Universe Calling

I get the feeling that the universe is trying to tell me something, only I'm not entirely sure what it is.  And I suspect it may be something I don't want to know, so my inability to hear it could be the result of my putting my fingers in my ears and my atonal la-la-la'ing to drown it out.  This hasn't been able to squelch the tiny rumbling in my gut, however; the tiny rumbling that indicates that - just possibly - it might be something I need to know, wants aside.

My love of stasis notwithstanding, it's become increasingly impossible to ignore the signs

that things are changing, and not for the better.  Sigh.

First, after things started going wacky at work, I finally had the chance to take the job I want ... only to find that it comes with an enormous salary cut.  Next, I discover that the job I have is not only whacky but is getting worse - it is going to be altered so as to be unrecognizable.  And then I find that they're willing to change it in ways that will improve the altered version, but still make it undesirable.  I also got a job offer out of thin air - flattering and tempting in some ways, but not a job I'd get excited about every day.  And there's another such possibility - same money and benefits as I now have - work I would only partially enjoy.

One of my co-workers had a heart attack.  He's fine, but then another (a dear friend) dropped dead unexpectedly.  A third (no, I do not have dozens and dozens of co-workers) ended up in the ER with chest pains.  She's fine, too, but it's hard not to see these episodes as potent reminders that life is short and uncertain.  Of course, we all know this, but living as though we know it is something else.

It should be such an easy decision; do I go with more money and benefits and settle for tolerating my job or do I do work I love with significantly reduced salary and benefits?  With the former, I have more money to enjoy life outside of work - eating out, theatre, traveling, etc.; with the latter, I can get excited about what I do and feel satisfied that I make a difference for people.  With the former, I can expect to actually retire someday, by sacrificing 40 hours a week for the next many years.  With the latter, I'll be happy for the majority of those 40 hours a week, but may have to work till I die.  

And if I were to die tomorrow?  Which plan would have made the most sense? 

I don't work because I want to.  Given my druthers, I'd never work another day in my life.  I'd do volunteer work and would otherwise just enjoy the plethora of things this life has to offer.  But as my parents were unkind enough to refrain from being obscenely wealthy and as I've yet to win the lottery, even though I have played it - once or twice - if I were to quit work, I'd have to live under a bridge and root through trashcans for food, which is not my idea of enjoying life.

And if one works, and works many hours a week, how much of life can one truly enjoy if all those hours are spent in near-drudgery?  In my experience, being unhappy at work drains one of the energy needed to enjoy hours spent elsewhere.

....

So, of course, I made my choice.  I took the pay cut and the greatly reduced benefits and hope that I'm doing what the universe prefers, even if I'm doing it with my fingers stuck in my ears.  In the meantime, don't be offended if I decline all invitations to go out - I can't afford a social life anymore.

Why Are All the Good Ones ... or As Susan's World Turns

Years ago, I explained my love of soap operas by saying that I watched them to feel better about my own life.  After all, my life seemed quite normal by comparison!  A few years later, I'd changed my explanation.  Now I watched them to see how "normal" people live.

Okay, I suppose my life doesn't technically qualify as a soap-opera existence.  I haven't had eight marriages (or any, come to think of it), a heart transplant with said heart coming from my husband/brother/arch enemy, or discovered a grown child I didn't know I'd given birth to.  I've never had the kind of cat fight where I dunked someone's head in the toilet or wound up grappling in a chocolate fountain.  Shoot - I've never even had amnesia!!

But if you take what I imagine the average midwestern housewife's life to be (admitting that I know no midwestern housewives, few midwesterners and fewer housewives), I think my life comes somewhat close.

Take my romantic past.  Or what passes as such.  First, there are the men I didn't want.  The son and one of the two heirs to a jewelry dynasty that puts Cartier to shame.  (He never called in advance for a date. How rude!)  A charming gentleman four times my age who shared his penthouse on Park Avenue only with his housekeeper - who lived in the housekeeper's wing.  (Four times my age....)  A former self-proclaimed "dentist to the stars" who lived in one of the richest neighborhoods in Beverly Hills and owns the kind of movie memorabilia sold at absurd prices by snooty auction houses.  (Narcissistic and boring, the type who is oh-so-impressed with himself.)

