Food Poisoning

In a white light, a tunnel reaching backwards through time, the hands fold over one another, fingers interlock, my head comes down to the ground.

“Thank you. For everything. For my health and my ability to do my yoga practice today. Thank you for everyone I love and everyone who loves me. Thank you for another day.”

I don’t know who or what exactly, if anything, I’m thanking. All I know is that I’m so grateful to be alive and well at this exact moment…

“Thank you,” I whisper. 

I curl up into the fetal position and hope I’m going to die soon.      

      

I’d be okay with dying now, I think. I just finished a project that makes me proud of myself.  I could stop worrying about growing older and how to pay for things and if I’m meeting some fragmented standard of success.  Now would be a lovely time to die.

I don’t think I’m near death, not really. My future’s so bright… and hot.

I pick up the bag beside my bed and throw up.

I hope this bag holds. I can’t believe there’s so much liquid coming out. How is there any water left in my body? How are there still carrots in my stomach? It’s been over six hours since I ate carrots…  

“She’s morphine, queen of my vaccine…”

I stand and bleary eyed stumble to the bathroom to empty the contents of my stomach from the plastic bag into the toilet. I blow my nose and gag myself on the contents of my throat. I brush my teeth and rinse with mouthwash and nothing changes the texture of my distress. I wash my hands and scrub my face. My head comes down into my hands. I fall to my knees and look up past the blurred black mascara into the mirror of my desperate eyes.

I’m going to be so thin when this is over. Everyone will want to know what my secret is. All of the girls are going to be so jealous of me… so jealous… of me…

I laugh. I always laugh when shit like this happens… speaking of shit.

I get up off my knees and run back into the bathroom to take my 10^th liquid shit of the last hours.

On the bright side, if I was accidentally pregnant before this, then I’m definitely not anymore. I didn’t think I was pregnant, but it never hurts to be doubly safe is what I always say… this reminds me of mescaline… but worse. Rocky will think that’s funny.

I wipe, flush, wash up, stagger wretchedly, and fling myself onto my crumpled battle-lost sheets. I'm freezing. I put on my moose fleece and shiver violently, pulling my legs to my chest.

“Please, let it end,” I beg. I don’t know who or what exactly, if anything, I’m begging. All I know is that now would be a fine time to die… 

Well everyone, the secret to my girlish figure is kale! It was the contaminated kale, or some other murderous vegetable, but my money’s on the kale.

 Just one little salad, my envious twatwaffles, and in just one day you’ll have dropped five pounds! Your body’s desperate attempt to purge itself of the deadly toxins will have you as your sexiest self in no time! No dieting or exercise required! No actual will power or sense of self-worth necessary! You’re only days of agonizing, disorienting pain away from your best you! Only three payments of 29.99! I’m Billy Mayes is what Mr. Funny said…

“I love you,” I whisper. I don’t know who or what exactly, if anything, I’m telling "I love you." All I know is that it’s true.

I close my eyes, and I see the hundreds of times my hands folded, my head bowed, and I said thank you, and everyone, if only me, said namaste.

The feeling is white and the color is peace.

“Thank you.”

I sigh and fall asleep.   

For Jim, Wherever I May Find Him

written December 2009 

I’m sitting with Jim in his room. The walls are painted a deep orange. An alcove, in which his bed fits perfectly, is painted a light cream color. The alcove has two windows that provide the room with the sun’s natural rays.

 “I like this room. It has character. I’m painting it to reflect my personality; the fiery angry side and the peaceful and logical side, from where the light ultimately comes,” Jim wrote me this summer, while I was exploring a life of hedonism in Sydney, Australia.

Jim is the angriest, most violent, lover of everything in the universe. When you first meet him this may seem paradoxical, but it’s not. Passion is at the center of everything worthwhile.

On the far side of the room, across from the alcove “from where the light ultimately comes,” is a tiny door covered with a yellow and black checkered scarf. Jim meant for this scarf to be his replacement for a tattered keffiyeh, a typical headdress of Arab men, which Jim bought during a year abroad in Chile when he was 18-years-old. Jim’s original keffiyeh symbolized solidarity with the plight of the Palestinian people, but his replacement scarf was bought at a time when this once-symbol is a fashion trend in the United States. Because Jim can no longer express his solidarity without looking as though he's trying too hard, the black and yellow replacement scarf now drapes the tiny door in the corner. I can’t write about what’s behind the door, where a light glows brightly, because it’s one of Jim’s secrets.

Jim and I are very healthy people. We eat well and we work out constantly. We look in reflective surfaces often. How we look and feel is very important to us. Some call our behavior vanity, but we don’t think of it in such terms. Respecting our bodies is our way of expressing our profound enjoyment of our youth, health, and beauty. It’s important to appreciate these things while you still have them.

“By the grace of God go you,” Jim always says.

He means that we only get to have the things we have, live the way we get to live, and love the way we get to love because of the unfathomably complex workings of the universe which, currently, are in our favor. All of these beautiful things which are so easily and often taken for granted can be gone in a second. “Only by the grace of God, the cosmic design of everything, go you."

