Tulips

“The tulip is the introvert of flowers”. I wish I had written that, but alas. I believe it though. Solitary, strong, still, existing briefly, bold color but never spilling, enclosing mystery, but never shy. Quiet, still, observing. But never shy.

This is my flower, the tulip. In recovery I had to give up feeding them gin, which the bulb flowers like crocus and paper white and tulips love so much. (It does give them excellent posture) but still, even a sober tulip is pure elegance.

What is your recovery flower?

Just My Face

No make up today. This happens about once a month; I just don’t want to do it. Something about seeing my own real face, and maybe it’s also that while I do like make-up and all things girly—I want it to remain an option, my choice. I admire woman who never leave the house without lipstick or eyeliner. Very French, very polished. But I never want to reach the point where I can’t leave the house with out lipstick.

It’s also interesting to see other people’s reactions. On my no make-up days I forget that it’s an unadulterated face but then I see someone looking too carefully at me and I watch their careful reactions.

Today someone said, “You look tired.” and I said, “No, this is just my face.”

Making Lists

I have always been a list maker. A friend once teased that, “Her lists have lists.” But the joke was true. I even have a master list of packing lists for all kinds of trips: there is the New York City Packing list and the Cape Cod list and the Kripalu or Retreat list and the Camping Trip list. I mean, really, these are vastly different undertakings, no?

Another list memory: my first husband—and this may be why he is an ex-husband—once wrote on my daily to-do list: “Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale….”.

But even at that I have defended my lists. Outer order balancing inner chaos perhaps. But my defense has always been that I get a lot done.

But yesterday reading a new wonderful novel called “April & Oliver” by Tess Callahan I read this line:

“Lists are for people who don’t do what they want.”

It struck me to the core. If I was doing what I relay wanted would I need a list?

Tip Toe Past Your Fear

This week I read about taking baby steps to accomplish goals. Nothing new there; we’ve heard this: take baby steps; chunk it down; break your goal into manageable pieces. But what was new to me was this: When we set a big goal, the flight or fight part of our brain is activated. The reason to take teensy tiny steps is to bypass the fear center of the brain—so it doesn’t react by scaring us into procrastination or into over-drive in the wrong direction.

So sneak up on yourself. Teensy tiny baby steps. Sneak past the fear.

Growth or Addiction

Marion Woodman, the fabulous Jungian analyst, says that the natural gradient in us is toward growth. Whatever we use repeatedly, and compulsively to stop that growth is our addiction.

So in addition to alcohol and food I am also using worry and work and fear thoughts as my addiction. They stop me from growing and they distract me from my natural gradient toward growth.

What stops you? Even after years of recovery from drugs and alcohol is there a behavior or thing or way of being that is stopping your growth?

No Becomes Yes

Today a setback at work. A company that I thought would be a good partner said no. My coworker was disappointed, but I said to her, “Better a clear No than a maybe; No gets us closer to Yes.”

It’s true in my personal life too. He says no, or I say no. Maybe its time to end a relationship, or I try for a client and the answer is no. Not fun to hear but a clear no is always better than maybe.

Every no gets me closer to Yes!

Why Women Love Bull Durham

The past couple of nights I have been watching Bull Durham. This is the movie from 1988 with Kevin Costner playing an aging catcher in the minor leagues. This is a movie that appears to be about baseball life with its travails and hopes and the desperate desires of men who want to play ball for a living. It is seemingly a men’s movie with all the swearing, ass slapping and drinking and real life baseball lore. But no, this is really THE all time best chick flick.

Yes, we love Kevin Costner from the first moment he arrives in the locker room wearing his navy blazer, rumpled white shirt and khakis that are the perfect shade of tan with a hint of olive. He’s a manly man who in the first 20 minutes gives the fabulous, if too artful, monologue about his beliefs which includes, “I believe in the cock, the pussy,, the small of a woman’s back…that the novels of Susan Sontag are self-indulgent, overrated crap”, and which ends with his belief in “long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses that last three days”.

Yes! You had us at “long, slow and deep”—and yes, at the Susan Sontag part too.

But there is a later scene that truly grabs woman because it’s something we really want.
“Do you want to dance?” Sarandon asks Costner, sitting in the kitchen late at night. He says yes, but surprises her by not dancing but instead by sweeping all the food and dishes off the kitchen table onto the floor. He spins Sarandon onto that now empty table and they go at it rolling and clutching.

Oh, yes, what he does is part of it; We want a man to want us that much; we want a man who wants to make love a second time and who will go for it on the kitchen table. We want that kind of passion in our lives. But, there is something else in this scene that is a woman’s dream come true. What most women truly desire is not what Costner does, but what Sarandon does NOT do. As all of her dishes and the leftover food crash onto the floor Sarandon allows herself to be swept onto that table instead of diving for a broom, or a dish cloth and saying to her lover, “Hold on a second, I’ll clean up this mess and then meet you in the bedroom.”

No, she is in the moment and desires this man and this sex more than she desires a clean floor or neat kitchen. She wants the rapture of this man and his body even with cereal and milk oozing under the fridge. And she is not saying, “Oh dear God that was my mother’s china bowl.” Nope, she’s on that table screwing her brains out.

Oh, to be that kind of woman. We assume the power is in the man, that to be taken that way would free us. But what we see in Bull Durham is a woman who CAN be taken. She is not thinking, “When did we last wash these sheets?” while a man is dutifully going down on her.

Oh, we may wish for a partner to love us with such sweet abandon, but Sarandon, in Bull Durham, shows us a woman who can abandon herself.