A Lesson from the Goddess Jeannette

(Note: I wrote this post two weeks ago, before the sudden death of our beloved Pomeranian Nala, the galvanizing murder of George Floyd and resulting rash of protests and violence, a death in the family and too many things to even recount. I was so knocked off my axis that I was unable to post in a timely fashion, thought to update this entry to reflect recent events but decided to keep this as I wrote it, complete unto itself.)

Monday dawned bright and crisp, spring arriving in a pandemic-scarred Manhattan, nature asserting her glorious self despite the human crisis. I awoke bleary-eyed, having been roused several times in the night in tandem with my husband, recuperating from a serious ankle injury some three weeks earlier.

My time in quarantine has been bracketed by the Before and After eras of his accident, just as all of our lives are bracketed by the BC – Before Coronavirus and the now.

In the Before the Accident era of the quarantine I found myself possessed of energy, good humor, a sense of optimism and focus. I was busy with several projects that engaged my interest and felt productive and creative. I divided my time at home with careful visits to my elderly parents, wearing a medical grade mask and protective gear, bringing food and good cheer. Even the week following his fall -- which included a terrifying breathless journey to a safe Urgent Care and then a COVID-free ER (in NYC!!!), the hospital admission, tests, swift medical consultation and emergency surgery – found me proactive, organized, calm, competent.

Perhaps I should not have been surprised that following the initial week home, I crashed. Big time.

I stopped wanting to speak with friends. I slept in the clothes I had worn during the day. I began obsessing over the ubiquity of science- and reality-denying Trump supporters on my Facebook feed. I found myself increasingly unable to tune out the daily antics of Trump himself. The death toll kept climbing. Mother’s Day was approaching and I hadn’t seen two of my three adult children in months, was sharing my grandson’s first year through FaceTime.

A steady theme running through my days was the safety of my parents, living independently but with shifts of caregivers. The thrum of anxiety was my constant background noise.

Going outside was wrought with peril, beginning with navigating the common spaces of our apartment building. A refrigerated morgue was parked down our block, next to the hospital. Sirens pierced the air day and night. I avoided the elevator, taking the stairs...which is where my husband had fallen. I held my breath while bringing the garbage down to the basement, despite my mask. I veered away from unmasked people on the sidewalk, some smoking, other running uncomfortably close by. When we had a visiting nurse and physical therapist come to the apartment, I ran to open the door for them, then retreated inside the apartment, shouting directions for them to my husband in our bedroom. A post-operative visit to the orthopedic surgeon on the Upper East Side was nightmarish as we encountered a crowded waiting room, receptionist without a proper mask and no hygienic protocols observed.

Like most everyone else, we lost friends and loved ones, attended Zoom funerals and shivas. There were days that Facebook seemed like one long obituary section.

At home, I was on-call in a rather intensive way, given the extent of my husband’s injury. The trauma he suffered was not limited to the fall itself; he was also processing the freaky corona-time hospital experience. The nurse’s bell I bought him clanged constantly and I contemplated throwing it out the window.

I alternated between feeling sorry for him and for myself.

Though I was sharp and strategic on Zoom calls, the second I hung up, I could not recall what I had promised, what I was supposed to do, what the project was even about…and subsequently did nothing.

Actually, that is not true. 

I was occupied nearly full-time in a completely new endeavor: active, full-time despair.

Despair wallpapered my daily life. It provided my every meal. It served as my sidekick.

I was totally adrift in an ocean of hopelessness.

And then I saw a text from Jeannette, also known as The Goddess Jeannette, my friend and partner in a remarkable project.

Her text told me that she missed me, wondered how I was. She knew about my husband’s accident and was checking in with me. She had a few things she wanted to share with me as well.

Guiltily (because I had dropped my correspondence with her) then gratefully, I texted back to let her know I could speak during my daily walk on the nearly empty Columbia University campus, which was the only place I felt safe to walk.

I swam through the familiar murky waters of hopelessness but somehow managed to wash my face, tie up my sneakers, grab my mask, phone and hand-sanitizer and head out the door.

Hitting the campus, I made the call and when I heard her voice…rich, melodic, multi-dimensional, warm, wise…everything changed.

Early into the pandemic, my friend Rabbi Ellen Bernstein pointed out the blessing of our technology in keeping us connected. Newly isolated during the most social/communal season of the Jewish calendar -- Passover -- we connected through Zoom, FaceTime and our cellphones.

While it has become fashionable lately to bemoan the ubiquity of our screens, the pandemic reversed that concept.

How blessed we are to be able to be together in our quarantine, defying the laws of physics!

And now, owing to this technology, I was together with Jeannette, she in her home on Long Island, me tentatively treading this unpopulated section of the Columbia campus, glancing around nervously before removing my mask.

I asked my friend how she was.

“Darling, you know that I’ve been in quarantine my whole life. This is no different, really.”

I knew Jeannette’s story well, after all, I am editing her memoir. Afflicted with Multiple Sclerosis since her early 30’s, Jeannette grew up on the premises of institutions for the criminally insane, the child of Holocaust survivors. Since I was first introduced to her story, I marveled at her optimistic spirit, keen sense of humor and sheer strength of will…made all the more remarkable by the adversity she has faced her entire life, the sheer amount of which seems nearly statistically impossible.

Jeannette Perutz Elsner was born to Shoah survivors from Poland who arrived on this shore alive in body but decimated in spirit. Seeking cover, they opted for a life of hiding in plain sight, living among the “feeble-minded and criminally insane” residents of three separate “snake-pit” state institutions.

Even before her MS was diagnosed, Jeannette survived a number of improbably freakish medical conditions. Her best friend was killed in an accident when she was a young teen. She survived sexual assault at the same time and managed to extricate herself from a coercive, abusive relationship with her married mentor as a young student in clinical psychology.

Now, despite her inability to walk, despite her diminishing vision, despite the excruciating pain that is her constant companion, despite the multiple failures of her neurological system, Jeannette wakes up each day, spends hours completing tasks that take minutes for those of us who are neuro-typical, exercises to Motown music and faces each day…not without despair, but in the face of despair.

Her decision to live each day is a big Fuck You to MS, a big Fuck You to her fate.

She accepts her fate and rejects it at the same time.

That is why I call her the Goddess Jeannette.