For now, Jim and I go together.

I’m in love with Jim, and he’s in love with me. We’re in love with each other. And it’s that crazy, wonderful kind of love. The kind where everyday I wake up, and Jim is the first thing on my mind. The kind where I spend everyday waiting to get done with my work and chores and errands so I can see him again.  The kind where to not have him creates a hole in my life that only his life can fill.

But that description doesn’t do our love justice. Not really.

What I’ve just described any couple in the world can have. You can love someone without knowing or caring why. And you can miss someone without really loving them at all.

"Love" is usually the word people use for "Addiction."

When we fall in love, when we make love, our brains release chemicals. The chemicals make our brains go wild with pleasure. You can come to despise someone, but if they’re the one that cuddles you at night and fucks you in the day, then you still need them. The chemicals have you – same as pain killers, heroin, or methamphetamine. It’s all you can think of, it’s all you want, and in having it, you find bliss… happiness... Nirvana.

But at what cost to yourself? At what cost to “the ghost in the machine” we so lovingly refer to as “the soul?”

 I watched a documentary about heroin addicts that showed a couple who spent their days on the streets of Denmark selling magazine subscriptions. Once they’d gathered enough money to shoot in their veins, they’d head to their dealer and help each other inject the venomous opiate.

Writhing around on the ground, eyes rolled up in their heads, gasping for breath - the couple held each other - in beauty, in peace, and in love. 

Not to say I’m not addicted to Jim. I am. And he’s addicted to me. The thing about our love which makes it different than your run-of-the-mill chemical dependency is that we know why we love each other.

I love Jim in the same way I love music, good literature, and the summer sunshine warming my skin. I love him for the sake of what he is and how his existence complements and inspires mine. If he were to stop loving me today, it wouldn’t change the fact of my love. I love him, because his energy is the sort of energy that creates, arouses, and changes the world. I love him, because his passion is all-consuming.

“I can't wait to have you back again to experience this messed-up universe with me. And maybe help me mess it up a little more,” Jim wrote to me while I was in Australia.

One of the things Jim enjoys most in this world is thinking of new ways to kill people. He’s even invented some weapons which he wants to patent, but he worries, maybe, the Israelis will use them on the Palestinians. Despite Jim’s new affection, or at least respect, for the Israeli people:

“You need to be as mean as a rattle snake to survive in a place where everyone around you wants you dead.”

Jim still has some moral qualms with his weapons being used to kill people who he once wore a scarf very often, even when it was not stylish, to support.

Jim loves knives, guns, and weapons. He sleeps with a large knife on the windowsill at the top of his bed in the little alcove. He explained to me once that he loves death and violence for the same reason I love comedy. The duality of man. We can desperately want peace at the same moment we inflict death. And the most powerful thing we can do in the midst of a great tragedy is to laugh. 

Jim’s life up until now has been comprised of chasing down all of the questions of the universe until they become unanswerable. Jim says every question you ask will ultimately and inevitably lead to the same unanswerable “Why?”

Jim constantly ruminates over how to best kill his enemies, such as the boys who talk to me when he’s not around. I can’t deal with any serious issue that hurts me without making it into a dark, twisted joke. We are the next generation of free thinkers. We are philosophers. We are artists.

Maybe this is just another way of saying we are college students who do too many hallucinogenic drugs.

But for now, Jim and I still cling to the belief that we will be able to help recreate the world in our image. 

Maybe if I can only write something good enough, then Jim will love me forever. I want to make him proud of me, and I want him to think I’m amazing. I want to always be the most worthwhile, stunning woman in the world in his eyes, even as my hair turns grey and my skin begins to sag and my face becomes lined with the marks of worry and laughter. I want to ensure his love will always be mine, and I hope that maybe, if I make him proud enough of me, then he’ll always want to be by my side.

In turn, I am Jim’s biggest supporter. I want to lift him up so high so that nothing in this world will have the power to tear him down once I’m through. I want him to know that he can have any girl he wants and still not be able to wait to come home to me at night. I want to make him so big that if I ever stumble or lose my way it’ll be no problem for him to catch me, to carry me, to help get me back onto my path.

Jim is going to be a rock star, and I am going to be a famous writer.

Jim and I are going to help each other become great.

This is the beginning of our story together, and this is my love letter to Jim. I wanted to write an entire story for us where we go on great adventures together and conquer great evils, but I suppose, for now, I’ll have to be satisfied with an introduction. 

Bikram Yoga - Like Dying but in a Good Way

           “It’s a lot like dying.”

           “Good, I’ve been meaning to try that. Let me know if you get your hands on some DMT too. I’m tired of waiting.”

             I’ve only done Bikram once, which isn't nearly enough to have a real opinion, but after my first time, these are my feelings about Bikram:

Cons:

1)            “This is [not] supposed to hurt!”

The instructor yelled things about how different positions were meant to be painful.

“Ignore the pain and push yourself harder!”

