WHERE IS THE LO\E?

Never Done: Watched the entire Superbowl

Can I be a slacker for NOT playing video games? I finally made a date to play Xbox with Lucas, but by the time late Sunday afternoon rolled around, I was deep under my covers, groggy from an impromptu nap, and not able to motivate myself to go out again. You know I had to be tired, because not only was I gonna get to hang out with Lucas, but I was also going to get to hang out with Andy and Jesse, who are my longest and bestest friends in NY, and Andy was going to give me dinner, and Jesse was going to give me books and CDs about musicals that he's been saving for me.

Instead, I stayed home, popped in an Oscar-nominated movie I thought I hadn't seen yet, and settled in on the couch. Except that the first shot looked very familiar, and by 20 seconds in, I realized I had already seen it. And didn't like it. Five bucks if you can figure out which movie I could have seen, not remembered I saw, and put on my Netflix queue of Oscar-nominees I thought I hadn't seen in the theater.

So what was a sluggish, DVD-less girl to do? I actually watched the entire Superbowl. For the first time ever. No party, no bacon explosion, and not even any team allegiance, but I watched the Superbowl. Sure, I paid a lot more attention to the commercials (One Epic Ride, Release the Hounds) than I did the game play, but I got behind the Steelers in the second half because I love competition, and I love the promise of a comeback.

And I also love those televised moments that were so important when I was growing up (tshuve) -- before DVDs and DVR -- when it's on, it's on, and everyone's watching. Well, I know not everyone is watching, but if you want to see it, you're watching it at the same time as everyone else. The Wizard of Oz, the State of the Union address, the moon landing. (Really, who would DVR the moon landing?) And while watching the Superbowl didn't have the depth of meaning for me that any of those other televised events had, I did feel connected to friends and strangers, and I value being in on the shared cultural reference of it all, most delightfully to an editor's daughter, the Black Eyed Peas half-time show fiasco: WHERE IS THE LO\E? (For those of you who missed it, the right hand horizontal of the V was missing from their illuminated stage design.) Here, I'll show it to you, and now you are in on the biggest editorial glitch of Superbowl XL\.

I entered the New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest

Never Done: Entered the New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest
Never Done: Completed GPS/MAPP (Group Preparation and Selection/Model Approach to Partnerships in Parenting) class

One of my goals for this year is to be a finalist in the New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest. Since one of the most useful rules I've ever learned about writing comedy is that it's about quantity, not quality, I generated 10 potential captions, not worrying about whether or not they were funny, and then chose one direction, and worked at it until I couldn't figure out how to make it any funnier, and then took the plunge and submitted it.

I think what I submitted falls short, but a journey of a thousand miles ... you know. And also, there is something liberating about clicking on the "submit" button without worrying too much about the outcome. The stakes are low, another opportunity will come along next week, and perfection is not always the goal.

Meanwhile, speaking about perfection and the goal, I completed GPS/MAPP class -- and got a certificate and everything, with my names spelled wrong (Levinson) and everything. The organization that did the training -- You Gotta Believe! -- links to an Adopt US Kids ad campaign that says: "You don't need to be perfect to be a perfect parent. Because kids in foster care don't need perfection; they need you." So here I go, taking the final steps (finish writing the 20-page Family Information Form, get a bigger apartment) toward the bank of the river, so I can jump off and get swept downstream with all the other imperfect parents.

Mama said there'll be days like like this

Never Done: Saw a new counselor
Never Done: Saw an apartment being rented by someone who sells Nazi memorabilia
Never Done: Bowled 100

Some days you wake up singing the blues and you go to sleep singing the blues. Other days it's more a Shirelle's song -- when you start the day emailing with a guy who sells pristine sheets of Nazi stamps, and then meet with a new therapist, and end up bowling with friends at Chelsea Piers. Mama said there'll be days like like this. "There'll be days like this," my mama said. (My mama was sarcastic, and so am I.)

