This is SOooooooo true! You know why my tribe?
Because they are the MOST interesting, sensitive and insightful souls.
Because they see the world differently than most.

Slightly tinted, and a bit skewed through the outsider’s lens.

Because they have an edge.
In their work and words and life.
It wraps it’s pointedness around their soft gooey hearts to keep them safe and sound, and if they let you inside, it feels like the Fourth of July, your first kiss and Christmas morning all rolled up into one.

Are you one of these wonderful, ragged, gypsy souls?

Then know I love You. Happy Saturday.
Xox

There’s a lot of media lately around the subject of loneliness, and it got me to thinking: When in my life have I felt real loneliness?
Not to be confused with spending Saturday night without a date.
That is an appointment with Ben and Jerry’s and “The Way We Were.”

Loneliness is so much bigger, darker and deeper than that.

By definition loneliness is a feeling of isolation, of feeling alone and separate.

I’ll talk about my friend’s loneliness first…because I felt such empathy for her, I can still feel it today. 
I’ve known TT since high school. We became fast friends the first day of ninth grade, when I told her I thought she was beautiful. I know, great opening line, Right?
But she is and I really meant it.

In the late 80’s, she married Andy ( I love him too, truly; I used him as my husband template for years, but that’s another story). 

They moved to Santa Barbara to do their post grad studies, and since I live in LA, I drove up every other weekend. We nicknamed it a JJ (Janet jaunt). 

They lived on campus, had a huge circle of friends, and since everyone was financing their tuition cooking in restaurants, we ate incredibly well, and since they were all so smart, the conversation wasn’t bad either.
A few years in, TT had a baby. I was in the room, again, another story for another day. 
Let me just say…A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!

Three months later they moved lock, stock and baby to Italy.
To Trento, for an actual paying research gig at the University there, were Andy could move further toward his doctorate.
Neither spoke Italian, so communication was…interesting, and after they got there, it was revealed that the money would be paid at the end of their 9 month stay. So, after thirty days…they were stone broke.

Since Andy was at the University all day, TT was left at their small apartment, or to her own devices. The first few weeks of enthusiastic exploring, turned into aimless walks around a foreign town, where, even when she eavesdropped on other people’s conversations, she could only make out a couple of words.

I’ve been there, it’s like you’re invisible, and she really was!
All the Italian women saw was “Bambina!”
Except, they couldn’t tell her what to get for the diaper rash, or the teething, or share her frustration about the fact that the hot water literally shut off at 9pm…in the whole town!

I could feel her deep isolation and sadness come right through the paper of her letters and faxes.
I swear, there were tear stains. My vibrant, beautiful, friend was dying of loneliness, and it made my heart actually HURT.

So…I gathered the troops, and one by one, we staggered our JJ’s throughout that summer and fall, so she wasn’t alone as she learned how to be a mom in a small medieval town in northern Italy.

I have felt the MOST profound loneliness on two separate occasions in my life, and they both caused me great sadness, even despair.

I’m sure there were more, I’m in my fifties for God’s sake, but these two have burned their memory into my brain, so as not to be forgotten.

One was in my first marriage.
I was about 23, waaaaaay too young to be married, and I remember lying next to my husband and trying to identify the deep pit in my stomach. It was like a dull ache. I can remember the night it finally hit me: Shit! I married the wrong person, because he’s right here and I’m lonely as hell.

Great. Now what?
I smoked a joint, ate a box of cookies and had months of anxiety attacks.
Then I filed for divorce.

The second one that just about killed me, was when my store was dying.
Many days toward the end it was “crickets”. By that I mean, days of no phone calls, no deliveries, no people coming in at all.
I am WAY too social for that kind of day to day isolation.
I NEED to talk to people to live, it’s like breathing to me.

Often when I got home at night, I realized I hadn’t spoken a single word THE ENTIRE DAY!

I had never felt such deep loneliness
I would watch people walking to their cars and I wanted to yell out, “Hello, I’m in here, come talk to me!”

