nakedjen

Get A Load Of This...

A couple of weeks ago, I was enjoying a Chinese New Year celebratory dinner with a group of my professor's colleagues and somehow I shared that I had attended a boarding school on the East Coast for high school.  A school where every moment of every day was truly regimented.  Tick tock we were always told where to be and what we were supposed to be doing.  We actually had to get ourselves up and sign in at breakfast every single day no later than 7:30 a.m. on the dot and from there our days continued complete with a dress code to follow and all kinds of rules that would make most of you laugh at loud thinking about Nakedjen not only being agreeable but, you know, showing up and complying.  The other professors at the dinner found it hard to believe that I thrived in this environment, but I explained that I appreciated the structure and I really loved that the school provided me truly expansive and safe space for my mind to flourish.  

Those who were there with me, who went to that tiny little school in Delaware, all have their own stories to share.  You all can do the math.  This was over 40 years ago.  The lens is softer, fuzzier, perhaps even a bit gentler than when were all there running the one-mile loop before an afternoon practice or staying up far, far too late sharing the biggest possible bag of M&M's just so we could finish a paper in time for class in the morning.

Blah, blah, blah...where's all this going?

Yesterday, I got to hang out with my roommate.  I haven't seen her in 40 years.  That's a really long time in dog years or even in people years, honestly.  
You know what I'm going to say next. 
Our conversation picked up right where we left off.  Not making that up.  Hearts absolutely recognize one another and just know.  They just do.

We did not even try to fill in any blanks.  We just used all our words and I remembered, so clearly, why I loved her the most and why Mary O had always been my first and best choice as a roommate.  She sees me for who I am.  Then and now.   What a gift to have someone who understands you for who you are and loves you completely anyway.  Treasures.  

Remember how I mentioned that we should be checking in on the ones we love?  Showing up?  Pick yourself up off the floor and just make it happen? Don't wait for tomorrow? 
I promised Mary that I wouldn't wait 40 more years before I showed up for our next hug.  xo

I can't be running back and fourth forever between grief and high delight

I sat in silent meditation as the tea swirled in my cup, contemplating the last few days, the last few weeks, the moments that have gotten a bit lighter as the days have found their way from deep darkness around the sun back into a bit more light. 

We were gathered together in a small group, searching for community in this city of strangers that so often pretends that we are not, for a ceremony.  A tea ceremony.  The tea on offer last night was a miner's tea from China.  Cooling to the body and, as I learned, engaging for the mind.  

Six rounds were poured. One after another gently served in beautiful clay cups.  I held mine and with each pour, more tea leaves gathered with a story in the bottom.  I know that there are wise crones that could have discerned the messages in those leaves for me, but what I found was a message from Philip Seymour Hoffman.

Go ahead and laugh.  I certainly did.  Loud and clear, I heard him say, "Ah, Nakedjen, this is the only life you've got."  

Wise and timely words from a dead man.  

****

The last time I really saw Philip Seymour Hoffman he could barely keep himself vertical.  It was far too early in the morning for either one of us, honestly, and a film he had both directed and starred in was screening at an ungodly hour at Sundance.  I'm not sure he actually went to sleep the night before and instead had chosen to acclimate to our thin air and altitude by just drinking all night.  He could have been absolutely any one of the characters he's played standing there, but he was also absolutely himself.  He was charming in his self-deprecation and was completely honest that he felt his film was just, well, not so good and thanked all of us profusely for sitting all the way to the end. 

I chatted with him briefly when he was here, again, the year he died.  I asked him if he was drinking enough water? Altitude sickness, you know?  He laughed his laugh and told me drinking water wasn't the problem.  He shuffled his way, I wandered mine.  That was a strange Sundance year for me for a whole host of other reasons, but I still mark it as the year we said goodbye. 

****

My last few months have found me struggling with time.  With age. With love. With relationships. With the masks that we wear.  
Self-medication can take so many forms and can cause harm in our lives in such varied ways.  The devil in our own hearts is sometimes a mistress whose lies are far sweeter and nicer to hear than the hard truths we're tasked with facing about ourselves.  So we eat the pecan pie doused with bourbon while sitting on the couch in the dark with a dog in our lap and hide under our blanket and believe that it might not be such a bad way to disappear.  

****

Then the light hits you square between your eyes. Brightly. 

