Flying solo.

Charlotte with photo of Janet and Charlotte 

snapped 10 years ago, more or less.

Janet and I live two continents and an ocean apart, more or less. I never see her, not even using iChat or Skype. We write emails, occasionally post a letter, and send each other photos in which we are rarely present. We use stand-ins, dogs and children, to show who we "are" these days. 

But we couldn't be closer. She is a sister to me. A mentor. A rock. A shoulder. A soft and warm place. A psychologist. A fairy god mother. A measuring stick. A dose of truth and honesty. A mirror. The person who finishes, and often starts, my sentences. So many things. 

So when she goes on vacation, even though we are already more than 6000 miles apart, I miss her. Knowing that she's not at home with her dogs and her greenhouse and her wabi sabi cups and her mercurial ocean, makes me feel a little less stable than usual. Even blogging without her feels a little wobbly, even though we alternate all the time. 

Weird. 

Anyway, all's fair in love, war and friendship. When she gets back from Mexico. I'll go to New York. And she'll be "alone" for a week. During which you will all probably note a dramatic improvement in the quality of the posts. 

This is just to say, I miss her terribly. So, here's to Janet, my dear friend. May she travel safely, and come home rested. —Charlotte

More Susan Boyle. 10 years ago.

Something about her singing "Killing Me Softly" is just too touching for words. Take a listen. First up, "Cry Me A River" and then the Roberto Flack classic. (If you want to zip ahead to it, slide up to 4:19.) There are no comments equal to the pathos of her voice. —Charlotte

 

Sun, Surf, Sand, Margarita. Repeat.

A few year's ago Rick’s stepfather Bob was sitting on our deck, content, first time on the Oregon coast. Relaxing in the filtered sunshine coming through the Sitka Spruce, the tide making the rocks sing on the shore below, a hawk flying between the trees on the edge of the cape, one of those days that makes you certain everyone not living in Oregon is crazy-stupid or merely crazy-insane. We mentioned we were leaving for vacation in a week. He looked from forest to ocean, looked at us. ‘A vacation from this? Why?’ A poet in our midst. And his point was taken. But once again nature calls. In this case the small and highly intoxicating fishing village/surfing town/expat haven of Sayulita, Mexico. First Bend for three days, then a week with great friends. This means Charlotte will have the blogging to herself. Unless Mellie or one of our other one ripe friends wants to join in.

Yeast: the new Prozac.

I like to cook. I don't like the obligatory shopping / feeding / plate cleaning ritual that seems to take over my life, but when hours are long and the fam is relaxed and one job has been neatly filed away until the next one comes along, I do like to cook. In fact, I love it. But I've never been a bread person, at least not until this year. 

A couple weeks ago, for what reason I can't remember, I was feeling low. Blue. Down. And it dawned on me, in one of those rare epiphanies that occurs when you actually identify what it is you really desire, that I wanted to bake a loaf of bread. I called a trusted baker friend, got the low down on the perfect loaf of bread, and got started. By the end of the day, the last crumbs of that yeasty wonder were being wolfed down by my kids with generous portions of butter, and we were all basking in an unusual happiness that almost only comes with making things yourself. But in the case of the bread, it was more than that. It wasn't just that we made it, it was that the thing seemed to have a warm life of its own. The texture, so belly-like. The rising. The punching-down. The yeasty smell which increases over time. The miraculous elasticity of flour, water and little else. The physical exertion required to make it yield its best—an exchange of energy that, yes, is "life". I dunno. 

Today, we made pizza. Making the dough was a simplified version of the bread process with the addition of olive oil and a different ratio of ingredients. But the same magic took over again. The yeasty rising, the alive-ness of it. The ability of the dough to forgive and forget and succeed brilliantly despite the pummeling best efforts of strong hands and small weaker ones. 

It's my new drug of choice. Not that I had one before. But let's just say that it works as an antidepressant as well as the centerpiece of a warm day spent around home and hearth. Not to mention the fact that it's the perfect antidote to so much else in life that isn't quite right and downright wrong. —Charlotte

And then there's Saint Susan.

Some Major and Minor Saints, Part One

Some saints are highly secular. But for some of us they form our strongest religion. In no particular order whatsoever: Merce Cunningham. Diane Arbus. Kerouac & Cassady. Dickinson. Hemingway. Capote. Plath. Martha Graham. Anne Sexton. Jackie Robinson. Sandy Koufax. Julia Child. Muhammad Ali. Louis and Ella. Tenzing Norgay, because sherpas do all the heavy lifting. Jane Goodall. Harvey Milk. Tennessee Williams. James Baldwin. Langston Hughes. Robert Lowell. Billy Wilder and Kurosawa, Hitchcock and Truffaut, Polanski, Kubrick, Capra, Almodovar, Cuaron & Inarritu & del Toro. Imogen Cunningham. Lucien Freud. Francis Bacon, Botero, Louise Bourgeois, Alexander Calder, Chuck Close, Robert Crumb, William Eggleston, Robert Frank, Tina Modotti, Claes Oldenburg, Meret Oppenheim, Diego Rivera, Cindy Sherman, Julian Schnabel, Wayne Thiebaud, John Currin, Helen Levitt, Richard Avedon. Hunter S. Thompson, dammit. Philip Roth. Joyce Carol Oates. Donald Barthelme. Raymond Carver. Roald Dahl. Salinger Salinger Saliger. Philip K. Dick. Junot Diaz. Nikolai Gogol. Amy Hempel. Patricia Highsmith. Shirley Jackson & Alice Munro. Grace Paley & Dorothy Parker. Annie Proulx. George Saunders. Ricky Gervais and Eddie Izzard forever amen. Christiane Amanpour. Hendrik Hertzberg and every single New Yorker writer. Rachel Maddow. Maira Kalman. Philip Petite. The French, period. While we're at it, the Italians. Anyone not going to a 'tea party' circa April 2009. The voters of Iowa and Vermont circa April 2009. Gore Vidal. Ingrid Newkirk. Michael Pollan. Fareed Zakaria. Toni Morrison. Tom Stoppard, still. Gloria Steinem, always.

Viva the Mod Squad!

It's a stunning image, isn't it? I was cruising through the New York Times slideshow on Michelle Obama's style while in Europe for the G20 summit, and this one stopped me in my tracks not because of what she's wearing but because of, well, let me count the ways. 

First, there's the hysterical size difference between the Lilliputian royals and the land-striding first couple. Second, there's the difference in complexion and all which that says about the strides we've made in the Unites States. (If the Queen and her consort were black and hip, I bet there'd be less discussion about doing away with the royal family. "What's your name? Who's ya daddy? Is he rich like me?") Then there's the décor, and the perceptible difference in smile-ability.

It was after I walked away from my morning peruse of the news to water the plants on my balcony that it struck me. It's so simple. 