No yoga instructor in his or her right mind would ever say this to a class. Our mantra is, “Listen to your body. If I instruct a position that doesn’t feel right, don’t do it.”

2)            It’s a cult.

            I hate the feeling of being manipulated, and going through my first Bikram class was a hazing ritual meant to make me suffer enough to cognitive dissonance myself in to loving Bikram. 

            Additionally, I was the only new person in class that day, and the instructor said my name easily over 50 times. AND he had everyone clap for me at the end of class for having survived.

While my vanity was temporarily satiated, I hate the feeling of being manipulated.

3)            It’s like dying.

            Bikram has a rule where you aren’t allowed to leave the hot room once you’ve come in to class. You can lay there and not move, but you’re not allowed to leave. This is because my fight or flight instinct kicked in around minute forty and my brain screamed in terror

“Get out of here or we’re going to die! What the hell is wrong with you! We’re going to die! Stop doing tree pose because YOU ARE GOING TO FUCKING DIE UNLESS WE GET OUT OF HERE!”

Once it was over, I felt as though I’d survived a terrible fever. Bikram wasn’t so much of a workout, as it was successfully staying alive.

Pros:

1)   “This is [not] supposed to hurt!”

        Bikram is not for the weak, and if you don’t want to challenge yourself mentally and physically than it’s not for you. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I did every movement the entire class; I won a battle of wills against myself.

         It’s the runner’s high – the body and mind scream for relief, to give up, and then you keep going, and then you prove yourself stronger and braver than you ever imagined, and then you feel just fine, and then, in that moment, it all feels so easy and beautiful.

2)            It’s a cult.

            I’ve always wanted to join/ lead a cult. Bikram successfully actualized a childhood dream of mine - that glorious bastard.

Also, they clapped for me. I like that.

3)   It’s like dying.

For the rest of the day, I felt invincible. I had survived a near death experience in the morning, and the rest of my day’s obstacles felt impotent against that intensity. I felt I’d lived my entire life in that hour and a half.

           I had a mentor in college who is now in his 30s and owns a successful advertising agency. He has a lovely wife and two cerubin children. When he was in college, he took acid every day for a year and painted paintings and filmed everything with his camera - the world's next great artist.

How did he not go crazy from all that distortion?

The blissful essential existence of the experience of nonexistence while we still exist.

“I learned to accept my own death one day. It’ll happen. Just let it be. It’s all okay.” 

A Depressed Person’s Brush with Death

                “Are you okay? For some reason, I woke up feeling like something bad had happened to you. I wanted to make sure you're safe.” I texted him.

                “I’m fine. I’m glad you were concerned,” he texted back.

                “Good. I love you. Take care of yourself.” I wrote back, a bit confused but relieved.

                “I love you too. Please be safe.”

                 The next day, the car he was in crashed in to a tree, and he almost died. And the thought of the world without him makes me cry.

                  He’s not supposed to be my boy anymore. I don’t call him or talk to him, and he lives far away, and sometimes, I don’t even think about him.

                  He’s crazy and too much and too broody, and he doesn’t understand people and their motivations, which is about all I seem to understand. He waves his arms around, and talks like an angry, old, Italian man, and he never knows if he wants his hair to be long or short. But he challenges me, keeps me passionately furious, fights with me, and for me. He would do anything for me.

He flies airplanes; and he writes long poetic prose; and he plays beautiful, well-rehearsed guitar; and speaks Spanish with a Chilean accent; and he has a piggy bank that says “New Car Fund” that almost breaks my heart to see; and he is electric like me. He bullshits more than I do. He understands parts of the world that I cannot comprehend. I’ll always want to know what happens next in his story.

                  I’m so very happy he’s okay. I don’t like the idea of a world without him in it. The world would impress me far less if I’d never known a boy like that could exist, that he could love me, and I could love him back - so beautiful and strange and intense and wonderfully weird.

                 Maybe my unexpected text, a day before, caused the accident, or maybe it’s what saved him. 

I have a disorder :(

I’ve wanted an Adderall script for years.

But I thought my obvious lack of having ADHD would affect my ability to obtain this precious, peculiar pill of productivity.

But then, there came along Adam Levine - sexy, cocky, Jane lover, Adam Levine. OMG so hawt!

He let me know that the pharmaceutical companies are paying him to promote adults having ADHD! What a happy coincidence! I’ve been seriously considering having ADHD for years! Adam Levine finally tipped the scale of my personal responsibility in favor of medicating myself in to a flurry of productivity. With Adam Levine on my side, there are likely hundreds of doctors paid, or at least strongly encouraged, to give me Adderall! Adderall must be easy to get!

I talked to my mom and told her the good news:

“Thanks to Adam Levine, I can definitely get Adderall, and then nothing, but my heart exploding or going insane, would be able to stop me!”

“Leah, are you sure it’s not dangerous?”

“Well, it’s not “good for me” per say... It is a highly addictive amphetamine salt that is easily abused… but Ayn Rand took a similar amphetamine salt for thirty years and she wrote Atlas Shrugged then died a bitter old lady! So how bad could it really be for me?”

