Living the Questions

"Despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, I have not been able to answer... the great question that has never been answered: what does a woman want?" - Sigmund Freud

"Why don't you go have dinner with the guy?" BK asked, suggesting a relaxing evening after our stressful day.
"He's sleeping," I replied. "He got up early to watch the Superbowl."

Shock. Awe. Simultaneous feelings of cuteness and, quite frankly, weirdness.

The words that came out of my mouth are not words that normally come of my mouth nor would fittingly flow from my mouth. I just referred to a guy as "the guy" and as someone waking up early to watch the Superbowl. What is odd about it is that I think it is cute.

I do not really see, date, contemplate men who watch the Superbowl to watch a football game. I see men who go to Superbowl parties because it is the Superbowl. I see men who go to Superbowl parties because there will be good food there. I date men who make theme parties around the Superbowl. I date men who go to Superbowl parties to watch the commercials. I contemplate men who write copy for ads for the Superbowl. When I contemplate a man, football really doesn't come to mind.

Scategories, Trivial Pursuit, Futbol, Salsa, Travel, Books, books, books, bedroom, books, bedroom, food, bedroom, dancing, stocks, books, economics, foreign films, news, travel, politics, photography, books, bedroom...These are the interests of the men whom I contemplate. Yet, I realized with a small thrill, a chill, that there is something nice - cute even - about the man who gets up early, before work, to watch a football game a world away. Of course this is bolstered by the fact that he scored many points prior to espousing his interest in said football fest.

He made me dinner. I told Mister Meh.

"Did he make it lactose free and wheat free and everything?" This is Mister Meh's first question about the food.

"Yes, yes, yes," I responded. There would be no debate if he did not.

"This may be the guy."

I hesitated. I am a heady girl - and this is my conundrum.

The man has scored major points in less than a week. First of all, he spins - I love to dance. His skills are impressive. He took me home, paid for the cab, and did not take advantage of me. He saw my messy flat. He saw my messy car. He still made me dinner. He made me dinner. He made me gluten-free, lactose-free dinner. I like this. He opens doors and pays for coffee. He walked with me to the pharmacy to buy tampons after giving me Ibuprofen at his place. These are quality qualities. My love language is acts of service and I am an organizational disaster - it takes a lot to quiet the cacophony in my brain, so these things are important. But there are practical matters that must be tended to.

I am of the mind. The DJ is of the body. I am yin, he is yang. I LOVE books and ideas and politics and fantasies and imagination and writing and photography and academia. I love being a nerd. I love nerds - Peter Orszag-style nerds. I knew nerd was the new sexy prior to the Obama administration making it cool . There is a reason Orszag has had a hot new fiance, a baby, and a baby mama - all within one year.

I like men who talk about the margin of diminishing returns, Html, Xtml, dividends, derivatives, precedence, and bipartisanship. I like men who discuss DNA, norepinephrine, the Atlantic Monthly and The New Yorker. Men who who would appreciate Big, the collaborative project between between the Atlanta Ballet and Big Boi. Stephen Colbert, Wolf Blitzer, Jackson Pollock, da Vinci and W.E.B. du Bois. I need to talk about AfriCobra, Impressionists, Monet, Manet, Matisse, and Modigliani. El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, Dr. King, Jesus, Mohammad, Yahweh. Race. Class. Education. Socio-economics. Cornel West. The Bodhisattva, Buddhism, Siddhartha, OM, Aum, Ahimsa, Namaste, Shanti, Shanti, Shanti....TS Eliot.

But the DJ is a breath of fresh air. Following in the footsteps of My Scotty with the door opening and the patient demeanor. Paying attention to what I say and not faulting my imperfections. Calling when he says he will, and talking about "next time." We like this. This is rational.

Then I am back in my head and it is abstract again. The DJ reads occasionally. I read three books at time. I love the news, he loves football. I want to move to New York City, he wants to go to Southeast Asia. I carry tight, turgid karma; his is clear - lucid and naive. My turgid karma could taint his lucid karma. The odds are questionable.