I just knew somehow, in my gut, that if something didn’t happen fast, the loneliness would start to affect my health.
There have been recent studies that back that up.

Luckily, the flood came, and saved my life.

Oprah has a campaign to help alleviate social isolation, and potentially some loneliness. “Just say Hello”
It’s a simple greeting, but it’s power is profound.
What it is, is a connection, and that connection can help someone feel less isolated, not as solitary in the world.

Let’s smile and say Hello to everyone, to strangers, we could make someone’s day. It would have made mine.
Xox

As we rushed out though the smokey maze of the Casino at the old Sahara Hotel in Las Vegas, it suddenly hit me that he had once again forgotten to give me my bonus. It stopped me in my tracks.
Damn him!

We had just finished a week-long, Estate Jewelry Show.
I was bone tired from being on my feet for over twelve hours a day – in heels, and to add insult to injury, our plane reservation left us no time to eat before the flight home, so to top it all off—I was hangry.
In other words—I was in NO mood.

We had grossed over one million dollars – in a week, the two of us, and I was about to fly home empty-handed, once again.

You see, I had a boss that hated to pay me. He just did.
And no carefully scripted notes, or heartfelt talks, or angry outbursts on my part had done anything to change that.

I had coached him repeatedly on the merits of showing respect. It wasn’t difficult, all he had to do was pay me. And not make me ask for my money, which I HATED.

What would this be? The third time that day I’d had to ask him for my money? I was quite familiar with this humiliating fucktard, power play, and I was sick of it! Listen, I had done everything I could think of to sidestep this idiocy! Even after years of his bonus structure consisting of whatever loose cash he had in his pocket, not his fat, overstuffed money clip mind you—but instead his pocket change, I had won one battle by finally getting him to agree to a pre-set amount.

“Why are you stopping?” he yelled impatiently. His aluminum wheelie suitcase, a rectangular R2D2, skipped from wheel to wheel, trying to keep its balance. I could’ve sworn it looked back in my direction with a “help me” face.

He continued his frantic march through the casino toward the door, not even turning around to see where I was.

“ I’d love to get my bonus before we leave?” I asked for the third time, running to keep up. I knew that if I let it slide, even for a day or two, the odds of getting it would become so slim even a Vegas bookie would pass on that bet.

I wasn’t sure he’d heard me when, in one fluid motion, he arced to the right, making a wide, sweeping, u-turn back in my direction. Then he reached into his murse (man purse) and dumped a handful of gambling chips in my direction. Surprised, I reached with out with both hands in time to catch most of them, but watched several make a break for it, rolling on their sides with great momentum underneath the dollar slots nearby.

“That should cover it; now hurry up, we don’t want to miss our plane.”

I stood there red-faced and flabbergasted, knowing I didn’t have any time to cash them in. Quickly, I shoved the chips in every pocket of my purse, and proceeded to get down on my hands and knees to see if I could retrieve the ones that had made their escape.

The pot-bellied, middle-aged woman, who was dangling a cigarette with two inches of ash from her lipstick stained mouth, straddled two stools in front of three slot machines. Without ever looking away from the rapidly rotating numbers she was counting on to change her life, her foot kicked the chips my way, like a bedroom slippered hockey stick.
“Uh, thanks” I mumbled, crawling on the ground in my skirt and heels, totally in awe of her concentration.

“Janet, let’s go!” He bellowed from inside the automatic revolving glass exit doors and then turned right to join the cab line.

I could hear those damn plastic chip clinking together in my bag as I ran to catch my flight back to LA.

In the hour that it takes to get from Vegas to LA, I began to seethe with rage.
Not only had he made me repeatedly ask him, he had literally thrown poker chips at me in lieu of my bonus! I had never felt so disrespected In. My. Life.

I don’t know about you, but when I get in touch with that level of anger, I have a tendency to burst into flames, tears.
Hunched down in my middle seat toward the back of the plane, I cried and cried and cried. Big, wet, sloppy tears.