So wealth and power and prestige obviously aren't what I was after.  (That's my father's voice in the background, sobbing.)  What sort of men did I choose?

No, I've not fallen for drug abusers/dealer, criminals of other sorts, or even married men.  But introduce me to a guy who loves musical theatre, feels passionate about sequins, and loves to decorate, and I'm a goner.

The question, of course, is why would gay men be attracted to me?  It's not like I have this long litany of unrequited loves.  I have a long list of ex-'s, quite a few of whom turned out to be gay.  In truth, sometimes I knew they were bisexual up-front.  And sometimes they lied and told me they were straight. (And who wouldn't believe that, coming from an actor/hairdresser who has a small poodle?!?)

For years I harbored a secret fear that I must be masculine.  After all - a gay man dating a woman - wouldn't he want someone who is butch?  Turns out, from years of casual research and talks with my gay male friends (one of whom told me he was afraid he was a closet heterosexual since he wasn't attracted to me), when gay men are interested in women, they tend to be interested in extremely feminine and usually petite women.  As well as in women who are comfortable taking center stage and refusing to give it back.  (Liza?  Barbra?  Bette?)

Still, I went blithely on my way, assuming all women had relationships with gay men until an acquaintance called me one day to tell me that my best friend's love life was the talk of half the town ... and my own love life was the talk of the other half!  Granted, the tabloids didn't appear to be interested, but everyone else apparently was.

What caused this fascination with my personal life?  In true soap opera fashion, I had begun doing a play where I was less than enamored with my male co-star.  He was rude when I first met him, and at our first rehearsal, he was wearing more eye make-up than I was.  (I later found out he'd been mugged over the weekend and was trying to cover up bruises.)  As any soap fan knows, if two people dislike each other up-front, they are doomed to fall for each other.  And, over post-rehearsal drinks and a shared love for singing tv theme songs, during rehearsals where we learned to trust each other totally, and in an unspoken way, fall for each other we did.  If there is such as thing as "soul mates", that is what we were.

I'd convinced myself he was straight.  He'd convinced himself we could be "friends".  Let the cameras roll.

Pathos is required.  He was swimming in new territory - he had always been gay and falling in love with a woman just didn't compute.  So he would delight in my company, then avoid me for weeks.  (I can be hard to avoid when I know what I want, so he was seriously determined at those times.)  We would go out till 2:00 a.m. or so, then talk on the phone till 5:00 when we both got home.  He would ask me to marry him on Saturday night, then call on Sunday to explain why that was out of the question.  We'd have huge arguments, sometimes in the middle of the street in the middle of the night.  I cared for him, night and day, when he'd been hit in the head with a cast-iron skillet and left for dead during a robbery.  I broke his foot by stomping on it with my stiletto heel while we were fighting in a bar.  We always, always knew we could count on each other, even if we weren't speaking at the time.  We loved each other passionately, but in the end, he couldn't handle feeling that he didn't know who he was.

Our big finale:  one tear-filled evening, we held each other in a long hug while admitting to each other that this simply couldn't work - not in this life-time.  We both knew our connection was too strong to end, but neither of us could handle more off-stage drama and we had to walk away from each other.  We promised we'd try again in our next life-time and parted with feelings of love and compassion.

Sometimes, soaps have happy endings.  But they also have tragedy and misery.  We saw each other only once more over the next few years; he came to town on business and we had dinner together and laughed and shared beautiful memories before saying good-by again.  The next time I saw him, he was dying of cancer and he lasted only a couple of months after that.

In soap operas, death is rarely final.  People fall out of airplanes, are shot dead and buried, undergo autopsies ... and still return, live and well, to pick up where they left off.  In my own personal soap, I fully expect this type of "ending".  Okay, not in this life, but I fully plan for us to laugh and love and fight and create scenes and pick up right where we left off in our grand romance.  And I am not worried about this show being cancelled.

