Christy Potter's Blog, page 5

Christy Writes: On the Inspiration for My New Book

I’m in the final steps before the release of my new book next week, which basically means I’m alternating between elation and exhaustion.

I’ll be writing another post with more details about the book when it comes out, hopefully Monday or Tuesday, but right now I want to answer a question I keep getting about it. Specifically, where the idea came from.

My book, The Bacchae, is a retold, modernized Greek myth based on Euripides’ play of the same name. As you may or may not know, depending on the level of love you have for mythology, the story is about the god Dionysus, who is the son of Semele – a human female – and Zeus. Euripides’ play tells the story of Zeus and Semele, his jealous wife, Hera, and the son who resulted from their affair, Dioynsus. Now Dionysus, called Bacchus in Roman mythology, is basically the god of wine, women, and every kind of debauchery you can imagine. Think Charlie Sheen in a toga and you’ve got the idea.

So why did I decide to retell a story like this? How could I NOT? I had to – this story was just begging to be reinvented. So I took these amazing, lush, horrible, beautiful characters, and I modernized them. What I discovered, as I delved into their story, is how much of what mythology teaches about the human condition not only still holds true today, it may be truer now than it ever was. The Bacchae is about the two opposite sides of man’s nature: the civilized side, and the wild side. For me to bring this into a modern setting was easy. Maybe a little too easy.

I’ve also always wanted to write my own version of a myth. Two of my favorite books of all time, C.S. Lewis’ Till We Have Faces and John Updike’s The Centaur, are both retold myths and are completely captivating. With this inspiration and all the intense reading and studying I’ve done of some of the greatest writers to ever put pen to page, I’ve created this book.

Right now I feel, as I always do when I’m about to release a new book, as though I’m sending my baby off to the first day of school. Proud, excited, trepidatious, and a little melancholy at the knowledge that I did the best I could and it’s out of my hands now. Again, I’ll post here next week when it’s available at and that time I’ll give you a synopsis and more detail about the characters. In the meantime, Mama needs a drink.

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Christy Writes: On Charting a New Course

I haven’t posted in awhile, for a thousand different reasons. Mostly it’s the usual stuff. Things have been incredibly busy – The Guy and I hosted an art show for local artists at our glass studio. We buried Glenn. We spent a weekend visiting friends in beautiful upstate New York. I’ve been taking a summer yoga class. I had to clean out the cat’s ears. Then I had to drive her to her therapist so she could talk about how much she hates me right now, because oh man so much.

But what’s been occupying me most over the past few weeks is a future-altering decision I made recently, after years of contemplation. For the past 26 years, I’ve been a newspaper journalist, and although that’s still what I do on a part time, freelance basis, I’ve been feeling for awhile like my calling may be changing. And over the past month, I’ve realized it’s not changing – it’s changed. I’m just a little slow to catch on sometimes.

So as of this fall, I’ll be a full-time student at my local seminary, studying for my Master of Divinity degree, and pursuing ordination in the Presbyterian Church where I’ve been a member for the past 15 years.

This may seem like a giant leap from the world of newspaper journalism, and while it is, I know it’s the right path for me. I’ve told a few people who are closest to me about my plans, and not only have they been supportive, hardly anyone has been surprised.

That, I’ll admit, threw me a bit. I expected more along the lines of “Wow, really?” or “I sure didn’t see that coming!” But those who know me best registered no real shock. That’s when I realized that sometimes people see our gifts better than we do. I’ve always identified myself as a writer – and I will still be writing – but I know I have other gifts, other skills that I can use to reach others, to help bring God’s love to a world that’s hurting in a way it’s never been hurting before.

I’m not a particularly preachy person, one of those who talks about religion and spirituality as often and easily as I talk about the weather or my cats or the Mets. But those who know me best know I’m deeply spiritual and everything I do is rooted in my faith.

Maybe the fact that more people don’t know that about me is a bigger problem than I’d been willing to admit. As I told my pastor recently, I can sit in the pew on Sunday morning and think about different ways the church as a global body could be doing better outreach and shake my head because we’re not doing it, then go home and read the funnies and take a nap and finish the laundry and not think about it again until some horrible story crops up in the news or another religion-based argument blows up my Facebook news feed, or until I’m back in church the following Sunday and I think about it again.