I decided I would rather die than take the prearranged ride home to Park La Brea with he and his wife. I know that’s what we had agreed to but seriously, someone was going to die if I got in that car with him— and I was way too overdressed to go to jail.

As we walked out to the curb, I saw his wife’s car to the left and without making a sound, (or so much as an indecent hand gesture) I made a beeline to the right and jumped into a cab that just happened to be waiting there in front of me.
The moment the door shut… I lost it.

I began to sob like a little girl, gasping for breath, snot running down my face.
There I was, trapped in a horrible working situation with no solution in sight. What do you do when you ask someone repeatedly to treat with respect and they blatantly disregard that?

I know what you’re thinking, quit! I couldn’t quit. I had the kind of career everyone wanted. Travel, great pay, jewelry, prestige. Which led to a lot of financial obligations, AND I was single.
Wahhhhhhhhhhhh. That always made me cry even harder.

As we wound our way through the late night traffic on LaCienega, I could see the dark, soulful eyes of the cab driver, looking at me in the rear view mirror. If I hadn’t already guessed that he was from India, with his deep brown skin and white turban, his accent gave it away as he asked softly,

“Beautiful lady, why you cry?”

“Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh, I’m just feeling so saaaaaaaad, I don’t know what to do.”

I could see his eyes searching my face in the rear view mirror as I accidentally wiped snot into my hair with the back of my hand.
“Beautiful lady, don’t be sad, it can’t be that bad,” he cooed in his soothing, heavily accented voice.

“Ohhhhhhh it is, I think I hate my boss…he doesn’t show me any respect…he paid me with…”

I started to wail louder, “With poker chiiiiiiiiiiiiips!”

For dramatic effect, I grabbed a couple out of my bag and threw them on the seat.

“Beautiful lady, you have God’s respect and that’s all that matters.”
Really? I guess he had a point.
The cab slowly came to a stop in front of my high-rise apartment building.

Since I had cried the entire ride home, I had to scramble around to find my bag and scrounge for cab fare. As I did, the lovely turbaned cabbie grabbed my suitcase from the driver’s side backseat where I had launched it, opened my door, and wheeled my bag inside the lobby, depositing it in front of the elevator doors. When he returned to the cab, I had composed myself enough to hand him his fare.

“Here you go, thank you for being so kind to me.” I said sheepishly through the tissue that was attempting to clean the river of snot from the side of my face.

“Oh no beautiful lady, you keep that. This ride is on me.”
And before I could argue with him or even thank him, he pulled away into the dark Los Angeles night. As I watched his tail lights fade into the distance, I realized a couple of things that gave me goosebumps.
They still do.

Number one: I never told him where I lived.

I just got in the cab and fell apart while he drove me home — to Park La Brea, which is a labyrinth of apartments, turnabouts and one way streets. Even with the best directions from the back seat, many a cab driver has made a wrong turn and been spit back out onto Wilshire Boulevard.

Number two: There are ten high rises. How is it that he had he managed to navigate all the twists and turns and one way streets inside the complex to deposit me right at my door?
The only answer? He was an angel. Plain and simple.

When I finally managed to come out of my stupor and slowly walk inside to the elevator, I noticed he had propped the doors open with my bag and pushed the button to the ninth floor!

My floor! How did he know?

I really believe that angels are everywhere and only show themselves when we need them.

THAT is the story of my Angel in a Turban.

Carry on,
Xox

A writer is a professional observer.
~Susan Sontag

When you get groups of people together, even writers, you get the talkers, and the listeners.
The talkers tend to gab, I think, to dissipate some of their nervous energy, from being with a group of people they don’t know – instead of chain smoking or stuffing their faces with donuts.

They want to appear engaged and engaging, which can only be accomplished on a full moon, at low tide, on a Thursday in November.

In other words…NEVER.

I do that, except I ramble on while smoking AND eating sweets.
It is my default setting.

Lately, like maybe the last couple of years, I’ve tried to override my hard wiring, and let someone else talk for a change.