“Didn’t Ayn Rand go on some really long-winded, speedy rants in Atlas Shrugged?”

“Probably just a little touch of amphetamine psychosis. A small price to pay for changing the world.”

“Do you really think you need it though?”

“Yeah. I’m a writer. Which is probably one of the least natural things for a human being to ever want to do. Adderall makes it so I don’t go all Sylvia Plath sitting alone all of the time. It makes writing about the most fun activity I could ever engage in.”

“You really have trouble focusing?”

“Oh yeah, absolutely. It may seem like laziness and no sense of personal responsibility, but I’m pretty sure it’s actually a medical condition.”

“You were always so good at focusing. Remember the snowflakes you used to like to make? You’d spend hours just cutting new snowflakes out of paper.”

“Yeah, until I Iost complete interest. I’m always obsessed until, suddenly, I couldn’t care less. Have I told you about the new guy I'm seeing?”

“You were always much better than your sister, Sheanna, at focusing.” (Suck it, Sheanna!)

“Elaborate on how I'm way, way better than Sheanna at everything I’ve ever tried, please.”

“Well, that’s definitely true. That’s why I always snuck in to your room at night and whispered that I love you more than her. But one example, of the thousands I have right on the tip of my tongue, is tying your shoes. You just kept at it ‘til you got it, and Sheanna gave up.”

“Yeah, Sheanna still just wears those velcro shoes everywhere. You’re totally right that I’m the clear, obvious favorite. Don’t worry, Mom, once I have the Adderall, I’ll spend all of my time writing and cleaning, and with all of the time I’ll save by not eating or sleeping, I’m sure to be a success!”

With my mom’s obvious approval of Adam Levine, I went to www.ownyouradhd.com and took the quiz and, just as I suspected:  I may or may not have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder! Yes! I'm being encouraged to see a doctor! 

Now, if I could only focus long enough to find a doctor listed and make an appointment. Next week, it is! 

Useless Super Powers

            The best answers:

            A: “I’d be able to fly, but I’d always crash land.”

            A: “I’d be able to piss gasoline.”

            A: “I’d be able to make paper money in to change.”

            A: “I’d be able to make change in to paper money. Obviously, we’d be mortal enemies.”

            A: “The opposite of being a chameleon - I’d be able to make myself stand out really badly whenever I'm in danger.”  

            A: “I could summon a mariachi band whenever I want, but they’ll only play when they feel like it.”

            A: I’d be able to transport to Duluth, Minnesota.

            A: “I’d be able to control the weather, but only what is occurring directly over my head.”

            A: “I could shoot confetti from my hands, but never in front of more than three people.”

            A: “My body can act as a wifi hotspot, but only for desktop computers.”

Papa was a rolling stone

I don’t want to leave anymore in search of something new.

I don’t need to go to the other side of the world to find out who I am.

I am no longer desperately searching for something… anything… something. 

What I want is to exist. And then I want to exist more. And bigger. And brighter. And on and on. And I want my reality to grow larger and stronger and my movie to change the other movies.

I want to create a world, in just one place, that is so vibrant and colorful and wonderful and weird that I never want to leave.

Instead of my energy being used to adapt and survive, it will be my energy to create. I want people to laugh for me and because of me. I want to make them smile and offer them some small respite from the dark corners of their own realities. To show them the movement behind the light and in the shadows.

I want to rock your gypsy soul 

I don’t want to be a stranger in a strange city where I don’t speak the language and don’t understand the culture and am only there to grasp at something I can never truly hold, certainly not in a week, or month, or year, or a lifetime.

I want to find the city that is the perfect fit for me. I want to have an apartment in that city where I can see the art, and listen to the music, and drink the wine, and eat the food, and watch and be with the people.

I’ll have a little cabin in the woods too, away from civilization, where reality is only what I dictate - a place to relax and breathe and listen to the silence. There we can be alone together, our realities intertwined.

I don’t want to go on a vacation to meet people; I want to meet the people that make every day a vacation.

I want to meet the people who make me want to be better, to try harder, to believe in humanity, and I want to make them love me too – as much as I already love them. 

The First Time Girls Tried to Beat Me Up

My senior year of high school I was at a party in a field, burning stuff.

“Leah, could you come with me to jump my car?” asked Steve, a boy two years older than me. 

“Sure Steve, let’s go jump your car.” Steve and I began walking towards the cars.

“That girl said she was going to jump Heather!” I heard a girl yell from behind my back. She was from a neighboring school and had been hanging around my school’s boys while her fiancé was away at war. She and her friend Heather had matching tattoos that said, “Bitch,” on their bellies. They were classy broads.

             “Hey, bitch!” the girl yelled at my back.

“Who? Lil old me?” I turned around and tried to bring everyone’s attention to how adorable and non-threatening I am.

“Yeah, you. You said you were going to jump Heather!”

“No, I didn’t,” I whispered, terrified.

“Yes you did! AND you said we were lesbians just because we were making out with each other for attention all night!”

