I was attempting a haiku this morning when I realized there is no good antonym for alone.
Walking alone is often the first step towards
These were the first two lines of an idea I was trying to work through by haiku. Except, I couldn’t finish it in a satisfying way.
“Together?” Is together really the only antonym for alone?
I was going for an emotion, a feeling, a deep sense of being close to another person or to humanity. Feeling less afraid. Feeling as if someone else understands you.
And “together” … just doesn’t do it.
Together is so physical. It’s a fixing word. It’s an extrovert’s word. It’s not the word I mean at all.
Want to help me finish the haiku?
Walking alone is often the first step towards…
I’d love it if you’d give it a shot in the comments below or on your own blog with a pingback here. If your haiku especially speaks to me, I’ll reblog it.
I was thinking of Sarah this morning when I realized how many similarities there are between the online friendships I’ve cultivated and the pen pals I used to collect as a young girl.
Sarah and I are planning to meet in real life for the first time. Despite the fact that we both are former Americans living in Israel, and only live an hour’s drive from each other, we’ve never sat to drink coffee together; have never spoken on the phone. I don’t know what Sarah’s voice sounds like even, and this is what I was thinking about when I realized that Sarah exists for me like my much-loved pen pals from childhood. The deep way one knows someone through letters. Except the letters are blogs, and Facebook chats.
When I was a girl — mostly from the ages of 12 – 16 — I exchanged letters with a few other kids my age. I vividly remember two of them, for they were strangers.
Thanks Ali Martell for the pic
Unlike Robert, my camp friend from Texas, or Natali from Mexico, both of whom became active pen pals of mine after shared experiences in real life; Kim and Phillipa, I never met. We starting writing each other because we were subscribers of Bop! magazine. (The original Match.com for pedophiles, Bop actually published in each issue a list of names and addresses of pre-pubescent girls. Can you imagine???)
Unlike my school friends, Kim and Phillipa exist in my memory only as curvy, bubbled Ms and skinny, drooping Qs; as unevenly snipped wallet-sized portraits taken during Picture Day. I never knew their voices so I can’t hear them in my head even if I try. I never knew how tall they were. Whether or not they were skinny or fat. Pimply or clear-skinned. Popular or tortured. Smelled like Chloé or B.O.
We never got in fights over a boy. We never stopped speaking to each other in the halls. We never shared sleepovers or sundaes.
And yet, I loved them in a way. I was grateful for their showing up in my life. In my mailbox.
I knew Kim’s hobbies; Phillipa’s favorite American movie stars. I knew about their jealousies of their siblings and their crushes on the neighborhood skater boy. I imagine they told me secrets they never shared with their school friends. I know I shared with them a few of mine.
There’s something sacred and safe in living and loving only through letters.
Isn’t that what most of us with online-only friends would say about many of those friendships? There’s something sacred and safe about them?
No, we don’t ‘know’ each other in ‘real life’ … but then again, what is ‘real’ life?
In one of my cardboard boxes, I found a folder with some work samples from my time as a book club manager at Scholastic.
While rifling through the R.L. Stine Goosebumps newsletters and colorful seasonal book catalogs I used to edit, a typed out note on white paper fluttered through the air and landed on the floor. It took me only seconds to realize what it was: a note from my former co-worker, Nelson, a kind man, the production manager of the creative team.
The words gracing the page were in Spanish, and though I hadn’t thought of them or heard them in years, I knew they were the lyrics of a song.
Nuestro tema esta …
Cantado con arena, espuma y aves del amanecer.
I rushed to the computer. Standing in front of the monitor, I typed in YouTube, then the words:
“nuestro tema”
The song appeared in the search bar. I held my breath.
You know the kind of breath holding I mean?
When you know you’re about to get the wind knocked out of you … but in a good way?
I pressed play and waited to get the wind knocked out of me.
And, as I could have predicted, I was overcome … a wave rolled over me.
I closed my eyes. And smiled.
* * *
The song, by Cuban musician Silvio Rodriguez, was on a mixed tape someone made me. Smitten by Rodriguez’s voice and guitar, I brought the tape into work and asked Nelson, a native Spanish speaker, to listen and transcribe the lyrics for me. (This was back before there was “lyricsfreak” and other easily available websites.) Even though my high school Spanish was rough, when I got the words from him, I immediately understood enough of the sentiment, and some of the imagery to know for certain it was a love song. A metaphor. A painting in words. Pure poetry.
” …besos a las seis de la manana”
Best of all, with the words in hand, I could sing along to the achingly beautiful voice.
Which is what I did for weeks and weeks and weeks until I eventually lost interest … and track of the song.
* * *
“Nuestro tema esta… Nos cuesta tanto
Que ya es un sueo y una cancion.”
Back in the present, I hummed along, thankful for the easy access of YouTube (and wishing I had never given away my Yellow Sony Walkman…who would’ve guessed?)
I only became aware of my breath again when the song was finished. I had apparently let it out at some point. My chest was relaxed; my shoulders loosened. My soul lighter. The wave had passed over me and back out to shore.
For this is what “Nuestro Tema” always did for me. Let me believe I could let go of some of the weight of the beauty and agony of this world, knowing that others were bearing it for me.
I couldn’t have told you all that then, though. That stuff about the beauty and the agony. About carrying the weight of it all on my shoulders.
I didn’t understand it then. The weight of all that beauty … that agony. The ability to let it go when we listen to music or allow our hearts to swell with someone else’s description of it.
All I knew is that I loved the song so much I had to know the words.
I’m not so compulsive to be recruited for a reality TV show, but I’m bad enough that closets are always full and there’s never enough storage space.
Not in my house, not in my brain.
Despite this need to hang on, each time I have moved homes (about 6 or 7 times in adulthood), I’ve let go of things I didn’t think I would need anymore.
