Buoyant Blues

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

Escaping, Through Music, But Not Really 

Starting at 1:40, which is probably where it always began when DJs played it on WBLS-FM, the song almost makes me forget my grief. Almost:



It's a great time when songs like this are playing on the radio -- my dad's employed again and I'm learning Disco and Ballroom dancing from David Jones in my hometown, Stamford, Connecticut, so that I feel like I belong at the 11 Bar Mitzvahs and six Bat Mitzvahs I attend between 1977 and '78.

This song comes a year later, but it's the sort we Hustled to at all of the Bar and Bat Mitzvah receptions, and I miss it today. Who knew then that five years later, my dad (z"l) would be dead of common bile-duct cancer?

This next song...



...also gets good about 30 seconds in and almost makes me pound away the blues of my pastoral session from earlier today. A Rabbinical Intern at our shul, wants to know what God would say to me after I ask, "When can I just fall apart?"

"Never," God says, I tell her. He says, "Keep going. It won't serve you to fall apart."

At ~1:20 in, God might as well say:



Or He could be as Kind as a number of the Psalms and pledge:



The Rabbinical Intern tells me, "Let's look at Psalm Chaf Zayin. Keep reading."

I read aloud, "For my father and my mother [in that order] have left me; but the Lord will take me up."

"Do you believe that you can let God into your life to help you?" The Rabbinical Intern asks me and I'm almost embarrassed at her revival-style inquiry.

"I *can*, yes, but will I?" I say, barely aloud.

Last night on Twitter, a former Modern Orthodox Jewish day schoolmate and I had an exchange of tweets around an article that compared and contrasted coming out as Atheist to coming out as lesbian, gay, bi or trans. He's an Atheist and one of only three friends of mine who identifies as Atheist...that I know of. He's definitely not:



Didn't God give me this great music for dancing, escaping, wanting to live, for hope and joy, even in the midst of my sadness and fury?



Can't I shut my eyes right now, even as I'm typing and be transported through the furniture from *The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe*? Dancing the whole way! God, for a moment, I've become even younger than Bat Mitzvah age.

Now, back to the present, where I feel very alone. Indeed, Pat is not home right now, but even with Phoebe, the kitty, here in her plush bucket-bed next to me on the floor, I'm just by myself, except for my Disco and Funk friends:



What if I could time-travel and heed the eventual call of this video to go to Barbados for a weekend in 2010, for three days and nights of "Pure Rare Grooves"? There's no such thing as a geographic cure, they say, but it doesn't stop me from wanting to escape my mourning. I am parentless. I am childless. Who will mourn for me? Ok, that was melodramatic.

Ever since I went to a '70's dance party at my friends' Stephanie and Laura, I'm craving dancing in public, and there seem to be fewer opportunities for public dancing than when I was younger. "Don't stop me and I won't stop you," as this song commands:



"Are you angry at God?" asks the Rabbinical Intern.

Later, I think of an answer: Not when I'm dancing, or rollerblading:



Or "Funkin' for Jamaica" and getting to see the beautiful, female singer for the first time by watching the video, which I usually don't like to do; what they produce is always less appealing to me than what I see in my head. Not this time, though. And the mens' spirit is uplifting. They love making the music maybe more than any musicians I've ever seen.



The Psalm book I was reading from today had been a gift to my mom (z"l) from me. I inscribed it 15 years ago, in 5760 of the Hebrew calendar:

5760

Dear Mom,

May these Psalms comfort you whenever and wherever you need comforting.

Love,

Sarah

When the Rabbinical Intern and I were talking earlier, why didn't I notice that my mom (z"l) had underlined part of the last sentence of the very Psalm that the Intern asked me to read aloud, "...be strong, and let thy heart be of good courage...."

Blog-Neglect

The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.

How Can I Make It Up to My Blog?

Hope it's not like that "Cat's in the Cradle..." song, where the kid, once grown up, doesn't care about his father, since the father wasn't around for him when he was a kid. Well, maybe my blog's still a kid and I can redeem myself. When would a blog be deemed to have made it past adolescence into adulthood anyway?

What would a blog's rites of passage be? A number of weeks ago, I discovered happily that my blog has been visited more than 10,000 times, and that I'm edging toward 300 posts. Even if several thousand of the visits were from me, that's at least 5,000 others -- most of whom, according to the search phrases on my site meter seemed to be trying to determine "Sex and the City," Kristin Davis', religion.

All of those searches were due to an entry I posted months and months ago, about seeing an "Ahavah" skincare products ad, which featured Kristin Davis in a "Haddassah" magazine. I've never again seen the ad. My guess is that she was the model for the brand because she has creamy, gorgeous skin and plays a convert on TV...I think, anyhow. Pat and I watched only two episodes in its history. We couldn't relate to it.

If I Had Forgone Some More Sleep Last Monday...

...here are the topics I wanted to write about, which I scribbled on a notepad prior to dinner and never got back to:

Mediation fairness vs. sunny side....teaching vs. doing....What *is* leadership?...Kitties for creativity....Didn't want the cathair or the smell of their food, but I apply strong, peppermint chapstick to my lips...

...when I'm opening cans of their food and then I mind less because I try to smell the peppermint, rather than the cooped up, and then released, "fish" or "turkey."