The Obamas are modern. Queen & Gang, God bless'm, are not. By choice or by accident, they just aren't. Then it hit me that Bush wasn't modern either, and that was one of his major flaws. And McCain, as much as I sort of respect him, didn't strike me in many ways as modern, either. While conversations and debates raged on during the election about conservative v. liberal, capitalist v. socialist, right v. left, Republican v. Democrat, something was missing. We weren't talking about modernity, and we should have been.

Modernity is a great word. Because it's not about leaving the past behind. It's this: "The quality of being current, or of the present," and what could the world possibly need more than leaders who are "of the present"? 

Bush and Co. made me want to flee from "now," because they were essentially driving us back into the Dark Ages anyway. The Obama's, on the other hand, have so quickly restored my sense of happiness about being alive in this day. I rest my case and leave you with one more image. I'll go back to digging in my own modest—but modern—dirt now. —Charlotte

A Wabi-Sabi Life or Nothing

The Japanese word wabi means harmony, peace, balance, what's simple and unmaterialistic by choice. Humble and in tune with nature. Sabi means 'the bloom of time'. I love that: the bloom of time. Not the waste of it, but the bloom. What's most intriguing to me, lover of The Plath and The Sexton, is that both wabi and sabi in their most original, ancient forms meant desolation and loneliness. And now mean so much more, especially when taken together.

The architect Tadao Ando says this: 'Pared down to its barest essence, wabi-sabi is the Japanese art of finding beauty in imperfection and profundity in nature, of accepting the natural cycle of growth, decay, and death. Wabi-sabi is flea markets, not warehouse stores; aged wood, not Pergo; rice paper, not glass. It celebrates cracks and crevices and all the other marks that time, weather, and loving use leave behind. It reminds us that we are all but transient beings on this planet. That our bodies as well as the material world around us are in the process of returning to the dust from which we came. Through wabi-sabi we learn to embrace liver spots, rust, frayed edged, and the march of time they represent.'

Here's to frayed edges, loving use, and a raucous and persistent celebration of cracks and crevices and the stuff that creams and gels and even surgery will never fix. We are the wabi-sabi women. Get used to it.

My Daughter Lila

Lila kind of has my eyes. She seems to really have the shape of my face, parts of my body, a certain swagger that connotes confidence mostly when we're not feeling confident at all. Right now Lila and I have sort of the exact same hair color, but that won't last. She was born in October and thank god, I don't remember much of the labor pains or the screaming or the rush to the hospital or even if we rushed at all. Memory takes that away, thank the benevolent gods. Who said that if we remembered every second of childbirth, humankind would have died out millenia ago? Precisely.

But of course she's not literally my daughter, not in the 'pulled from the womb' kind of way.

Honestly, who made up these archaic rules?

Many of my nearest and dearest have children. Many other of my other nearest and dearest do not (we have instead the furred, domesticated, can't-judge-you-in-therapy kind. And we love them pretty much the same.) When I was ages 11-32 the last thing I wanted - literally, the very last on the list - was any sort of baby growing into any sort of child becoming, eventually, an adult. This may have had something to do with blatant and loud feminism (I like to think so) or my leftist worry about overpopulation (definitely an early bloomer here) or the strange moment when Ronda P. turned to me when we were 13 and told me she was not only pregnant but she was keeping the kid and naming it after me. Honestly, I didn't know we were that close. And I did what any sensible 13 year old would do - tried to talk her out of it, stayed as far away from her as possible, and felt badly when she left Raleigh Hills to 'see if she liked Catholic School.' Right. Precisely.

Later, marrying Rick, that desire changed and I decided yes, a child (or two) would be wonderful. Didn't happen. Didn't kill me. But it was sad to realize I would never have a child (or two) of my own. Sad that we didn't adopt. Sad that I didn't have all that the words 'my child' implies, not the least is which telling other people to shut up, you're going to raise your children any damn way you want.

Sometimes, I ache for those words.

So, Lila. Her mother was the first person to ever look me in the eye and say 'This child is yours, too.' Her mother was the first person to ever put my hand on her ripe and round belly and proclaim 'This child is yours, just as much as she is mine.' With Lila she did that. With Henry. With Ginger. They are our godchildren, but we have other godchildren. There is something about Lila and Henry and Ginger that transcends that rather benign label, something that reaches right into my gut like it does whenever I see any of my nieces and nephews, something that's flesh and blood and bone and marrow. It's DNA. It's inescapable. It doesn't scare me at all.

We bathed them and kissed them and cleaned up after them and read to them. We were there when they started to walk and we're there, now, when they're falling in love and hating wrestling or loving drama or reading about Jack The Ripper or wishing on some crazy falling star. I didn't get the birth pains or the right to declare them to the IRS or the amazing ability to know that forever, always, they will always be mine, regardless of how I raise them or what city they move to. We're not really related after all. They can turn away or turn on a dime. We could have one big fat blow out of a fight with their parents and poof - it will all be gone. Probably not. But it could. It's transient, I guess. Fallible.

But I look at Lila - at Henry - at Ginger - and I feel so insanely, profoundly, shut-up-and-dance blessed.

Look at her.

Who wouldn't?

And another thing: I'm not going to be saying "I'm sorry" with the same frequency as before. 

One of the beautiful (and irritating) things about life in Italy, is what happens to women when they hit, oh, seventy. They have the most unbelievable sense of authority. If the bakery is crowded, makes no difference. They push to the front. If they have to cross the street, they stop traffic. If there's advice to be handed out, they do it without waiting for permission. In other words, they're not big on being overly concerned about what other people think. They are looking out for Numero Uno. 

That said, if they trip you with their canes, sending your pomodorini flying, they're quick to say "I'm sorry." These women aren't impolite, they've just arrived at a certain point in life. And that's the point of being very, very sure of who they are, what they're about, and what they think. I'm taking notes. 

The world is full of people who are rude, pushy, and immorally egotistical. We're suffering the effects of that now, globally. But there are people like me, who have tried for too long to make up for it in not-quite-the-right way. Quick to apologize, quick to assume that I'm the one who's likely in the wrong, I've been saying "I'm sorry" when it probably wasn't necessary—even when, and here's the clinker—I didn't feel sorry. What was I doing? 

I'm going to stop. I'm going to start blocking the traffic if necessary. (Excuse me, but the crosswalk should be a safe place to cross the street, no?) I'm going to defend my opinions. I'm going to respect my own course of action, and not second guess it because it's inconvenient to someone else—my children, my husband, the other mother in the park, the account guy at work, etc. 

I'm going to say "I'm sorry" when it's warranted, and I will mean it. But when it really isn't appropriate, I will politely decline. Someone else can be sorry.

Last week when I went to see my therapist, we were discussing fine-tuning, next steps, where I'd like to see improvements in my life, etc. And I made a rather lame joke about what I'd do when I grew up. A joke, I'm embarrassed to say, I've made too often lately. Lazy. 