I’m not doing anyone any good that way. Gandhi said “If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change.” Mother Theresa said “We can do no great things, only small things with great love.” Jesus commands (his word, not mine) us to love one another. In other words, sitting in church on Sunday morning surrounded by like-minded people is great, but it doesn’t help the person who isn’t in church at all but lonely or hungry or given over to the suffocating dank darkness of despair. If there’s hurting in the world – and I literally don’t know anyone who doubts there is – why am I not doing more to help? I know I can’t change the whole world by myself, but as Anne Lamott says, “I just try to love and serve everyone, and bring everyone water, and lend an ear; that’s what Jesus said to do.”

So at the end of August, I start my new journey. It’s a radical change for me, but I’ve spent the last few years working on me, focusing on growth and healing and letting go and all that stuff that sounds great in Pinterest quotes but is actually pretty hard to put into practice. I’ve turned my spirit on its ear lately, and now I know why. There’s a new path that’s opened before me as I begin the second half of my life. Others may not have been surprised, but I sure was. I already have some great people who are stepping up to mentor me. It will be three years of hard work, and right now I don’t know where I’ll be when I’m finished. I may be in a pulpit somewhere. I may be working as a chaplain. Or I may be in an urban location I’ve never even thought of, working for social justice. Wherever it is, I’m ready.

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Christy Writes: On Acceptance

It’s 6 a.m. and I am sipping milky coffee and squinting out the window at the rain like it’s hooligans on my lawn. I’m contemplating trying to make it to my 6:30 yoga class, but the studio is a mile’s walk away and my overarching thought is how much I hate doing yoga in wet clothes. I sweat like a lumberjack as it is. And it’s not just drizzling out there, it’s a monsoon. In here, on the other hand, there’s coffee, a purring cat, David Arkenstone on the stereo, and a sandalwood candle I’ve just lit in an apparent attempt to entice myself to stay home and write instead. I settle back into my writing chair. I’m remarkably persuasive.

Acceptance.

It seems I’ve spent most of my life struggling mightily against the invisible restraints of whatever is, automatically fighting any decision I perceive as having been made for me, determined to decide for myself.

Occasionally that works. But more often, for me anyway, it leads to more conflict and upset because, let’s face it, sometimes what is is what’s going to be and fighting it just makes it dig in deeper. My irritation at this morning’s rain hasn’t parted the clouds so I can make my way to yoga like Moses crossing the Red Sea. If anything, I think it’s raining harder now.

Acceptance.

I’ve lately begun to learn the difference, and there is one, between acceptance and giving up. Giving up is a negative surrender. A fine, I don’t care, whatever. Acceptance is an embracing of what is, an alrighty then, let’s see where this goes. Accepting something doesn’t necessarily mean you like it, just that you’re open to what it has in store for you.

Guy’s first cousin Glenn was diagnosed a couple of months ago with advanced esophageal cancer. Everyone continually referred to Glenn’s “battle” with cancer, but it was from Glenn that I learned the most profound lesson about acceptance – not as an abstract, sounds-good concept, but in a real life, watch-this kind of way.

I don’t think any of us took his diagnosis as well as he did, including me. I love Glenn – he was always supportive of my writing projects, he found me hilarious, and he bequeathed his vintage Aqualung album to me last Thanksgiving. His initial response to his diagnosis I don’t know. That went on inside Glenn’s own mind. Early on, we all tried to buoy his spirits – as well as our own – with positive sentiments. You’re going to beat this thing! You’ll outlive us all! Meanwhile, in the way those closest to the stricken tend to do, we prayed for a miracle and braced for the inevitable.

The miracle, it turned out, was Glenn. Knowing his cancer wasn’t curable, he accepted it and instead brought his focus to his three children, his friends, his extended family, his community, his life as it was now presented to him. What could have been a wrenching, exhausting, prolonged goodbye for all of us turned into a weeks-long celebration of Glenn. I’ve never seen such an outpouring of love. Every person Glenn touched with his wonderfully huge laugh and his kind heart cropped up to tell him so. He was interviewed on the radio, the television, and in the newspaper, now weak and thin and struggling to talk, but always smiling and reminding everyone to give back, to love, to live. His friends took over Facebook to such an extent I kept expecting him to show up as a trending topic.

