nakedjen

How It Started....How It Is Going

This parade is for every one of us who got chosen last for the kickball team.

It is for seven year old me who played by herself on the playground during recess.

It is for that small child in all of us who always struck out at bat, never got the ball in the basket, rode her bike to school, but never won a race.

It is for all of us who were never quite good enough for Varsity sports teams in school because we were just too damn slow, not quite tall enough, too clumsy and not a good *fit*.

It is for the ones who finish last, but still finish because you are not going to not finish. You always finish what you start.

It is for those of us, the survivors, (of #allthethings) who after trauma somehow choose to still show up.

This is for every one of you. For your unbridled joy. The world needs your joy more than ever right now.

This is me on the day the #Peloton arrived. I knew I needed it. I had no idea how much. 

For 365 days in a row, somehow, some way, I chose me and I chose to be here, on this bike, every.single.day.

In a year robbed of every ritual I had ever known before, the handlebars held me up, absorbed my grit and my sweat and my grief, allowed me to remember that being human is being really messy and taught me with grace that the one thing in this world I can control is actually being right here, breathing in and out, one two one two, on the bike that goes absolutely nowhere but has taken me to places I never knew I needed to even go.

Exactly 365 days later. This is me. Hopping off the bike after doing exactly the same ride I had done the very first day the bike arrived.  My improvement and transformation speak for themselves, but honestly, I am so very grateful for the community I found while sitting here on this bike that goes nowhere. 

 

 

 

I learned what everyone else already knew.

Movement really is medicine.

It's always been more than a bike.

Showing up with my love goggles and my sparkles to celebrate just being ALIVE. It's been a very long year. 

 

Together we go far.

Here's to another 365 days.

One blue dot at a time.

 

If you want to join in the fun with me, you can find me, as with everything as #nakedjen on the leaderboard on the bike that goes nowhere.  Also, if you'd like to purchase one for yourself you can use this discount code GUYQYU to receive $100 of accessories for the bike (or tread) at purchase.  I used it when I purchased to get a mat for under the bike, shoes AND weights and honestly that made my commitment to ME that much greater.  

The 2020 Nakedjen Film Festival

The Nakedjen Film Festival (#NJFF) started over 20 years ago as my way of avoiding the Feast of the Cash Register.  

Christmas Day, as many of us know, can be fraught with family of origin drama or even with the horrors of non-family of origin drama and there was no better way in my own mind to avoid all of this than to go sit in the dark with a bunch of misfit toy friends and watch stories unfold on a big screen.  The kindness of Hollywood meant that they understood this even better than I did and so they saved their best Oscar hopefuls for a Christmas day opening.  I'd spend the week before pouring over the scheduled films, choosing which ones to see when, smuggling in yummy snacks to share and including a break in there somewhere for all of us to gather at a Chinese restaurant to nosh and laugh and, yes, talk about the films. 

The Nakedjen Film Festival is a marathon from start to finish, but it is honestly, the best way to spend the holiday if you need to avoid the trappings of Christmas.

In the year of our Pandemic, 2020, Hollywood (who has never actually known they're participating in the Nakedjen Film Festival) is delivering the #NJFF directly to a couch near you and I could not be happier.  It means that should you like to participate the films are as close as your remote control.  I realize that not everyone has access to all of these streaming services and that makes me a tiny bit bonkers.  In my perfect world, these services would give us a CHRISTMAS MIRACLE and allow you to stream these films FOR FREE at least for the holidays.  Capitalism still rules the day, however.  The studios have not been visited by the Ghost of Christmas Past, Present or Future, I suppose and so, well, while I can share with you where you can see these films, I must admit that they're not free.  Of course they would not be free if we were gathering together in a proper theatre, either.  We need to remember that.

Please remember that these films are simply a suggestion, as always.  Programming for the Nakedjen Film Festival is always done with a nod to both entertainment, but also to films that make you really think and perhaps even go huh?!?  I like to sit and the dark and escape, to be taken on an adventure, to be told a story that I never would have been told otherwise.  Films for me have always been my refuge, my safe space.  

I hope you'll make yourself something truly delicious, share it with your #pandemic pod, plop yourselves on the couch in comfy clothes and let the magic unfold and carry you away.

Happy Festival.  May the story that you find be the one that is written on your own heart.  xo

Festival Schedule

Wonder Woman

Available on HBO MAX
I feel like we have all been waiting ten years for this film. We haven't, we may feel that way after watching it? Who knows?  But it's coming to your couch, so you can watch and decide for yourself. 