He let not more than a millisecond pass before looking me squarely in the eyes and pronouncing the following: "You are grown up, Charlotte."

There it was. Out in the open. Shockingly true and strangely liberating. I am grown up. Mature. A woman. Whatever I've done so far has been a matter of choice and consequent decision-making. Whatever I will do or not do from here on out, will also be a matter of choice and consequent decision-making. Nothing, at this point, is because I am too young to figure it out yet, too "green," too inexperienced.  

It's time to stop making excuses. It's also time to accept what I'm not going to do—ever—in order to make room for the many things I am going to accomplish, still. 

I think in our youth-obsessed culture, which has largely to do with outward appearances, we confuse the "beauty" of youth with the excuse of immaturity. But you can't really have one without the other. And right now, I'm not interested in either. 

Maturation has been anything but boring. So I'm no longer going to deny the fruits of my own labor—those which have hung heavily, ripely on the tree, and those which will grow in seasons to come. 

And I'm sure as shit not going to my grave waiting for myself to figure this out. It would be such a shame to grow old and die, having bypassed the part where you know who you are. The wrong words tend to wear grooves in our minds, until we believe them. I'm changing the words today.

—Charlotte

Spring-Cleaning Outside In

I don't know about you, but this "economic crisis / change of season / time to prepare the taxes / lull in my career" is doing me good. In fact, I'm enjoying it. (I have to immediately interrupt myself with a quick caveat or two, though: First, hunger hasn't set in yet, and hopefully it won't. Second, I have nothing but brotherly concern for the people who are suffering real hurt. I wish I could make things better for them.)

But, for me, it can't be denied. This Spring feels fresher than any I can remember in personal history. The stakes feel higher, but the chances feel greater. We've gotta clean up. And the best place to start is in your own sphere. And as I've got nothing better to do, that's pretty much what makes up my daily To Do list.

It all started with the crisis. No work. OK, so use the time otherwise. That's the point of freelancing, right? (I mean, if you're going to angst your way through workless periods it's not a career path you should choose.)

Then, the season changed. The cloud lifted, the sun decided to shine and shine and shine—all as if to say, "Whatever happens, bigger forces at work, and guess what? Sometimes they're benevolent." But it was also an inevitable reminder of the overriding existence of Cycles. That helped a lot. Things will "come back." They always do. 

Then, tax-time rolled around. Not my favorite time of the year, but somehow very, very cathartic. There's no way to do it without digging out the boxes, confronting the detritus collected over another 365 days. Organizing. Categorizing. Editing. Totaling-up. Fessing up. It feels good. And it leads, like a pebble tossed in the water, to ripples and every larger ripples of Putting Things in Order.

Once the receipts were harvested, the copies made, the signatures illegibly placed on the appropriate lines, we moved to closets. Storage rooms. The garage. Things are neatening. Lifting. The mass of stuff we've accumulated as a family (three generations) in the past years, was all sorted through this week. And most was given to charity. Sifting through it was sobering. "We. Bought. All. This. (?)" Yes, we did. It was not nice to face up to, but it's the first step in realizing that, no, it doesn't all need to be replaced. And, no, you don't have to have "new" stuff. And, wow, somehow it all has more value—real value—when there's much, much less of it. 

And what happens to me when I start yanking out the hidden stuff, organizing the socks, giving to charity—cleaning? Things in my head start moving around too, reordering themselves. With every "thing" that is dealt with, there's a bit of gray matter that gets dealt with too. The Inbox of my e-mail demands a good cleaning out, but so do the drawers of my soul. Fears, interpersonal "messes," bad habits—they all require the same measured "dealing with." And as a result, I start feeling lighter inside, as if so much more were possible. And as the literal clutter is removed, so is the clutter in my head. There's a clearing. And inside this clearing, I feel both safe and sound and strangely content. I also feel something inside me soar, that was too weighted down before. 

So even though there's no work coming in, there're still bills to pay, and the world hangs in the balance, here in my growing clean spot, I feel that I just might be able to dream my way out of this one.  So much more seems possible, because so much more light can get in.

—Charlotte

Coraggio

NOTE: This is just another take on what Janet said. But it bears repeating. 

Here in Italy, it's said countless times a day: "Coraggio!" 

Courage! Buck up! You can do it! But it also a carries a sort of "Get on with it" connotation at times. Like, here's the courage you need, now shit or get off the pot, if you'll pardon my French. 

It's used on every occasion that requires the minimum stiff upper lip. When you decide to spend the summer in Milan instead of joining the mass exodus out of hell. When you have to eat all your vegetables. When you realize you have to undergo open heart surgery performed in the mythic Philippine style.  When you merely have to face another day head-on. It's used for challenges great and small, enormous and insignificant. Once in a lifetime, and run of the mill. 

And, you know what? It actually helps to hear it, to receive an injection.

Why do I say this? you ask. Because I've concluded...no, wait, my Mom told me...that Life requires boatloads of it. That at every turn, I would be well served if I carried an extra, even illegally sized, stash of courage in my backpack/suitcase/bra. You doubt me? Let's talk. 

Marriage. (What could be scarier?) Childbirth (ditto). Failing. Succeeding. Losing your job. Not finding a new one. Bush et al. Knowing that somewhere out there, there really is a Camorra. Flying (why does that plane stay airborn anyway?). Climate change (or any other headline you'd like to focus on). 

And that's just the obvious stuff. What about our internal workings? Our deep fears? Our persistent flaws? The demons—oh let's just be honest and call them "our choices in life"—that continue to haunt us? The long term effects we are having on our children? The hurt we dole out without realizing it, until it's too late? The losses? The chances that never come back? The people we love that never come back? The people we lose? There is nothing to keep us going at times other than courage. Nothing.  

•••

Let's get back to climate change for a minute. If you're a woman, you have your own internal variety to contend with, the one that will strike sooner or later, requiring you to spend all of the winter months in cruise wear. 

Which leads me to my theory that a middle aged woman came up with this rallying cry. (Coraggio!) Can we talk about shocking? Can we talk about unpredictable? Can we talk about paranoia? Can we talk about not knowing what's around the corner, not even tomorrow morning? That's what happens...and it happens for a long time...and it starts without warning...and it goes on and on...even though the prevailing signs and symbols say that you are "fine." I know, I know. Many of my friends sailed through this change in their life without a ripple, a hiccup or a lost hair. I, on the other hand, have days where I feel like I'm not a day older than 25, followed by days where I feel like someone who couldn't possibly be me. Things are "off." Things are out of whack. I'm out of whack. And then it goes. And then it comes back. And then...

In every phase of my life, I've been behind in my ability to "get it." Just when I realize where I am, I've scooted on to the next point. Right when I'm getting used to myself, my body has decided to take me on another blindfolded tour of yet-another amusement park (with even scarier and more thrilling rides). Just when I think I know something, really know it, I realize I don't. 