“No, I didn’t! Even if I had called you a lesbian, and let me reiterate that I have not, it would have been a respectful objective observation. I’m jealous that I’m biologically programmed and socially conditioned to like men and not women! Please, don’t beat me up!”

“Let’s beat her up!” the girl reiterated the plan, rallying behind her a group of good men prepared to do nothing.

“Steve,” I said to Steve, “We were going to go jump your car right? Not Heather?”

“Yes,” Steve agreed. Despite logic being on my side, the girls were going to beat me up anyway.

The music reached a crescendo as the story barreled forward in to the climax. It was dramatic.

The party formed a circle around us, and the girl lunged at me, trying to claw out my eyes. At the last minute, I pulled out my secret shank and stabbed her in the heart! She fell to the ground. Then, I opened my fuel tank, siphoned gasoline out on to her convulsing body, struck a match, kicked her, then I dropped the match. As she went up in dancing flames, her energy made useful for the first time in her resource suck of a life, I did the electric slide.

“Anyone else want to take a stab at beating me up?” I screamed in to the night, laughing at my clever double entendre, my eyes crazy with primal blood lust. “Also, does anyone remember the next step to electric slide after the grape vine?”

Fear and respect for me permeated the air that was thick with burnt flesh. The dead girl’s friend Heather sat crying, and I laughed in her face and told her, “That’s what you get.” Then I spat on her and walked away to sit by the fire and toast marshmallows for s’mores. A boy Andrew came to sit beside me.

“You know they just tried to beat you up because I think you’re pretty, and I like you,” said Andrew. “They liked me, but I’m interested in you.”

“Well, Andrew,” I paused as I looked in to his hopeful, horny, young eyes, “Please get away from me before I have to put some more uppity hoes in their place.” 

And that was the first time girls tried to beat me up. 

Paul McCarty: all that jazz and the death of my friend

Almost two years ago now, one of my best friends, from a past life growing up as a country girl in rural northeastern Ohio, passed away.

The summer he passed, I was a new Ohio State graduate, broke, living out the rest of my lease in Columbus, Ohio. I was busy trying to save up money from working promotions in order to pay for a poorly planned, almost-sure-to-fail, move alone out to Las Vegas, Nevada. I couldn’t make it home for his funeral, because I was working a summer long promotion for these new Kool-Aid tablets that fizzed up in water, and I really needed the 13 or 15 or whatever they were paying me an hour. Actually, I ended up being fired from that job, as seems to be the case with almost every job I’ve ever held, and I could have made it home for the funeral, but I didn’t know that until it was too late.  This time, I maintain that I did nothing wrong to be fired and was, in fact, the victim of a jealous harpy’s wrath. Other times I’ve been fired from jobs, I have not been nearly so innocent. I seem to have problems following rules and respecting authority figures…

“Write something about Paul McCarty,” my father cajoled me over the phone. “You always do such a nice job expressing what we’re all feeling.” No, there wasn’t time, I had to hock Kool-Aid to the thirsty masses, and more profoundly, I didn’t have the words I needed to express the depth of what I was feeling. He’d been so very special to me, and I feared anything I wrote at that time about my dear friend would sound contrived.

Paul McCarty was my high school band director, and for years, for a minimum of an hour and a half, five times a week, under his fatherly gaze, I’d honk away on my saxophone. (Alto, tenor, bari - I’ve played and loved them all.) The first 45 minutes would be the regular band, those just then learning instruments or filling a credit, and then they would leave, and the last 45 minutes was all that Jazz. The Pymatuning Valley Jazz Band, the real music geeks, those of us in it for the love of playing music worth playing, would stick around for the real fun.

He had blond hair, and glasses, and a big jolly Santa belly. He played the trumpet, which is the coolest wind instrument – after the sax obviously – and I loved him – we all did. The man was music, and there’s not a single thing I don’t love about music. 

“It’s a woman’s prerogative to change her mind,” he’d say with a mischievous head bobble whenever his beloved children, his PV Jazz Band, would complain about a change in song selection or whatever modification he’d flippantly made at the last minute.

He told us one of the silliest, most inappropriate, most band geeky jokes of all time, and of course it’s remained one of my favorites and most oft told to this day.

“What did the flute player say to her saxophonist boyfriend?”  Carty asked the entire jazz band with a twinkle in his eye.

“I dunno Carty, what did she say, oh King of the Band Geeks?”

“Ouch! Pull out! You’re sharp!”  Hahahahahahaha!

If you got this joke, then take comfort that at least you’ve got rhythm – you’re a band geek through and through.  Additionally, this joke is the only way I’ve been able to remember how to correctly adjust my mouthpiece to get my instrument in tune. That dirty old man sure knew how to teach.

One year, he took us to see the jazz legend, trumpet player, Maynard Ferguson and his band play. What other band director from such a small isolated area could possibly be so groovy?

I was the only little Jewish girl in my farming community, and every year I’d complain to Carty that we only played Christmas songs and never any Hanukah songs.

