read and how much he had seen and what he possibly could have thought of the eight years of truly naked information that I have poured from my soul? 

“You write really well,” he shared.  “And your pictures are just stunning.”

“It’s not a porn site,” I stammered.  “I hope you were able to at least sort that out.  Perhaps why I do it?”

“Oh, no, I realized it wasn’t porn.  The pictures are not even sexual.  They’re just beautiful.” He smiled across the table, his blue eyes sparkling at me in a way that made me trust that he really was sincere.  Still, there was just a touch of mischief glinting at the edges of his smile and I could tell he was just a little proud of himself for his discovery.

“Well, at least that’s out of the way,” I continued.  “Usually, I have to sort out the how and when to share all about my blog and the explanations sometimes send men running, literally, but since you know, we can talk more about you.  I want to know about you.  Since I didn’t take the Google path of discovery.”

We share our stories over tapas and he’s a perfect dining companion. 

I can’t imagine ending the evening.  Not yet. I can’t quite let him go, so I suggest coffee.  If this is going to be my only night to share with this truly lovely man, I really do not want it to end.  I’m trying to pay close attention to the intimate details he so willingly shares, to listen, to remember all the very tiny moments, but I find myself continually getting lost in the azure blue of his eyes. 

I can’t believe it is nearly midnight and something in my heart forces me to ask him if he wants to spend the next day together?  I never ask these things, ever.   Especially with first dates.   My heart, though, is doing the talking and I’m just hoping that he will say yes.

We walk together back to my house.  Not touching, but all the cells of my body, the hairs on my arms, the pieces of my heart are aware of every facet of him.  Crickets are still singing their own evensongs of late summer and when we get to my door, I resist the urge to invite him inside.    

Small talk about possible plans for the Sunday, the next day.

Then, suddenly, no talking.  His lips are on my lips.  My heart unfolds, refolds, and becomes something new entirely.  It changes its rhythm. It beats differently.  Just.like.that.

 

3.    3.  Life may be sweeter for this, I don’t know.

    Feels like it might be alright.

And so, well, this is the start of my next forever.  Actually, truthfully, this is the start of our next forever.  With my professor.

That Sunday, for the curious, I went to his house for the very first time and when I walked into his backyard there were beets growing.  Beets he had planted long before he ever knew that I even existed. 

He tells me, now, that it is as if I fell from the sky.  Like a star. 

He also tells me that we just fit.  Our brains, our bodies, especially our hearts. 

We do.  It’s as true as anything else that I have ever known. 

There are far more very unusual and remarkable synchronicities in the tale of the colliding of our hearts, but what is important for you to know right now, Internet, is that I really needed to be standing in my little black Doc Martens on that particular Saturday evening and not a moment before for all of this to happen exactly as it should.

I’m absolutely certain of that much.

I’m also absolutely certain of him. 

My professor.

He wears glitter oh so very well. 

 

 

Naked With Intention

I get asked this question a lot.  A whole lot.  I also get asked, a whole lot, how I keep from getting arrested since I seem to just show up naked in the most unlikely of places?  Is there some sort of special something that I do to avoid arrest?  Is there some sort of practice to becoming as comfortable as someone like me seems to be as I am in my own skin, willing to just be naked in the presence of others, clothed or not, without really batting an eyelash?

I think if you've read my words for long enough you already know these answers so you can skip this post and just carry on with whatever it is that you happen to be doing on your own Friday evening that makes you happiest.  I might suggest that it include hugging a few people that you love, perhaps even a few that you don't even know, sharing some glitter just because and if you happen to be living on the East Coast of these United States, making certain you have some drinking water, a working flashlight or three, DOG FOOD FOR THE DOGS, snacks for you, and to just get ready to even, maybe, have a little naked dance in the rain.  I would do it, but we all know I'm bat shit crazy.

Back to Phil's question.  The thing is this all just takes practice.  It really does.  There are those places where public nudity is actually accepted and encouraged although I am going to be the first to admit that I'm not even a big huge fan of those particular places.  I'm far more of a fan of natural hot springs or places like my beloved Oregon Country Fair where we have sanctioned communal nudity and everyone is so relaxed and nonchalant about it that you really do realize that good heavens all bodies are just so incredibly beautiful in their unique differences!  Seriously.  When you see so very many naked bodies all together, each one just as beautiful and different and special and exotic as the next, you realize that we are magical creatures and our bodies are all as unique as our voices and our hearts and should absolutely be shared.

Now, I'm not suggesting you take off your clothes and go walking down the streets of your neighborhood. (Or, actually, maybe I am). I realize that when I do that many people exclaim that I'm an exhibitionist, that I do it to shock people.  My own mother, Emily Gilmore, insists that I do it because I have some screws loose and just absolutely MUST have people STARE AT ME. 

It really isn't about that, actually.  Not really.  I actually even have my own very strict internal set of rules about where and when I'll get naked, even in the very most public of places.  I will admit that if there's just a bit of shock value, that's okay.  But it is more, for me, to get others to reconsider their own individual notions about nudity.  About our bodies.  About exactly why it might be so offensive, so wrong, so awful to have a fully naked woman standing on a street corner.

However, I am suggesting, I am, that you dip your own toes as far as you can into the places where it feels the most comfortable for you.  I have always said that we can't exactly go about fighting wars if we're all standing around naked because there's no where for us to keep the bullets.

I live in this world naked. I can't live in this world any other way.  What I am enchanted to know is that there are others who can't live in this world any other way, as well. 

Naked with intention.  Now, there's a political platform we should perhaps all consider.