But this time, I think I do know something. I know it in my cells, in my weird-feeling head. I know it with my heart. I know that my Mom was right. It--Life--does take courage. And Janet was right. You have to get through it. 

You just have to. And you can. Coraggio.

—Charlotte

Going Through It

There’s something in the air lately. Some of it's the optimism, and relief, that comes from finally having a President worth believing in. A President who not only understands the depth and frailty of our economy, our safety, our future, our planet, but a leader who believes in our ability to make it through times such as these and come out stronger on the other side.

But the other emotion traveling through our atmosphere is realism. The realistic expectations of the grownups we're being forced to become instead of the children we've been for almost a decade now. We're finally being told to be adults, instead of greedy, spoiled, careless brats. Or to be fearless, instead of being full of fear. Not fearless enough to spend money we don't even make, but fearless in the way we attack our real lives. Fearless in the way we look at reality and deal with it, make the most of it, adore it. We’re supposed to learn what matters, what counts, what lasts. We’re supposed to take stock of our lives when we go through something like this, when our friends are losing jobs and money isn’t just tight it’s squeaking.

Right now, some of our friends are taking leaps they weren't before. Quitting and starting over. Leaving for a new city. Being brave instead of refusing to move. Several friends are getting divorced. Others have considered it, dropped it, picked it up again and set it down in some dark corner hoping it will stop making noise. In every case, money or lack thereof has absolutely nothing to do with it. Most have been married a long time, some more than 20 years, others ten or eleven or twelve. In almost every case the wife or the husband – or both – have been thinking about it, tossing the idea of it around, for years. And then shoving it under the rug. Until the rug is so high they have to walk around it when entering the house.

For some of us, the rug covers a multitude of things we refuse to look at. Whatever we’re ashamed of, afraid of, loathe to admit. The way we eat too much, care about ourselves too little. The phone calls we never make, the list of to do's that gets longer and longer, the life we let slip away, the lies we mumble to ourselves and others, the way we act like we'll live forever and a day. And we walk around The Rug until we’ve created a groove in the floor, then a gutter. And we look up from the gutter at the shadow that mountain makes and we feel buried beneath it. And our necks ache so, constantly turning away from the shadow it casts.

One of the best things I learned during therapy was this: Whatever it is, you have to go through it. Not around it, through it. Grief, fear, loss, addiction, anger, hatred, self-loathing, we’re so afraid to go through the darkness of the woods. Like a child we keep pretending if we don't acknowledge it, it will cease to exist. Close our eyes, whisper the words, poof! it will disappear, like some lovely fairy tale.

But it doesn't.

And it won't.

And it's ourselves we bury in that darkness, not just those Things We Shall Not Name.

And so to my friend who keeps shoving things under the rug:

Stop.

Get out the vacuum.

You can get through this.

God it will be messy and painful and there will be times you can’t stand another second and you'll cry and you'll wish you'd never started and you will feel awfully alone and utterly overwhelmed. But then you'll see something through the trees: a light.

And you will be brave.

Because sometimes brave is the only thing to be.

- Janet

On Cottesloe Beach

About nine years ago my husband said the worst thing he’s ever said to me. We were laying on the beach in Zihuatanejo with some friends, drinking and playing cards, utterly relaxed and a little high and discussing, as so many couples do, our current crushes and the ones we’d be allowed to – oh what’s it called – you know, the exceptions to the fidelity rule. 

Obviously all the names were of the celebrated and illustrious sort, for I’ve yet to meet any couple secure enough (or idiotic enough) to openly discuss each other’s attractions to the real and the next-door and the familial and the best friends in our midst. Anyway, when it came to me I listed my usual suspects, for I tend to fall rather faithfully the first time around. My husband has heard the same four or five names repeatedly over the years; I know his, he knows mine. There’s an odd comfort in that. 

And then I paused and said ‘But I think my top one right now is Heath Ledger.’ And this husband of mine reared up on one elbow – we were all laying on our towels in the sand – and barked, honestly barked, practically spitting the words out – ‘Heath Ledger! But you’re old enough to be his mother.’ 

Old enough to be his mother? Shouted as if this idea wasn’t some brilliant original sin but an atrocious crime someone should really pay penance for. Lock her up! She likes younger men! Oh you hideous horrible crone – look at you, you’re 40 years old for god’s sake. What surprised me was his attitude. After all he’s twelve years older than I, so in truth he could have sired me, legally, in some of the sadder of our Fifty States. Why was he so repulsed by a nineteen-year age difference? 

But then it occurred to me. It wasn’t the difference in age.  It was the direction. 

If I’d cooed Kevin Costner, Russell Crowe, Sean Connery, everyone would have nodded, Ahh, yes, wise age-appropriate choice. But obviously my erotic compass was off, pointing wildly due South instead of decently North.
So. Have I mentioned how unabashedly pissed I became? 

How righteous in my indignation? 

How, after two split seconds of stunned (and hurt) silence, I reared up as well and shouted the first two things I could think of. One, why was it singularly appropriate for every crush of his to be as young as his own daughters? And two, why was it so commendable of me to appreciate men 10, 20, 25 years senior but appalling if their ages decreased instead of progressed? And then I asked when the hell did he become Sophocles?
Now I suppose I should be thanking the fates in some Oedipal/Electral way that this truly was the worst thing he’s ever said to me. I suppose I’m lucky that way. And I suppose it should also please me how prescient my tastes were, and how over the years I’ve been able to torment him for his own appalling choices (Denise Richards, yes, Denise Richards) while pointing out the brilliancy of mine. 

But it also makes me realize that by 37 or 38 I had turned a chronological corner, at least in society’s eyes, and that I was too old for some things. Some people. Some dreams. Some desires. Perhaps the words hag, biddy, gorgon, harpy, harridan, shrew are too harsh, but the dictionary still offers them up when you type in ‘old woman.’ Perhaps it’s utterly ridiculous to consider human years like the rings of a tree. But I’ll admit this, shh, tell no one: when my nephew told me last year that his 22 year old friend found me ‘really hot’ I wasn’t merely delighted. I was vindicated. 
   Which brings me, at last, to this photo. On New Year’s Eve we sat on Cottesloe Beach, just outside Perth in West Australia, overlooking the Indian Ocean. It’s gorgeous, iridescent, unspeakably blue. Wild parrots gather in the Norfolk pines at dusk, calling to each, finding their mate. Each night hundreds of locals sit on the shore and watch the sun sink into sea, and for once that verb ‘sink’ does no justice to the act. Here on the other edge of the world the sun doesn’t just vanish, it melts. It’s liquefied, a living lava lamp of orange and magenta and scarlet, taking a full ten minutes to finally disappear. 

It was one of Heath Ledger’s favorite places in the world. 

He had such excellent taste.

Speaking of which...

Image: www.travel-to-naxos.com

Death. Doors....Tourist spots?