The Joys of Summer

It is summer.  For at least three - long - months, the days will be hot, humid and long.  Friends talk of boating, swimming, picnics, softball, and lazy evenings spent on the porch.  I talk of nothing.  I can't.  I have to save my energy to get through the day in spite of the sun-induced headaches and the overwhelming listlessness that comes with the sort of heat that presses down on you, forcing you to walk slowly, if not crawl.

In truth, I should be genetically disposed to love the heat.  I grew up in the deep south and days in the 90's were routine for almost half the year.  In my youth, I relished high temperatures.  The slightest whiff of cold air would send me shivering for a sweater and movie theaters required heavy coats.

But something changed.  In my early 20's I moved to NYC.  In January.  When making the plans for this move, I decided that I should find out early whether I could tolerate a winter up north, and if not, I could move home sooner rather than later, before making friends, getting comfortable - settling in.  I arrived in early January to find snow on the ground.

The room I had rented via mail, in a hotel for women, was nothing like the charming pictures in their brochure.  Those showed smiling women in sweater sets and pearls sitting and reading by warm lamp light in a cozy, nicely furnished room.  They were obviously taken several decades before I arrived.  The actual room - er, suite - had beaten-up furniture, a stove with two burners, one of which didn't work and the other which would not get hot enough to boil water, a minuscule sink and fridge and NO HEAT.  Forget the cockroaches that fell through gaps in the ceiling.  Forget the women who sat in the hallways during the day, drinking from bottles concealed in brown paper bags and screaming obscenities at those of us who passed by.  There was NO HEAT.  Did I mention that this was January?

Surprisingly, this did not cause me to run to the airport and catch the next plane home.  Intrepid adventurer that I believed myself to be, I simply went out the next day and bought an electric blanket, which I wore around myself whenever I was in the room.  I also quickly found a job which enabled me to spend my days in a heated building.  Finally, I began to realize that my winter clothes had not been intended for real winters and they didn't keep me very warm.  In addition, I learned that open-toed shoes in 20 degree weather, especially when worn while trying to catch a cab on Broadway post-theatre (which means there were no cabs free for a very long time) - were an invitation to frost-bite.

Still, I stayed and I learned to dress for the weather and ... slowly ... I guess my blood thickened.  A couple of years down the line, I realized that my new favorite month was - February!  I loved the grey skies, the cold, the yellow slushy snow - all the stuff I'd hated such a short time before.  I'd walk miles in my heavy coat and hat, savoring the winds that bit my face, laughing when they whipped so hard that I had to turn my head to catch a breath.  I loved the ritual of dressing to go out - the scarves, the layers of sweaters, the thermal underwear, the coat, the gloves, the hats, the boots - knowing that I would not be beaten by the elements.

So after this transition, when I had begun to loathe summer, dreading the muggy heat as much as I looked forward to snow drifts, I moved again.  To New Orleans.

Then began the task of re-learning to dress for heat and not just for four to six weeks, but for months at a time.  I discovered that sweating is downright unpleasant and that my energizer-bunny style of walking slowed to tortoise speed as I pushed through the steam of summer streets.  My beautiful wool clothes sat on shelves, gathering dust.  My heavy-with-warmth coats were used as costumes in plays.  My hair refused to curl.  This was not the happy heat of my childhood memories; this was stultifying, lethargy-creating leaden heat.

Of course, as humans do, I adjusted once again, though I never did regain an appreciation for temperatures above 75.  In New Orleans, the heat is a character in one's life.  As one tolerates a bigoted, ignorant uncle, or accepts a beyond-eccentric aunt, one comes to terms with the weather and learns to overlook the daily annoyances it causes.  (One also learns that one can stay hydrated if one drinks a great deal of alcohol, as long as the alcohol is stirred into fruit juices, milk, sodas, etc.)  So this new character in my life and I found something akin to a truce.  I went about my days much as usual, only at 33 rpms, rather than 78, and I traded in my woolen chapeaux for straw sun-hats.

