and yadda yadda, an aliyah blog
by Jen Maidenberg
I wrote a poem
I wrote a poem
I want to shout it but I won’t
I wrote a poem.
*
I wrote a poem
A simple poem
I ache to cry but hold it back
I wrote a poem.
*
I wrote a poem
Just a poem
It’s not my best, but it’s not half bad
I wrote a poem.
*
I wrote a poem
Thank God, a poem
Was almost sure the well’d dried up
But I wrote a poem.
*
It’s just a poem
I know, a poem
but I dare believe, it’s cleared the way
for another poem.
Honesty bursts forth from me in fits, in starts.
This is 40.
This may not be 40 for you.
I realize, for you, this may be 43. Or 38. or 67.
I don’t know if it’s temporal, situational, or hormonal, this shift.
It certainly resembles the week leading up to my period with its moodiness, its gentle swaying between certainty and confusion.
There are moments, for instance, when I can’t speak anything but the absolute truth; even when I know it will hurt, even if I know I will pay.
There are moments, too, when I slip into a dark tunnel, the Hadron collider of womanhood: understanding that I can’t have both what I want and what I imagined I wanted years ago. They can’t live together in my world of almost 40. They will combust there together and set me on fire.
The kind of fire that burns people.
I can’t stretch my arm far enough down to reach the me who slipped behind the back of the sofa. She’s choking on dust bunnies down there, but I can’t reach her.
I almost don’t even want to.
“Sorry!” I yell to her; the one who dreamed of lots of babies. I leave her with the dust bunnies, and run off instead to play Hickory Dickory Dock.
I hardly blog about parenting anymore.
It’s not because I don’t have opinions to share or thoughts to express. It’s that I finally arrived at a place where I understand that most of what I say or think about parenting is either obvious or worthless.
Obvious to the older or more veteran demographic who, at best, might compassionately respond to what I write with a nod, “Oh yes, I remember that time of life.”
Worthless to the younger or less experienced demographic who, at best, can’t possibly imagine ever being in my situation, so focused they are on the stage of life, couplehood or parenting they are in right now.
I suppose, too, when it comes to parenting, I find my voice so boring I can’t even stand to read what I write.
This is when you should stop writing about a topic.
At least, this is when I should.
So I did. For a while.
Instead, I expressed my Parent Self through photographs and filters; as I tried to filter through what it meant that I no longer wanted to express myself as a parent.
I think I figured it out.
I stopped caring so much.
Which is unimaginable to me considering how much I used to
CARE.
How all-consumed I was as a mother.
How all-consuming my children were.
(“Yes, you were,” say my Greek chorus of family and friends in unison from the shadows of my not-so-distant past.)
But I got tired of caring.
Literally. Physically.
Tired.
Wiped out. Sucked dry. Milk gone.
From my breasts. From my galaxy.
There I was (there I am)
a heap of flesh, in desperate need of my own nourishment.
In need of someone like me to care so much about my needs, my safety, my future.
To hang my art on the refrigerator door.
To give me a Time Out.
To tie my hair back in a long, silky ribbon
and kiss me softly, with no expectations, in that region of my neck below the ear.
* * *
I just finished reading Sisterland by Curtis Sittenfeld, an author whose work I always love, always connect to. In the book, the main character is a mother of two very young children. She, like I was when my kids were infants and toddlers, is all-consumed by her role as mother. She wants to be not just a good mother, not only the best mother, but a mother IN CONTROL.
Because life, and more specifically parenting, is too overwhelming otherwise. At least for those of us like Kate (the main character) whose lives are precariously balanced between intuition and anxious uncertainty. At least for those of us who believe our children are a reflection of our commitment to parenting them.
On the one hand, I related very much to this character. I used to be her, to the smallest, organic, breastfeeding detail. On the other hand, I found her annoying and shrill. It’s clear the author does, too. In fact, she references just how shrill Kate is and sounds on more than one occasion. It’s clear, too, Sittenfeld is on the otherside of “all-consuming motherhood.” She is, in a way, mocking Kate. Lovingly so.
It was in the reading of the book that I fully understood (and admitted to myself) how I feel a tiny bit embarrassed by her. Not by Kate, but my Me. The former Me. The one who cared too much.
And how I feel a tiny bit ashamed of Her. Not the Her I used to be. Me. Now. The Her who doesn’t care so much.
I don’t really want to be either of them. Her then or Me now.
I want to be somewhere else.
Someone else.
But who?