Odd how these go together (last two posts and the comment in between). Metaphorically. Poetically. Emotionally. Clearly, death, despite being the ultimate closure, is yet another passage for those it takes and for those it leaves behind. We call what comes after it "The Great Beyond," not knowing, really, what that means. And those of us who lose someone go forward, despite our loss, into unchartered territory. Sometimes territory that is unpredictably beautiful.

So nothing could be more powerful, graphically, then the shape of a door or a window framing nothing but time and space, making manifest an invitation from here to there. But the outlining of space does something else—at least for me. It gives me a tremendous sense of optimism, a sense that infinite possibility is just there, within reach. A complete Liz Lemon: "I want to go to there." And despite the fact that a delineation is by definition a border, the opening without context makes me feel border-less. It makes me feel utterly free. 

Janet's comment to Teresa mentioned the Portara at Naxos. It seemed only fitting to include it here. Time to move forward. As individuals. As a collective. The door is right there. And it's open. Maybe the time is not opportune to go to Greece, but we can walk freely through those beautiful doors in our minds and in our hearts.

—Charlotte

Something that Lasts

Our friend Mark died a year ago today.
All week the words Write something write something Write anything on the blog to prove you're here kept passing through my head, but waking up this morning there was only one idea that made sense. 365 days ago Mark left. And because he's never coming back, this will be for him. 
Mark loved good cigars and great Scotch and the way those two make a night a lot more gorgeous. He was a poet who loved other poets most of all. He was passionate about the written word and how incendiary it can be, how loving, how perfect. He hated phonies and pretentiousness and idle gossip, although gossip is never idle and the phonies should know that most of all. He loved his wife and his dog and his cat and he loved the ocean, too, and these mountains most people take for granted.

He loved the simple act of reading a book. He loved the heft of them, the craft of the spine and the ink, the smell of pages and how no internet will ever replace all that, how reading something online has no soul but what we force into it. He loved law-breaking liberals and profane revolutionaries and those who go howl in the night and he threw this dark pointed look at anyone he met who understood none of it. There was something feral about him when pushed by an idiot or fool. He knew some idiots and some fools.

He loved New York City and Paris and Woody Allen films and Che Guevara and Fidel Castro's pitching; how he would have loved to have seen Soderbergh's 'Che'. He didn't judge others which is a quality in such short supply I can think of almost no other besides him. We shared some of the same Gods - Cormac McCarthy and Kerouac and Ginsberg and Cassady, Lowell and Plath and Berryman and Carver and Rexroth, and always at the top of the list the great, misunderstood, underappreciated Hemingway. Mark simply did not live long enough, if quantity of years are anything to go by, and I think they are. It's such utter bullshit that those who die young somehow cram all the good years in: we say this so we can live with the loss, sweep it away, hope it won't happen to us. Some people get all the luck; others try to make and save and store up what they can. Whenever I read something beautiful or bruising or benevolent or terrifyingly true, I will try to think of him. Mark, this is for you.

My Autopsy

There is a way
if we want
into everything

I'll eat the chicken carbonara and you eat the veal, the olives, the 
small and glowing loaves of bread
I'll eat the waiter, the waitress
floating through the candled dark in shiny black slacks
like water at night

The napkins, folded into paper boats, contain invisible Japanese
     poems

You eat the forks,
all the knives, asleep and waiting
on the white tables

What do you love?

I love the way our teeth stay long after we're gone, hanging on
  despite worms or fire

I love our stomachs
turning over 
the earth

There is a way
if we want
to stay, to leave

- Both

Matthew Dickman

Dream.

Our heartfelt thanks to Teresa Elliott

who contributes the following. 

If ever a winter was long, it's this one. 

If ever there were a time to dream, it's now. 

Consider this the portal.

Well, here's my pink door. It came to me in a dream. It was actually the finishing touch on my courtyard, which came to me in a daydream (never confuse the two), and was made possible when I sold my husband's truck. It's a nice courtyard, peaceful. There's a fountain—that's de rigeur, ain't it?—and sometimes I catch Homer, a dog, drinking from it, standing like a man with his feet on the rim; other times I see grackles bathing in the upper basin; sometimes I see both of these things at once. Those are very sweet days. 

Also in the courtyard are melon-colored hibiscus and pink bougainvilla, there's a gardenia bush that sends off blooms faster than I can place them behind my ears. There are several kinds of bamboo ringing the perimeter, the most dramatic kind being Timer, which grows so mightily I expect it to come for me in my sleep. And I bet there are worse ways to go. In fact, I know there are. 

Also in the courtyard, behind the pink door, is a big ship, made by a potter, my husband's friend, intended to house my darling's ashes, except I can't get them out of the more official brass container. I took the brass container with me to Key West not long after I received it. We stayed in a grand old plantation home surrounding...a courtyard...wait a minute, is that where this whole thing started? For sure we did a lot of daydreaming that trip, so maybe...

The dream in which my pink door starred was the first time I'd woken up laughing in just the longest time and I guess that's why I needed to bring it to life. It quite broke the spirit of my handyman—he hasn't returned a call since—but I'm told it amuses passersby. My across-the-street neighbor says they take pictures of it. I wonder what they think. I hope they think it's "witty." I hope they don't think I'm trying to keep the bad stuff out, 'cause you can't. I'm trying to keep the good stuff in. And it's working out okay. Not perfect, but okay.

Teresa Elliott is a writer living in Austin, Texas. 

If ever there was ripeness.

If you don't know who Maira Kalman is, it is never too late to find out. She will make up for all that lost time. Please watch this video. It is worth it just to get to her last line. 

For more such inspiration, please visit http://www.ted.com

—Charlotte

We couldn't agree more.

Thanks for the plug, Mr. President.

Basking in it

Life—i.e. all the stuff one could blog about—keeps getting in the way of blogging. But I guess that's a good thing, no? Personal things, small things, big things. Life threatening, and simultaneously life affirming, things. Suffice it to say December was rugged. But the New Year rolled in with a silver lining so lovely it was blinding.

And of course, there was the small affair of the American inauguration. Not only did it knock words out of those who never find themselves speechless, as they searched for adjectives to describe the day. But it also knocked the desire out of me to think about much of anything else. My mind, blissfully, has drawn a short-term blank.

The entire time Bush was President, I worried, fretted, and opined; and I was only one of billions the world over doing the same thing. It was like having another job. "Yes, I'm an advertising professional, but I moonlight as an expert panicker in an attempt to keep the world intact." It was about all I/we could do at times, wasn't it? Watch in horror, watch again, scratch our heads, experience profound fear. Fear and baseless hope became so intermingled that you could hardly feel one without the other.

Someone once said in the last eight years that W was like a feckless adolescent who had borrowed his dad's keys to the car—"Sorry, Dad, I wrecked the country." And we were all in the back of the Ford Country Squire without our seat belts fastened.