This Tuesday, he posted a link to Peter, Paul and Mary’s “Leaving on a Jet Plane.” And then he died. And it was like we were all carrying him out on our shoulders, crying and cheering.

Acceptance.

As I’ve come to understand the whisper-thin line between acceptance and giving up, I’m finding more and more ways I can be accepting in my own life, and how truly empowering that is, how freeing, and how beautifully it allows me to live in the moment and to appreciate what poet Lucille Clifton calls “only here, only now.”

Acceptance.

The rain this morning is so beautiful.

 

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Christy’s Shorts: The Cat

Charlie found a dead cat once.

It was 1978, the summer she turned nine, and she was staying at her grandparents’ farm. Her parents shipped her there every summer for six weeks, as much for themselves as for her. The farm soothed Charlie’s restless spirit, and she adored her Grandpa Pip, a weathered man with snow white hair whose whole body shook when he laughed and who understood his young granddaughter better than anyone. His name was Franklin, but for reasons no one understood, Charlie had called him Pip from the day she learned to talk. He called her Bug. No one understood that either. It was their handshake, their club, their world.

The day Charlie found the dead cat, Pip had gone early into town to pick up a part for his tractor, her grandmother told Charlie when she came downstairs. The heat made her feel sticky and heavy and not in the mood for breakfast, so Charlie grabbed a banana and announced that she was going outside. Her grandmother made Charlie uneasy anyway – she always imagined the old woman was trying to slowly poison her with her terrible cooking because she was jealous of how close Charlie and Pip were.

Charlie sat down on the bottom step of the front porch, where the shade from the giant, knobbly elm tree left her a cool spot in the mornings to collect her thoughts. Her feet, pushed into her untied black Converse high-tops, were the only part of her in the sun, getting her used to it, like when she went into the pool an inch at a time so the shock of all that cold water didn’t kill her.

She squinted off into the distance, trying to see if she could spot Pip’s clattery old pickup coming back. A wooden fence separated her grandparents’ backyard from the neighbor’s field behind it, and beyond that was a gravel road. The endlessly flat Kansas landscape made it easy for Charlie to lower her head just a bit and make it appear the cars in the distance were driving along the top of the fence. But the fence was empty. Pip wasn’t back yet. No doubt he’d stopped off at the hardware store for a cup of black coffee in a white Styrofoam cup and a discussion with Silas, who had worked there longer than anyone could remember, even Silas. Charlie liked Silas. He always said “Hiya, Charlie girl” and gave her a cold wet can of strawberry Shasta.

The sun had begun to sidle up Charlie’s legs and she moved irritably up a step but it wasn’t long before the sun did the same and, tired of the world’s slowest game of tag, Charlie got up and wandered across the front lawn toward the barn and Pip’s outbuildings, peeling her banana as she went. Pip never wanted her to go into his toolshed without him because it was full of sharp, jabby things but today, missing him, she pushed open the door and went in. It was dusty and cool inside, still momentarily untouched by the rising heat. It had a comforting smell of dried garden soil, paint thinner, and old greasy lawnmower parts. She closed the door behind her, looking around at nothing in particular and eating her banana. She felt strangely safe. No one in the world knew where she was at that moment and, unless she chose to tell them, never would.

The rake Pip had been using in the yard the day before had fallen over and she picked it up and was leaning it against the workbench when she saw the cat. It was big, black and white, and had wedged itself awkwardly between the workbench and some old milk pails. Pip had barn cats all over the place – he called them the Mouse Police – and Charlie wondered how this one had gotten into the shed and managed to get stuck. She moved a milk pail to help it get free and a swarm of flies rose up from its wet-looking head, lolling to the side at a strange angle. A strangled little scream shot out of Charlie and she dropped the milk pail with a clatter that scared her even more. Whirling blindly around, she ran out of the shed, tripped over her untied shoelaces and sprawled on the gravel, skinning her knees and smashing the rest the banana with her palm. It was years before she could eat bananas again, and even then they tasted faintly like dead cat.

 

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Christy Writes: I Am From…

I am from watercolor prairie sunsets,

sticky summer days and lightening bugs,

Freeze Tag and jump ropes, hide and seek,

dares and dibs and dizzying leaps from trees,

purple Kool-Aid, grass stains and bubble baths before bed.

