If only my waistline were so easy. I have been a loser at the Biggest Loser, but my hope continues to be that if I pick myself up off the floor enough times, I might actually start picking up myself up every day. In an effort to incorporate exercise sans gymtime, I went kayaking over the weekend, in a storm. It scared the crap of me and made me feel amazing and shiny. The muscle sprain from gripping my paddle so hard was shiny too. Then it met a bag of ice. Don’t stop believing!

small exhibit currently displayed at the Ontario Science Centre in Toronto

giving you a look at the self-portraits of famous artists
and how they changed over the years.

Picasso morphs from a very respectable gentleman to a mere sketch, mostly air but still so defined.

and Rembrandt… all shadowed in darkness grew into the light, always serious with one jaunt into play.
was he trying on a mask that didn’t fit or was that face the one connected in his memory to “the good ole days”
that some of us never grow out of?

recently i’ve noticed how much i prefer photographs of myself where the waves are evident in my hair.
between last year and now, a self portrait for me would be very different in that way.
For now the difference is reflected in my Dragon Age character.

Looking in the mirror, making this snapshot of yourself, whether on canvas, in words or a journal
seems so much like a secret honeymoon with one’s self. and a puzzle for us.
I thoroughly enjoyed sitting with these men for the afternoon.

ps. i’m totally reminded of Pond and her skirts. be prepared to laugh and don’t forget to check out part 2!

You can just about imagine the expletives that went off in my head.

“Why’s that, dear?” I ask, attempting to keep my voice steady and imbued with only modest interest so as to not belie the disaster I imagined was about to walk through the door.

I was almost happy that the anger at the company was “only”  because of insensitive Super-bowl commercials. At least my $60 haircut for only $30 was not a scam. How narrow we can be.

Last Friday I did finally get that haircut. He did the weirdest thing. I have to tell you because I still almost don’t believe it myself.

My hair is super thick and any stylist, even the walk-in sorts, inevitably thin it out to some degree. Tom, as we shall call him, had the genius idea that this caused my frizzy hair to tend towards even more frizz. His method to thin out hair like mine was to do “channeling.” He said he would cut out small, very small, sections to literally THIN my hair. I agreed or maybe I was just wooed. I hadn’t been into that fancy of a salon in a long while and you know how intoxicating it can be to have someone – anyone! – start playing with your hair.

Another of the stylists came over as he began and asked if she could watch his technique. Is this common? Because I just didn’t think it was and while it creeped me out a little, I was both flattered to have “the teacher” as my stylist and still deaf, dumb and blind from the simple act of having my hair cut. It was oh so long and thick, heavy and overdue.

He started to cut and she exclaimed “Oh my God!” RIGHT after he did so.

Now what would you think if you were in the chair?!

It really does sound worse than it was. And I’m playing it up. And I was the one there. This gal didn’t seem so bright and I really honestly truly thought she was simply amazed at the technique. Tom, as we are still calling him, joked for awhile about how her reaction was the exact wrong one to say in front of any client and continued to cut and thin and then there was this girl with a broom. She kept sweeping behind me. It’s odd how I noticed her presence, but it’s purpose there and the further ramifications didn’t fully register until I came home and felt my head.

But I’m jumping ahead of myself. Tom did a beautiful cut and style. Men always accentuate the wave in my hair. Women blow or iron it out straight. While I think all of you out there with crisp clean locks are so beautiful, it’s just not for me. I am now fully the embodiment of – what my friends in college used to call – my evil twin sister. When I’d show up at school with hair straight, I was just me. When the wavy locks came out, Adriana was born and she didn’t take crap from no one. As I get older, the two halves are merging. I like my waves but had little idea what to do with them. Tom showed me. And I walked out of there feeling great!

So you’re thinking that whatever he did can’t have been that bad, right?

Well, I dunno, maybe.

TWO days later we are sitting around the table playing a board game. I get an itch on my scalp and go to scratch it. My hair is there and, then wait, it’s not. What’s that short stuff? Thoughts tumble out one after the other. It takes half a second to go from the sensation of what I felt at my scalp to the full understanding of what Tom did to lighten my hair so very much.

He cut it off. Literally.

