Tag: consciousness

Childhood, Dreams, Letting Go, Relationships, Writing

What of the mountains?

Jen

I don’t know if I said it because of the dream or if I dreamt it because I was bound to say it later, but I said it and only after did I realize that it didn’t matter if the dream preceded the belief or the belief the dream.

*  *  *

What matters more than the man in the dream — a composite of men I have loved — is the woman who jumped so high as to be seen from the carved out window of the plane I was flying in.

She is not me. She was too tall to be me. And yet her hair …

What am I supposed to glean from her loose and long dirty blond hair, from the bohemian dress that floated up above her knees like a parachute each time she leapt from the valley as if the earth below was her trampoline? And what about the mountains, which were not the mountains of Denver, Colorado or the Golan Heights, mountains I have seen directly, both from above and below, but were, I am certain, the mountains of a European country, Spain or Portugal, a country in which there are less Jews than in the countries I am familiar with, countries I might even dare to call my homes?

What matters more than the man in the dream — who brought me to near tears with his collection of short stories recognizable as anecdotes from his childhood — is the woman who was sitting in the row ahead of me on the plane. She, too, saw the leaper, but she was not fazed. “I’ve seen her before,” the woman ahead of me noted. “We’re friends.”

She is not me, either. She was not Jewish enough. And she was also tall, even when seated.

Perhaps, what matters more is the man in the dream — perhaps, he is me.

*  *  *

Perhaps, I believed it and dreamed it both. Neither one before the other. Neither one bound to be first.

Dreams, Family, Letting Go, Love, Memory, Mindfulness, Poetry, Relationships

They said this outfit was 3D

Jen

I had the dream again last night in which it’s you and me and him and her at a dinner party and the lighting is for grownups, but for some reason there are children in the room. I made meringues for the children for dessert. They came out fluffy and perfect and I wanted them to stay that way – the meringues – except, inevitably they deflated. “No matter,” my husband said in the dream. “They’re still sweet.”

The dinner party is awkward even though the lighting is good. Like the last time I dreamed us at an awkward dinner party, the lighting is mostly by candle with a touch of track over a brick mantle and the scene is set for adults, which is to say there are things nearby that may be broken.

She is in black as she always is. As for me, I picked out something new to wear just before arriving. I tried it on for my husband in the store, invited him into the dressing room. “The tag said the outfit was 3D,” I told him, but only when I take my glasses off am I able to see the shapes moving in the mirror.

Books, Childhood, Dreams, Family, Home, Letting Go, Memory, Parenting, Relationships, Writing

Key to the Treasure

Jen

I keep dreaming of my childhood home. I won’t bore you with the details; with the recalling of the coat closet next to the front door; the fur that once lived there, but didn’t appear in my dream. In my dream, my mother pulled out a vintage polyester shirt draped over a wire hanger steam-pressed and plastic wrapped years ago, now eager to breathe. She handed it to me, “Do you want this?”

I wasn’t sure how to answer.

= =

My middle son is reading a musky-smelling original hardcover edition of Key to the Treasure by Peggy Parish. It’s not the edition I read when I was nine — mine was paperback. But mine was lost in the Flood.

= =

I know for certain someone somewhere is reading my copy of New York Then and Now on a toilet. It’s a book meant to be read on the toilet.

They call them coffee table books, but no one has time for coffee anymore. They ought to be called toilet books. This is where I go when I want to pore over pictures from then and now.

Why can’t I manage to hang on to my books? Especially the ones I sought out, hand-picked, then coveted?

I found some of my lost New York books at The Strand last December. I had an urge to buy them all in an effort to once again build a carefully curated collection. This would have been a redux since once before — on weekday afternoons at Bookman’s in Tucson — I spent my lunch hour scanning the children’s section for the titles lost in the Flood.

= =

I say it, but I don’t yet fully believe it: That there is something worthwhile in losing.

==

Except this.

I accept the hardcover original edition of Key to the Treasure, but I do so with a gentle stab of reluctance. I understand it’s the story I was wild about when I was nine — Jed and Bill and Liza and the feathered bonnet and the sorrow of missed connections passed down through the generations — not the texture of the pages or the color illustration on the cover. And yet, I want back what was once mine.