I'm not likely to flesh out these thoughts because I've moved on, but wanted to include even the telegraph version of them for some reason...I guess, as evidence to my blog that I've been wishing to spend time with it, whether or not I fulfilled my wish this week....This is the longest I've ever gone between blog-posts. I didn't want to write that previous sentence because acknowledging it might start a trend, God forbid.

Stream of Consciousness

Blogging is so safe. I don't know who's reading my postings -- just their location typically, and any search words they used to get to it. It really babies the shy side of me. I can be bold and honest and personal in the blog (I try to be when I'm face-to-face as well, but it's certainly a more vulnerable feeling than blogging typically). This week, an Indian colleague referred to me in an instant message as "...a sassy gumptious lady." I don't even know to what she was referring specifically, but I believe she meant it positively....

It hit me that IBM gives time off for new parents, and yet, I didn't take any time off when we got the cats on the last day of July. And it is as close to parenting as I'm likely to come, God willing....We are the godparents of our twin nephews, but God forbid anything would happen to their parents that would turn us into the twins' parents....My brother-in-law's reaction to our getting cats -- I heard via my mother: "Great, now the boys are going to want cats."

"Tell them that they can choose to have them when they're adults, like I did," I told my mom he should say. They'll be 10 later this month -- the twins, not the cats. The cats are five years old.

Pat gave them -- the cats -- each a cottton catnip pouch last night and it was like I've seen in the movies, when someone snorts cocaine. I had heard about catnip, but never had seen its effect in real life, and never knew that it comes from the mint family.

I was happy to learn that it's a sort of mint; it made me feel somehow more kindred with the cats. I like the Burt's Bees peppermint lifeguard chapstick, which makes my lips white, so I can't wear it much in public, and they like catnip.

Workaholism or Fecundity of the Mind?

The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.

Individually Conscious or Unconscious?

Yesterday, during lunch with colleagues, we talked about one of their Masters theses, on Jungian archetypes applied to organizations. And then we talked about the conscious and unconscious. And then we talked about Buddhism.

And then I went back to work and focused completely on responding to participants' feedback from a pilot I ran yesterday and writing the draft of a workshop proposal. All the while, in the corner-office next-door, a colleague was packing up; she was retiring after a 30-year career.

My door was shut, but I still heard colleague after colleague coming by to wish her well. And right outside her door was a huge bin on wheels into which she was tossing old papers between visitors' farewells. Yet I was focused...mostly.

Somewhat Conscious

Her assistant was on my mind because I heard her bravely helping the colleague with last-minute needs, like calling for a cart, so the colleague could bring her boxes to her car, and ushering in the well-wishers, and I knew her heart was breaking because she adored the retiree. And then at 6 pm, even the assistant said her goodbyes and left, but I still had work to do.

I kept my door closed, but felt guilty, like I ought to go home to finish working, and give the colleague privacy as she finished cleaning out her office, but I didn't want to stop what I was working on. I was on a creative roll.

By 6:45 pm, I was satisfied with my output for the day, which had begun at 7:15 am, called home to say, "I'm leavin' and I'll be home within an hour, I hope."

Recreation, Not Retirement

On the way home, I called my mom and told her, "I don't know if it's workaholism or extra creativity, but I had a great, and really long, day. And a colleague retired, and I was happy that I got to stay, rather than retire myself."

My mother just listened. How fun could it be to be trapped in a physical rehab facility for three months due to her accident? And my mother didn't work outside the home for much of her life, so perhaps, she couldn't relate.

On an average day, where things weren't as stimulating as they were yesterday, I might have felt a bit jealous of my retiring colleague...and actually, working from home today during this gorgeous weather made me feel like a kid, who just wanted to go outside and play.

But when I thought of my mom, trapped indoors, with just physical therapy for fun for six more weeks, I wanted to lose myself in my work some more. My lunchtime conversation confirmed that even as I tred to be conscious only of escaping into my work, what was unconscious was super-active in parallel. Oy!

"Mom, I think I'm just pumping till I get to go on vacation at the end of May."

"Where are you going?"

"To Florida for a weekend, to see our friends, who we missed over New Year's." They used to live the next town over and we always went to their house for New Year's, so since they moved a few years ago, we've tried to get to Florida in late-December, but this year, we had just returned from India.

Workaholism and Boring Blog Entries

It was a bit too exciting, describing my upcoming vacation, which also fell between semesters as a true break, and so I knew that between work and school, I've been running too much.

How boring for me to recount, and for anyone to read, about my days of hard work. Still, it was the best I could do. It didn't matter as much if I were conscious or unconscious; rather, I just didn't want to be self-conscious. A year ago, when I launched this blog, the first entry was about trying to get over my self-consciousness, so I could write freely.

Lately, I felt the self-consciousness returning, i.e., the more days between blog entries there were, the harder it became to write freely, for pleasure. Part of the struggle lately, too, was in trying to decide whether this blog was more useful to me and to others as an outlet for any sadness about my mother's condition, or to serve as an escape from the sadness.

I was leaning toward mostly maintaining it as an escape, which was most often when it was the most fun for me to blog. Blogging felt best when it had the same quality as what I did upon returning home last night:

Pat led us outside and we watered a bunch of flowers by hand, with a pitcher and a hose, while we waited for the grill to heat up. It was a total departure from the wild pace of the day. Typically, we just let the sprinklers do the work, but last night, it was relaxing to do it ourselves