In layers as you go up my head from the neck, there’s a thin row of hair, then a thin row of buzz-cut short hair, then hair, then buzz, all the way up to the crown. No kidding. I have no idea what this will do to my hair in the future. What is another stylist going to say when she gets her hands on me again? But now, right now, it’s okay. I think. I just washed my hair for the first time since the cut. He said curling it in fabric like girls used to do before electricity is one of the best way to encourage my waves, so I’m off to rip some fabric, do some tying and get a few hours sleep. One night off is never enough, but I just had to ask: has anyone ever “channeled” your hair before?

Just finished the polish on my nails. Not so sure I’m happy with them. They started out as a nude and then with the top coat became a very subtle shade of pink. Now I can’t get Julia Roberts in a bathrobe and all that hair out of the camera of my mind.

And still I am an island. Oddly enough.

Heard stephen fry say something today that totally inspired me… “the eternal adventure of trying to discover moral truth in the world” and since then virginia woolf has had me in tears. She’d been sitting there rather quietly. A pretty picture on an unnoticed bookshelf. Why have I not read “A Room of One’s Own” before today? Because I have not listened before today.

Yes, I was a good girl, obeyed my own syballus and read Dawkins and no longer believe, I think, in god or God or… you know. (I don’t even sound convincing to myself yet.)

I was even better and finished the tome on sign language. Hard slog at times, that one. And truly fascinated as I was by Broca and Wernicke, it was still a lesson, one necessary for my life to set my fingers flying.

But what truly did I want to read… to make sense of me. For this I have come to an Englishwoman who ended her own life. Poor girl. why must genius walk so closely with despair?

Still, page after page, she calls and I follow. Lights are set off and long dark mysteries revealed. And since she is so fond of them, I will say it. You have been my mirror.

“So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say.”

And yet – how fond I am of conjuctions at the front of sentences! – with all the optimism in my heart, all the grandeur that I feel, knowing it from completely new springs, I want to shout out upon the rooftops. The wind and I shall have a contest of wills. It would be much easier to type klickty-klack on Facebook, in email or blog, but up-turned my stomach has been since I began detailing where I am. I am nervous. Will you know me? Will you still love me?

My life… my life up till now has in part been a sham. No, that is all wrong, a sham cannot be in part. For that would only been a prank or farce or some other noun of less catatrosphic conditions. A sham indeed. What am I to be? Who am I to be is someone totally unlike the person they once knew. And I find surprising my wish that they were no longer hanging on. For to disappoint breaks my heart. And it would be easier to become. I try to let go but they return. Friend requests bum me out.

What deep things do they think? Am I alone? While I’m at work or play, gaming or chopping, my mind is somewhere else. Never content to the menial. For so long I tried to be. No more.

Tonight is for quiet. There is nothing but her. Go away. Yes, even you, dear diary.

“Indeed my aunt’s legacy unveiled the sky to me, and substituted for the large and imposing figure of a gentleman, which Milton recommended for my perpetual adoration, a view of the open sky.”

She is Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

Here is the small excerpt that wove one more thread into my mind.

Interviewer: “In your most recent book Nomad, you write that its been the work of your lifetime in a sense to put your grandmother’s ghost to rest. What do you mean by that?”

Ayaan: “On the emotional level it’s of course very hard because the loneliness that my grandmother talked about is there and was there if in my case I opted to step out of the community. And she was completely right in saying that if you do that, you will find yourself in stranger waters, you will be a stranger wherever you come, you will never have that sense of belonging that you take for granted now. She’s completely right in that.

At my lowest and deepest moments of loneliness I did have moments that I thought “I wish I hadn’t left” and I wished they were around me… I started to wish for all kinds of things that were not possible and laying that ghost to rest was to accept that yes if you as an individual seek freedom from the clan, from the collection, you are embarking on a life of loneliness but you have to then shape your destiny and create new friendships, a new network and a new family for yourself. But that is life. And so that in a way, when I say laying the ghost to rest it is the feelings of guilt and feelings of nostalgia, those are the feelings that now I am at peace with.”