Over the course of the past three years, I have dived into Jeannette’s life as a reporter, a voyeur, an investigator, a detective, a spy, an admiring friend. We have spent countless hours talking…on the phone, in upscale restaurants, at her dining room table. We attended a glittering, celebrity-studded MS event together in Los Angeles one year ago.

Just a year ago...but a lifetime ago. Before Coronavirus.

Nearly two years ago, with her adult son David, we revisited the heart of her childhood horror -- Letchworth Village – the now-abandoned NY State institution where her father served as an on-site doctor, consigning her to a childhood where abnormality was her normal. David had just learned the truth his mother had kept hidden from him and his brother. As we climbed through the haunted, abandoned buildings, the true shape of her childhood – the true dimensions of his mother’s character – became known to him.

Now here she is, facing another bit of improbable adversity, this time in good company.

“To tell you the truth, aside from the fear of infecting myself because I cannot wash my hands easily, my daily life has not changed under COVID-19,” she said to me in the first weeks of the pandemic.

Before the Accident, I told Jeannette that I wanted to write about the secret that she holds; the life hacks she can teach us to transcend this terrible moment.

Before the Accident, when I was possessed of the determination to overcome the adversity, I committed myself to serving as a megaphone, publicizing the secrets of survival known to many survivors of trauma.

And then I allowed myself to fall into the snake-pit of despair.

But that Monday, Jeannette threw me a lifeline.

“You are dealing with a holistic sense of threat,” she told me, after listening to me recount my experiences of the past two weeks. “You have lost your illusion of safety. Here’s the difference between us: I never had this illusion. I’ve lived under extreme threat my entire life.”

Jeannette named the amorphous monster that had overtaken my existence.

My new despair was a reaction the new and unwelcome sense of daily menace.  Most of us have no antibodies to threat. Born into the most secure and prosperous era of history for Americans, we have no reflexive ability to respond to the new normal.

Let’s be real. Before COVID-19 came to our shores, our lives have been a Hollywood rom-com, a day at Disneyland. Unless we have personally encountered death or devastating disease, unless we have experienced hunger or crushing poverty, unless we are survivors of violence or assault or war, we know nothing about surviving this present moment.

What we need to do is find the survivors among us – of the Holocaust, of adversity, of battle, of disease, of political unrest, of hunger, of neglect, of violence – and hear their stories. We need survivors to kick us in the butt, teach us how to shout a loud Fuck You to the adversity of the present moment.

The antidote to despair is the knowledge that the human spirit is resilient.

The antidote to despair is perspective, the knowledge that crisis has happened to humanity before. The extended period of comfort, ease and safety we experienced is actually an anomaly in the history of humankind. Disruption and crisis are the forces that have changed the course of human history.

We are now in a historic turning point whose trajectory – and meaning -- will only be revealed over time.

That Monday, my dear friend and collaborator Jeannette, survivor of an improbable number of traumas lifted me out of my despair by naming my new adversity – a pervasive sense of being under threat -- and reminding me that survival is embedded in our DNA.

My conversation with The Goddess Jeannette restored me to my warrior woman self.  Warriors know the importance of shouting when they confront an enemy and so, I have woken up each day since Monday shouting: “Fuck You COVID-19!” I am also shouting a big Fuck You to the corrupt clown-king occupying our White House and his administration and cronies.

It feels good to shout back in the face of threat. It feels good to be reminded of our capacity for fighting the good fight.

I never knew until the present moment that the archetypical struggle of Good vs. Evil was actually real. I thought Hollywood dreamed it up, didn't know it was ripped from real life. What we are understanding now is that our lives, Before Coronavirus were charmed. 

After my conversation with Jeannette that day, I returned to my apartment and promptly located the short essay she had written at the beginning of the pandemic, in response to a query from David Brooks of the New York Times. As it was not printed, I am presenting it here.

Read it once, then read it again.

Read it often.

You will need it.

I Have Been Here Before

By Jeannette Perutz Elsner

I have lived in some form of isolation my entire life. I am the child of Holocaust Survivors and when my father came to the States, he found work as a residential physician in various mental hospitals, including Matteawan State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, Letchworth Village and other "snake-pit"-like institutions of suffering and terror. It was on the premises of these houses of horror that my childhood unfolded. My formative years were characterized by a sense of quarantine, being locked away from normal life, imprisoned within a hellish alternate reality, subject to outrageous and traumatic events.

More than three decades ago, as a young mother in my early 30's, I awoke to find myself fully paralyzed. Thus began my personal plague: Multiple Sclerosis. While the paralysis eventually lifted, the tell-tale symptoms replaced them. Over the intervening years, as my illness progressed, I have felt alone and isolated, overwhelmed by the awareness that normalcy or even health is all illusion. Reality can change in a heartbeat. Everything is fluid; changeable, unreliable. We all live at the mercy of the moment.

Now, with the advent of this horrific global pandemic, we are united, seized by an invisible virus that has violently and abruptly broken our core illusion of emotional, physical , financial stability and safety.

For most of humanity, this experience is novel but for me, it is familiar.

I've been here. When you have MS, you live in lockdown, you are quarantined within yourself, isolated from humanity and the flow of daily life. 

As such, I believe I have some wisdom to impart right now. Here are some useful tips for survival amid brokenness:

Accustomed to being alone, I try to find emotional purpose in my physical and emotional isolation. Many mornings I am broken. My tears frighten me for wiping my tears with my imperfectly cleansed hands can prove deadly. I try to find connection with people and family, even at the risk of being met with the avoidance and impatience that many people have for candid conversation surrounding sickness. or hardship. With the entire world united in this perverse manner -- we are all victims of COVID-19, infected or not -- I find that the bonds of humanity sustain all of us. And paradoxically, ironically, I find myself oddly calm and confident, knowing that I already disabused myself of the illusion that any of us have control over our lives or fates. Strangely, I realize that those of us who live with suffering have an edge right now, a resilience. Used to being imprisoned within our bodies, we are strangely empowered with superhuman strength and purpose during this uncertain and terrifying time.

Talk to us. We will help you through. 

Trumpensschreckenswut

It was shortly after the bleach-injection/UV lung treatment idea unleashed by Donald "Mengele" Trump and slightly before I happened upon a Christian Trump supporter's Facebook page where prayers were being solicited for God's anointed one (who seemed to be suffering from a case of "loosened tongue") that I realized what I need -- what we all need -- to get through the double-plague of COVID-19 and 45. 