I am from Saturday morning cartoons,

Tom and Jerry and Bugs Bunny and meep meep!

milk and cereal and styrofoamy marshmallow bits,

coloring books and half-peeled crayons,

tangle-haired Barbies, Shrinky Dinks and Colorforms.

I am from Sunday church services and Wednesday youth group,

Christmas Eves by the Advent candles,

Easter egg hunts in the yard, noisy birthday parties,

sparklers and firecrackers and potato salad,

the Macy’s parade forever married to the smell of turkey.

I am from long, snaky roads slipping off into the flat forever,

amber waves of grain, tornadoes and lightening storms,

crickets and cicadas and mosquitoes,

fat, heavy rains that rolled through the night,

prayers for snow days answered with drifts up to my waist.

I am from the simple, the basic, the alpha,

the Breadbasket, the Bible Belt, the most mid of the Midwest,

limestone and sand hills and chiggers and hay bales,

the flat land, the rich earth, the open sky.

I am from stern-faced women in aprons and weathered men on combines,

pink-cheeked pre-teens and robust babies,

fresh air and rhubarb stalks dipped in sugar,

tomatoes smooth and warm in the sun,

friendly neighbors and dandelioned lawns.

I am from daydreams and diary entries,

cassette tapes and ticket stubs,

hairspray and stonewashed denim, Benetton and Benatar,

pressed corsages and heartthrob posters,

tears on my pillow and wishes on the stars.

I am from a vast and rich beginning,

a life that will never end as I reach in and reach out

while my spirit both lifts and grounds me,

as I am growing and unfolding and becoming.

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Christy Writes: On That Little Black Dress

I used to have a little black dress.

This was in my early 20s, before I knew about the mythic Little Black Dress, worn by Holly Golightly into the hallowed halls of fashion history. This was just a dress I bought because I liked it. It was form-fitting and outlined curves I didn’t appreciate enough then but would kill for now. It wasn’t can’t-sit-down short but it was above the knee enough to be sexy. It had long sleeves and a modest neckline. It was a generic black dress in just about every way, except that when I put it on, it felt like magic.

I remember when I first saw it, I almost left it on the rack because it had an ugly black knit vest sewn to the front that took any potential hotness and sent it off to pick up some sensible flats and go give piano lessons in a stuffy house with doilies on all the furniture. But when I carefully cut the vest off, I liberated the dress, THE dress, The Dress, the one that would shape not only my figure but the next ten years of my life.

It was The Dress I wore when I wanted to look my best. It was The Dress I wore the first time I interviewed someone famous (see below for that photo). It was The Dress I wore for the last party I threw at my apartment in my hometown before I moved to New York so that everyone could see for themselves that I was already a New Yorker because look at The Dress.

I wore The Dress the night I went to cover an appearance by a well-known state politician, or The Night My Life Could Have Changed Forever. I wore it because it made me feel sleek and sexy, but with heels and pearls so I looked polished and professional. Plus sleek and sexy. That night I met the politician’s chief of staff. Our eyes locked. He was all kinds of a smoke show, tall and chiseled and with one of those smiles engineered to make girls forget their names. He noticed me, of course, because of The Dress. This I was sure of. We talked. Far more than necessary for a political aide and a local journalist. We laughed. We sat too close together. At the end of the evening, he gave me his business card and told me if I was ever in his town, I should look him up.

These were the prehistoric days before texting and email and Facebook, so I did all I could do, by which I mean I spent the next two weeks searching frantically for an excuse to get to his town. Finally I found someone who had a valid (read: not hormone-driven) reason they were going there, and I caught a ride. I called and told him when I’d be in town. He sounded pleased to hear from me. We set up a date. When the day arrived, I was struck with the realization – and I mean it almost knocked me to my knees – that I had nothing to wear. The Dress had been my weapon the first time I met him. If I showed up to a casual Sunday brunch at Ruby Tuesday in it, I’d look like an ass. An ass who never changed clothes. I hit the mall frantically and finally settled on new dark blue jeans and a black sweater, and went off to meet him. We had brunch. And he never called me again.

I naturally blamed The Dress. If The Dress hadn’t set the standard so high, the jeans and sweater might have had a fighting chance. The Dress set us all up to fail.