 

Vitamin B3

It's the new moon.  A new month.  I was blessed with two new friends in the last two days.  A naked girl who loves her beets could really get used to that kind of luck.  I suppose it wasn't luck, really.  It was just the goodness of this blog, of my words that get shared, of hearts that resonate in just the right ways so that even the bits and bytes flying through space can't stop them from connecting.

We are surrounded, all of us, by kind and gentle and kindred souls.  I know, I do, that it is so easy to not look up, to focus on those angry birds on your own personal screens, to ignore the guy sitting on the bus beside you.  To pretend that your world stops at the end of your fingertips and the tips of your toes.

This week, though, just for me, I want you to share your glitter and your magic and everything that makes you especially you.  I want you to look a stranger in the eyes, I want you to smile, I want you to make contact with your heart with just one new person.  If you can, if you're feeling bold, ask to hear their story.  We all have a story we're really hoping to share.  Sometimes we just need a loving heart who is willing to listen.  Go and listen with your ears, your eyes and with your hearts.  Go and share your glitter.

 

There was the most delightful sounding recipe for grilled peaches infused with cinnamon and slathered with bourbon on NPR this morning.  It isn't time for peaches, quite yet, here in Salt Lake City, but I'm pretty certain it is time for peaches in other parts of the world.  If you're lucky enough to be living where peaches on the grill make perfect sense right now, I want to encourage you to put peaches on your list for the farmers market and make these.  I'm making them, I promise, as soon as we have peaches here.  I really can't wait.

My list for this week:

• Beet Greens
• Microgreens
• Arugula
• Roasted Garlic Bread
• Radishes
• Basil
• Mint
• Garlic Greens
• Squashes
• Whatever else strikes my fancy

I'm taking my newest friend to the market tomorrow morning.  She's going to hug my farmers with me.  I want you to hug your farmers, too. 

There's Really Love In The Bottom Of My Coffee Cup

Scene: Interior. Coffee Garden. Early Saturday morning. Long line of sleepy eyed half-dressed hipsters snaking from the register past the cream and sugar island and nearly out the door. 

I am very near the back of this line and, as I do, I am spacing out thinking about the million other things that need thinking about on an early Saturday morning when the crusts of sleep are still clinging to the corners of my eyes. 

Then sweet Ben, my cute barista, gets my attention and waves me over.  I hesitate and say aloud, "But I'll lose my place in line..." as my feet carry me directly to him anyway. 

He giggles at me and says, "It's perfectly okay, because I've already made you your coffee.  Just how you like it."  I look down and there, on the counter between us, is my twenty ounces of fair-trade organic light roast shot through with four shots of espresso.  

"You, of all our patrons, do not wait in line," he whispers. 

Believe it of not, I'm speechless.  It's such a small gesture of kindness, but it is also such a huge beautiful loving thing for Ben to do for me. 

I want to hug him, but there's a counter separating us and it is impossible, so I give him my best megawatt smile, glitter from my eyes, and tell him just how very much this means to me.

I'm not sure he really knows.  There's really love in the bottom of my coffee cup.  There really is.

This is a story of boy meets girl, but you should know upfront, this is not a love story.

Summer decided, just this week, to put on her finest party dress, throw a few flowers in her sun-kissed hair, brush her cheeks a rosy pink and to come strutting right into town with a swagger that would make even our best drag queens a tad jealous.  Sunscreen should be on everyone's shoulders and noses on every day here in the high desert, but now that Summer has decided to finally pull back her dark cold curtains and give us best golden smile, it is really important to slather it on. Wear a hat, kittens.  Wrinkles only look good on Sharpeis.

Speaking of dogs, it is really much hotter now and I want to remind you that dogs don't belong locked in cars.  I don't care if you're cracking the windows.  They don't sweat the way we do, their bodies don't cool the way our bodies do.  Leave the dog at home in a cool, well-ventilated spot with plenty of clean, fresh water to drink. 

Also, let's not drag the dog along while we're on our bicycles.  It's a short few steps between trotting along beside you to collapsing on the sidewalk from heat exhaustion.  Buddha and Stella want you to exercise your sweet dogs, yes.  Just remember that they're wearing fur coats in 100 degree weather and might be happier with a wander about Liberty Park early in the morning.

Or...they might enjoy going with you to the Farmers Market.  Salt Lake City is one of the only Farmers Markets that I know where dogs are just as welcome as their humans.  Buddha LOVES the market because it gives him a chance to give therapy to all those people who do not even know they might need therapy.  He spends the whole time we're there giving out his famous Buddha love and he really does seem to have an infinite amount to give.

On the list for this week:

• Beet Greens
• Basil
• Garlic Greens
• Radishes
• Arugula
• Peas
• Shitake Mushrooms

I had the incredible good fortune to meet (and hug) and organic farmer last week who is new to the market and is growing some of the very best beet greens and beets that I have ever had.  He's new to the market and is growing his vegetables on a large ranch in Morgan, Utah.  He even invited me to come and see the farm!  I bought more beet greens from him than anyone would ever expect a single person to buy, but it is a testament to my insanity about beets that they didn't even last me until Wednesday.  I am going to buy MORE this week. 

Here's how I ate the majority of them this week. 

I toasted a slice of the very delicious roasted garlic bread that I get from the market.  On to that I slathered some of my raw cashew hummus.  Then I added some sliced fresh organic tomatoes.  A quick grind of fresh pepper.  Then topped the whole thing with the fresh beet greens. 

That's it.  EAT.  I really pile the beet greens on top of that open faced sandwich.  It almost looks like a plate of greens with something hiding underneath.  Again, I just love them.  And now I just love that farmer who is growing them so I can eat them!

What's on your list for this week?  Make sure you hug your farmers and thank them for all that they do.