What we need, my friends, is one word that contains the amalgam of shock, horror, rage and fear we are experiencing as Americans at this moment when it appears that our president is literally TRYING to kill us.

(A measure of how horrifyingly sick this present moment is is the fact that I find myself wishing for a president who was merely incompetent...not incompetent and resentful, incompetent and narcissistic, incompetent and science-averse, incompetent and sociopathic, incompetent and racist, incompetent and homicidal.)

As English is disadvantaged by having a limited number of syllables permitted to individual words, I knew that this was likely to come from German, a language famous for words of impressive length that convey entire weltanschauungs (world views).

But who to consult in the dead of the New York night as I gnawed away at my cuticles, chewing Elderberry gummies (high in Zinc and vitamin C!) and counting the cans of tuna, cans of diced plum tomatoes, cartons of Oat Milk and boxes of lentil pasta on the floor of my office/emergency food storage locker?

It came to me in a brilliant flash. My oldest son, a culture writer living in Germany for the past 12 years was just greeting the Munich morning as I stared balefully out the window at an idling Mt. Sinai Ambulance parked on the corner of Amsterdam and W116th Street.

As one of his gigs, for the New York Times, entailed covering the German language theater scene in Europe I felt this was a reasonable ask. And even if he were not up for the task, his wife, my Italian daughter-in-law, was fluent in German as well. 

Perhaps their best credential was that THEY WERE AWAKE!

Through our WhatsApp call I conveyed what I was seeking. I did not have to give too much of a preamble, shorthanding the assignment as my search for the schadenfreude equivalent for this state of mind. 

Two brilliant minds went to work. I humbly suggested that the word end in "angst," which every American could relate to. There was a first version. That was amended. Angst was in it. Then angst was taken out. Angst, they explained, was implicit. 

Include his name or not? I thought not. They argued for specificity. 

Some more back and forth, some family gossip and then my daughter-in-law produced the word: Trumpensschreckenswut. If I could figure out how to place an umlaut over the u in Trump I would, so add your own if you can.

What does this mean? This word of twenty-one letters encapsulates this moment, names the unique and horrible psychological state we find ourselves in as American citizens being held hostage by the Mad King Donald.

It literally means Trumpish Horror/Rage. 

This word is a world unto itself. A terrible world, to be sure. A world with monsters, straight from our childhood nightmares.

The length of the word reflects the length of our quarantine, the interminable sentence of the Trump presidency, the endless ability to be shocked afresh, anew, every day, several times a day.

But being able to identify a free -floating threat is helpful. We named the thing. We know what it is. We can examine it. We can talk about it. Soon we can overcome it.

And the kinder were correct. There is no need to add the word "angst."

Angst is implicit.

Angst colors the dawn of every day that 45 is the American president during the crisis of COVID-19. 

There is a Make-Shift Morgue One Block Away...And Other True Tales of the 2020 Pandemic

1 a.m. April 22, 2020.

Week seven...or is it eight?... of the quarantine.

I am camped out in my home office, aka Emma's old room, aka Adam and Anna's guest room, aka the pandemic food storeroom.

I am here because it is where I feel safest right now.

As is my habit, I just spent about an hour reading the latest news reports...on CNN's live update feed...on Twitter...on Facebook...on NYTimes.com.

Others need to immerse themselves in escapist fare -- which I wholeheartedly salute, by the way -- but for me, staying informed is a way of staying sane, keeping control or equilibrium.

This is coming to you from Manhattan's Morningside Heights, from Amsterdam Avenue and W116th Street, to be exact. We live in faculty housing, opposite Columbia University.

Two blocks south is the former St. Lukes hospital, now Mt. Sinai West. To accommodate the number of dead, a makeshift morgue in the form of a refrigerated truck is camped out on W115th Street.

Columbia has always been our backyard, since we moved here in 1994.

Now it is our only yard, the sole stretch of outdoors where we feel safe to walk, aside from the grassy lawn in front of our bungalow up in Monroe, NY.

Until a month ago we were walking around the reservoir in Central Park, along the Hudson in Riverside Park or around the perimeter of Morningside Park.

As the virus spread, the crowds began to feel threatening. Even thinned out, there were too many people.

Because the campus is our only haven, which we walk with masks and sometimes even gloves, I have raised holy hell with the administration to ensure that people on campus comply with public health policies. For the space of an entire week, I sent pissy"Karen" emails to important individuals, prompting one of them to ask if I was "Mrs. Bollinger," that is, Columbia President Lee Bollinger's wife.

I must say that I stand by my letter, my pissy tone and actually do not think that I acted like a Karen, I acted more than an Erin...as in Erin Brockovich. What I wanted to know was: if Governor Cuomo AND Mayor deBlasio BOTH said that wearing masks in public is required...WHY WERE AT LEAST HALF THE PEOPLE ON CAMPUS WITHOUT MASKS, SMOKING, SOCIALIZING AND RUNNING SWIFTLY PAST ME, SENDING ME INTO A TAILSPIN OF FEAR???

It is amazing how many people truly do not think that a basic, commonsense public health policy applies to them...and I'm not even talking about the so-called "protesters," aka "Covidiots" waving guns around because they think their personal liberties have been taken away by a bunch of wussy scientists who are only trying to keep them alive.

I'm talking about some neighbors. I'm talking about security personnel at Columbia. I'm talking about the students staying in East Campus.

But I don't want to dwell on this. And I also want to say that I got a personal email today thanking me for my "tenacity," (YAY!) and assuring me that signs were going up on campus shortly informing everyone that it was mandatory to wear a mask.

I want to be more general, talk about the incredible disruption to normalcy, the lives spent indoors, the cessation of street life, night life, restaurant life, regular shopping life, the sirens, the 7 pm applause, the clever videos, the heartbreaking videos, the silly videos, the memes, the co-created concerts and benefits, the glimpse of celebrity's kitchens and backyards and basements, newscasters without make-up, none of us with neat hair or nails, weight gained or lost, food stockpiled, the fear of going hungry, the fear of not having, the uncertainty of what tomorrow will bring.

I want to talk about the fear, the despair, the anxiety, the flickering hope, replaced again by fear, despair, anxiety.

I want to talk about my awareness that as tough as this is personally for people like me, it is infinitely more horrible for others. If you have a roof over your head, money for food and are healthy, well, then...that is a Dayenu. You are one lucky bastard.