When his boss came to town a few weeks later, I went. I put on The Dress and I went. I wanted him to see what he’d let slip through his fingers. I wanted his last memory of me to be my casting him a withering sidelong glance as I slithered out of the room and out of his life, instead of the one I knew he probably had, of me red-faced and laughing and putting my elbow into the ranch dressing. I walked into the room that night in The Dress, my head held high.

He wasn’t there.

That was some 20 years ago and my memory has pixelated his face to the point that all I can see are big teeth, great hair, and shattered expectations. I didn’t, as you might expect, toss The Dress into the nearest donation bin after that. It had become a part of me by then, and the confidence it had given me stayed with me. It became the very essence of who I was in my 20s, a girl just figuring myself out and throwing darts at the world – some carefully aimed, others haphazardly tossed over my shoulder – to see where I’d land. I was a little girl in a dress that made me feel like a woman.

I don’t remember when The Dress finally went to the Goodwill. There was no traumatic moment of deciding to add it to the bag of donations. There was no debating about whether I should mend the sagging hem and dunk it in a vat of Rit Dye and see where it took me next. I didn’t need it anymore.

I know who I am now. I’ve stopped throwing darts – I know where I belong. And most importantly, I know what makes me beautiful. Beauty comes from having your own style and knowing who you are at every level. But in some of my greatest memories, I still see the little black dress that brought me here.

Me, Tony Randall, and The Dress

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Christy Writes: You Don’t Have to Be a Kitten to Be a Rock Star

I adopted a shelter cat last week. I adopted her for a lot of reasons, but mostly because – I’ll be honest – she’s old.

She’s a petite orange Persian who had been handed off to the shelter about a year ago. When I saw her face, I knew she was meant for me. She looked tired, sad, and vaguely irritated. I bent to pet her and she rubbed her head against my hand and began to purr. Then five seconds later, she batted my hand away and hissed.

I reacted to my editor much the same way just the other day.

“This one,” I told the shelter worker. “I want this one.”

“Just so you know, if you’re looking for a warm and fuzzy lap cat, this one isn’t. She’s pretty, uh… independent.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “I want her.”

The shelter said her name was Sassy, but it didn’t really suit her and she didn’t respond to it anyway, so I changed her name to Charlotte – after Charlotte Brontë, about whom I am in the middle of an in-depth study and writing project. I call her Charlie for short. That suits her.

There was no charge for adopting her since she’s ten – they only charge adoption fees for kittens. That struck me as a little sad. Also, have you ever had a kitten in the house? They’re adorable, four-footed royal pains in the neck who have one goal: making sure you never sleep. They should give us money to adopt kittens. Here’s the kitten, fifty bucks, and a refillable prescription for Ambien. No returns.

Anyway, all the way home, I was planning the myriad ways I was going to shower Charlie with attention and affection and better food than I eat most of the time. We would be best friends. Inseparable. Like Collette, I would lounge about literarily and compose epic novels with my loyal and adoring cat nearby.

Three hours later I was trying to coax her out from under the radiator in my writing studio while Dakota, our longtime and highly spoiled cat, watched with obvious disdain. He likes Guy better anyway. I left her there but went back every few hours to reach under and pet her. And every time, she rubbed against my hand and purred so loud I was afraid she was going to sprain her purr muscle. But she wouldn’t come out.

Later, just before bed, I went back into the room, put some Enya on the stereo at a low volume, and settled down on the floor. I reached under the radiator and petted Charlie for a moment. Then I leaned back against the wall and sighed.

“Look, I get it,” I told her. “It hasn’t been easy, has it? I’m in the beginning stages of a mid-life thing here myself, feeling like the vast majority of people I see are literally half my age, wondering when my knees started making so much noise when I walk up steps, looking in the mirror and noticing lines and shadows that weren’t there before. I get it. Sometimes I feel like I live in a cage too. But you know what? I think you’re beautiful. And I’m glad you’re here. I’m going to take care of you and you’re going to take care of me, and you and I going to prove once and for all that you don’t have to be a kitten to be a freaking rock star.”

This time when I reached under the radiator to pet her, she poked her head out and studied me for a moment, then came slowly out. Then she rubbed against me. Then she purred. Then I cried.

As I write this, the cat I was warned isn’t cuddly or friendly is sprawled beside me in my writing chair. Watching me. Purring. Yeah, she’s definitely a rock star.