* * *
The older demographic of my readers will likely nod at this post, “Oh yes, I remember that time of life.” That in between space. That desperation for nourishment. That guilt for wanting Me back so badly. The conflict between loving these children so much I can’t stand it and wanting them to leave the house RIGHT NOW so i can write so I can read so I can nourish myself. Me Me Me.
The younger demographic of my readers will likely have already stopped reading at the first paragraph, so all-consumed and convinced they are that their choices today directly impact tomorrow. So sure they are, as I was, that tomorrow will be intact and unassailable for their children if only they pay close enough attention.
And again, I am bored by my words. Turned off even as I write them. Swearing off, once again, blogging about parenting.
But I won’t forsake my Greek Chorus their collective voice. Their somewhat smug, somewhat compassionate nods.
I won’t assume that I am the only mother in that in between space.
I’ll leave a trail of pebbles so that you may find your way to me and tell me I’m not alone.
Tell me you remember that time.
Tell me you are in it right now.
Tell me you too are tired.
Tell me my children will forgive me my selfishness.
Tell me I will fill up again.
Tell me I will be more than this.
Tell me.
I give up knowing it all.
I give it up.
I’ve started to play with my label.
It’s itching me a little.
I tried
moving my neck side to side to see
if it would readjust comfortably
on its own.
Didn’t work.
So I reached my right hand back over my shoulder.
Stretched my collar
all the way ’round front to see
Mother.
Wife.
39.
Chief Marketing Officer.
Size small.
Made in America.
35 % Israeli. 100 % Woman. 21 % Buddhist-to-be.
Hand wash warm.
Prone to startling. Handle with care. Do not bleach … yet.
<NEW LOGO HERE>
Art begets art, don’t you think?
Of course, we may disagree on the definition of art. But I find the more I notice, the more I notice.
The more I write, the more I photograph, the more I dream.
The more I read, the more I feel, the more I write.
When you open up — even just a little — to noticing and noting, you are actually working your art muscle.
What I say is not new. It’s not an original thought. Many more experienced at attracting art have said it before I just did.
But I notice it happening to me.
I see poetry in my photographs, and color in my poems. The art of one lends itself to the other, and suddenly I feel as if I am getting somewhere.
It’s not that I am a constant rushing stream of good art. Some of it is just purge.
Pages filled with strike outs.
I look like this sometimes.
But then I laugh at myself. At my #selfie.
And I share it with you.
And my nervous heart strengthens a bit when you laugh along with me… in the knowing fully that you understand I’m half joking.
* * *
There’s something that gets in my way, though.
Thinking. Too much thinking. About getting somewhere with my art.
This, too, I notice.
It’s like that moment when I realize I am lucid dreaming and I know if I think too hard about it, I will wake up. So I try not to think — just breathe, I say — but this in itself is thinking.
POP!
Out of the dream.
Or, more simply, it’s like losing your cross-eyed stare once you finally become aware of the 3D image in a Magic Eye design. I see it! You cry. Then,
POP!
Back to staring at blurry peacock feathers.
What’s the real magic trick?
Minding your thinking, I suppose.
Noticing it, yes, but allowing thoughts to float away as easily as the 3D Magic Eye design.
Blur it away on purpose.
Master this, and become a Master.
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.)
I wrote recently about this superpower I possess called synesthesia. How I see letters and words in full color. And how I am going to defeat fear once I manage to harness my power properly.
It occurred to me this morning that my superpower might be the cause of quirky compulsions I also possess like the one that prevents me from listening to the Beach Boys in December, or drives me to listen to Van Morrison when the leaves start to change color and fall from the trees (even if I’m not living in the country in which they do.)
The connection between music and emotion is a studied one that’s not unique to me, but actually quite documented in human beings. But what about music and season? For me, the music must fit the weather outside. And there are singers or albums that are just completely inappropriate in winter, or off limits when I’m driving with the top down in July.
I looked into it a little. And guess what?
There’s a connection…and suddenly my strange compulsions don’t seem so compulsive anymore.
Studies show that music is connected to color and color is connected to emotion — particularly for people with synesthesia. From there, the connection is easy. Emotion as it relates to season is a no-brainer. Lots of babies are born in August, nine months after couples snuggle up together inside supposedly to warm up from winter’s cold. I think it’s more than shelter from the cold they seek; but love and interpersonal connection that is often sacrificed in the isolation that winter brings.
Ask the average Joe or Jane which emotion is aroused when they envision summer. Most will say joy. Freedom. Fun. Ask the same person to describe the accompanying emotions to winter, Most will say introspection, introversion or sadness.