“It’s religious intolerance, is what it is. I feel persecuted,” I’d say to him while skipping class, hiding out in his office. (He’d always be game to vouch for me and sign fake passes saying that it was regrettable, but necessary, that I skip calculus to sit joking around with him in his office.)

My junior year of high school, I lived for a year in southern Brazil as an exchange student. I don’t know how lonely all of you were during high school, but at that time in Brazil, my Portuguese was still so-so, and it doesn’t get too much lonelier than not only not being able to fit in but, literally, not being able to speak the same language as your classmates. That December, I received a package from Paul McCarty in the mail. Inside there was a CD, and recorded on that CD was the entire band, having rehearsed for months, playing the song “The First Night of Hanukah.”

“Happy Hanukah, Leah!” A world away, Paul McCarty had used his authority as our teacher to have the band shout for me, wishing me a happy Hanukah. Bless that man. In the days before Facebook and Skype, when I felt very much alone at sixteen on the other side of the planet, he made me feel loved and missed.

And I sat down today to write something else, but with jazz playing in the background, I had Carty on the mind, and I wrote this without thinking, in an improvised style, because I finally, years later, knew what I wanted to write for him. Hopefully this will appease my father.

Rest in peace, Paul McCarty, my dear friend, the man who taught me to love jazz – you are not someone easy to forget.

Ultra Music Fest: Yoga and Raging Proper (post from March 2011)

Please allow me to introduce myself, I’m a woman of wealth and taste…

Ha, not quite. But here’s what I am:

An Ohio State graduate of June 2010 who couldn’t stomach the idea of using my communication degree to sell knives door-to-door.

OH - IO!

Upon graduation, I packed up my beat up, 2003 Toyota Corolla and drove cross country to seek my fortune in Fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada.

How’s it living in Las Vegas? Weird. Yesterday, I was lying on a sofa, watching a movie, contemplating how Angelina Jolie is so perfect, when the wife of a super famous comedian burst in wearing a Mexican wrestler mask and tried to coerce me into giving her a lap dance. This is normal for Vegas.

I’m a yoga instructor and an electronic head

PEACOCKING AT ELECTRIC DAISY CARNIVAL IN LAS VEGAS

and if any of you remember an offensive little Ohio State publication called The O Face, well, I was its Editor-in-Chief.

I just got back to Vegas from The Best Party EVER in Miami, Florida: Ultra Music Fest.

I do not use the “Best Party EVER” label lightly. 

from left to Right, that's an Australian boy, a German girl, a Canadian boy, and another German girl. All high school exchange students. All together on a beach dressed as women drinking all day and night on the beach in Southern Brazil. Not too shabby.

When I was 16, I raged hard for days on Laguna Beach in southern Brazil, widely regarded as the best Carnaval in southern Brazil - dancing on the beach, drinking underage, no Americans in sight, Sambaing my little heart out with exchange students from around the world. Ultra was equally mind altering.

I want to share my Ultra experience, one of the best of my life, with all of you through the lens which I viewed it: Pantanjali’s 8 limb path of yoga.

The first yogic limb: Yamas

Yamas are the guidelines to living your life with universal morality. Pantanjali talks about 5 of these, and I’m going to talk about one of them - Ahimsa or non-harming.

Over 100,000 people in attendance at Ultra and No Fights. Bump into someone? Say “Sorry,” they say, “No problem,” the two of you begin dancing together.

An amazing amount of RESPECT for everyone permeated the Ultra Experience.

Everyone dressed in their most outlandish rave wear, and everyone quick to compliment the ingenuity of new friends around us.

No vulgar grinding – meet a handsome girl or guy and the two of you DANCE. Really dance. Even if you do touch, it’s beautiful, rhythmic, a celebration of the Present Moment.

I danced for three songs with a gorgeous man. After the first song, he told me, “I’m already in love.” After song three, he told me, “I’ll see you on the other side.” Then he danced away.

The 2^nd limb: Niyamas

Niyamas are personal observances to lead a spiritually fulfilling life. Pantanjali discusses five of these, and I’ll explain one, Ishvarapranidhana – surrender to the absolute.

Holding an asana – or yoga pose - for 12 long slow inhalations and exhalations teaches you to take a deep breath and let yourself relax, surrender to the pose. When you surrender, you’re able to Sink Deeper and you experience the stretch, and life, at a New Level.

At Ultra, it’s the music to which you must surrender. If you fight the music, stay in your contracted shell of neurotic mind chatter, you’re not experiencing the music correctly. Let the music wash over you, enter you, surround you. 

                                                                              Transcendental

Surrender to the blissful unity that is dancing full force with a group of like-minded people. 

The 3^rd, 4^th, 5^th and 6^th limbs: Asanas, Pranayama, Pratalyahara, and Dharana

These four limbs are: yoga poses, focusing on your breath, cultivating control of your senses, and one pointed focus. 

While dancing at Ultra, all four of these limbs came into play. Yoga’s made me a better dancer with crazy backbends and utilizing the full movement of which my body is capable. Breath control helps keep the rhythm flowing, and controlling my senses, and one pointed attention let me focus on what’s important – my body moving in unison with all of the great vibrations around me.