I no longer live in New Orleans - or NYC.  I live between the two, in a land where summer is long and oppressive and winter comes with snow and frigid temps.  In the former, as I am now, I fondly recall struggling through feet of snow and reverently stroke my cashmere sweaters.  In the latter, I  remind myself to treasure the moments, no matter how long the wait for the bus or how icy the streets.

Genetics, be damned!

Communal Living

Had I been born early enough, I've always figured I'd have been a Haight Ashbury type - free love, make peace, one for all and all for one.  Of course, it's entirely possible that my dislike of dirty clothes, not to mention dirty hair and body odors, and my aversion to so much as holding hands with someone I find physically unappealing, might have gotten in the way.  We'll never know.

Whatever might have been, I continue to see myself as a hippie-could-have-been and have always thought that the idea of a commune is a wonderful one.  (As I live alone in a two-story house and shudder at the thought of sharing my space for longer than a week, I am well able to separate the dream from the reality.)  So I guess it shouldn't have surprised me when my cat, Arthur, decided that he wanted to try out communal living.

In addition to my other numerous soap-box topics, I am a strident advocate of the necessity of keeping pet cats indoors.  Research indicates that it is far healthier for the cats, personal history indicates that it is less stressful for the humans who know where they are and aren't worried that they've been hit by a car, and the simplest of logic indicates that it is healthier for the bird population in general.  So my two roommates of the feline persuasion live an entirely indoor existence with no knowledge of the larger world outside and they've given me no reason to believe they are unhappy with this situation.

Nonetheless, they are cats, and we've all heard about cats and curiosity.  So when Arthur, closed up in a room he'd sneaked into, discovered a tiny hole where he could squeeze out the window next to the window unit AC, squeeze he did and found himself on my porch roof.  Who knows what persuaded him to wander off, eventually find his way to the ground, and disappear into the neighborhood, but it's hard to imagine a cat who would be unable to resist new sights, smells and sounds.

At first, I was in denial.  I kept thinking that he was in the house, hiding from me, which isn't unusual, and that he'd appear soon.  When I had to accept that he was gone, my brain slowly began to work and I took action.  I reported him lost to the Humane Society.  I made dozens of fliers (on bright hot pink paper) and put them up all over the neighborhood.  I bought a live animal trap and baited it with his favorite food.  And calls began coming in.  A cat of his description had been seen with its four kittens (nope).  A cat of his description had been seen running down the street and the caller wasn't sure where he was now (this call came in at midnight).  When a friend knocked on my door late at night and said she thought he was up the hill, I ran out, in bathrobe and slippers with my keys in one hand and a bag of kitty treats in the other.  I will be forever grateful that no one took a picture of me wandering the streets and alleys late at night in my robe and slippers, shaking a kitty treat bag.

Then came the call that said he was living behind a house nearby with various strays.  Sure enough, there he was, hanging out with about 10 other cats.  I spotted him, called his name.  He stopped, turned and looked at me, and sprinted off!  I climbed into the neighbor's back yard, followed him down steps, through yards and watched him disappear into a basement through the broken window of an abandoned house.  The disparity between my size and the size of the window, added to my unwillingness to carry my trespassing quite that far, caused me to acknowledge defeat for the time being.

This is when it hit me.  My pampered, protected pussycat preferred foraging for food, rolling in the dirt and living side by side with similar felines to coming home to me!  Only I would have a cat who would choose to live in a commune!

Still, even if he doesn't have my genes, some of my proclivities must have worn off on him.  No matter how much he enjoyed life in the kitty kibbutz, he kept coming back to my house.  He was spotted in or nearly in my back yard almost daily.  And finally he was seen lolling under my sunroom and I was able to coax him to me with those same kitty treats with which I had recently toured the neighborhood.

He did not like being captured.  He became a furry whirling dervish, and while his lack of front claws terrified me when he was missing, his back claws turned out to be most effective weapons.  (Tip:  buy stock in band-aids.)  Bleeding and battered, I plopped him into the house and announced that his adventures were officially over.