What about you? What do you say?
Having superpowers can make a girl feel lonely sometimes. Like I’m the only one whose heart hurts as fall moves towards winter. But when I get like that I cry it out to Randy Newman … whose voice and lyrics match perfectly the melancholy and nostalgia that crop up for me in fall.
Or I listen to this video — a performance of his “I Want You to Hurt Like I Do” in Berlin– and I laugh. Knowing I’m not really as alone as I think.
I have this thing.
After half a lifetime of thinking it was either a special power possessed by only a select few, or a strange sensory birth defect that generally didn’t interfere with my life, I discovered it was a thing.
With a name.
I see letters, and words, in color.
Not all words, and not all the time — only particular words and only really when I pay attention to it.
Months of the year, for instance, each appear as a particular color when I visualize them in my mind. So detailed, in fact, that June and July are both red, but different shades.
All the letters of the English alphabet are colored, too, but strangely, not the Hebrew alphabet. Some letters are (Aleph is white like “A”), and some aren’t. If I were a neurologist, I’d probably study that, but I’m not. I’m just the handicapped super hero with a colorful dictionary in her mind.
What’s particularly interesting to me, though, is how words can change color when they are paired with another.
Prickly is white. But pear is yellow. Prickly pear is white. Why?
I have no idea.
Home is red. But go is green. Go home is “green.” Does my mind automatically prefer the verb? Does the adjective always dominate?
Fear is a word whose color I’d like to change.
If I could somehow convert fear from that rusty-tinted brown orange to a vibrant hot pink with purple polka dots, I somehow believe that my perception of fear might change, too.
Can you really be terrified of a word that is hot pink with purple polka dots?
What if, indeed, the secret power of synesthesia is the ability to use color to change the way you perceive ?
Change the color of a word in order to manipulate your world?
Into a place that’s less scary?
If you write poetry and no one reads it, is it still a poem? What if no one likes it?
Gets it?
Shares it?
What if it’s never published?
Never praised?
Is it still a poem?
How — really — does one recognize a poet?
Is the title earned? Learned?
I admit —
I am a reluctant poet.
Reluctant, not because I don’t enjoy weaving short thoughtful phrases together and calling it poetry, and not because I don’t enjoy reading short thoughtful phrases woven together by others
but mostly because I am not 100% sure how to recognize a poem.
And I am not 100% sure I am a poet.
Poetry confuses me. It makes me insecure.
I doubt it. I judge it. In a way I don’t judge novels or articles or essays.
When I read poetry, I am often left confused.
When I write poetry, I am overly critical. Hungry for approval and acknowledgment.
Is it the writer in me, I wonder, that is anxious and unsure?
Or is it the human?
There was a time when I thought I knew poetry. When I thought that poetry was as simple as alliteration
as simple as limericks … as quatrains … as rhyme.
I was in third grade and poetry was the unit during Language Arts.
We created a poetry book — I still have it. It’s bound in wallpaper and decorated with a rainbow colored pride known only by nine year old girls and confident gay activists.
And I am moved by the poet I was then.
I am struck by how I saw the world when I was a poet, and I am envious of the girl who strung together lavish gibberish and confidently presented it as verse.
Oh, how the words flowed then…
/
walking down the stairs
holding tight to the staircase
taking your first step
Your parents at the bottom
finally your (sic) down the stairs.
/
In 1983, under the instruction and guidance of Mrs. Wald, I wrote a 12-page, wallpaper-bound book of poetry.
The pieces vary in length and in depth.
They cover topics that range from my childhood home to the mountains of Japan.
They make perfect sense and no sense at all.
Some rhyme, some reference people I no longer remember.
30 years later, I read this book of poetry and I am moved.
Does that make me a poet?
Is that enough?
I say it is.
It’s enough.
Not enough for contests or Ph.D.s or prizes, that’s for certain.
But enough to offer me the confidence
to write another poem
tomorrow.
I love TED talks.
I love the concept.
I love the execution.
As a marketing professional, I think TED talks are often brilliant examples of storytelling and I often share them with my clients to show how delivery can reel a person into a topic that might be dense or unfamiliar.
I have watched TED talks that seem to have nothing to do with my life — that are by people so foreign to me or about ideas that are a million miles away from what I think or care about.
And yet, by the end, I’m crying. Or nodding. Or shaking my head in stunned disbelief.
That’s what a good story does to you.
As a human being, I think TED talks enrich my life.