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Christy with a Camera: Beauty in the Ordinary

“My only duty was to describe reality as it had come to me — to give the mundane its beautiful due.” John Updike

 

 

Vine

 

Dandelion

 

Fishing

 

Grass

 

Onions

 

Beach

 

Shadows

 

Sticky

 

Water

 

John

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Christy Writes: On birthdays, squirrels, and sinking in

The days and weeks following my birthday always make me contemplative but I find it’s not negative or nostalgic or in any way panicky about being a year older. For whatever reason that doesn’t bother me. My contemplation always has a more positive focus, or at least points me in a positive direction, even if the road between here and there is a bit pot holey.

Lately my mind is hovering around the idea of simplicity, getting back to basics, giving my life a trim, honing my focus. It’s become a more common mantra these days, simplifying our lives, but I’m pretty sure none of us (me included) are ready to take it to the extremes that Thoreau did. For some it means reducing consumption or commitments or spending. Those are all good. For me it means all of that, plus a little extra. It’s that little extra I’m still tossing about in my mind, playing mental catch with myself while I work it out.

For the past couple of years I’ve been recommitting myself to my craft, to writing as the great masters did it, taking my time, making sure it reflects the best that I’ve got, instead of worrying about getting it done quickly so I can slap a cover and a price on it and get on to the next one. I’ve done that, and it leaves me a little chilly. It’s a bit like cramming a fast food burger from a bag while crawling through traffic on the way to my next thing. It’s unsatisfying, cheap, and makes me a little gassy.

So while I’ve fully re-devoted myself to practicing my art in the old way, I’ve also been looking at the rest of my life through the same lens. When did we become so instant, so plastic, so hollow? It feels like everything is a race, a competition, a shouting match, a virtual cage fight, and I don’t remember signing up for that. I used to enjoy every moment when I was a kid. One of my mother’s favorite stories about me is the day she was driving home and saw me, on my way home from school. I was standing absolutely still, my eyes fixed on something. She wondered, as you would, what on earth I was doing. When she got closer, she could see that I was watching a squirrel with a nut. She says she watched me watching that squirrel with all my attention and was touched by my simple fascination.

I miss watching squirrels.

I miss hanging out in the bathtub, lying back so my ears were underwater and listening to all the sounds around me, muffled in aquatic gauze, making even the mundane sound mysterious.

I miss getting lost in a book for hours at a time, so that when I put it down it takes me awhile to get my bearings and remember that I’m not in Narnia or Middle Earth or wandering the windswept moors.

I miss real conversations with friends. I miss the days when I could share something that moved me or made me happy and people really listened, instead of ignoring or glossing over it in their hurry to rant, repetitively, about politics. (Yes, Facebook, those are my eyes you feel burning into the back of your head.)

I miss not having a phone to tempt me to glance at its screen all the time, even when there’s nothing on it, and to send out that phantom vibration that makes me fish it out of my bag only to see that it didn’t vibrate all. I miss not being Pavlovian.

I miss buying an album by my favorite band and peeling off the cellophane wrap with giddy eagerness and putting it on my turntable and playing it, over and over, so many times that it would get scratched and I’d have to balance pennies on the arm to keep it from skipping but it didn’t really matter because by then I knew every lyric, every chord, every beat to every song. I miss being human liner notes.

I miss parties with friends, real friends, whose hands I could hold and laughs I could hear. I miss hanging out in the backyard under the smell of hamburgers on the grill, playing Frisbee and swatting mosquitoes and not stopping to Google “how to repel mosquitoes.” I miss Google not being a word.

Is this retro thinking? Is this me being ungrateful for the modern conveniences of my life today? It probably is. But I am looking past all of these sticky bits of nostalgia and finding the message the universe is using them to send me. It’s time for me to focus on what matters. It’s time for me to dig deep and find me again, the me who lingers over things, the me who gets lost in meandering and abstract thoughts, the me who savors every bite and does a little dance when I’m happy and believes in fairies. The me who watches squirrels. Sheryl Sandberg can keep leaning in – I’m sinking in instead.