I’ve put Ayaan’s books on my to-read shelf over at Goodreads. She has done amazing work to advance the cause of women’s rights around the world. Feminist theory simply won’t leave me alone. Science, caring, woman. Such themes swirl around the days of my life, and each time I recognize their voice in the wind, I wonder more deeply what answer they’ll one day demand.

“You need not apologize for being brilliant, talented, gorgeous, rich or smart. Your success doesn’t take away from anyone else’s. It actually increases the possibility that others can have it too. Your money increases your capacity to give money to others, your joy increases your capacity to give joy to others, and your love increases your capacity to give love to others. Your playing small serves no one. It is a sick game. It is old thinking, and it is dire for the planet. Stop it immediately.” ~ Marianne Williamson, A Woman’s Worth

The sun is shining inside and I can’t hold it in. My thoughts jump from boyfriends that didn’t make the cut to a small tussle I had with a co-worker recently. Somehow they are connected. The middle ground is so hard to find. That place, that magical place, where I can assert myself and people around me don’t find it intimidating. To a large extent, it is why I am shy. There is much more certainty than is proper behind these downcast eyes. But when I unleash her, there are consequences. Everything from being alone on Saturday night to snarky remarks.

I am not trying to boss you.
I have an opinion.
Stating it implies nothing about your worth.
I am not trying to put you in the deep shade.
I am trying to shine.
Shine with me, next to me, grow in my light.

remember how you used to sit me down in the bathroom for hours to set my hair. especially the night before school pictures. you were so careful with the hot rollers. every single strand was in place before you’d consent to securing it. every section meticulously brushed. i’d preen when you were done. somehow only you could make me feel that beautiful.

the stool became a throne when we bought grandmas house. made of metal but painted creamy offwhite, i sat ensconced in style. certainly not yours though. you would never have purchased such a thing, all curled armrests and decorative scrollwork. once meant for a pretty lady to sit before a vanity mirror, i sat before you.

the throne was my power and shame. my reign upon it rather embarrassing. it kept me your little girl who didn’t like walking barefoot in long grass and who prissed her curls for the camera too long. where hairdressers invented frankenstein versions of myself to look at, you at least found something of the emerging me. so there was reason to endure.

recreating that moment over the years without you has been painful. always torn between some notion of beauty and some inkling of myself. your ghost ever at my shoulder. did I feel beautiful? sometimes. mostly ridiculous.

many years later i sat before different hands. i’ll always wonder what made that day different. which stars were in the sky, what made me call for that appointment, why i got that girl. the time had come. i watched her and the horrific invention in the mirror cracked and fell away.

a whole person unearthed, chiseled out from a brush and a blow dryer, so long undiscovered at your hands or mine.

and what she found came home with me. she did not hide. i could bring her forward any time i choose. the inner lining of the cloak i’d long worn.

Where is your Internet heart?
Revisiting online privacy and presence

amidst everyone freaking out about facebook latest changes to privacy, friends leaving facebook and other friends discussing blogging, I’ve come to the conclustion that my loyalties are in the wrong places.

Facebook has been bothering me for other reasons on top of the current uproar. And the pile of stress was so high that I finally recognized it for what it is. A constant flowing stream of updates and applications that have little importance to my daily life. My exuberant reach at the start went way too far. My daughter said it best when she confided: “Mom, I like being involved and busy, but I don’t like doing everything and having no time to relax.” Exactly! Thank God for my ten-year old fount of wisdom.

The deluge coming from Facebook feels just like that to me. Too many people to keep up with. One liners are funny when you post them on a wall, but do they penetrate? are they a building block? do they make a friendship when after years the only thing left is a hyper-link from one insecure social media webpage to another. There was way too much time reading somethings and not enough Skype calls to my girls, my real friends who have been there through thick and thin and who read my blog. Not enough blog writing – you should see the backlog in my drafts! – and expressing and reading and spending time with the people that matter.

So after much hand-wringing – just ask my husband how many times I asked him a question like “what will people think?” or “will they hate me?’ or “should i tell them what i’m doing?” still trying to please – I seriously downscaled my Facebook: chopped my friend list in HALF, tightened privacy settings and removed any information that I do not want totally public.