One pointed focus is one of the secrets to living a better life. Discover what’s truly important to you, and then devote all of your attention to it. Watch as the obstacles fall away.

The 7^th limb - Dhyana

Dhyana is meditation.

Every morning I sit for 30 minutes meditating. This works by focusing on my breath and listening to the silent voice “I am” in my mind. Whenever thoughts, memories, worries, whatever, intrude in the peace, I label it. I say, “thought.” I say, “memory.” Labeling the mind chatter helps me to become aware of the way my mind works.

When I began to listen, I realized there are two of me. One of me is a little kid who only pretended to take her Adderall that morning and is going on a playing spree while she still can. She’s running around, looking at everything, experiencing everything: excited, and sad, and scared, and anxious, and foolish. And then there’s the silent observer, the energy uniting all of us, weighing in and, if I work hard and study self-discipline, having a say in what that feisty little kid is up to. 

Yoga is a moving meditation and meditation is all about Being PRESENT. Experiencing what is happening RIGHT NOW. At Ultra, I experienced the importance of remaining PRESENT. My body was busy dancing, but my mind was busy worrying. As I danced, I thought about the men I've loved, the mistakes I've made and am sure to make again, and I felt sorry for myself for being only a selfish animal.

Then, I remembered the silence and the control.

“No, this is the past, and maybe it’s the future, but none of that matters – the PRESENT matters. What is happening RIGHT NOW?”

I snapped out of my funk, looked around, and RIGHT NOW I was dancing full throttle beside some of my best friends in the world. One of my friends was giving a tripping girl a light show with his gloves that Dayglowed while he danced. MSTRKRFT was playing some of the dirtiest beats a dirty girl like me could ever ask for. 

The 8^th limb: Samadhi

Samadhi is the goal of yoga, and for me, the goal of music. Experiencing a connection with the energy of everything – understanding that we are not alone, that we are all connected, and hopefully, if only for a moment, feeling the vibrations of our own bodies become one with all of the vibrations of everyone and everything around us. Not thinking maybe, but knowing for sure that, yes, “This is the TRUTH.”

I’ve lost myself in music and experienced Samadhi, that yogi coveted experience of vibrations and energy and unity, so many times. The pursuit of Samadhi is what keeps me returning to shows, traveling the world to dance with everyone who will dance with me.

At Deadmau5, at the end of the 2^nd day of the 3 day Ultra experience, Deadmau5 had everyone begin clapping. We all clapped at different times, out of synch. Deadmau5 began to play a beat – we all clapped in perfect unity. The music brought us together, and together, we all danced. 

My own body no longer mattered, all of us together, experiencing the exact same thing at the exact same time. Finally, we were all one with the music, and the energy, and our lives on this tiny, little planet that is our home.

Party on, CO Way. I’ll see you next year in Miami. 

OK(?) Alone

This is where the yoga and the meditation and the hobbies come in. I work out my energy, clear my mind, and fill my time. If there’s no time to sit alone with my thoughts, then there’s no time for the loneliness to take hold.

I’ve gotten pret-tay, pretty good at being alone, and now the problem is being around other people. I have mixed feelings about other people.

I have many acquaintances, and I value them highly, but I can have those conversations in my sleep. I’ve had the same introductory, “So what do you do? Who are you? If you could have any super power, what super power would you want?” talk an estimated 1,000,000 times. I can recite my resume of qualities that hopefully make people like me without paying any attention at all. In Las Vegas, the people in my life with whom I’ve made it past the first ten hours of conversation can be counted on one hand.

It makes me lonelier - talking over and over and over and never saying anything new. I never feel a real connection, and I skim the surface of myself and others – never anything important. When I reach the point where my pocket conversations have all been used, every favorite story told, then I feel the panic set in. Now it’s actually me they’re going to see, not the smoke and mirrors, not the polished final product, and am I ready for that level of exposure? Just a little more time alone. Just a little more time to heal. And then I can accept the risk of caring for others and having them care for me.

In my room, in the coffee shop, it’s me and my thoughts and the silence and occasionally an ice cream truck drives by. There’s no chance of embarrassing myself, there’s no chance of offending my friends, and there’s no chance of rejection. It’s nice.

Forgive Me 12-31-11 by Oscar Young

I know who I am when I’m alone. I am the OM. I am presently Leah. That’s what I am, and people complicate that by trying to make me a part of their story. I’m not their story. I’m only my story and every story. I dislike being observed, but I love observing.

Sometimes, people compliment me. This is very nice, and it makes me happy to hear nice things said. But, sometimes, they compliment me too much. They seem too excited about me, and I get nervous. I’m not whatever they’re saying I am. I’m a girl who stares at her computer alone in her room, and I’m doing okay. I could be doing better, and I sure as hell could be doing worse. Never accept compliment or critique a great friend, who I’ll likely never see again, said once. If you accept one, then you must accept the other, and both disturb me equally, although in different ways.