SOUL 
Available on Disney + 

PIXAR. Questlove and Daveed Diggs. I swear I'm getting a Disney + sub just for this! Souls in training...yes. xo

TRANSHOOD

Available on HBO Max
I'm here for these kids and learning more about exactly what it means to just be human.

 

KAJILLIONAIRE

Available on Amazon Prime 
It's Miranda July. Yes, it's been out a while. I missed it at Sundance, so I'm including it for my own Christmas present. 

THE MIDNIGHT SKY 
Available on Netflix 

Would we be able to call it a festival if we did not have some sort of blockbuster that dealt with the apocalypse?  No. So here we go.  And we get George Clooney. The end. 

MA RAINEY'S BLACK BOTTOM 
Available on NETFLIX

Viola Davis. Chadwick Boseman.  The esteemed August Wilson.  Do I really need to say anything else?  This film was made to drop on Christmas.  This one is like going to Church. 

LET THEM ALL TALK

Available on HBO MAX

An Amuse Bouche from our friend, Steven Soderbergh.  Starring Meryl Streep.  Alternatively, you can stream THE PROM with Meryl and her friends on NETFLIX.  Or go all in and stream them both.  It's like Meryl decided to show up for you both in your stocking and under the tree!!

WOLFWALKERS

Available on APPLE TV 
Irish folklore, animation, it's actually fun for the whole family.  Maybe a great bedtime story?  

A VERY MURRAY CHRISTMAS 
Available on NETFLIX 

I'm not me if Mr. Murray if not making an appearance.  Hot dogs are on him.  May your holidays be merry and bright. xo

Masked Compliance

I don't know, do you think this facemask restricts my personal freedoms? 

I know, might be hard to tell.  That's the point of Naked Fridays.  Let's think outside the masks that society asks us to wear. 

I know that many of us have our knickers in a twist over the new requirements that ask that you please wear a facemask in order to enter their establishment.  Or even to ask that you wear one if you're just going to engage in public at all.  We have thousands of Americans who are on the frontlines risking their lives every day to provide us with the basic necessities to allow our country to function, many of whom have shown up without proper protection and now we have entitled citizens protesting over being asked to wear a piece of fabric over their mouth and nose while in public.  I want to say that while I'm the first person to say that I acknowledge that I'm all about personal choice and personal freedoms, I also am a woman who encourages public health and safety.  In this particular case, science says that a facemask is helpful to protect us from one another and this unseen virus. 

Wearing a mask in public in America, I feel, is going to be similar to wearing a seatbelt and not smoking while we're indoors.  Initially, none of us wanted to ever do it.  As a child, I never wore a seat belt and have memories of sliding all over the vinyl backseats of our big Ford station wagon as my father purposely took corners a little too fast and my mother was smoking like a chimney sitting next to him, clouds of noxious smoke filling the entire car.  Now we all wear a seat belt and the smokers refrain from smoking in places where we all gather together indoors.  It's mandated in the public safety laws of every state and none of us would think of putting our child or grandmother into the front seat of a car without strapping them in safely or lighting up and smoking in the middle of a crowded restaurant or grocery store. 

Are you going to send your grandmother, or your own mother, or your teenager or your child to the store unmasked?  Just to prove a point?  Just to say that no one, no one is going to tell you that you have to wear a mask? For the safety of your community?  To perhaps save a life?  

A vaccine is not imminent.  It's important that we make our public places safe for all of us, not just a few of us.  We're not helpless, we actually do have far more power than we realize.  You are a real participant in making this society functional...right now. If you choose to participate.  If you choose. 

My mask protects you.  Your mask protects me.  It's science and it's compliance. 

Your life is important enough to me that I will wear my mask even when I choose not to wear anything else at all.  That is my promise. 

 

feliz día de acción de gracias

We assumed, most likely because we were young and white and privileged, that there would be open restaurants with all kinds of delicious things to eat.  Why wouldn't there be?  This is America.  Land of plates of food so large that in any other country the same plate would feed an entire family.  

Assumed.  Making an ass of both of us.  

That morning when we woke up and drove the winding road from our cavernous empty rental house into the sleepy beach town we were smacked right upside the head with the reality that there were no open restaurants at all.  None.  Not a one.  They were all closed.  

God Bless America.