After all, if I had wanted to part with it I would have. I would have piled my copy of the book on top of the others that were going to Good Will. But I didn’t. I kept it on my shelf and then placed it in a cardboard box which I labelled “Jen’s books” before my father carried it down to the basement.

Those books, I believed, were meant to be found again one day.

= =

I say it, but I don’t yet fully believe it: That there is something worthwhile in losing.

= =

I can have almost anything I want: a Fisher Price Sesame Street set, a pair of gently-used docksiders, a Speak and Spell, an autographed pull-out poster of Mackenzie Astin. People are buying and selling my faded memories…and yours… all the time.

I can have almost anything I want.

==

And yet, there is something worthwhile in the losing. In the being lost.

Food, Letting Go, Poetry

Free

Jen

If I collected pretty purple waves of light every time I said the word “free,” perhaps I’d be the kind of free i really want to be. not gluten free, not nut free, not sugar free, fat free, or buy one get one free, not
Groupon free, but really free. Worry free is close, but not close enough. My desire is the kind of free at least three meters away from a hyphen. mine must be at a certain distance from a noun in order to avoid possible cross-contamination. mine, I’d tell the chef, burns easily, so keep it in a cool, dry place like the yellow bowl high atop the counter where little hands covered in Play-doh can’t reach it.

It’s sad, really, how we’ve corrupted free, compounded it, like mad scientists preparing the liquid version for the old man who can no longer swallow pills. It used to be so pretty: wide orange all-caps. Now free is a deflated nude, the letters warped like old records left too many years in the back storage room of my parents’ basement. I wish I had the key

to free her.

Culture, Spirituality, Technology

Do your dreams predict your Facebook feed?

Jen

I’m entering dangerous territory.

Dreamland.

Dreams — and how they figure into our waking lives — fascinate me. I don’t remember which came first —  my vibrant dream life or my wonder for that version of reality. But both have been with me since childhood.

What’s curious to me these days is lucid dreaming and predictive dreaming, both of which I seem to be getting better at.

The other night, for instance, I noticed I was in the middle of a super frightening nightmare, and I willed myself awake.  Not bad, I thought, when I woke up in a sweat. Now how do I start teaching myself how to fly?

For the past year or so, I’ve occasionally (a few times a month) experienced deja vu during the day in which I am certain I dreamt the interaction already the night before. Nothing momentous; in fact, regular every day occurrences that have a particular interesting twist. Not just the regular drop off at my daughter’s preschool, for instance, but one in which her classmate starts to speak to me in Russian.

I’ve read that such predictive dreaming is, in fact, not uncommon. Famous physicist Russell Targ (most well-known for his work with the military on remote viewing) writes about his own experience with precognitive dreams “predicting” newspaper headlines that he’d then read the next day.

But here’s a peculiar phenomenon I haven’t come across yet in reading on the subject of dreams, and I’m wondering if any of you have: Sometimes I dream my Facebook feed before it happens.

I have 851 Facebook friends. I’m pretty well aware of the 50 or so who appear regularly in my feed. So that when I dream of someone far away — who is not present in my day-to-day interactions and who is not one of the regular 50 people who appear in my feed — and that person shows up in my Facebook feed the next day, I am … to say the least … startled. Like, “Hey you, weren’t you just randomly in my dream last night? What are you doing in my Facebook face?”

Is there an algorithm to explain that experience? I say that only half-facetiously. There probably IS an algorithm to explain that. (If so, please share it, and if possible, in graphic novel format, which is how I best understand geek.)

In addition to dreaming about someone the day before they show up in my feed, I have, on multiple occasions, been talking about something with my colleague at work during the lunch hour — something seemingly obscure — only to find the topic being explored in an article posted by one of my Facebook friends in my feed when I return from lunch. As if Facebook was eavesdropping on our conversation.

Is there an algorithm for that? For overhearing a discussion on, let’s say, the ecosystem of the gut after eating meat or milk? Is there an internet worm crawling from our ears, our minds, and back into “the system?”