So how has he adjusted to living life indoors again?  This cat who used to avoid me except at mealtimes and who, following even the slightest alteration to his schedule would hide for hours, immediately ate a can of cat food, then wandered back and forth through the house, even flopping down on the floor next to where I sat.  He's been less skittish around me since and I've actually been able to pet him a couple of times - something new indeed.

Yes, I'm beyond grateful that my errant cat has come home.  I was thrilled to be able to take down the fliers and say to the kind neighbors who inquired that the story had a happy ending.  I'm incredibly relieved that he is safe and unhurt.  And, secretly, I feel a tiny bit validated.  His reactions to his return seem to prove that I was right; living in a commune is probably great fun ... for a day or two ... but it's just not the same as home.

Nelda, We Hardly Knew Ye

She was ebullient, beautiful and bossy.  She'd burst into a Spanish song without notice and then translate the lyrics for us, whether we were interested or not.  She would not hesitate to ask people to move out of the seat she'd "claimed" by leaving something on the table in front of it.  She'd talk on and on but get annoyed if she stopped and someone else began talking.

And she was a drama queen.  When she was upset about something (or usually, someone), she'd literally take to the couch, moaning, all the while proclaiming that she didn't want us to worry about her, that we should just eat and laugh as usual.  Eventually she would, faintly, ask for a bite of food or a drink of water, delighting in the way friends would scatter to meet her needs.

So why do we miss her so much?

She had the hugest of hearts.  She'd be the first to cry with you over the death of your pet whom she'd never met.  She dispensed hugs more often than she dispensed prescription meds.  She'd bring a present for any occasion, or just "because".  She rejoiced when one of us had something good happen to us.

More than food or drink, she loved music and dancing and laughter.  She could never stay sad for long and would laugh louder and longer than anyone else once her tears dried.  She's the person you'd expect to see dancing on the bar before night's end and you'd know it wasn't because of alcohol - she got high on life.

Her exuberance was infectious.  And when she cared about you, you knew she cared from the bottom of her enormous heart.  Yes, she had faults and quirks and eccentricities, as all of us do.  I see that as a positive.  After all, when we truly love someone, we love them not only in spite of their flaws, but because of them, too.  After all, most of our flaws are flip sides of our virtues - you don't get one without the other.

So her delight in being the center of attention was simply a component of her larger-than-life personality,   her dramatics a way of embracing life to the fullest, her bossiness a way of corralling all of us who were "hers".

Today, I'd happily cede my chair to her, even if she hadn't "claimed" it.  I'd be delighted to hear those torch song lyrics translated again.  And I'd let her talk the entire hour if she wanted to.  But what would be truly wonderful would be if I had the luxury of knowing she'd be doing those things again and again - the luxury of being able, occasionally, to be irritated by them.

Regrets

In my line of work, I hear a lot of people talking about their regrets.  The marriage they regret.  The divorce they regret.  The marriage that didn't happen that they regret....  So I recently got to thinking about what I regret.  I mean, really regret, not just times I think I probably should have done something differently.  And you know what?  I can only think of a couple of small instances and those are all about how I treated someone badly when I was in a bad mood.

Although some might argue that I should, I don't regret any of my past relationships.  Even the worst ones gave me some amount of pleasure (and gave me an excuse to avoid the dating pool for a bit - always a plus!)  From some, I learned about life; from others, I learned about myself; from all, I learned about tolerance.

There are paths I might have chosen that would have been positive ones and sometimes I went another way because of fear or apathy or because I didn't know better.  But if I turned away because of fear, or any other reason, that's where I was at that point.  It's perhaps unrealistic to think I could have chosen differently, and impossible to know for sure that I should have.