I want to talk about the heartbreaking deaths, how Facebook has been turned into a vertical obituary column, how people die alone, how people grieve alone, how Judaism's magnificent rituals have been constricted, how Purim turned into a death factory for so many, how so many rabbis have risen to the enormous challenge while others have failed their flock by worshipping the Golden Calf of disdain for truth and science. I want to talk about the shocking infection and death of our frontline medical personnel -- whom we call heroes when they are really being martyred, or maybe murdered -- about the stunning lack of preparedness in this nation, about critical supplies deliberately being withheld, about a president who has failed to say even ONE empathetic, unifying word,  about how America might be ending, or over or dying and we...the same.

Will we survive this?

I want to talk about my shock that we are hostages of an insane and evidently homicidal president (how did this happen that we cannot be guaranteed safety from our government????), my horror at the enablers who are still -- STILL -- propping him up, fueling his insanity.

I want to talk about the horror of this moment. The horror of listening to FoxNews when I visit my parents. The horror of Ivanka and Jared whom I hate more than I imagined I could hate people I do not personally know. The horror of governors who put wealth over health,  who lead their people to slaughter.

I want to talk about my rescue fantasies ala Deus ex Machina. Of Biblical justice meted out. The splitting of the Red Sea. A miracle.

I want to talk about my valiant friends who are alone. Truly alone. In their homes. What that is like. How it is different from being with others, even others you may not like.

I want to talk about my parents, ages 89 and 86, in their apartment in Great Neck, with two caregivers...and how terrifying it is to love someone so vulnerable during this time.

I want to talk about the deaths in the nursing homes, the bodies piled high, the terror of the administration at being discovered, families astonished and aghast and robbed of final hours and even truth and especially the dignity of a proper death for their loved ones.

I want to talk about the work I have been lucky to have. I want to talk about my adult children who bring me such joy and hope. Who are the sources of light in my life. Whom I miss...except for the one who lives with us, next to us, with his wife, with his music, with his wry observations and calm.

What a blessing.

And I want to say that one of the teachings of this terrible time is that love really does traverse distances. Love knows no bounds, no geography. It is here even when the person is not. I feel my children and my little grandson even though we are not together...just as I feel my sister, brother, parents and all my beloved friends.

This is my first foray at documenting this time aside from Facebook posts...of which there are many. It is late at night. Or early the next morning. Look, the new day has arrived. America is still here. We are still here.

Our story is not over yet.

Let's Make America Sing Again!

Coming soon to Kickstarter:

A campaign for my new multi-platform gonzo journalism project: I Hear America Singing, which will take me coast to coast in search of the song that resides at the heart of contemporary America.

Since Election Day, I have been visiting karaoke bars in New York City to hear people sing and speak about their hopes, dreams and fears in the aftermath of the recent presidential election.

Why karaoke bars? Because they are the new Town Square, that friendly place where people gather after work to connect, relax and express themselves through song.

At a time when words are being used as weapons in our newly-divided nation, the power of song is great and profound. It heals rifts. It unites. It expresses what cannot be conveyed through words alone.

It is said that a person's name is their destiny. My name is Shira, which means song in Hebrew, and my life has been influenced and enhanced by the sheer joy of singing...solo or in a group, in school, synagogue and summer camp, in times of joy and sadness alike.

Inspired by my love of singing, I am now continuing the journey I began in local karaoke bars and taking it on the road, coast to coast.

Built around that great American tradition -- the road trip -- I Hear America Singing is journalism of the people. It is unvarnished, gritty and real. It is democratic. It is journalism of the here and now, capturing this epic moment in our nation's history, documenting it and striving to make sense of it all.

Featuring interviews with regular Americans in a variety of cities and towns across this great nation, my intention is to head out on the road over the course of several cross-country trips within the first year of Donald Trump’s presidency. 

While on each leg of my I Hear America Singing road trip, I will be visiting places with current social and political resonance, changing up the landscape, seeking to capture the widest possible sampling of incomes, professions, backgrounds, faiths and political leanings by visiting local karaoke bars, getting to know their patrons and documenting the local mood.

It is my hope to zigzag from "red" to "blue" America, making my journey as diverse as possible. Among locations I hope to visit are Charleston, SC; Flint, MI; Ferguson, MO; Indianapolis, IN; Atlantic City, NJ; San Bernadino, CA; Orlando, FL; Whitefish, MT and dozens of others cities marked by tragedy or fame; popular or forgotten.

  

The purpose of my Kickstarter campaign is to launch the pilot phase of the project.

How do I envision I Hear America Singing?

The essence of my project is an up-close-and-personal invitation to YOU to join me on my journey, which will be documented in real time. By reading my daily blog and Facebook page where compelling videos and photographs will be posted, you will be able to follow me as I leave the bubble of New York City in search of America. 

As additional funds are raised, a website and podcast will be added to the suite of products documenting my adventures.

Details on how you can support  I Hear America Singing will be available on the Kickstarter page. 

Now is the time to document America's hopes, dreams and fears through the songs of its soul in this uniquely 21^st Century journalism.

I hope you can help put me on the road in quest of America's resonant song, that which rises above the divisive rhetoric of our nation. I hope you can become a supporter of my multi-platform storytelling project, I Hear America Singing.

I'm Back and WTF 2016!

Yes, I've been gone, doing that thing called Life Undocumented.

Life got intense. Intensely good. Intensely bad. Intensely weird. Intensely intense.

And suddenly the rest of the world...or at least AMERICA...caught up to me.

Okay, so we are all now in that WTF moment.

As the Chinese or Yiddish curse has it, we are living in interesting times.

First, all the deaths. David Bowie. Glenn Frey. Patty Duke. Prince. Elie Wiesel. Leonard Cohen. George Michael?? And Carrie Fisher!!! (and all the wonderful others I simply cannot remember at this late hour.)

And then the impossible.

The unthinkable.

President Trump.

Think back to last year at this time. Who would have imagined that that big-mouthed bully would win the White House?

Or, as HOBB* commented just tonight, "How did Hillary NOT win??"

It is like a recurring nightmare. Reality, that is.

As for me, I keep reliving the hideous moment I awoke from my depressed slumber on the living room couch to see the CNN banner announcing Trump's win. 