I know that readers of this blog span the spectrum of futurists believing we already live in the Matrix to religious devotees who believe the Bible literally happened. (And I appreciate that diversity!)

So tell me:  what do you think? Does this ever happen to you, too?

Is it more common than I think,  this transmission from mind to physical matter (our computers) and back again?

Or am I naive to think of “the internet” as matter, at all? Isn’t it, too, mind?

 

Letting Go, Love, Mindfulness

Giving it up to Cory Booker

Jen

It’s widely agreed among women that following Cory Booker on Twitter is more groin stimulating than the hottest 1980s era episode of All My Children.

But Cory is also a deep thinker, and a spiritual guy –at least his social media strategy team would have us believe.

It’s working. He’s totally got me wrapped around his finger.

Cory shared this on Facebook yesterday:

Courtesy: http://waywire.com/
Courtesy: http://waywire.com/

It was timely for me. (aka “Wow, that Cory Booker is so in my head!)

I’ve been thinking and writing about what I gave up to become who I am now.

Truth is, I think about it a lot. Almost all the time. Definitely, way too much.

Sometimes I wonder if I breathe in nostalgia instead of air.

What could I have been had I made a left instead of a right?

Stayed in Washington instead of moving to New York?

Continued in children’s book publishing instead of leaving to freelance?

Stayed single longer?

Stayed married without kids longer?

Stopped having kids at just one?

At every given moment, indeed, we give up who we are in order to become who we might be.

Right, Cory Booker?

This is automatic. It’s quantum physics (I think). After all, it’s impossible to be who you were and who you are at the very same time. At least, not without a migraine.

If we could do this, we’d be time travelling already. Or having coffee with multi-dimensional beings.

True: We’re often not ready to give up who we are, but just as often we do so in spite of ourselves. Every single day, every single action, may require this on a small level.

And big choices certainly do.

So why not, give it up willingly,  for ourselves?

Life is, indeed, a marathon. Through which we shed many layers of skin.

And each time, we birth ourselves anew.

It’s a much better way to approach life — to approach our Self — than constantly imagining “what might have been.”

The intentional act of giving up who we are propels us forward — from past, to present, to unimaginably awesome future.

Culture, Education, Family, Kibbutz, Learning Hebrew

Fool’s errand

Jen

This morning, as I was just starting to feel better about my tough week, my husband corrected my Hebrew.

It’s perfectly okay that he corrects my Hebrew — it’s something I have asked him to do with the intention of learning quicker. After all, aren’t your mistakes sometimes more memorable than your achievements?

Despite the fact that I’ve asked him to correct me, I still often feel like an asshole when he does. Particularly when I realize that I’ve previously made the same mistake in front of someone who didn’t correct me. Someone who let my mistake just hang there in midair. Who just nodded, but inside thought to herself either a) “awww…isn’t the new immigrant so cute?” or b) “dumbass.”

The correction, in case you are wondering, was my use of the word “chuggim” when I really meant “chaggim.” Chuggim, for those who don’t speak Hebrew, are after-school enrichment type classes. Chaggim are literally holidays or festivals, but refers here in Israel to the Jewish High Holidays. In  September, people are constantly referring to “achrei hachaggim” (after the holidays) because the chaggim are as disruptive to your life and schedule here in Israel as winter break is in the States. In September, you’re just getting your life back on track after the summer break and then WHAM, the chaggim hit you.

I actually know the difference between chuggim and chaggim. It wasn’t a true mistake; the kind where I used the wrong word because I thought it was the right word.  It was a mistake of confidence. It was a mistake rooted in my desire to speak Hebrew without thinking, which is what all the veteran immigrants advise you to do.

The two words are similar sounding and used frequently (at least by weary parents). Chuggim just came out. I quickly understood my mistake after my husband corrected me and also suddenly realized it wasn’t the first time I made it…and that the previous time was to a friend of mine. (A friend, I hope, in the “aww….isn’t she cute” category.)