The larger point, of course, is that focusing on regrets is always useless - unless it is a means to learn a better way to do something in the future - and then it becomes a focus on learning and improving, rather than regretting.  After I (finally) ended a drama-filled relationship of five years a couple of decades ago, my father said to me how sad it was that I had "wasted the best years of [my] life" on that relationship.  I gather I was meant to regret investing so much time on a man who actually was rather a waste of air, but all I could think was, "Really??  Those were the best years of my life??  So what about the decades that lie ahead?  It is time to go bungee-jumping without the cord?"

Have I ever dated another man with that particular set of flaws?  No.  Have I had other drama-filled relationships?  Yep, and one of those remains the best relationship I ever had.  (Granted, my criteria for "best relationship" may not be the same as that used by 99% of the population.)

Nonetheless, I think the important thing to do is to try to live so as to avoid regrets.  Possible?  LOL!  Of course not, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try.  I also think we tend to regret the things we didn't do far more than we regret the things we do.  So here are some things I'll never regret missing - because I haven't missed them:

sky diving
riding a mechanical bull
singing karaoke in a crowded bar
moving across the country with two suitcases, no job, no apartment and no friends
taking trapeze lessons
dancing on a bar
changing careers ... several times

I'd love to see others' lists of the things they've made sure they'll never regret missing.  I might even steal from them to add to my own.

We'll always have Prague

I have a love/hate relationship with traveling.  I love being someplace different, seeing the sights, meeting the people, eating the food.  I hate being away from home, living out of a suitcase, sometimes eating bad food.  In the days prior to a trip I basically refuse to think about it (I pack and make all the arrangements but it's sort of like making out a will when you're young and healthy - I'm getting ready but it's not like I'm actually going anywhere!) and when thoughts of the upcoming adventure do intrude, they are pushed aside by thoughts such as "Why did I sign up to do this?  I don't want to go anywhere!"

Given my curmudgeonly nature, one might reasonably assume that I never get much farther than my front porch, but one would be mistaken.  Periodically, my wanderlust side triumphs over my couch potato side in this ongoing war, and I book a trip.  I recently returned from a 10-day journey to Sofia, Bucharest and Prague.

Don't ask why this particular itinerary, just accept that I had some resemblance of a good reason for choosing it ... whether or not I actually did.  These may not all be at the top of everyone's must-see list but they should be.  

So what did I find there?  Sofia is a charming city filled with ancient buildings and new high rises.  We stumbled on the oddest changing of the guard I've ever seen, were impressed by the complexity of the peasant costumes (all hand-made, of course, but full of delicate embroidery and beading) and would round a corner, looking for a restaurant, and happen upon a round church.

The traditional Bulgarian food is fabulous.  And unlike many European countries, they even have a national traditional salad!  In many ways, the city still seems very poor, but someone must be shopping at the Dior and Prada stores!

From what I'd read, I actually wasn't expecting much of Bucharest.  The guidebooks even said there isn't much to see there.  The guidebooks clearly are trying to keep the tourists out of this city so the authors can have it for themselves!  From the Parliament Building (the ironically named "House of the People" by the narcissistic leader who built it) to Ferdinand and Maria's summer castle (a ways out of the city, but so worth the trip), the eye simply cannot absorb all the beauty that artisans and craftspeople throughout the ages have created.  And many are still creating beautiful things, such as tablecloths that I at first avoided, thinking they'd cost a week's wages, only to find out they could be had for the price of a pizza lunch.

Yes, we also did a couple of the kitschy tourist things, too, such as eating at Dracula's Castle Restaurant.  Where else can one get dinner and a bite on the neck by a stranger?

And finally, we caught the train to Prague.  This is my third visit and I'm starting to view it as a home away from home.  In my opinion, it ties with Venice as the most beautiful city in the world.  (No, I haven't seen them all, but I can still express an opinion.)  It's become so popular I feared that it would have also become prohibitively expensive, but no - one can still eat a ridiculous amount of fabulous food for $15 and one can buy one's (third) Bohemian glass chandelier without feeling the need to start skipping meals.

There are more wonderful places to visit than my couch potato side will ever allow me to see, but I've seen enough to have  favorites.  You can have Madrid.  Feel free to keep Rome.  And as for Paris - well, I'll always have Prague.