Now, there's an adult in the driver's seat, and all of a sudden, my panic is gone. I'm still worried, but I'm also inspired to participate meaningfully in a dialog and a process, not to mention some personal choices, that might pull us forward. Panic isn't something the new driver inspires. Quite the opposite.

In fact, right now, thanks to Obama, even though I'm working and even though the kids are home sick and even though the stresses of daily life haven't abated one iota, I am taking a small psychological vacation. For the first time in—oh, let's count 'em, eight—years, I feel calm. Really calm. And the hope I feel isn't intermingled with terror. It just is.

So I'm not really doing a lot of thinking right this minute. That'll come later. What I'm doing is just feeling. Well, no. That's not it either. I'm basking—simply basking in the ray of hope that has stretched itself far and wide across this crusty little spinning ball of a planet that we all call home. 

—Charlotte

President Barack Obama

...the beacon still burns bright.

Out in the rain

As if there's not enough going on...

Yesterday, I had the most awful day. Awful. It was raining. It was dark; it felt like nighttime at 10 in the morning, here in Milan. My husband is away for the week. I was running around like a crazed person trying desperately not to let anything fall through the cracks.

So what did I do? I let something fall.

At 5:00 o'clock in the afternoon, after a day of ferrying children back and forth, spending time with an aging relative, and doing my work, I realize that Luna is gone. Luna is our dog of 10 years. She's not at my house. She's not at my mother-in-law's (right next door) where she passes nearly every hour of every day. I panic. I retrace my steps. AND OH MY GOD. I remember that I've left her tied up outside my youngest daughter's nursery school. Where she's been. Under the cold rain. Since 9:00 in the morning. The math? 8 hours. A full working day. And she's not young.

The guilt is already unbearable. I throw on my raincoat, run to the nursery school crying and panting and going as fast as I can. And when I get there, she's not there. Just by chance, the school is open, because there were parents' meetings just about to begin, which I was supposed to have attended. But, you know, when you've accidentally murdered your own dog, you don't hang out at PTA meetings. Anyway, I go in the school, and I throw myself at the nearest attendant and say between sobs, "Has anyone seen my dog." She narrows her eyes and looks at me like the murderer I am, and pulls a wrinkled piece of paper out of her pocket with a phone number on it. "Call this number," she says. "Someone came by around 1:00 and took the poor beast away." That's what they say in Italy; it's a term of endearment: Povera bestia.

I call the number. Turns out, that, yes, just after midday, someone saw Luna in a miserable state in the rain and called "The Friends of Animals," a volunteer association not far from my house. They came, picked up the trembling remains of our dear animal, dried her, warmed her, fed her, gave her water, had her scanned at the nearby veterinary clinic for the information her microchip would yield (didn't find it), then waited for someone (me) to call. 

When I get there with my mother-in-law in tow, the woman meets me and says Luna is in the home of a volunteer dog sitter not far away. We go all together in the car, and are greeted by an elderly gentlemen with an extremely kind face. As it turns out, he's an ex purse designer for all the major fashion houses, and he's kept Luna the whole day in his old studio. Luna practically does a dance when she sees us. Weaving and wagging—bang bang her tail thwacks against the open door—around and around smelling and sniffing and "smiling" that dog's smile that says, "Is it true? Is it really you? I'm so happy!" She's fine. She's not lame. She's not dead. She's not even holding a grudge.

And even with the depth of her forgiveness, I am having a horrible time forgiving myself. Sleep didn't come last night. And I'm feeling certain that the "breathing" I so highly recommended two posts ago isn't going to accomplish a whole hell of a lot. 

How could you have done that? you ask?

Well, it's like this. 99.99999% of the time, my husband takes Luna with him when he takes our eldest to school. I stay home and attend to the other child. When Luna comes home with him, she eats, then spends the day at my mother-in-law's, sleeping on the couch while she knits, eating the frequently offered goodies, and taking walks when weather permits. I don't see her until she comes home for dinner. And as I'm stressed with being alone and responsible for everything and everyone, I forgot that I'd "disrupted" the usual rhythm of things by taking her with me, and tying her outside the school, where I never have the habit of leaving her. As for the microchip, it was in place, they'd just missed it with the first scan.

So a series of both awful and fortunate events unfolded yesterday, reminding me that when I try to be and do everything, shit happens. And, yet, there's not a lot I can do to change it. I remember something my sometimes-therapist said to me years ago. He said, "Be careful as you do the everyday things." We'd been talking about happiness—I was at the time extremely happy—and his warning to me was to remain present and conscious and alert, even as I was feeling so "on top of things" and capable. Yesterday, whizzing through my Super Woman routine, I forgot his words. 

To make it all the more poignant for me, Luna feels for all the world like the perfect metaphorical representation of me. We got her weeks after I moved to Milan full of new love to start my new life. We have aged together. I see the passage of my life in her gray muzzle and her slower movements. I left her out in the rain. 

I left myself out in the rain too. It's going to take me some time to feel normal again.

—Charlotte

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA?

Hope hope hope hope hope hope hope hope hope hope hope hope hope hope hope hope hope hope hope hope hope hope hope hope hope hope hope hope hope hope hope (breathe) hope hope hope hope hope hope hope hope hope hope hope hope hope hope hope hope hope hope hope hope hope hope hope hope hope hope hope hope hope hope hope hope hope hope hope (again) hope hope hope hope hope hope hope hope hope hope hope hope hope hope hope hope hope hope hope hope. 

- Janet

Breathe.

After my colleague Janet's brilliant dissection of Sarah Palin's wink, I've felt at a loss for what to comment on. Her assessment of the anatomy of that manipulative facial punctuation is so right on, so to the heart of the matter. I've got nothing to add except my appreciative agreement.

But this morning in my yoga class, as I began the simultaneously grueling and tranquilizing series of exercises that has become my drug of choice, it came to me. Perhaps it's time for an about face. So what I want to say is what I was saying to myself as I bent my 46 year-old body into a pretzel shape I'm particularly proud of: "Breath." That's it. 

Yoga often hurts. Muscles strain. Your outside life insists on inserting itself into the calm you're seeking. The best way I've found to stop the spinning of my mind and my preference for reaction over reflection is to breathe deeply and rhythmically. Yoga requires that your mind be relaxed even as you prompt your body to attempt the impossible. You learn to observe your physical state without judging it or entering to far into it. The result, amazingly, is that the pain recedes. I'm not an expert, and I don't experience lovely glowing, nirvana-like apparitions. But I have managed to experience waves of peace, which come and go, with the cyclic engagement and relaxing of my mind.

What does this have to do with Sarah Palin? With politics? With next Tuesday? Well, somehow, a lot.