The chuggim/chaggim mistake came up in the context of my mother’s upcoming visit to Israel, which we are all very excited for. (Yes, emphasis added with love for my mother who reads every word of every blog post…and then analyzes what I must have really meant when I wrote it.)

In June, I asked everyone I knew if they had a school calendar for the upcoming school year. My mother was planning a trip during the chuggim (which is probably what I  said at the time, though you now know I meant chaggim). It was my intention to coordinate her trip with the break from school and work during the chaggim.

Everyone assured me that yes, there would be a national holiday declared, but they couldn’t tell me the exact dates.

What?!? This was maddening to me, and more so to my mother, from whom I inherited my “bordering on maniacal” organizational skills and obsessive need to plan in advance. How could they not know in June the official school break for the High Holidays? Wasn’t it the same every year? Didn’t it occur between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur? Or during Sukkot? Or both? Sure, our winter break in the States varies from year to year, but it basically starts a few days before Christmas and ends a day or two after New Year’s. It’s predictable! You can plan around it! You don’t need to be a fortune teller to figure it out.

But no one here could answer my question. Not the parents with kids currently in the system and not parents of older kids. No one knew. I even searched our regional web site (in Hebrew!!!) to try to find out the answer on my own (after my husband politely decided not to on my behalf).

I finally just heard yesterday from a coworker who heard it announced on the radio that the school break would be during Sukkot (the week after my mom’s visit.) I think, but I’m not 100% sure, that the Ministry of Education just decided this the day before school started.

So much for trying to coordinate my mom’s visit. (Yes, mom, I am still taking time off work and we will keep the kids home so they can visit properly with you.)

“You could have called the school,” I blamed my husband this morning when he got the “official” announcement in his email inbox.

Huh, what are you talking about?, his look said back to me.

“Don’t you see? This is my life here,” I wailed at him this morning before he left for a meeting. “Half the time I feel like a moron and the other half I feel like an imbecile!!! Maybe you should take pity on me! Moving to Israel made me stupid!”

“On your walk to your meeting,” I spat at him with venom (but really sadness and frustration), “think about that! Spend some time thinking about what it must feel like to be ME! Stupid, stupid me!” (The words I actually used were a little more foul, but the above is basically what I meant.)

In a moment of brilliant patience and kindness, my husband kept his mouth shut, nodded, and walked out the door. Whether or not he actually spent time pitying me on his way to work is another issue.

I was blessed with a quiet house in the hour after he left. My oldest kid was out at a friend’s house and the two little ones were in Gan. I spent this luxurious hour sulking, cleaning my dirty house, sulking, putting in some dirty laundry, and catching up on the lives of my far-away friends through their posts on Facebook.

While scanning the Facebook updates from Hurricane Irene-damaged New Jersey (and still selfishly sulking), I was fortunate enough to find a video link in my News Feed from my FB friend Carol, a veteran American immigrant to Israel who I’ve never met in real life. The video she posted reminded me of something very important; something that wiped the sulk away and replaced it with a guilty sigh.

In between the moments I feel like a moron and the moments I feel like an imbecile, I actually feel alive. More alive than before. More connected to myself, my kids, my husband, my community, my planet.

It’s my acknowledgment of and addiction to this feeling that makes the stupid bearable. It makes me want to stay, instead of leave.

True, when I lived in New Jersey, when I had my own business, when I was considered a community leader and an educator, when I was writing for important publications and being interviewed by journalists, I felt like a smart Somebody. It was a really good feeling.  But, in truth, what was attached to that feeling of being smart was a compelling need to constantly know more and do more. To research, to learn and to share. Naturally, I was addicted to my computer, to my BlackBerry, and to social media outlets. In order to maintain my competitive edge in that space, I had to be turned on all the time.

All the time.

What were the consequences of being turned on all the time?

You know what they are. Think about your irritation when your husband interrupts you when you are in the middle of an email; or the compelling urge to check Facebook while you are sitting at a table in the Food Court across from your son; or the panic you feel when your internet isn’t working.

My life here has allowed me (forced me?) to disconnect. Not completely, obviously, but significantly.

And, suddenly, I remember there’s a good side to being Stupid.