I love learning about problems I never knew existed.
And being surprised by how the solutions to those problems end up applying to my own life.
I have the TED app downloaded on my smartphone and when I remember, I will often listen to a TED talk on the drive home from work.
I hardly ever spend time browsing the videos. I choose one of the top three recommended.
Today I chose “Phil Hansen: Embrace the shake.”
I had no idea who Phil Hansen was before I watched his talk, nor did I understand the reference to the word, “shake” in the title.
But I love the word “embrace.”
It’s physical.
It’s emotional.
And this word alone in the title was enough to pique my curiosity and press play.
I’m very much into embracing. (And tips on how to do it better…)
Embracing my uncertainty.
Embracing my fear.
Embracing the new and unfamiliar.
Embracing …so that you may let go.
What Hansen suggests in his talk is that embracing our limitations actually opens us up to limitless possibilities.
I agree with him.
I won’t spoil the 10 minute talk.
Enjoy it for yourself, but be prepared to be surprised.
And to let go … of your expectations.
About the speaker.
About the talk.
About everything.
“As I destroyed each project, I was learning to let go,” Hansen says. “Let go of outcomes. Let go of failures. And let go of imperfections…”
See what happened, when he did.
A few years ago, I took a brief, but fantastic memoir writing course with poet and writing professor, Chloe Yelena Miller. It was in this course I was first introduced to the concept of writing from a prompt.
Wow, how I loved this exercise.
Not all writing prompts work for all people — and it could be the ones that Chloe chose resonated with me personally — but, regardless, I had a lot a fun with them.
I wrote one piece about my childhood stuffed dog/bear, Floppy.
I wrote one piece about my ex-boyfriend’s family beach house.
I wrote another about a long-kept secret.
What exactly do I love about writing prompts? I’m not sure.
But I think it has to do with looking at life differently. From a different angle. Upside down. Inside out.
To see people and things in a way they’ve never been observed before. To imagine them in a purpose or a place they’re unused to.
Today, my writing prompt was Mr. Mushroom Butt.
While slicing vegetables for my breakfast stir fry, I couldn’t help but notice the cute little butt in one of my deformed mushrooms.
In an instant, I could imagine the yellow peppers as arms and legs. And hurried to arrange them and photograph the scene before it disappeared from my imagination or I got too hungry not to eat it.
The Sad and Sorry End to Mushroom Butt was born from my breakfast.
A story was born … a character, a fractured fairytale. And who knows what else? A film? A line of toys? A breakfast cereal?
One morning, I birthed Mushroom Butt . And now he exists.
This is what’s amazing about writing prompts.
And about writing.
This ability to birth something or someone anew.
There are writing prompts everywhere masquerading as boring nothingness.
But once you name them as writing prompts, someone or something exists where there was previously nothing and no one.
And the list of possibilities for their adventures becomes endless…
I have a bad temper. And I hold on to anger.
I don’t know if I was born sullen and stubborn or if I cultivated these attractive personality traits over time.
Regardless, what I’ve fortunately learned in recent years is that “letting go” is the gateway to peace and ease — the path away from sullen and stubborn.
In the few years before I moved to Israel, I studied with teachers experienced in the mind/body connection, many of whom introduced me to the concepts of mindfulness I often write about. Through their teaching, I understood this practice could alleviate everything from aggravation to anxiety to physical pain.
As a writer, I’m really good at listening to other people’s stories and sharing them with others. Which I did a lot with mindfulness, but looking back, I was not so good at practicing it in real life.
Living in Israel, though — mostly because of the language and cultural differences — has been a daily practice in the art of letting go.
Letting go of my ego.
Letting go of my sense of control.
Letting go of my assumptions .. .about myself, my neighbors, the region, the world.
Letting go of stereotypes.
Letting go of the tight hold over my children.
Letting go of certain dreams and expectations.
I’m nowhere near a master of the art of letting go.
Maybe an experienced student. Possibly, good enough to be a T.A.
Still a long way from Zen bliss.
But with this particular type of study, thankfully, the culmination of my efforts is not in a certificate or a degree, right?
The win is in the practice itself.
I win every single time I let go.
Again and again and again.
Which means I also have the space in which to mess up, without worrying about failure. Because, think about it, failure (hanging on to something ugly like jealousy, resentment, or righteous indignation — all favorites of the stubborn and sullen) just sets me up for an immediate opportunity to win once again.
By letting go.
And with that philosophical turn, I need a nap.
Thank you for listening. This T.A. is outta here.
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