Yesterday I wrote about the mide (middah) of Separation -- well, mostly I shared what Alissa Wise has written about separation -- and today I want to write more personally, and try to be open about my Never Done and the Mussar process, but without over-sharing. Inspired by my Mussar Va'ad's initial conversation about Separation: Respect in sexual and intimate relationships, I sought out a new therapist, and met with her for the first time. We all have our Achilles heels, and mine, for better or for worse, is in this realm. What happened (and this does feel quite vulnerable to write about) is that I noticed I have been having a hard time controlling my eating. I've had one eating disorder or another (overeating and undereating) for as long as I can remember -- although I've done a really good job of managing the behavior for probably 20 years, and I've felt blissfully free from its pulls for about five years. But like most addictions, you can manage the behavior and still have difficulties, pulls, and unresolved issues that will pop up when things get tough. Or maybe they pop up, like an old friend, to help you notice that things are tough. That's what happened for me. I noticed (through my Mussar journaling practice) that I was struggling, in a way I hadn't needed to for years, to eat in a healthy way. Once I noticed that I hadn't conquered this as thoroughly as I'd thought, I was able to notice that I've never actually gotten help for this from anyone who has special training and expertise in the field. Instead, I've done it with an enormous amount of personal grit, determination, and decisiveness. And speaking of Decisiveness: When you have made a decision, act without hesitation, as soon as I figured this out, I went to my health insurance provider list, found someone who specializes in eating disorders, sexual assault, and sexual identity, and called her. I don't plan to write about the counseling process, but after some careful consideration, I want to be open about my decision to tackle this behemoth, for the first time, with specialized help.

OK, breathe. And moving on ... I found an apartment listing on Craigslist, which I've been mostly avoiding, but this one seemed to have potential, because it was both a three-bedroom apartment and also a mixed-use storefront, all for a reasonable price. When I set up a time to go see it, I Googled the name and email address of the landlord as a safety precaution, because I knew I was going alone. First hit: he runs a store called Collect-a-thon, which sells (among many other things) Nazi memorabilia. You'd think if I was running a Google check as a safety precaution, that would make me pass on the apartment, but I am fascinated with people who are fascinated with Nazis, so I kept the appointment. Keeping the appointment meant emailing with the guy several times throughout the day, because other of my appointments canceled; he was extremely responsive on email, but he never gave me a phone number. When I showed up at the apartment at 4, after agreeing on the time less than an hour earlier, he wasn't there. The building was open, so I went in, and up the filthy stairs, and knocked on the door to the apartment. A nice guy opened, told me he knew Robert was supposed to be showing me the apartment, but that he wasn't around, and didn't know when he would be. But he offered to show me the place anyway. Now, I have been watching Veronica Mars (TV show about a teenage detective) lately before bedtime, and I often wonder -- for all the times she's been beaten up, sexually assaulted, and almost killed, why does she still go into empty buildings, and worse yet, un-empty buildings, with no fear. And yet there I was, like Veronica, completely comfortable going into this skanky apartment, without the landlord, with a guy I don't know anything about. The fact is, the guy wasn't skanky at all -- just the apartment was. And when I got inside, there were six other people in there: his kids, a young woman, a young guy playing video games, and an old man napping. It didn't take me long to realize this was not my new home, so as much as I wanted to meet the Nazi collector, I didn't stick around.

I later got a message from him that said he had been at the health food store when I was there, and got back 20 minutes later, despite the fact that we had an appointment. And I thought Nazi's were punctual. (Josh points out that Hitler was a vegetarian.)

From there it was a quick jaunt to Crown Heights to pick up this week's soup swap soup (German winter cabbage caraway soup, with dumplings) from Benjy, and off to go bowling at Chelsea Piers. I had given Josh a Groupon for bowling a couple months ago, and he invited Serena and Graciana bowling. Normally this wouldn't have made it into my Never Done blog, except that I won for the first time in my life, and I also bowled (exactly) 100 for the first time. I don't know what it was, but I was bowling some serious strikes and spares and 7s, 8s, and 9s. (Mixed in with some gutter balls, for old times sake. Tshuve.) I think I was in a pretty zen space about bowling. When it was working well, it felt very controlled and mechanical. I would take a deep breath, tighten my abs to protect my back, focus on the center of the lane, take three steps and ..........................................$@#$%^&*@#!!!

Which felt like a perfect ending to an intense day.

I finally took a Zumba class

Never Done: Took a Zumba class

This time for real. Maybe you remember that the last time I tried to take a Zumba class, the teacher was a sub, and she was actually teaching her own improvised Cuban dance class to Zumba music, and all the regulars were grumbling "that's not Zumba" and crashing into each other, and I left early and ran on the treadmill and had some realization about decisiveness. Well, this time there was a real Zumba teacher, and she was wearing a hot pink t-shirt that said Zumba instructor and everything. I jest, but she was great. She didn't say a word the whole class, but her physical communication quotient was extremely high. She moved clearly, with athleticism and grace, and always took the time to indicate where she was going next.