Life is funny that way, it’s a bit like musical chairs.
When you get up from your assigned seat, others will rush in to sit there and take your space. There seems to be no shortage of nervous talkers.

I like to be polite and introduce myself, but I don’t speak until spoken to for awhile, I let other people come to me. That is unless several of us are just standing around in uncomfortable silence, then I will start the conversation.

Someone like me cannot tolerate a looooooooong silence. It hurts our ears.

I once burped to cut the tension. Everyone laughed and then we started a conversation about food that makes us burp.
It was riveting.

Listening isn’t passive, the best listeners aren’t thinking ahead to their response, they’re using their observation skills, like a reporter, taking mental notes about their conversation partner.
Who is this person? Why are they here? How can I find out more about THEM? All the while listening, because what the other person is saying will lead to the next question, and the next, and the next, so…you can throw away your notes.

Are you the talker in a group or the listener? When someone is talking, are you thinking ahead to what you’re going to say? (That’s a hard one to break)

Much love,
Xox

Cool Is An Emotional Straightjacket. I’m Going To Take It Off.
Brene Brown

Why do we play it so cool?

I am at my long awaited, kick ass writing retreat/workshop in Carmel as I write this.

This is my tribe. I could tell by the peals of laughter that met me at the driveway, and guided me inside this lovely house, to sit with these lovely people.
I’ve come to work hard, with a side of laughter.
If I were to write down my recipe for a happy life, that’s what it would be.
Hard work – with a side of laughter.

A good belly laugh is the anecdote to “cool”.

Anyway, I decided in the car on the way up, that I would be as authentic and vulnerable as I had the courage to be, otherwise…why bother?
It’s like the people who go into psychotherapy and pretend that their world is round when it’s actually square. It’s not doing them any good and it’s a colossal waste of time.

I will be and act excited when I’m excited (which was all day yesterday) lost if I feel lost ( mid morning) happy when that occurs (dinner last night) and cry if the mood strikes me (today when it was my turn to read).

I will not pretend that this is not the once in a lifetime experience that I know in my heart it is.

I have done that in similar social situations where I’ve felt intimidated or out of my league. It is my virtual armor, and it has repeatedly short changed me.

I know I’m not the only one, I see it all the time.

So…what if we show people exactly how we feel? Would they laugh or sneer or run away? If you can believe it, none of the above. They’d feel relieved.

I was born in LA, which is the Capitol of Cool.

Not if you’re born here – that’s just winning the weather lottery.
It’s where all the cool people that stand outside clubs and check out their reflections in the shop windows on Robertson Boulevard or Rodeo Drive have ended up. The earth is literally tilted in such a way that the “too cool for school crowd” rolls into California via every mode of transpiration imaginable; and Los Angeles in particular.

There is an air of abject “so what” that hangs over this city as thick as smog.

You feel proud of a promotion, raise, engagement ring, new house or car?
SO WHAT. BIG DEAL. BE COOL.
You can throw a rock and hit someone with a better job, bigger diamond, fancier car and more square footage.

When I worked in the jewelry business and celebrities would saunter in, we, the shop girls, all had to act like it was just another day at the office, lest we frighten those fragile, skittish, individuals away.

But a couple of us decided to be real.

We cracked jokes, fetched them vodka from the fridge and encouraged self deprecation, and you know what? They came back again and again.
They wanted a real connection. Not ooglie eyed, start struck, adoration, and not indifference. They ARE, contrary to popular belief, human beings after all. They wanted to laugh and kid around and eat cookies and talk smack about the paparazzi.
We were happy to supply that for them.

I look back and realize that we would have missed some really great moments, with some amazing people if we had played it cool, and I think that’s the moral of this whole story.

Like Brene Brown says, it IS and emotional straightjacket, and one that I’m no longer willing to wear.

In which situations do you put on your “cool.” What would it take to remove the straightjacket?
Much love, 
The writing Queen 😉 
Xox

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