You put on your love goggles that you remember you actually do own. 
You get some fresh air. The dog stops snoring and wags his tail and reminds you that walks in the woods are good for you, too.  You say yes to an invitation. 
You actually get out of your pajamas, extract yourself from the bottom of the couch, make no excuses, stay sober. 
A dead man finds his way into the bottom of your cup and reminds you that this is the only life you've got and a smile finds its way to the corner of your frown.

I'm not making promises about tomorrow. Today, I'm showing up for the living. 

“A positive mind find opportunity in everything. A negative mind finds faults in everything.” -Buddha

After taking a taxi to what we believed to be a hip night market that might provide some fun opportunities for street food, what we found was a wishful spot where someday, yes, there will be a hip night market, but last night there were maybe seventeen folks gathered together and the most exciting thing happening was the dogs who had figured out that table scraps may be available if they just hung out long enough.

So...we wandered to what we had gathered from the information available was a 24-hour mall.  We walked past all sorts of street food vendors and while I wasn't opposed to stopping at any of them, plucking a seat and asking to eat, the visible food available was definitely of the dead corpse variety slaughtered and prepped in a myriad of ways and I wasn't exactly certain how either of our vegetarian stomachs were going to respond?  We trudged on.  

When we reached mall it was dark, empty, and felt abandoned.  Almost like an amusement park where everyone had gone, but left just a few safety lights on.  Out of one restaurant, a woman appeared who asked us, in impeccable English, if we were hungry?  Yes. She pointed us to a corner restaurant that she claimed would feed us DimSum. 

We wandered over to the spot she had suggested, got inside, sat down, looked at the menus provided and realized both that we were unable to read them because of the exceptionally tiny print, but also they were in Thai and while we're doing our best not to be horrible tourists, we're still not the best kinds of tourists, either.  Together we struggled, guessing we'd just go for it and then, like a vision, the woman appeared again!  And asked us what it was that we really wanted??  

I expressed to her that she was, truly, an angel.  The ambassador of all of Bangkok.  She surmised that what we needed was some noodles with lots of delicious vegetables (this was no where on the menu!) and chrysanthemum tea and she told us just to relax, she'd be back.  With that, she vanished.  Not ten minutes later, two delectable plates of steaming noodles and vegetables appeared out of thin air.  Right in front of us. 

If this had not actually happened to us, I never would have believed it.  There we were in a deserted shopping mall.  Just us.  The lights were all off.  The whole space is under renovation.  But in the best possible way, food appeared and we were fed. 

It turns out the Dee (that's her name) is the GM of the mall.  It is under renovation and isn't set to re-open until August. However, she also knew we were hungry and should be fed.  I shared with her that she was one of us.   A love beet.  I promised her that I would be back.  I'm taking her some pins and stickers to make her official.  

It isn't always about the outside, this traveling to experience new cultures, to see the world with fresh eyes. Oh no, especially for me.  It is about the inside.  The hearts that crash into one another with instant recognition and the love, always the love that bubbles up from the collision.

Noisy.

There's been all those articles lately about "what not to wear after you're 40..." and now there's this article about "women who are naturally loud".

I'm loud. Really and truly very, very loud. I'm 52. I'm a woman. I'm also, as was pointed out to me yesterday incredibly TINY (or SHORT, because I think that person was just being nice) and, well, according to one person at my clinic, I am not only TINY, but HOT. Ahem.

Here's the thing. Yes, I am all of those things. Every.single.one. For goodness sakes, beautiful loving friends. Life is so full of every kind of different. Let's stop with the comparisons and the shaming. Instead, let's just hold out our arms and our hearts and embrace one another with a, "I am so incredibly glad that YOU are a part of my little speck of this vast universe because you make it that much more interesting!"

Really.

I mean it.

It is precisely all of our differences that allow us to put this puzzle together, to make this world spin on its axis every day, to solve the problems that need to be solve, to find our way home to the centre of our hearts. Without every one of us, sharing our differences, being loud, being quiet, wearing whatever it is we wear, choosing to participate in ALL.THE.WAYS. we choose to participate, this world stops spinning. I don't want to live in a world where all of you are not spinning with me.

I appreciate you choose to share your hearts with mine and that you chose to show up today exactly in the way that you did.

You go be you. It's perfect. Exactly like that.

Loud, tiny and very proud. ~ nakedjen