And I did a pretty good job following her. Every now and then she did a sequence I couldn't do (my knee doesn't bend all the way, so sometimes I had to stay more upright than her) or one I couldn't follow (I couldn't always see her from where I was) but I never felt bad about it. I just caught up when I could, and got those hips wiggling with the best of the Zumbies. (I just made that up.)

Basically, Zumba is a dance class, which is why their motto is "Ditch the workout! Join the party!" I can't say that it felt like a party, but I did have a good time. I love dance classes, particularly the way that physical memory kicks in, and reminds you how to separate your hips from your waist, or your knee from your thigh. (After all these years, I still have a hard time separating my torso from my waist. Maybe one day I'll get there.) Hmmm, interesting. This week's mide (middah) is Separation: Respect in sexual and intimate relationships. I know that's a different kind of separation from separation of the torso from the waist, but still, dance and sex are certainly related activities. At least in Borsht belt routines.

Typically in Mussar, Separation is about the separation of the self from lewd thoughts, and from forbidden, unhealthy, or unsanctified sexual relationships. Rabbi Alissa Wise approaches the mide of separation differently from how it's traditionally interpreted, writing:

For some of us, we need to be separated from pain and hurt around our sexuality or sexual identities. Maybe we have been victims of sexual assault, maybe we have been targets of homophobia, maybe we have internalized messages about sexism or misogyny, maybe our gender identities has been rendered invisible by a rigid gender binary. For others of us, we are still searching for our sexuality and our own desires and wants. Some of us need to be separated from the confusion caused by messages and images of sexual objectification of women, by the pervasiveness of sexual violence in our culture and media, by ideas of masculinity that are too violent, of femininity that are too submissive, or of our culture's fear of gender non-conformity. Some of us need to be separated from feeling disconnected or embarrassed about our sexual desires.

Some of us need to be separated from actual relationships in our lives that aren't serving us. Relationships where we lose our desires and ourselves. Where we prioritize another's needs over ours, or where we prioritize our own needs over another's. Relationships where we are subjected to harsh judgment or criticism, or where we are being emotionally, physically or sexually abused. We need to be separated from being lied to be our partners, or from breaking our partners' confidence by having intimate or sexual connections with other people outside of agreed upon understandings of non-monogamy.

Some of us need to be separated from our own tendencies to hurt people we are close to, from our own patterns of manipulation and aggression with those we love and are intimate with.

We are all sexual beings, and our sexual needs and desires are real and often powerful. We need to attend to them just as carefully and thoroughly as we do any other aspect of our lives.

I understand if it feels like I took a sharp left turn in this post, when I connected the separation of the hips from the waist to the separation of the human from our full sexuality, but it's often hard to bring up the topic of sex. Why should it be any less awkward in a blog? And now that I've blurted it out, maybe I'll find it easier to write about the hip wiggling we do when we're not wearing any Zumba brand cargo pants.

Catching up on bad 80's TV

Never Done: Watched Punky Brewster

I missed out on a lot of pop culture from my earnest college (and a bit beyond) years. If it happened between 1983 and 1988, and it wasn't either feminist, whole wheat, or anti-racist, I probably didn't notice it. The me I am now respects the me I was then, but also sort of wishes I had a little more fun. Thank god I found my way to Railroad Square Cinema, which truly saved me from sinking under the weight of my own gravity.

The me I am now has a lot of catching up to do, so every now and then I conjure up the ghost of pop culture's past, and take a little trip. And because I'm obsessed with adoption and fostering in pop culture right now, I thought it only fitting to finally watch Punky Brewster, which aired from 1984 til 1988, and which I never saw. (As you might imagine, I pronouncedly didn't even own a TV during those years.) The thing I found interesting about Punky is that under that terrible acting and laugh track, the show is actually emotionally accurate when it comes to depicting the inner life of an abandoned child. She is afraid (because her mother left her) that she is essentially unlovable, and many plots center around the way she tests her grouchy foster dad George to make sure he really wants her.

Despite the emotional verisimilitude, the show is still pretty much unwatchable, so if you're reading the blog for tips on cool ways to spend your time, I would say YES on the Russian baths, and PASS on the laugh tracks.