I met a group of women last week who were icons of the civil rights movement in America. I was taken by their stories on so many levels, but the biggest thing I came away with was how committed they were – then and now – to their cause. They fought for civil rights for all, and some of them nearly died in that fight. Some of them were imprisoned. Some of them lost loved ones. But they fought and continue to fight because it matters to them. It matters to them. I don’t personally know many people who would be willing to go through what these women went through for any cause, including me.

This realization drew me up short, I’ll admit. If I continue to follow the societal trend of skating on the surface of everything, in a hurry to move on and compete and succeed and win, but never stopping to sink into anything, how will I ever find what I’m passionate enough to fight for? How will I leave my mark if I’m moving too fast to ever touch down?

That’s my resolution for my Personal New Year: to unplug, to slow down, to dig deep and find what really matters to me. And when I find that passion, I’m going to sink in. I’m going to sink in and linger and enjoy every moment. I might even stop and watch a squirrel while I’m at it.

 

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Christy Writes: Happy Birthday, That Was Disgusting

Last Friday was my birthday. I turned 46. While I generally show up here on my birthday to write a soul-searching piece on what I’ve learned over the past year of my life, how I’ve grown, and various iterations born out of my navel-gazing tendencies, the fact is I’ve done more than my share of that over the past couple of years. This winter in particular I spent in deep introspection, emerging into spring with a renewed sense of myself and my place in the world.

So rather than go shuffling back over ground I’ve already shuffled over, I’ve decided to tell you the über book geeky way I celebrated my birthday this year.

One of my favorite novels of all time is W. Somerset Maugham’s “Of Human Bondage.” About a quarter of the way through the book, the main character, Philip (with whom I fell as deeply and desperately in love as one should with a well-written character) moves from England to Paris to study art. He has been in Paris for a few days when he finds himself with nothing to do early one evening. I’ll let Maugham take it from here:

“Philip went out and wondered what he should do with himself till dinner. He was eager to do something characteristic. Absinthe! Of course it was indicated, and so, sauntering towards the station, he seated himself outside a cafe and ordered it. He drank with nausea and satisfaction. He found the taste disgusting, but the moral effect magnificent; he felt every inch an art-student and since he drank on an empty stomach his spirits presently grew very high. He watched the crowds, and felt that all men were his brothers. He was happy.”

I’m sure you can see where this is going.

A funky little bar in my city not long ago started advertising that it now serves absinthe. The moment I got the news, I told The Guy we needed to go there on my birthday so I could have absinthe. And we needed to go before dinner, so I could drink it on an empty stomach and I could feel every inch an art-student and my spirits could presently grow very high.

The Guy, long accustomed and always amenable to my odd impulses, agreed but warned me I wouldn’t like it. He said it tastes like black licorice, which I detest. But I was ready for that, you see, because Philip had already let me know the taste was disgusting. And there was nothing more that I wanted on my birthday than to taste something disgusting.

I dressed carefully and artistically for the event, making sure I looked every inch the art-student, because although I never have been an art-student, I always kind of wanted to be, so that’s essentially the same thing. We arrived at the bar, which was very much not an outdoor cafe in Paris, but still had an artsy vibe. We told the waitress we wanted absinthe and she brought us an absinthe menu.

An absinthe menu. Philip didn’t have this kind of stress. He ordered absinthe, he got absinthe and was able to get right down to feeling magnificent. The waitress explained each kind of absinthe to us, and when she got to one she said was from France, I stopped her and told her I wanted that one. That had to be the kind Philip drank in Paris. That Philip is a fictional character was completely out of my head at this point. I’ll have what he’s having. And make it snappy.

Five minutes later, I had a glass of absinthe in front of me and I stared at it as awkwardly gobsmacked as if my blind date had shown up with two heads. For someone who had done so much planning into when and how I should drink this odd and exotic beverage, you’d think I’d have known what it looks like. For some reason, I’d expected a shot glass full of a shimmering, clear liquid. What I got was a regular glass, half full of what resembled milky lemonade. That’s a lot of volume to have to drink with nausea and satisfaction.

But drink it I did. And Philip was absolutely correct – the taste was disgusting but the moral effect was magnificent. The Guy had ordered a different kind for himself, so there was some swapping of glasses and taste-testing at first, but I insisted on getting my glass back so I could lean back a little and look artistic as I sipped.

And my spirits presently grew very high. I watched the crowds, and felt that all men were my brothers. I was happy.

 

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