Made with Dead Sea Minerals

Today we visited the Dead Sea. It was pretty cool apart from the fact that I repeatedly got salt in one of my orifices. I think every 10 minutes I had to blindly stumble from the water as my helpful Boyfriend got a bottle of water with which to rinse my burning eyes and a towel to wipe off the crusty pain. Either that, or I was spitting out mouthfuls of foaming saliva and wrinkling my face in disgust and a fruitless attempt to rid myself of the yucky yucky taste of extreme brine.

But apart from that, it was enjoyable. The water doesn't move around you like it does in the non-dead seas. It truly feels dead. As dead as water can be, of course. Is water really ever dead? I guess that would require a state of aliveness at some point...after all, water does have need oxygen to exist, and it respires by evaporating...

Silent Night

I'm in the Holy Land. I don't feel Holy. In fact, I don't feel much of anything. Perhaps this has something to do with the confusion of my internal clock, or the fact that I could just as easily be in Texas, or Boston, or Amsterdam and the city would look and feel very similar to Jerusalem. I suppose that I'm confirming here what I've long suspected...I'm not sentimental.

I don't cry at life insurance commercials. I don't remember "the good old days" with fond caressing love. I don't seek out old friends or old boyfriends or old memories or anything of that ilk to relive some past that no longer moves me. So perhaps this is why, when I think of Christ moving through these streets, or when I think of the many years of tearing down and building up and conflicts and haggling and peace, it feels just like any other day of my life.

But the things that do move me - being able to put my boyfriend in context. Knowing that, given his background (seeing it, living it) that he is being a really great guy in his way, trying to understand me better and making a super A-1 effort to fit this idea of love. I think back to the years of refined gentility that I lived with another guy and realize that much of it was all taught to him from an early age just by his surroundings, and also by his family. It meant that he knew early on how to be delicate with women, how to make life poetic, what to say and what to do. He made love and appreciation very obvious. But it never forced me to look beyond what I saw, and perhaps I can make that connection now.

This city is full of hidden places and multiple meanings. Perhaps my boyfriend is rough around the edges but there's a lot more too him than just the stony exterior. And that helps a lot, the perspective.

So we'll see. Right now, I miss my bed and my son.

Southern European Goodness

Oh. And might I just say...I LOVE Italian men. There is a group of them staying in the same hotel this past week. They know how to make a woman feel damn sexy just by looking her up and down. All in all, that might mean that they're chauvinist pigs, but god damn it - I haven't felt this smashingly attractive in a long time.

Uncoiling

This past week in India, I have slowly (ever so slowly) been uncoiling from the tightly wound mess of self that I had been these past weeks before leaving. Moving house. Moving house and in with my boyfriend. Finishing a wedding dress. The wedding dress, finished, was not finished because it was not perfect. Wedding dress was praised by client. Still a failure in my mind. Trying to transfer recorded interviews onto computer. Failing. Wanting to be beautiful, smart, funny, thin, special. Failing. Failing, failing, failing. And with every failure I got another tight coil in my spring.

But now I'm here in the land of heat and spice and feeling quite relaxed. So much of those twisting turns that have pierced their way into my body are eeking out of me now. In part this is because my work is under control and I feel like I'm making progress on something worthwhile. Plus, it pays. I mean, literally - it pays me money. Overall postive.

But the other big part of this equation is that I finally asked myself, "For whom?" For whom do I need to make this wedding dress perfect? If my client likes it and accepts it, then why am I making myself crazy? For whom do I need to be the smartest? Do I want to not only join, but also run, MENSA? Or perhaps memorize Pi to the billionth digit? Not really. No. There isn't anyone or anything that I actually care about that NEEDS me to be the smartest.

So I ask myself that now, for everything. For whom do I need to deliver this roadmap? Our customers, my boss, my livelihood. Well, all right then. Go ahead with the stress.

For whom do I need to be the prettiest? No one. The funniest? No one. I am enough of each of these things for myself that they come together to make me better than I would be if I didn't take care of myself, didn't get out, didn't try to love and be loved.

For whom do I need to be a good and loving mommy? Sir Nedlypants. No question whether I'm holding on to that one.

For whom do I need to be in shape? Myself. I need to feel good and healthy and eat well.

The Bhagavad Gita - I think this book sums it up. If you have a choice between doing something that you might not be great at, and doing nothing, go with the first option. Better to work hard and suck than not work at all.

So now I am just left with a mission to re-evaluate that which is important to me. What are the qualities in myself that I love? What are the qualities I used to have and don't anymore, but that I want back? What are the qualities that I dislike and want to get rid of? What is my spiritual goal in life? What is my material goal?

I don't have answers to any of those questions right now, except that for the next short term interval, I am going to try to be a better mom, a better girlfriend, and try to accept those I love for who they are with the knowledge that they do the same for me.

Apocalypse, NOW!

Yes, Captain. You have, indeed, stumbled across The Apocalypse. In fact, I rather like the image of stumbling into someone else's Last Days because I feel like that's how it's going to go down for all the non-believers. The End of the World should be relative to one's own religious leanings.

So, for example, as fire rains down from the sky onto Catholics the world over, those who are still awaiting the Messiah (for the first time) might find themselves thinking, "What terrible weather the [Italians, Irish, Colombians...] are having. Perhaps I won't go for a walk and instead will inside and light some incense as an offering to [Buddha, Vishnu, Zeus...]. Or, maybe I'll circumcise some young children today. Mazel tov. And for those unlucky enough to be having a post-dinner stroll, getting trapped by some crazy angels blasting horns might ruin the day entirely.

So for some, this Blog may well represent The End. And for others, it might just be bad weather. There was certainly some foul storming going on yesterday.

But today is a better day, and I even managed to smile by the time I went to bed last night. I think it had something to do with getting things accomplished, like more moving and more sewing and more - just MORE everything. Last night I managed to increase my consumption of time within the same number of physical hours as the night before, so that made me feel better. Time travel is always a pick-me-up.

I can't get no...

I'm struggling today with the deceptively simple question of satisfaction. Interestingly enough, if I take a step back and look at the fundamentals in my life - do I have enough food to eat? Shelter? Clothing? - then I feel extremely satisfied and almost uncomfortably so. Guilty, even.

But then I think about all the extras that are in my life, like wedding dresses and bags and surveys and whatnot, and it's a different kind of satisfaction but just as equally appealing for me. Part of me knows that the reward for what some might label as noise will only come after a long and arduous journey, and that it will probably be very fulfilling. Probably.

But another part of me wants to just throw away all the ambition and just live contentedly forever and ever. I love my son and I love my boyfriend almost to the point where I want to hold on to them like beacons in a storm. I hate myself when I don't deliver what they need, and yet I hate myself when I don't deliver what I need. And sometimes the two purposes don't match up.

Of course, when I think about the happy vision of needing nothing and wanting less, it seems so impossible and idealistic. And yet it means that all of my basic needs would be met. So what is satisfaction? I challenge the world for an answer.

Let the madness begin.

This past weekend was full of major stresses in my life that I don't know how to deal with, and most are self-imposed.

First, I've wrongly prioritized too many things, and the High Priority items are more than I can handle without having at least one of those projects or life priorities suffer.

Second, I feel like I'm mentally and emotionally deficient at some times and almost inconceivably strong at others. And sometimes I can tell when I'm going to lose my grip on things, and others I just don't, and then the foundation crumbles and I begin lashing out at the world for the situation that I alone have created.

So I decided to create a blog in the hopes that, instead of lashing out at the people whom I love more than anything, I will preferably scream into cyberspace and this outlet will make me a more pleasant person.

Get ready, Internet!