Angels in America

Never Done: Saw a stage production of Angels in America (Part 1: Millennium Approaches)

Angels in America was first performed twenty years ago - just after I moved to Portland, but before I was paying attention to theater, aside from what I had done as a kid or the political street theater I had done in college. At the time, I was absorbed in everything that would have made me and Angels a natural fit: didactic left wing activism, getting close for the first time to people with HIV/AIDS, Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City, my first forays into Jewish community, and although I had come out some years earlier, my first long-term romance with a woman. I wouldn't encounter Angels for another five years, but when I did, I was riveted.

By now I have read Angels in America probably ten times -- perused it even. (OK, this is a total distraction; Ellen Langford just taught me that the word "peruse" means to read or study carefully and at length, not to read quickly, or glance through, as I have always thought.) So I have perused Angels, studied it scene by scene, broken it down, and yes, seen the filmed HBO version. But until now, had never seen it on stage. But my mental images of how it lives on stage have been strong -- I guess from people's stories of the angel breaking through the ceiling of the Walter Kerr theater. After all these years, and all that build up, I guess it was inevitable that the Signature Theater production after the cast change would be a disappointment. First of all, it is almost unbearable to me that after waiting four and a half months to see it, I saw the first performance without Zachary Quinto in the role of Louis. (Adam Driver stepped into the role.) But mostly, it felt .... safe in a way that is out of place with what the characters are living through. I wanted the play to transport me, shake to my core like it did every time I read it -- and even the way the HBO production did. But instead, I felt like I was sitting around with the actors on soft couches, and reading the play aloud together. Which is not a terrible thing. It's a comfortable thing, in fact. But transporting it's not.

I guess it's like when they make The Hobbit into a movie. You have such strong images of Bilbo Baggins and the Shire that anyone else's images might pale in comparison. Or even just match yours in intensity, which might feel like paling, if you had high expectations.

So what's the lesson? Don't read great books ten times? Don't form expectations? Don't go to the theater? I don't think so. I think the message is more that when life gives you a comfortable evening with wonderful actors, pour a cup of tea, lean back on a pillow, and start turning your well-worn pages.

I gave flowers to strangers

Never Done: Handed out flowers to strangers

I loved that day in the Fall when I put little presents in people's gym lockers, and then didn't stick around to see people discover them. So I decided to do something similar but different: offer beautiful presents to people in person. I went to the a bodega and bought a dozen yellow roses. And then I walked down 7th Avenue Brooklyn, and offered them to the first people I saw, one stem at a time.

Now I don't want to go all racial/gender profiling on you here, but no white men took them. I am serious. White women took them. Black women took them. Black men took them. Arab men took them. Latina women took them. Latino men took them. Children took them. But no white men took them. White men weren't the only people who passed them by, but I'd say an informal estimate is that 12% of all people declined, whereas 100% of white men passed up the chance to take a yellow rose from me! Mostly these guys declined with pinched embarrassed smiles and a quickened step, whereas one woman who sounded Russian said she was sad she couldn't accept because she wasn't going to be home soon, and why was I doing this, and how did I think of it and thank you. One Arab man took one, thanked me, and then called after me after I went down the block, pointing to his friend in the car, and calling, "He would like one too, please!" His friend waved to me. One elderly man too one and said he'd give it to his wife. A school girl, who got the last flower, shouted to her friend with whom she had just parted, "That lady just gave me a flower!"

The idea was that I would offer the flowers to the first people who crossed my path, with no censorship. I didn't want to assume or influence who might and who might not want a flower, but I secretly assumed that everyone would. But as I stood there with a bunch of yellow roses, and asked people, "Would you like a flower?" and saw the fear and avoidance in the people who were fearful and avoidant, and I wondered (because this is a mussar practice) what might be going on for the other -- what might their flower-rejecting burden be, I realized they might think I was baiting them into a religious cult. I wanted to say, "It's just because! It's just a flower!" but I held my tongue. A few people asked me why I was giving them away, and I said, "Because I want to." But once the flower cult thing got into my brain, I felt vaguely dirty, like maybe I did have a secret agenda. But the only way out was through, and I so I kept offering until all but one were gone, and then I asked myself if I wanted a yellow rose, and I discovered that I did. So I took the last one home.