I believe we got in quite an argument.  Car doors were slammed.  At least one of us stormed off and wandered around the empty streets of that sleepy beach town for quite a while wondering just what she had signed up for moving all the way over here from the security of all the way over there and finding herself here on this day tired from sleeping on a cement floor in a cavernous empty rental that had no electricity or running water (because, hello, holiday weekend and utilities needed someone to actually appear to turn them on) and contemplating exactly how many dollars she still had and if she might, just maybe, could put herself and the dog (you knew there was a dog, didn't you?!?) on a plane and get herself back to the security she had abandoned all the way over there, but eventually we found our way back to each other, hugs were shared (there are always hugs), sorries were said and then we drove back up that winding road and back to that cavernous empty rental house and before it was too dark we wandered the woods searching for anything, anything at all that we could burn in the wood stove because it was November and did I mention that it was cold?  

We ate lukewarm spaghetti that night.  We cooked it on our camping stove.  It took fucking forever and we tossed it with some Ragu and were thankful, sure, that we actually had some food.  There was not a whole lot of gratitude, though.  We weren't cognizant that we had it better than so many others.  It's interesting the things your mind does when you're a white privileged girl in America.


*****

That was 32 years ago.  

The woman I am today wants to tell that girl to remember that she's damn lucky to have spaghetti to put in her pot. That there's always enough, always.  To share her sandwiches no matter where she happens to find herself and to be grateful that she can. 

Chlorophytum Comosum

When I left, I gently squeezed you between the two front seats of the car.  I felt really lucky that there was even space for you there. Every time my elbow knocked you, I'd apologize, as if I could hear you complain about being stuck right there in that tiny space meant only for coffee and spare change.  You were far more important to me than spare change and coffee.  You'd been around since the days when I said hello to Santa Cruz and now, well, now you were there when I was saying goodbye.  A silent witness to every single day of my upside-down life. 

There are no magic words I can conjure up now to bring you back from the brink. 

I put you up on that ledge when we moved from that house to this house because I thought, right, it will be sunny and there will be less chance you'll be bothered by things.  What things, I don't even know, honestly? Just things. You know THINGS.  I wanted you to have a vantage point where you could just be...happy.  Up there.  Out of the way, I suppose, if I'm being the most honest with you.  With myself.  With all of us.

So up there, out of the way, above my head, where you wouldn't be bothered, where I did not notice you but you could see everything about me, I forget all about you and I let you die. 

Or nearly die.  

I'm sorry I left you alone.  I'm sorry I forgot about you.  You deserved better than me. 

You deserve better. Than. Me. 

****

When's the last time you took a drink of water?

How often am I asked that when I spit angry words at someone when they ask me about my day? 

Is it as simple as a long, cool drink of water?  

Water and we will be okay?

Words won't keep you from dying.  Water, though, water might just keep you here to witness what comes next. 

Mother of Dragonflies

As I wandered through Phuttamonthon relishing in the small gardens and the lush greenery and getting lost along the paths that led along canals full of fish of all kinds while the air was pulsing with the smell of sweet jasmine, I kept thinking..."I should have brought Buddha.  This would be a grand place for him."    

I know, I know. I'm still carrying around my dead dog in the creases of my heart reserved for just that kind of thing.  Resting places for dead dogs to call upon when you need comfort.  Even while I thought those VERY WORDS, I also admonished myself because I left Buddha in the temple, specifically, at Burning Man, as well as in temples and shrines all over the world *last year* after he graduated.  He's well enshrined, well honored, well remembered.  He's also back sharing my pillow with me every night, let's not forget.


Still...

Just as I reached the tall standing Buddha in the center of the park, again lamenting the absence of my own Buddha, I received a text from my professor asking if I was at "Buddha's Headquarters?"  Meaning, yes, the dog.  I will be the first to admit that we have anthropomorphed the dog into a god, but aren't all dogs gods to some degree to those of us who are lucky to share our hearts with them? 

I was about to reply to him when, out of nowhere, seven dragonflies appeared.  

Dragonflies. 

Of course.

When Buddha died last year, dragonflies appeared.  In late March in Utah.  Dragonflies would appear whenever I walked Stella. In the snow in the middle of the city. At bus stops. Where dragonflies do not fly.  There they were. Choosing to alight on her tail and on my fingers. They were everywhere while I was out at Burning Man. Flying through our little camp. Choosing to land in my hair. There was even an art installation of the life and death of dragonflies.  I chose, because of all of this, not even *knowing* that he'd return so soon, to incorporate a dragonfly into the tattoo story that graces my left arm.  A reminder that we are all light and can reflect light in powerful ways if we choose to do so. 

Dragonflies.  Dead dogs.  Buddhas.  Transformation.  

Sometimes, you travel halfway around the world to find the center of your own heart and plant your feet firmly back on the planet.  

On the wings of a dragonfly, if you're brave enough to hold on. 

 

“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.