Everyone is as lonely as everyone else, right? We’re all alone together. All of us live with the illusion of separateness. I think this is true… but I know some people’s minds are quieter. Some people’s minds don’t follow them down the rabbit hole, never to be satiated when unanswered “Whys” still remain.

Is this nicer? The quietness? Those of us like me, those of us whose inner worlds vibrate and dance and seldom settle, we comfort ourselves by saying that although our lows may be lower, our highs are also higher! Our ability to experience this world is greater and therefore the bad and good are equally blessed. How dynamic is my world! So many facets shimmer and break apart. This is comforting in the bad times, because how lucky I am to feel so profoundly. Don’t others wish to be as alive?

No. I doubt that they do.

:)

Lucid Dreaming

            “Is this real? Am I dreaming?” I ask myself throughout the day.

            Usually, the answer is, “No. I am awake.” I am driving to the coffee shop down the road to write and drink too much coffee. I am at a barbeque in Brazil with a bunch of lawyers and my secret boyfriend. 

A big party in Brazil where I didn't speak the same language as anyone else? Yeah, that happened.

I am in LA, out drinking in Hollywood with talented young writers. I am in Las Vegas, dancing all night on the strip. 

Glee star Darren Criss playing Disney songs on a piano for a Vegas sing-along? Could be reality. 

I am dressed as a peacock watching fireworks.

            In each of these cases, nothing tipped me off to let me know that what I was experiencing was not really happening. I was awake. This was reality. 

            BUT 

           Twice now, when I’ve looked around my day and asked myself, “Am I dreaming?” the answer has been, “Yes. This is a dream.”

            Then the fun part can begin! Welcome to the Matrix! With practice you can learn to control your dream world! You can fly, teleport, have sex with young Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie at the same time and separately! 

You can fly while having sex! You can go cruising the universe with your lost lover! You can be free from the constraints of physics and philosophy! 

These are all things I aspire to do one day.

            I began teaching myself to lucid dream by recording my dreams whenever I woke up. Whatever I remembered, even if it was only a feeling, I’d write it down.

With time, I made a database of events, people, or objects that only exist in my dreams.

            I do tests throughout my day to see if I’m dreaming or awake. I’ll fully commit myself and see if I can jump from the ground and in to a tree. Most likely, I’ll only come off the ground a foot, but there’s a chance I’ll soar to the top of the tree! That’s conclusive evidence I’m dreaming.

            A funny thing I’ve discovered through this exercise – it’s nearly impossible to tell what’s reality and what's a dream. Reality is so varied, bizarre, ironic, and unpredictable that most dream experiences, no matter how exceptional, fall somewhere within the realm of possibilities. 

            Am I sitting in a field, silently watching black crows? Am I in a remake of Wet Hot American Summer? Is a woman taking a topless mug shot of me while I stand in tree pose? All of these could be happening. None of it is bizarre enough to let me know I’m dreaming. I don’t recognize, until I’m awake, the unlikeness of these scenarios.

            To realize I’m dreaming, something completely impossible has to happen: I have to be able to walk on water faster than Jesus, Ayn Rand and I have to go skiing together, Darth Vader needs to challenge me to a hot-dog eating contest (I would know that was a dream, because I'm a vegetarian).

            The first time I successfully lucid dreamed, I was laying beside my college boyfriend in his bed when, suddenly, he became a completely different man. His appearance and clothing changed completely. The jig was up! He was caught! I pointed at him:

            “You’re not real! This is a dream! I’m dreaming right now!”

            There’s satisfaction that comes from pointing at someone who’s talking to me, interrupting them, and yelling, "You don’t really exist other than in my mind!" Oh man! I get excited just thinking about it! They never believe me when I tell them it’s a dream, but I think deep down, they know their reality is merely a shadow of my psyche.

            I heard my old boyfriend’s voice coming from outside the room where I was now in bed with a man I didn’t know.

            “Baby, you’re talking in your sleep. You need to wake up,” his voice said, far away.

            “You’re not dreaming, baby,” the man I didn’t know told me. “You’re awake. I'm your boyfriend.”

            Oh no. If I’m awake then that means I’m crazy. I don’t want to be crazy. 

I got very upset because I believed the dream, when it lied and told me that it was real. I tried very hard to wake up. 

I opened my eyes to see my boyfriend was back! I did it! This was definitely reality! 

My boyfriend’s hair changed color. Shit. 

Shit. I’m crazy. The evidence against my sanity was growing. As I ruminated on my madness, James Franco burst in to the room with the cast of Your Highness.

“Come on!” James Franco yelled to me. “We need to make it through the portal!” He beckoned me in to the next room, as he went running through.

I followed him, but part of me was sure I was sleep walking, about to walk in to a closet alone. I would be found sleeping on shoes in the morning, my madness confirmed. I didn’t enter the portal because of my fear, my doubt, my lack of confidence in my mind's story.

I reentered the bedroom, and then I woke up to find myself in New Jersey sleeping next to my mother.

Lucid dreaming can only be accomplished by believing 100% in the reality of the world you create. Big fan.