I confess that I'm right up there with the most rabid election addicts. Even when I'm supposed to be working, or better yet, relaxing for one brief minute, I am wasting time clicking back and forth between Rasmussen, Real Clear Politics, CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera in English, The New York Times, the Washington Post, Andrew Sullivan's "The Daily Dish," Salon, Slate and an increasing dose of YouTube (as it provides me all the American stuff I miss by living in Italy) in search of a whiff of where this thing is going "right now." And as we all know the internet and our bottomless addiction to it have reinvented the immediacy that "now" connotes. You can read a story "now," only to have to click to another source to read the latest version, which is already more "now" than the one you just read. All day long between other jobs and responsibilities I follow the polls ticking back and forth by tenths of points in their nervous, incremental, undecided—and very irritating—little dance.

It is, in a word, insane.

But what does this mean—this continuous flow of updates, analyses, commentaries, attacks and counter-attacks? It means, really, that no one's thinking a whole lot. Everyone's reacting. And over-reacting. Who's breathing deeply in the middle of all this? Who's observing, reflecting?Every now and then Sarah Palin does take a deep breath, but like her wink, it's designed for dramatic effect. ("While I take a break to breath you can absorb the truth of my latest lie.")

I can't make this rolling stone stop to gather moss, but I can stop the way I let it infect my mind and my quality of life. Because it is effecting my life, and not in a good way.

This election IS important. I'm not denying that. It may well be the most important thing that happens to us American collectively in our lifetime. But, I repeat, but, it is not the most important thing in my existence. 

I live. I breathe. I love. I have children to raise. And while I'd like to raise them with a consciousness about what's happening in this world, this nonstop participation in the media circus is neither consciousness nor conscience at work. This is addiction. This is madness. This is not helping us.

From here on out in this post, please slow down. Forget about all that mad bubbling stirred up by your favorite internet news source. Breathe. Think about how your breathing feels as it travels in and out of you body, carrying in new air and carrying away old. Breath deeply. Enjoy the fact that you can. 

I'm asking you to do this because what would help us, would be to stop. To still ourselves. To find a silence inside. What would help us would be to breathe deeply, to slow down our processes, to reflect well and long and without hurry or preconceptions about what is happening in our lives. To observe from a distance. What color is the sky today? How does the air feel against our skin? What muscles hurt? How do we really feel? How can the relaxation of the mind relieve our various ills? How long can we sit still and simply observe what that feels like—without input, without stimulus, without browsing. Without judgment of ourselves if we fail, at first, to find stillness.

And then, with calm and maybe with a greater degree of detachment, we can view the news as a deservedly small part of an even larger picture: just existing. And maybe there, we can find a place to contain it so that it doesn't consume us and in so doing destroy our capacity to react appropriately and to live our lives despite it.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out.

—Charlotte

Why We Get Sarah Palin

The McCain ticket, as well as America's incessantly shrill and one-note corporate media, wanted us to believe Sarah Palin was there to bring women to their side. You know, make Hillary supporters believe Oh look, she's one of us. She's wearing...a skirt. To get us to vote Female First, issues and intelligence and demonstratable ability and country last. Vote with our vaginas, as if our vaginas weren't beyond exhausted as it is.

Seriously, with all the laundry and coq au vin family suppers and spontaneous acts of complex multi-tasking our nifty anatomical regions must perform on a daily basis, how ever do they find time to cast a deciding vote? Oh so that's where the term ballot box comes from! 

But wait, once again, I digress. 

For six, seven weeks—although, dear reader, it feels like 107—everyone propped up Sarah Palin as if she were the crimson-clad answer to all things womanized. Even Geraldine Ferraro, whom I used to respect, acted as if Palin deserved extra girl credit simply for being utterly X instead of nasty old Y. Gravelly-voiced newscasters trumpeted how wonderful it is that someone from tiny Wasilla could shatter our eternal glass ceiling. My husband turned to me in utter horror after the VP debate saying 'Will women honestly fall for that?' because even an intelligent man such as he was wondering if the pundits were right, and there's some sort of female gender switch which automatically ignites, requiring we vote for the one most 'like' us, regardless if she's completely unqualified, against every ideal we espouse, dangerously inept and incurious, strangely arrogant and oddly over-confident, miraculously uninformed and stupendously dangerous for our democracy. 

And to my husband I screamed a mighty No! Only women who are (all those words above) would vote for her! 

And then, friend, I got angry. And I've been growing steadily more angry ever since. 

This Governor wants to overturn Roe v. Wade. This Governor would enforce a Constitutional Amendment on gay marriage. This Governor wasn't simply into banning books, she was into pulling books off library shelves with her own evangelical hands.  This Governor believes she is on a mission from God and this God can pray the gay right out of you. And 'win' Iraq. She doesn't believe climate change is man-made, but she does believe in Armageddon. She doesn't believe in sex education unless it's abstinence-only, but she does believe in making rape victims pay for their own rape kits. 

She has opposed clean water regulation and has approved legislation allowing oil and gas companies to nearly triple the amount of toxic waste they can dump into Alaska waters. She loves earmarks as much as she loves aw-shucks folkisms, believes creationism should be taught in every school in America, believes in unlimited off-shore drilling, thinks slaughtering wolves and soon bears from on high is not simply good clean fun, but a God-given right, too. 

She believes in cronyism and nepotism but more than anything, anything, she believes in what got her where she is in the first place, and that's the last refuge of the female scoundrel: The Almighty Wink. Winking at cameras and crowds and world leaders as if she's....she's....gosh darnit, the second-prettiest lady in Alaska. Winking as if that, forget the nod, can make all sins wash away in the night.

But see this is where my anger ends. And my chromosomes stand up and applaud. 

Because women, regardless of our political affiliation, regardless how far left or right we are, know the shallows that lie beneath a lady who winketh. And last week, as her numbers plummeted, I was proved right. See, we know she's part Mean Girl we knew in high school and part Human Being Who Doesn't Deserve These Heights. We understand her wink-ness is a way of deflecting any sort of intelligent response, of leveling the playing field to something truly subterranean. She can't answer the question, so she bats it away with an eyelash. She squeals Gosh and Darn and because it worked for Bush, perhaps it will work for her. She uses mascara, liner and shadow like they're the Holy Trinity of Vanity, projecting the humble unity of 'we're all in this together don'tchaknow.' As well as 'See how easy breezy this whole running the United States thing really is?

But we see it and we're embarrassed. Not embarrassed because she's a woman but embarrassed that anyone believes she represents us, as Americans. As thinking individuals who care desperately about the direction this country takes. 

And it turns out, as it always turns out, her biggest appeal isn't to women and never has been. As it turns out, her biggest appeal is to—ta da—men.  

Men in trucker hats and baseball hats turned backwards and inside out, men who think Barefoot and Pregnant is the name of a sweet new cologne (Man where can I buy me some?) men who yell 'You tell 'em baby' at rallies and wear buttons proclaiming 'Proud to be voting for a hot chick' and who far, far overuse and misunderstand the word 'dude.' Men, in other words, who think she's winking at them. Because she sure as hell isn't winking at us. 