No One Will Ever Believe You

OG Clyde

Clyde was from Colorado.

I wonder how many of you actually know that?

Just days after Gatsby died in a snowbank in my arms (I really thought I'd have Gatsby forever, until I got Clyde), like maybe three days I think, Than showed up on my sister's doorstep in Provo, Utah with a weeks old black lab mix puppy he had adopted for me.  It probably surprises no one else but me that when my very best dog (up until that moment he really was) died in my arms I sought refuge in Utah, but that is exactly what I did.  I bolted from Steamboat Springs where I had been living with a gaggle of boys on the side of a snowy ski mountain and wailed into a pillow under the covers in her guest bedroom in the dark. 

Until Than showed up to retrieve my heart and carry me back to me, back to Colorado ever so gently on the four paws of a black lab.

At another time in my life, another time when I felt that perhaps the Universe just wasn't actually hearing me, or I wasn't listening to what the Universe was saying is probably more the truth of the matter, I was on the precipice of abandoning my community in Santa Cruz, literally stepping into what may have been my last road trip on this planet (for all I know, honestly) to move myself to Boulder. Things just were that unhappy and sad and not good for me and I was certain that a geographical fix was going to be the perfect answer. That Clyde and I should call Boulder home.

A phone call, a last minute dream about furniture placement, changed all of that and instead of Boulder, we both ended up in a small cabin in the woods in Bonny Doon. 

It is impossible to know what might have been.

I did live in Boulder, once.  In a hobbit house.  I also lived in Colorado Springs, quite by accident, for all the wrong reasons with all the wrong boys doing all the very wrong things. 

That was before Clyde. 

Clyde was from Colorado, but he never actually lived in Colorado with me.

He lived in all the other spaces and places. Until he decided that it was time to graduate and we all remember how he glowed, literally, and transformed and took his final breath and moved through me and and then…

Then there was Buddha. And Stella. The dogs that changed my whole world. Turned it from upside down to right side up even if I was uncertain that I had been living upside down to begin with, the dogs knew how to right my world and fix things that I never understood needed fixing.

They were superglue for my broken heart. Mending it with dog slobber and keeping me on this planet, right here, often when I was certain I was going to float away like small particles of dust.  Those dogs. Both of them with separate and unique purposes.  Those dogs.  Forcing me to face all that I never knew I actually needed to be and should be in this world.

Buddha and Stella

Those dogs. Repairing me. Showing up for me and teaching me exactly how I need to show up for others in this world.  If you’re not going to actually show up heart first, what is the point of showing up at all?  If you’re not prepared to love like it’s your job, your only job, you might want to re-think why you’re choosing to love at all.  These were the lessons those dogs, Buddha and Stella, taught me best over the last 14 years.  We walked thousands of miles together and found ourselves, somehow, in Utah, the place where Clyde had found me and with my own heart and soul mended and love found, Buddha and Stella also graduated to their next grand adventure.

I will admit I didn’t believe I was ready. I am never ready.  Not for that goodbye. Not to be the girl who lost both dogs. The dogs who taught me to love fiercely and first and with my heart bare and always ready to give.  To give all the balls back and share all my sandwiches with whomever asked. The girl who would now always say yes because that's just what we do. We say yes because yes allows for all the possibilities. 

I also wasn’t ready for what happened next. I am uncertain even the very best of us who love dogs the most would be ready for what happened next.

Clyde came back.

Clyde B.

Because of course he did.

I know it’s difficult to believe it.  You’d have to be full of *woo* and understand a dog’s purpose.  Their hearts and souls work in familiar yet mysterious ways.  Sometimes we’re meant to travel together in life for specific work and lessons.  Love lessons. Life lessons. Lessons only a dog can provide.

Clyde found me last Sunday.  Just two days after Stella graduated.  He has been on quite a raucous journey of only the kind CLYDE could ever have just to find his way to me. One that has included escapes and narrow misses and destruction of property and the insistence that he BELONGED with me.

My professor drove me 10 hours round trip to go retrieve Clyde on Friday.  I can assure you that LOVE looks like the man who will drive me ten hours to retrieve the beautiful crazy puppy I insist is my reincarnated dog.

I know it all sounds preposterous. I also know what I absolutely know and what Clyde knows, as well.

We’re a team. We’ve always been the very best team.

I’m just so grateful that he’s home.

I Bet You Think This Blog Is About You

Since it's been a while, you missed the part where we lost Buddha. 