And since that time I've vacillated between disbelief, anger, fear, despair, sadness and...hope.

Condensing countless hours of contemplation, therapy, soul-searching, meditation and conversation with people wiser than myself, I've arrived at the following:

I can resist. I can fight the good fight. I am a born warrior.

Trump's victory pushed me hard into existential mode, forcing me to leave a respectable, well-paying office job in favor of the insecure life of the freelance journalist.

There was a particularly intriguing multi-platform project kicking around in my brain for the past year that I had researched, developed, polished, vetted and then shelved.

But November 8th made me sit up straight, grab it off the shelf and get to work. 

Now I'm about to launch a crowd-funding campaign to help put me on the road, going city to city speaking to Americans in the Public Square of the 21st century: the humble, local, democratic karaoke bar.

It is called I Hear America Singing. After the great Walt Whitman Poem. 

The next post will have further deets. 

For now, it is great to be back.

______________________________________________________________________________
*Husband of Bungalow Babe

The Blessing of an Arthritic Hip

Much like Ben Stiller's Josh in the movie While We're Young, I greeted the news that I had the beginnings of arthritis with disbelief verging on denial.

I was in the office of Dr. Liu, my acupuncturist, wearing running shorts, a towel covering my chest and belly. He bent my right leg this way and that.

"OWWWW!" I shouted. "Why does that hurt so much?!!!!"

"You misled me," scolded Dr. Liu who had told me just last week that I had bursitis. After four treatments failed to heal the inflamed hip, he investigated further, pelting me with questions about the specific nature and location of the pain and expertly prodding me in my hip, my thigh, my lower back as I yelped in affirmation of painful spots he hit.

"Arthritis!" he pronounced as I immediately envisioned myself in a motorized wheelchair, wizened, determined, steely-haired, careening down Broadway, zipping in and out of traffic.

Me? The party animal? The hiker? The dancer? The singer after hours? The gym rat? The traveler? The drinker of tequila?

But the diagnosis of arthritis -- arthritis arthritis! -- did make sense. For the past month, my right hip hurt as I ran up stairs and now, late in the day, the pain had started to radiate down my thigh to my knee.

I searched frantically for reasons to blame myself for this affliction. If I had caused it, perhaps I could remove it!

"Should I change my diet?? I semi-wailed as Dr. Liu progressed to inserting needles into the soft skin just to the side of my hip bone. A vibrating electrical current went through my leg and something else deep and horrible.

"Yow!!!" I howled.

Though I have been know to vocalize at Dr. Liu's office -- where regularly moans emanate from behind closed doors -- I had never made a sound like this, which was akin to a female Moose in labor.

He instantly looked concerned and patted my shoulder, withdrawing the needle.

"Don't worry," he said kindly. "We will fix."

Arthritis!

What the...!!!!!!!

"Seriously...what should I do differently?" I asked Dr. Liu. I had a jumpstart on the nutritional no-no's of arthritis, as I obsessively read health manuals. "Can I still exercise? Should I cut out the inflammation-causing foods-- dairy, nightshades, wheat, meat, sugar..." I paused and gulped. "Alcohol?"

"Alcohol," he said, gravely. "It causes necrosis."

Though I wasn't sure what necrosis was, exactly, it scared me. It started with "nec," which I'm pretty sure has to do with death. Could there be something dead or dying inside my hip joint? And could I have caused it with my late-in-life love of...well, getting drunk?

As I limped out of Dr. Liu's office, I was fueled by a coked-up optimism: I would grab the arthritis bull by the horns, continue acupuncture, eliminate inflammation-causing foods, take supplements and vitamins, seek physical therapy, read everything I could find and modify my exercise, which he told me I could still do, just not at crazy intensity.

I had been using the elliptical at a rather challenging setting lately. Could that have caused this? I fretted.

Heading to a Vitamin Shoppe to stock up on anti-inflammation goods in their Joints aisle, I found the wind knocked out of my sails by a singular thought. I ate fairly well and was active. My weight was good. I was mostly gluten-free.

But I would be kidding myself if I denied that in the past few years -- and especially recently -- drinking had become a fun, new habit. What started as once every month became weekly and then several times a week.

Yes, I was a cheap drunk, getting wasted on two glasses of wine or two shots of tequila. I would note everyone else guzzling so much more than me but Dr. Liu sounded unambiguous.

No alcohol.

Digesting the news of my diagnosis of arthritis, I wondered: could I have brought harm to my body through this indulgence?

And what would it be like to no longer have my reliable party friends -- Pinot Grigio and silver tequila -- in my life?  What will I discover without the hazy embrace of that altered consciousness that I so crave at the end of a long day, the recklessness that it invites, the conversations that it enables, the inconvenient, uncomfortable truths that it blurs until the next day?

Emergence or the Essence of Spring

After two days of dazzling sunshine -- long overdue -- the rain arrived, heralded by a nippy wind that dismayed us as we rushed from our friends' house last night on West 106th Street to our car, parked on Amsterdam Avenue in front of a karaoke bar where a twenty-something guy was drunkenly belting out a Backstreet Boys hit from 15 years ago.

It was the tail end of a complex Sunday constructed with the colliding stuff of life: a funeral on the West Side, a birthday party on the banks of the Hudson, a visit to an old beloved friend in a northern New York suburb, a lecture on the East Side, numerous phone conversations with family and friends and finally, the ritual of watching MadMen with dear friends, which we have been doing for the past three years.

After a winter of unprecedented harshness, New Yorkers were treated to a Saturday of sterling perfection: clear skies, temperatures near 80, abundant light, the kindness of strangers liberated from the prison of extreme weather. Jolted out of bed by an optimism and lightness of spirit I hadn't felt since my  trip (#4 this winter) to Florida last month, I made the most of the gift of sudden spring, walking the dogs at leisure, strolling to my gym in Harlem (instead of bolting there, hands dug deep into the pockets of my North Face parka, nose numb, eyes tearing), eschewing shul for the much-needed communion with sunshine in the form of an impromptu hangout on the lawn of the Columbia campus with book, water and a beach towel.

Following numerous false starts and broken promises, spring officially arrived in winter-scarred Manhattan. Returning from his shul, HOBB found me on the campus (I left a minimalistic message -- "outside" -- made of Scrabble tiles on the dining room table, just next to the challah), we ate a light lunch, played a round of Scrabble and then propelled ourselves outdoors, virtually sprinting to Riverside Park to join the jillions of joyous humans, dogs and others creatures who were walking, running, climbing, cavorting, ambling, rambling, scrambling, shedding themselves of the too-tight skin of this recently departed season.