And that is why, with fingers crossed and hope in my heart, I hold my breath and await Election Day. 

My vagina is voting for Obama/Biden.

I hope yours, no matter how exhausted it may be, is too.

—Janet

        

My mother, myself

My mother was a beautiful woman.

We all say that about our mothers, it must be some evolutionary impulse I suppose, and we hope that by saying so we reap the genetic benefits that follow. But in this instance it takes no amount of exaggeration for me to say that my mother was quite beautiful, and that I have always paled in comparison.

When I was young it seemed as if all my friends had mothers straight out of Happy Days or The Waltons or All in The Family (seriously) and mine seemed like nothing less than a young Lauren Bacall, which both intimidated the hell out of me and made me alarmingly proud at the very same time. How she managed to look lovely regardless of how little money we had (and how less and less it became after my father was struck with cancer) I will never know. But how she felt about beauty is something I will always remember: it mattered only a little, and in comparison with generosity and grace, kindness and humility, intelligence and tolerance, it mattered not a whit at all. Her aim in my life - in the life of all three of her children - was to raise the best adults, the best human beings, she possibly could. What we looked like, and what we achieved with those looks, meant absolutely nothing to her.

What mattered was the number of novels we devoured and the grades we brought home, those words teachers scrawled on report cards as to whether we were a pleasure in class or utter hell, the friends we coveted, the loves we reciprocated, whether we knew enough to do something brilliant in this world, whether we had the grace to fail and get back up. She told me a hundred times that looks were temporary - a blessing when acne sprung upon me with Wagnerian ferocity; when pizza and chocolate became my Prozac of choice and thus poundage did apply - and that to judge ourselves either too harshly or too lovingly was a trap. A joke. A lie.

I think she watched her wrinkles come and her red hair turn dark and was glad she had Updike and Cather and McCarthy and Dinesen to keep her company, but I also know that growing older pained her. Not in the expected ways, because she believed Bette Davis when she said 'Old age is no place for sissies.' What pained her was the invisibility. The gradual fading away while younger, newer takes over. How she went from having all doors opened to just a few. How years became a slight cross to bear, although she bore them so regally, and how inside she still felt 32 and could not understand how no one saw that. The way that years should add up to something, not detract. She despised my admission that at 42 I felt 'too old' to begin a real writing career. For if I felt 'old' at 40 what did that say about her at 70? Was I negating her still being on this earth? Could I not see she was just as viable if not more so?

And of course that's not what I was saying at all.

It had nothing to do with numbers or wrinkles or chronological gravity: it had to do with fear of a blank page and a new start and it was personal, all mine, just me. If she were still here I would tell her that. If she were here, my beautiful brilliant mother I would take her hand and tell her that nothing ever diminished her. Nothing cut her down. Nothing made her less. But she is gone and I am left with a blank page again. At 49, I do not know how old I feel. Sometimes I'm happy to merely feel anything at all.

—Janet

Where to draw the line

I've been working freelance this week on a European line of products, found in the pharmacy, that help combat cellulite. By all accounts—pharmacists and friends alike—the stuff works. It's been around a long time, and I suppose that one could argue that its dated look in packaging and advertising contribute to the sense one has that the brand is "trustworthy". There are no sleek modern graphics to seduce you. No minimalist lines or frosted glass. Instead, the company's claims are specifically spelled out on the packaging. "Increases tone around the waistline by 37% within 4 weeks of use." Stuff like that. The names of mysterious active ingredients appear as well, in hefty Helvetica Neue expanded. Along with this rigorously Swiss typeface, the advertising has featured—as do competitive campaigns for brands such as La Roche, Vichy, Collistar, etc.—a perfectly perfect woman, or parts thereof. When asked to take a stab at refreshing or modernizing the campaign, one of my first thoughts was to back off on the retouching. Too much perfection a dead body makes.

Nonetheless, in the end, I hesitated to even broach the subject. This company is not Dove, and they could easily argue that their success, which is enormous, is based on these very perfect, inhuman images. Further, I discovered that as I was presenting my own updated versions of the ads, I too was tempted to retouch the photos I'd been given to work with. I wondered why?

I can't really answer the question, other than to say that the model the agency had photographed was so close to perfection, that certain flaws felt like they had to go. On the other hand, as I poised my Photoshop airbrush over her tanline, I realized that the retouching I was doing, was nothing compared to what they would want eventually. In the end, she would be truly airbrushed, resculpted, scrubbed clean of any and all variations in skin tone. Her curves would no longer appear soft, but as firm and cool as marble. She wouldn't be she, she would be a platonic ideal. Both boring, and a lie. And this coming from a company which takes great pains to precisely quantify its promises.

I'm not laying blame here. I'm just tossing it out there for thought and consideration. Because the other thing that bothers the brain is this: how many of us would buy the product if the images were "real." How do you show "37% more tone"? Compared to what? Without the ideal of perfection dangling carrot-like before our eyes, do we take the otherwise honest bait? I don't know. Maybe not. And in fact, it doesn't even feel like a lie; it merely feels like what it is: an obvious idealization. I know that won't be me, but I don't really care. 37% of something moving in that direction seems like a fair shake.

Then I remembered a fascinating article entitled "Picture Perfect" which I read in the May 12 issue of the New Yorker about perhaps the best photographic retoucher in the world, Pascal Dangin. He was the retoucher behind the Dove campaign, behind all those "real" women that we assume are appearing "as is." Don't be fooled; even they have been doctored for presentation.

When he explains that he'll leave an actress' crooked teeth and laughlines because they make her who she is, he is telling us from a position of great visual authority that there's a significant difference between beauty and perfection. Aging is hard enough, but we would be greatly accomplished if we could assess ourselves in the mirror with as much humanity: what of our reflections is simply who we are? and what would be left if we erased it?

—Charlotte

Growing up.

Funny how time warps and weaves and folds back on itself.

Our last entry was in 2006, and perhaps frustrated that our book sales weren't doing better (that's another story for another time) we stopped posting onto Ripe: The Movement. But the fact of the matter is, our book may have slowed down, but the movement of ripeness goes on with or without us. We were happily reminded of this by a reader named Wendy.

When last we were posting, we'd both been hit by a series of deaths within close range, and our moods, world-views, and words were colored accordingly. Even though we said "Boing" in May 2006 with the intention of jumping back into action, the fact of the matter is that springing back takes time.

But time has passed: more than two years. And in that time, we've both regained a sense of youth and resilience. Some experiences are just to be waded through. There's nothing to do but hold tight and see where you end up. We're happy to say that we've ended up "up."

In the past weeks, we've also decided to dive back into our working partnership, and to take advantage of the ways in which we've both grown individually and professionally in the past few years. As Janet always said, "you don't grow old, you just grow."