That happened near the very end of March. I held my breath until I couldn't hold it any longer and when I exhaled, he exhaled one last time and graduated the way the best spirits do and went on to do whatever it is that a Buddha will do when he makes his grand exit from his work here tending to my heart and soul.  If I'm truthful and honest, I'll share that I squashed some of my missing of him in order to try to be present for his sister Stella.  She is still here. She needed me to be here for her. She needed my own heart in ways that she had never asked for before because her whole world, her life as she had known it, had also ended in that last exhale.  

Stella is now an only dog.  Not just an only dog, she's my only dog. The one who has my heart wrapped tightly in all the sinews of hers and who carries it gently on her four wobbly paws. Stella is also now clearly dying before me and I am holding my breath and I don't know when I'll be able to exhale.  I'm not ready for her to graduate as much as I know none of this is about me and all of this is about her and the way time continues to march onward even when we do everything in our power to wind the clocks backwards, to bargain with gods we don't really believe in, to cast spells and concoct potions that may keep the inevitable at bay. 

I know that howling at the moon is not going to work, but I am still howling.

*****

While sitting at therapy this afternoon, I surmised that I've got a problem with narcissists. 

A long, sordid affair.  Ugly and abusive in parts.  A rare gift in others. I even uttered that there were moments that were like a symphony they were so beautiful to me. 

One does not just have a problem with narcissists, I realize.  There's obviously a certain personality flaw, some sort of kink in my own hardware, some space where the light doesn't exactly shine through that creates an opportunity or, better yet, an attraction for me.  Or to me.  Or...well, this is why I have a really good therapist. 

I own that have absolutely played my own part in all of this. I'm the writer of the narrative that is my life story. These characters came into my life because I invited them. I'm not an innocent bystander. Yet in owning my story, my history, I need to also own all the parts of it, including those that are difficult to embody.  I threw up today in therapy from the nausea of remembering. 

*****

I know I'm a privileged person to sit here and write on a blog, of all places, about my dead dog, my dying dog and my mental health issues.  

They're connected. 

My dog keeps me on the planet. She helps me to stay present and sane.  Her heart ties my heart here and keeps me from floating too far away.  

I don't know if I'll be able to exhale. 

There's More Than One Way To Have It All

 

"There must be those among whom we can sit down and weep and still be counted as warriors."

 

• What I am reading   Proving that everything that is old is always new again.  Or, perhaps I just got really bored and stopped paying attention and this industry never actually died.  I'm sure there's at least one person who remembers when I worked for Camera Cafe.  I knew this world. It actually was part of the impetus behind #nakedfridays and my own wish for everyone to love themselves as they are.  I'm not surprised that the world is dangerous.  It was then, it can only be more so now.  We forget that people are actually HUMAN BEINGS. 
•   
• What I am eating  I have to make something to take to a party.  Who doesn't like chocolate and caramel?  I mean, some people obviously do not, but I'm pretty certain this will just disappear and I won't have to deal with bringing home leftovers. 

• What I am Listening To Stella is missing her brother. I'm thinking she might even need a heating pad with a heartbeat in it, if I can find such a thing.  She used to sleep wrapped around him and now, well, now she sleeps with her head burrowed under her blankets. Times are tough.  The music helps. 

• What I am watching   Feeding my Gilmore Girls habit. However, it's even better because Amy is not constrained, has a far bigger budget and, well, we get to go on a deep dive without commercials.  Stella joins me on the couch for every episode. Also, the New York Times gives us this fab list of reading material to add to the fun.  

• What I am thinking about The money quote: “I hope — I pray — we don’t have to use this fund,” DeAngelis said. “But odds are we will.”  
  
  What they do not really mention in this article is that the State of Colorado is creating a 501(c), based on the generosity of others, to take care of victims of mass tragedy in their state.  While I know that we're human and we all respond with caring hearts when mass tragedy happens, what bothers me most here is that why not also fund this fund by collecting additional dollars from the sales of guns?  Maybe?? Or does that cross some line drawn in the sand.  Or even with additional fees for gun licenses?  And, yes, I know that most mass tragedies occur at the hands of people who probably had illegal access to guns in the first place.  However, I'm a big believer in helping to make the entire community (in this case gun owners) take responsibility.  
  
  If you're going to need a FUND for the victims of Mass Tragedy and you want people to donate to fund the fund in advance of the tragedy that you know is inevitably going to happen, why not also ask for money from the makers of the guns that will probably also contribute to the tragedy.  It just seems like common sense to me. 

• What I am really feeling: Like I want to throw up. Pleasant, I know. However, it's the truth. And I'd like to think when I read this however long from now in the future that I'll perhaps not feel like throwing up because things will have somehow sorted themselves out.  A girl can hope.