In midday, Riverside Park resembled nothing more than a grand, public rehabilitation facility.

Along the river, we walked down to the 79th Street Boat Basin and back uptown, bumping into innumerable friends, joining the crowded, grungy party that is the Boat Basin Cafe, witnessing a bike accident, dodging speeding cyclists to avoid getting hit ourselves, holding hands, allowing conversation to flow freely, punctuated by periods of placid silence.

Recalling Saturday -- the most perfect urban Shabbat in recent memory -- I find the strength to face the backsliding temperatures of today and revive my habit of documenting my life in this public forum.

Why have I not written this winter in this, my online home, repository of my musings, struggles, activities, inspirations? (Full disclosure: I have written elsewhere and for others but not here. Just two weeks ago, I published a rather naked essay on the Huffington Post. And I have pounded the keyboard of my laptop in pain, despair, fury, frustration and the quest for transcendence since my last meandering, meditative post, two seasons ago, choosing to keep my thoughts sealed and concealed in my personal files. Some things are too private or perhaps it is simply too soon to examine them publicly.)

When I stopped at the home of my former neighbor in New Rochelle yesterday -- a soul sister of sorts -- she asked me this very question: why my blog went into blackout mode.

The winter, I answered, meaning more than the weather.

Which she instantly understood.

Earlier that day, at the birthday party I attended at Wave Hill, I met a musician and psychologist with whom I spoke for close to two hours. Given to spontaneous connections with strangers, the fact of our impromptu conversation was not unusual but the substance of it was so significant and relevant to me that I had to wonder about angels placing us at the same time and place in order to connect.

Among the many things we spoke about was creativity and mood. A third person joined the conversation, also an artist. We discussed the importance of the ebb and flow of our feelings, the deep dive into difficult introspection that leads to breakthrough and outpouring.

Heads bent inward, we excitedly shared our accounts of the ways in which we managed our moods, our conviction that feeling all ends of the emotional spectrum was essential to the integrity of our artistry and the emergence of our authentic selves.

Twenty four hours later, I feel myself transported to a faraway galaxy with the warmth of the sun on my bare legs a distant memory. "Taking the dogs out today was an act of animal abuse," reported HOBB, returning with two miserably soaked pooches just a short while ago, his canvas Crocs sloshy.

I dried and fed the dogs. Outside our window overlooking Amsterdam Avenue, I saw cars and trucks driving through a downpour, tires turning on wet pavement. Dreamily, I drifted back to my bedroom. The sound and scene chilled me, made me burrow into my blankets.

But my allotted time for self-expression has come to an end and the demands of the workday begin.

It is time to get out of bed, where I have cozily arranged myself -- laptop on pillow, a mug of Zabar's coffee on my night table -- in response to the weather that reminds me of the recently-departed winter.

Today forces a close and candid examination of what transpired over the past few months.

It was an ordeal but there was insight, beauty, new bonds, self-knowledge and discovery.

It was an assault but the absence of pain is a form of pleasure.

There was adventure because I crave and create it; there was escape and travel and sunshine. I cannot misrepresent reality. While new acts of insane and cruel religious extremism were broadcast into our lives from faraway places -- destabilizing us as human beings, recalling the potential for destruction, terrifying us -- I had the luxury to slip into sadness, to sit in dissatisfaction, to taste disappointment, to dream.

Perhaps because I so love the essence of paradox, I prefer to view the Winter of 2015 through that particular prism.

Gazing reluctantly backwards, I feel like a survivor, brushing myself off, stepping gingerly but with spirit and great dignity over the Finish Line, moving towards the rising sun, palms raised, heart open, face tilted upwards.

Don't Cry for Me, Mandy Patinkin

On the final Friday afternoon in November, Concord's Monument Square was congenially crowded with ruddy-cheeked, good-natured pedestrians arrayed in colorful outerwear, toting oversized holiday shopping bags, gracefully skirting the coconutty mounds of unsullied snow banking the sidewalks of the street leading up to the Colonial Inn, our destination, established in 1713.

We had arrived in the heart of this historic Massachusetts town with only a couple of hours until Shabbat, eager to track down food and local cultural offerings...not necessarily in that order. Stumbling into the hotels's reception area with my too-numerous bags and Manhattan black-on-black attire, I set about the task of finding out what was showing, playing or otherwise open that we would need to purchase tickets for before the 4:12 sundown.

One of the hallmarks of people like me who straddle the worlds of traditional Jewish observance and the cultural cornucopia of secular society is an insistence upon celebrating Shabbat while also availing ourselves of shows, concerts and other local offerings. In other words, we want to be part of the wonderful world at large even as we honor the restrictions that are part of a religious life.

What this typically means is a mad dash to purchase tickets before the advent of the Day of Rest and being able to walk to the venue and back to one's hotel from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday. It means figuring out what to do for Friday night dinner; it means museum admissions secured ahead of time so that a Saturday visit can take place. It also often means a tote bag or knapsack filled with snacks so the day of adventure can unfold without compromising any of the Sabbath day restrictions on making purchases.

Depending on one's denomination, all kinds of creative solutions may be found and the season greatly impacts this experience as the long days of summer provide the opportunity for Friday evening travel before it gets dark and the short days of winter mean that secular Saturday night endeavors can begin as early as 5 p.m.

Whether one carries a credit card that is used only until sunset on Friday or just after sunset on Saturday has to do with the willingness to interpret the law in a flexible way. Still, the pursuit of this ideal binds all Jews who seek that precarious balance between the spiritual and the secular.

Grabbing a local fall going-out guide from the rack of tourist brochures in the lobby of the Colonial Inn this past Friday, I impatiently perused a plethora of uninteresting holiday offerings until the very item I had been seeking came sharply into focus.

"There's an 8 p.m. performance of Evita at The Umbrella tonight," I happily informed HOBB, breathing a sigh of relief. The Umbrella is a new arts collective and performance space that occupied a local elementary school, just a five minute walk from the Colonial Inn. After settling into our room, we could buy our tickets online, light Shabbat candles in the bathroom, read, go down for dinner in one of the hotel's restaurants and leisurely make our way to The Umbrella...a most perfect way to start our weekend vacation.