I want a psychological match. I want an intellectual match. I want a physical match. I do not know to what degree this makes a difference.

In theory, we seek the yin and the yang - the active and the receptive. In theory, there is a balance. I always sought this balance in right-brained - left-brained dynamics - not in body/mind dynamics.

I can neither confirm nor deny Mister Meh's suggestion that said DJ may be the one. After less than a week, I am not yet there. Yes, I enjoyed myself with him, and yes, he is thoughtful and fun. He is not my traditional "type", but I am now being more reflective, flexible, honest, and measured in my dating decisions. Hell, this is not even a relationship yet; it is undefined. It is a question, and I have not yet an answer.

Love Understated

The face of a lover is an unknown, precisely because it is invested with so much of oneself. It is a mystery, containing, like all mysteries, the possibility of torment. - James Baldwin Another Country, 1962

I just fell in love with a news article. And a man. Or a man. Both?

It is not rare that I fall in love with an article in The New York Times. It is not rare that I fall in love with the idea of a man in the news - usually one who writes it as opposed to one who is the subject of it. I was born a lover of words and I will die a lover of words. I am a self-proclaimed journalism junkie and a proud lover of men. This situation, this circumstance, should be of no surprise.

But it is. And it is different. I long ago gave up hope that my fairytale family dream would one day come true. I am, after all, five years past my ideal marrying age and three years older than the impending birth of my first child.

The day I graduated from college my family was asking me when I was going to get married - well, the ladies two generations past were. My mother was adamant that I have a career, travel, blah, blah, blah before I got married. I, however, did not give a damn. I figured I would travel with my husband. That's all we would do in those two years between the wedding and the kids, and then again after the kids were born and while they were being born. I was going to be a wife. Whatever came in between the degree and the death certificate were of no matter as long as I got my family. I would figure out the rest, and my husband and I would find a way to do our share of saving the world together.

Alas, here I am with my series of careers and my travels - no husband, no babies, no joint getaways. No common cause.

And today I read this article about John Bowe and the book he wrote “Us: Americans Talk About Love," - a groundbreaking new way to talk about romance - firsthand - his collection of oral histories. I am in love with his story, for it so mirrors mine - "beginning with a high school relationship in which he and a girlfriend broke up and got back together", followed by his film school girl, much like my senior year of college/post college love - in which we were similarly unable to resolve our problems, and best described by "his 30s — when he alternated between “long stretches of being alone” and “one-night stands or lame affairs,” (that would be my 20s and my 30s). All of which, I confess, leaves one a little skeptical about the opportunities for and sustainable existence of romantic love.

The most compelling aspect of Bowe's story is not that he met and fell in love with a woman to the extent that he had to explore this all-encompassing event/circumstance/situation, but that he thought - and may still think - he's going about it the best and logical way - that's what we all think, right? That we get the degree, we get the career, and then we get the family. He knows - he is absolutely positive - as much as I know and am absolutely positive, that when he has a family and kids, he will be happy. And that is not to mean that either of us is unhappy now - it just means that there is this effusive amount of love and joy and energy and adoration and passion and dedication at the surface of our hearts and we cannot wait to share it with those people in the houseful of love we have waited decades to create. But, no pressure.

The hardest concept for me to understand in my 20s was that just as much as women are "looking for love"- or hoping that the next person they date will either be the next person they fall in love with or choose to spend the rest of their life with - so are men. There are actually men who hope upon their next silence-inducing kiss or breathless moment complete with racing-heart-and-loss-for-words or simultaneous outburst of "Me too!", that she will be the one. But I am older and more cynical and I still find that a tiny bit optimistic. So I play it safe.

I read articles about men who reside in turn-of-the-century flats in The City, publish books, and live the much-aspired-to-life of working as a journalist for social justice; I travel, figure out my next career step, which will undoubtedly lead me to an existence in which I am residing in turn-of-the-century flats in The City, publishing books, and living the much-aspired-to-life of working as a journalist for social justice, and I contemplate falling in love with a man who appears not as the subject or the author of one my news journalism fantasies, but as someone more tangible than words.