When I left high school, I made and kept a promise to myself: that I wouldn’t feel obliged any longer to keep in contact with people just because there were the only game on the block. Facebook changed all that and put me right back in 1995, a pleated plaid school skirt standing in front of a baby blue locker absolutely covered in pictures of people who don’t call me on the weekends. Sheesh, why did I do that to myself?!

Where is my Internet heart?

Where my real one is. Right here. And from now on, my online presence will not be what Zuckerberg wants. It will be what I want. And I like Twitter better anyways.

ps. In case you haven’t heard… http://www.quitfacebookday.com/

That indescribable assurance that what you are doing or about to do is the right decision.

Where does yours come from?

What faith calms your twittering heart when on the verge of a yes or a no?

I used to rely on my religious faith, based in Roman Catholicism. But – as long time readers know – I don’t find much comfort there these days.

Knowing that God loved me, knowing that I had followed all the rules, knowing that I had been taken care of many times before lent a certain credibility to walking into darkness. I could do it.

See, I think with religion, answers were easy. Or rather I thought that with religion answers *should* be easy. Like, if you are X, then Y is the decision you make. But even that is not right and not good. I threw out that book long ago. Cookie cutters I called them. Bah. Boring. Restrictive. Let me out! I screamed without knowing I screamed it. And when I finally heard myself, it all went… kaboom!!!

Kaboom was fun and freeing and all, but now I feel flag-less. Who am I cheering for? Me? Wow, that seems vain. And yet, who else will do it and who else deserves it?

I’m on the verge of making a decision. I’m scared. I can’t depend on religion to offer solace, I can’t depend on someone agreeing with me, it’s just me. Yet I want so desperately to know that I am doing the right thing. I need the security of being sure.

I have always always wanted to be the good girl. I try to blame my mom for that. Certainly she didn’t make the sentiment any easier. But that idea seems so seminal to who I am and has sprouted again in another generation that it starts me wondering that maybe it is simply who I am.

What a boring life, eh? To always want to be good. What IS good? For you it is surely different than for I. And yet both good.

Wow, to even acknowledge that enough to write it threatens the borders of my mind. And yet life will not let those borders be, events constantly acting as waves against the fences built so high by some strange combination of genetics and environment.

There is some place inside of me that knows.

Maybe all those years, I gave religion the credit where it ought to have been my own back getting the pat.

But if that is true, why does knowing now still seem so frightening? Why do I need someone to tell me its OK? How many books have I read in so many different genres by widely different authors who teach the same lesson over and over? How many blog posts must I write? (Yes, even my little blog is a humble acting out of what seems to be my life lesson.) How many times do I need to hear it before patterns and anxiety dissolve?

I must beat this out of myself. For I must foster a new person, let her grow up without this hindrance, for she is a radiant beautiful thing. And I want her to know it.

There is some place inside of me that knows.

“Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.”
— Henry David Thoreau

#1. I got a great cut and color! walked out of there feeling like a million bucks. not that the shape was much different than usual — little past shoulder length, layered near bottom and around my face, thinned and long bangs for interest. but the way she styled it took my breathe away. rather than straightening it with a flat iron, she used a round brush and blow dryer. the effect was stunning. not that I’m trying to brag lol. but my hair was blessedly straight up top without frizz and yet it’s natural body hadn’t been stripped away and the bottom could flip and bounce and have fun. looking back at me from the mirror was the me I always hoped to see but never dreamed I could be.

I tell you I wanted to sing! so first thing upon leaving I march myself into a pharmacy to buy an identical brush and later found to my wondering eyes that with my old blow dryer and an extreme helping of patience, I was able to replicate the same result as my stylist. this from a girl who swore she never stand in front of a mirror for more than the ten minutes it takes to brush my teeth apply moisturizer and basic makeup.

#2 I got a job. a real one. with a salary and vacation time and benefits and security and everything. it’s my very first. seems like the girl who always falls asleep during movies does fairly well working graveyard. and that same girl who thought she’d never be able to work with so and so dearly loves her new work partners from Jamaica and Ireland.

so what does this mean? these things happening that I never thought would. it means my imagination is starting to believe enough to peep out of it’s little closet. it means life is still wonderful and least of all predictable. it means I’m starting to believe in miracles.

to top the day off, here’s one more thing i thought i’d never ever do….

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