We had driven to Concord as a spontaneous, last-minute weekend vacation after a fall of unusual work-related stress.  In the days following Middle Babe's wedding at Greentree Country Club in New Rochelle on August 28th, I longed for a period of calm that never quite arrived; in fact, it seemed that the end of the wedding ushered in a season of new challenges, extending an unfortunate trend of dealing with difficult and unreasonable personalities.

After a charming overnight stay in Philadelphia the week before, we spontaneously opted for another great American city for the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. With memories of many marvelous restorative winter vacations in the area, of hikes around Walden Pond and visits to the local cemetery where many of the great transcendentalists are buried, I instantly went online and booked the last available room at the Colonial Inn.

Our room was as quirky, old-fashioned, overheated and quaint as I had hoped...complete with beamed ceilings and slanted floors with broad wooden planks. We happily unpacked, set our Scrabble set on the bed as we readied to go downstairs for dinner, uncorked the excellent Borgo Reale Pinot Grigio we had brought from Manhattan and began our long awaited Day of Rest.

After a short traipse through the magical snowy streets of Concord a couple of hours later, mellowed by the wine and the Louisa May Alcott landscape, I sat in the auditorium of the new community arts center, utterly enchanted by the surprisingly professional and inventive production of the show I had last seen 35 years earlier when it opened on Broadway, starring Patti Lupone.

There are the shows we are conscious of loving, the shows whose scores we sing in our heads, the shows whose themes seem intertwined with our lives. West Side Story; Phantom of the Opera; Little Shop of Horrors; The Lion King; The Rocky Horror Show: Hair: Jesus Christ Superstar; The Sound of Music and Fiddler on the Roof top my personal list.

Over the course of my life as a parent, part of the joy of loving -- and sharing my love of -- certain musicals has been my penchant for speaking in lyrics or dialogue to my kids and certain trusted friends. The snide, "What do you mean by that?" from "Pontius Pilate's Song"in Jesus Christ Superstar has been one of my popular refrains. "She asks me why I'm such a hairy guy," from Hair has peppered conversations about the need for waxing. "Very smart Maria, very smart!" snarled by Anita in West Side Story has been employed as a way of defusing criticism.

Sitting in The Umbrella abuzz with excitement -- singing every lyric along with the actors in my head -- I recalled how much I had loved Evita and wondered why it slipped from my consciousness, especially since the sarcastic "Oh but it's sad when a love affair dies," has escaped my lips a few times and "I kept my promise. Don't keep your distance," has also been known to be on my spoken lyrics list.

I remembered how I had excitedly bought the cast recording on cassette after the show and how I sang along with it together with my sister, a musical actress. I recalled how insulted and stung I was when a critic from The New Yorker (or maybe it was the super-nasty John Simon of New York Magazine?) made fun of the lyrics, which I thought were great.

I also remembered that I had seen Evita just before I left for Hebrew University for my junior year semester abroad; my parents presented tickets to the show to me as a gift before I left home. For a city college kid, leaving the country for a year abroad was a big deal, especially for my parents who had insisted we live at home and commute to school. For the oldest daughter of a rabbi who changed careers just two years earlier -- becoming a clinical psychologist, borrowing money to buy a house for the first time, working around around the clock to earn enough to pay his friends back and keep his three children in school -- it was a big expenditure as well.

All this I thought of on Friday night in Concord, Massachusetts, in the auditorium of The Umbrella, 35 years after the fact. "This is very good," HOBB whispered to me as each actor debuted, their sweet and strong voices carrying the music of Andrew Lloyd Webber. I nodded vigorously, staring at the stage in a state of rapture.

Somewhere in the middle of the show-stopping number "A New Argentina," I nearly cried out with an emotion that blended revelation, joy and shock as I realized that the young bearded actor I had seen 35 years ago playing the narrator Che Guevara revolutionary on the Broadway stage was none other than he who played the avuncular, grey-haired Saul Berenson of "Homeland," a show HOBB and I follow with a passion that borders on religious devotion.

"Ari!" I whispered in a hoarse voice. "I just remembered that I saw Mandy Patinkin for the first time in Evita! How crazy is that?"

"What?" he whispered back, unable to hear me above the swelling, soaring music.

"I'll tell you later!!!" I whispered, sitting alone with my mind-bending realization, wrapping myself in that most universal human experience -- the stunning experience of past and present blending, the sensation of standing still while being hurtled backward through the tunnel of time.

As often happens when I return to a cultural touchpoint of the seventies -- the movies Carrie, Annie Hall and Taxi Driver, the music of David Bowie and Donna Summer, Laserium, shag hairdos -- I recall  the pre-cyber era. I remember a world before we were points along a worldwide GPS grid, a focused world before the habit of distraction, a wide-open world before it was possible to find just about anything within seconds by staring at a screen, a sincere world where "virtual" and "text" had far different meanings, a world strictly of the here and now.

I remembered the seventies buzz about Mandy Patinkin, his super-Jewy bonafides -- the Yiddish, Hebrew and cantorial songs he had performed, the Old Testament appearance, the name -- and the communal pride that "one of us" had again made it to Hollywood, the Broadway stage and great stardom. 

In truth, I didn't think about him much over these intervening decades until I became obsessed with Homeland.  I knew he had other starring roles but he was off my personal radar screen until Homeland, playing the former head of the CIA and looking quite a lot like our friend, the best-selling author Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, at least according to Middle Babe, who introduced us to the show. 

But being reminded of the 1979 production of Evita and of the spirited and youthful version of the actor now beloved to me as Homeland's wise yet weary Saul Berenson, I fell down a temporal rabbit hole as the 1979 Patinkin met up with the 2014 Patinkin...at least in my mind.

On that Friday night in Concord, Massachusetts, watching a local performance of Evita with tickets bought before sundown, I wondered about the Jewish life of the man who brought Che Guevara to life on the Broadway stage. I wondered about his Shabbat observance. I wondered about the journey he had taken as an artist and a Jew. I wondered about his personal life, his web of connections. I wondered what he thought of his accomplishments. I wondered what he was really like.

But mostly I wondered: how could it be that -- in the very same number of years that Mandy Patinkin went from newcomer to legend -- I feel exactly as I did at the age of 19, unformed, unaccomplished, focused, wide-open, sincere, eager to leave home for the first time and begin my own true journey?