"Go out in the woods, go out. Go out in the woods, go out."

This is how she learned that it is true what they say, that the wolf is the wisest of all. If you listen closely, the wolf in its howling is always asking the most important question--not where is the next food, not where is the next fight, not where is the next dance?--- but the most important question in order to see into and behind, to weigh the value of all that lives,

wooooooooor
aieeeee th'
soooooooool?"
wooooooooor
aieeeee th'
soooooooool?"
Where is the soul?
Where is the soul?

- The Wolf's Eyelash, Clarissa Pinkola Estes

My copy of Women Who Run With the Wolves is beat up. That may be putting it mildly. I have been having a love affair with the holy book for years now, too many too count. I officially finished the book - as in have read every story, every analysis, and every page - tonight while I was in the bathtub. It was my bathtub book. For years. Granted, there were nights when I read other books in the bath - When Things Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron, Normal is Just a Setting on the Dryer by Adair Lara, and of course Cameron Tuttle's Bad Girls' Guide to Getting What You Want - but I always came back to Women Who Run With the Wolves.

I feel proud. I feel whole. I feel as though I should cheer for myself - have a ceremony. I feel as though every tale in this book, in this collection of Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype, has followed my journey of the past several years. When I was reading last night or last week that each of the phases of a woman's life is about seven years, I realized I have been reading this book, on and off for the past seven years. In the beginning, I read only what I thought I needed to, Skeleton Woman. For so long the tale of Skeleton Woman and the love/death/love cycle was what I thought I needed - since I always seemed to be in the love/death/love cycle with one of my beaus. Eventually I kept reading, and Clarissa Pinkola Estes kept telling me my own story. She told me my tales, she told me my loves. She told me of my smarts and of my foolishness. She continually pointed out the shenanigans I continued to put up with - Bluebeard - and she always reassured me about my intuition. Then she isolated the beauty of the Ugly Duckling - me - and I knew I had found a home. The night I read of the Ugly Duckling - sometime in the fall of 2007 - I knew I was home. I knew I needed to thrive not just survive. I knew I had to keep reading. My life depended on it.

At this point in my life, several ideas, actions, thoughts, and goals are coming together. I have quit smoking cigarettes - the hardest thing I have ever done. I will not suffer for the sins of the mother, nor carry their burdens in my brain. I am fully and completely and wholly single. I have no "best friend", no ambiguous lover, no so-called "guy I am seeing or something," no boyfriend, no beau, no future husband. After years of rebounds and flings I am finally able to mourn My Michelangelo - as melancholy as it is, it is more so healing. I am committed to my goal of living my Plan A as opposed to torturing myself in Plan B. Although it means waking up at the grueling hour of 4:00 am to pursue my passion and saying no to friends and getting ready for bed at 7:30 pm. I am finding the balance between work and play and people and solitude and rest and discipline and love. I have decided I will no longer live my present to make up for the sins of my past.

I no longer fall prey to Bluebeard. I have shaken out the Doll in My Pocket. I now know the dance of Skeleton Woman, and I accept it. The Ugly Duckling, I have found my home. No longer am I a slave to The Red Shoes, no longer The Little Match Girl. I live in my own skin, in clear water. I climb the mountain and I am no longer a prisoner of my own rage. After years without them, my hands have grown back again. I am out in the woods. I am howling. I will follow the General Wolf Rules for Life: Eat, Rest, Rove in between, Render loyalty, Love the children, Cavil in the moonlight, Tune my ears, Attend to the bones, Make love, and howl often.

I am in the mood to celebrate.

Just because I have finished reading Women Who Run With the Wolves, by no means am I done with it. I will read it again and often. It lives within me. The hero's journey is a cycle, it is a cycle of birth and rebirth and it is continuous - so is life.

I have embraced my gifts. I have come to terms with my hair. I have let go of self-hatred and the quest to define who I am as a result of my skin color or despite it. I, finally, love my feet. I am not part of a people but I am a person. I am woman. I am La Que Sabe. I am La Loba. I howl.