I purge — in the rapid, violent way the word evokes.
Goodbye to the japanime LeSportSac bag I coveted. Sayonara to the collector’s set of Leonardo DiCaprio movies on VHS. Farewell to the Fall-inspired finger paintings done by my son when he was 18 months old.
When we moved to Israel, a country that does not believe in closets, nor basements, my husband and I did a major purge — in the form of a yard sale and of giveaways to friends and neighbors. But there were about a dozen boxes we knew not to bother opening — for they would go into storage until we figured out exactly what this aliyah thing would mean for our family.
Boxes sealed in brown packing tape marked in hastily drawn capital letters:
JEN’S MEMORABILIA
AVI’S OLD PAINTINGS
WEDDING PARAPHENALIA
MIXED TAPES, SCHOOL PAPERS OF JEN’S, DO NOT THROW AWAY!!!!!!
CARDS, PERSONAL
Those boxes landed in Israel on a cargo ship a few weeks ago and eventually — after the usual Israeli-style run-around at customs — arrived in our storage room/bomb shelter last week.
Carefully, carefully I am opening those cardboard boxes.
Because they aren’t just cardboard boxes, you know.
They are Pandora’s. Modern day Pandora’s boxes.
Carefully… because danger lurks in the folded over corners of hoarded memories
just as often as joyful surprise.
Carefully… because yellowed papers inside a stale smelling tupperware container may easily transform into messages in a bottle.
Carefully… because when you save, when you keep, when you store away, you might just get what you wish for one day–
a portal into the past.
a light unto what was once dark.
* * *
Watch this space to see what I discover inside a set of boxes.
My new friend Miriam is a long-time professional dancer and choreographer. I met her in a writing workshop at Bar Ilan University and have enjoyed hearing her tales of dance, particularly those she found herself in while living in far-flung areas of the world foreign to me.
But yesterday, Miriam surprised me even more when she led our group in a movement exercise designed to be used as a writing prompt.
Movement as a writing prompt?
While I’ve sometimes walked around outdoors as a way to move past writer’s block, I never would have guessed that following simple guided instructions on how to move in space would bring such a wealth of content to the surface …and so quickly.
The experience for me was remarkable. While in it, I was singularly focused on following Miriam’s instructions. But as it turned out, my body’s movement allowed my mind to relax … and open up to new ideas.
In the final of three exercises, Miriam instructed us through a series of varying movements during which we were to write our name in the air. For the final movement, however, we were to present ourselves to the group, then write our name in the air.
I noticed a grave difference between how I felt when I moved independent of the group and wrote my name in the air, and how I felt presenting my name inside and to the group. The difference was physical. An ease that accompanied my independent movements … a stiffness that showed up once I faced the group.
This physical discomfort stirred inside my creative space afterwards, when we sat down for ten minutes to write.
And it was this discomfort that became a poem that I dare to share with you…
The Group.
Take care with my bare heart …
With the me out there.
===
Me Alone Meets Me Out There
Will I always be two Mes?
The Me alone and the Me out there?
When I am Me alone, fast or slow, I am me.
Giggly, thoughtful, silly me.
When I am Me out there, within without, I am not me.
I am a stilted lilted version of me.
A me wrapped in bubble wrap.
A me on display.
I am cute, a hoot, but not a whole
Me.
I wish the two Mes would meet one day
On the street, on the stage,
in the office, on the page
And decide to become one.
The Me alone
and the Me out there.
Easy peasy pair.
==
(All content, including poetry, is original — unless otherwise noted — and copyright Jen Maidenberg.)
When I was a girl, our refrigerator was stocked. Not just with food, but with memories.
My mother liked to collect magnets from places she had visited — and while it’s difficult to remember exactly from where and from when, I do distinctly recall a trail of experiences splattered like paint across the front of a series of refrigerator doors of my childhood.
It’s a tradition I’ve, without much serious intention, carried forward. It started when I moved in with my now-husband. He already had a few refrigerator magnets that predated me, but we began building a refrigerator of love of our own. The first addition was a magnet we found at a gift shop in Hoboken where we lived at the time.
We loved the quote so much we incorporated it into our wedding invitation.
A few weeks ago, after a bunch of dreams of messy houses, I realized my home was in need of attention. In the middle of mopping up the kitchen floor, I noticed how dirty, disorganized and jumbled our refrigerator had become. We had been mindlessly putting up A+ exams, beautiful art class drawings, and promotional magnets from every local business, from the hairdresser to Pinchi the clown, birthday party extraordinaire I don’t ever remember being entertained by. I don’t have “before pictures,” but imagine a Leap Frog alphabet game scattered in more than 26 places; a Made in China set of Hebrew letters ready to be choked on by a visiting baby; and hidden beneath five field trip permission forms was the Marcel Proust quote.
I held it in my hands — saw how smudged and worn it had become in 13 years — but smiled knowing it remained. Intact, across continents and seas; still stuck to my refrigerator door.
I spent some time then sorting, throwing away, and putting the dusty alphabet letters in a bag to give to a friend whose children would use them — mine had grown too old for them while I wasn’t paying attention.
I filed away some papers, recycled others. I organized the promotional magnets in a big square on the hidden side of the fridge.
Afterwards, I pulled out the Marcel Proust quote — made it a centerpiece holding up a series of photographs that represented experiences we treasure, times and places … faces almost forgotten in the everyday rush of life.
I made love, once again, the focus of the refrigerator door. And said a quiet prayer that Proust’s words would continue to carry this family forward in 2014.
“Let us be grateful for people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.”
Yes, our days, if only we are lucky, will still be filled with exams to study for, dentist appointments to run to, and permission slips to sign, but somehow, in spite of it and in light of it, let us be grateful for the people who make us happy.
and yadda yadda, an aliyah blog 