In the Velvet Darkness of the Blackest Night* or The View from 2:45 a.m.

The Urban Bungalow is quiet at this hour, Alfie and Nala the Pomeranians respectfully camped out next to me on the mattress in Little Babe's room that is, in fact, his bed, arranged teenage-style.

Minutes earlier, my Israeli nephew quietly came through the front door, returning back home after a farewell night with friends before he leaves for his post-army American road trip.

Midday, the two of us spent more than three hours at the Medieval Festival at Fort Tryon Park in Upper Manhattan. Wandering amid throngs of people, we were dazed and dazzled by the sunshine, the spectacle, the booths, the music, the dance, the cups of mead, the oversized turkey drumsticks, dripping with grease, the duels, the human chess game played on a field beneath the Cloisters, the meditative glass blower, the purveyor of ancient dentistry and other forms of merry entertainment.

Endlessly fascinating was the profusion of era-fetishists --  the civilians who came attired in their version of the Dark Ages Best Dressed List -- looking like goths, members of a punk band or residents of Williamsburg, Berlin or Middle Earth. In velvet, leather, chain-mail, animal skins, corsets, spilling cleavage, heavy boots, helmets, tattoos, bared midriffs, wreaths, veils, capes, caps and other archaic finery, they touched me with their wish to wear the wardrobe of another time and place. I wondered what they were drawn to or what they sought to escape. They were multi-ethnic pre-modernist postmodern performance artists, wandering the paved pathways of Upper Manhattan, transforming the landscape with their costumes and their poignant quest, which seemed prayerful, reverential, deeply and sincerely religious.

At the festival, I longed for the presence of my three grown children, recollected our long-ago visits to the legendary New York State Renaissance Faire, held in Sterling Forest in Tuxedo, New York.  I recalled the swords and shields we had bought our sons -- eleven years apart; the jousting matches we had cheered on; the wreaths and fairy wings our daughter wore. I remembered awkwardly shooting arrows at the archery range and wandering worriedly through the labyrinth and falling off a shaky contraption called Jacob's Ladder. How my kids would have loved the quirky fun of the Fort Tryon festival; how its very proximity to our Manhattan home would have delighted them, even as adults. Especially as adults.

Several hours later, sunburnt and slightly dehydrated, heading for the A train with possibly three thousand strangers, I heard about the Society for Creative Anachronism, a group through which enthusiasts of pre-17th Century Europe connect and find out about opportunities to dress up and celebrate their favorite historical epoch. For perhaps the billionth time, I praised the Internet for the mitzvah of bringing people together.

Regarding anachronisms, the summer-like weather of the past few days was both a worrisome sign and a delight. Having heard reports that the upcoming winter is shaping to be even worse than last year's relentless reign, I welcomed the heat that insisted upon loitering into late September and yet, with the urgent message of the People's Climate March still ringing in my ears, I knew that this gift comes with a steep price tag.

But it is not my aim to write about the weather at this hour, nor even the marvelous fair overlooking the Hudson River.

Instead, it is my intention to document this moment of wakefulness, this sliver of soul disturbance following a flawless fall day. It is my duty to examine the act of staring into the velvet darkness of a liminal moment -- poised between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, between midnight and morning, unmoored, one week after Big Babe, my oldest son, returned to Berlin after a month's stay, five weeks after the return of Little Babe, my youngest son, to his Pennsylvania college, one month after the wedding of my daughter, Middle Babe and three weeks after HOBB and I marked our 31st wedding anniversary.

As someone forever in search of connection, I experience transitions and separations as invariably tinged with pain. The many morphings of a family take emotional adjustment. Milestones occasion great introspection and evaluation. Marriages go through grand upheavals when children are grown and the respective dreams of the liberated spouses collide like comets.

Though I ponder these matters during daylight hours, the deepest processing happens in the middle of the night.

As someone who loves deeply and possessively, as I believe one is entitled to, I ponder that which I have and seek. I take my cue from God, depicted in Scripture as a jealous God, forever outraged that His chosen people are consorting with other gods. I love that unabashed pronouncement about God; it is so honest. I, too, believe in relationships where such jealous claims can be made, where one is empowered to stake one's claim against other gods, human and otherwise.

I deeply believe that some things are so sacred and basic that they are worth fighting for... or grieving over, if lost. I believe in being called to account for my own inability to satisfy the jealous God emotional needs of those nearest and dearest to me.

Sacred, too, within this dark room are one's dashed dreams. The pain, outrage and sorrow experienced at the moment of this honest encounter can be either cataclysmic or a catalyst for change.

This clarity comes in the space between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur. It is a clarity that induces a form of madness, or perhaps is borne of madness. The quest for Teshuva is not just about atonement for our sins but for the restoration of all that has been shattered and lost.

In the darkened room where I am alone with God and my private self, I can name feelings without blame or reproach. I can say Ashamnu, Bagadnu, beating my breast...or not. Alone, apart from the congregation, I can confront my sins and failures as well.

Perhaps I can even befriend them.

I can confess my hurt and my shortcomings and feel comforted by the maternal night.

Adopted nearly 54 years ago, I can examine the wounds that will likely always be mine.

And because it is night, I can dream of the time when they will be healed.

In this quiet room, dreams start to take shape. At this moment, I strive for strength, steadfastness and fortitude.

Deprived of external images, introspection yields understanding. I return to the task of Teshuva. I pray for honesty. I see my own misdeeds. I see pathways to restoration. I struggle, like Jacob, with dark angels. I twist and turn like I did on the aptly-named ladder at the Renaissance Fair so long ago. I fall, I land in dirt, I get up, I attempt to steady myself on the shaky rungs. I take aim at the archery range, missing the target repeatedly, trying again, gaining a bulls-eye eventually. I wander in the labyrinth, lost, found, running on instinct, fear and exhilaration.

In this space, I can focus on faith, something I am deficient in, like Vitamin D. I can believe that the new day will bring insight. I can believe I will be given a gift or a key or that I will have a personal encounter that will change my life.

And then, I will feel whole. Perhaps.

Mostly, at this hour, I can write freely, thereby dignifying the fact of my solitude, a necessary pre-condition for insight.

And like the Medieval enthusiasts who find one another through a website, I can reach out through this 21st Century portal and connect with all those who sit in the darkness of liminal moments, longing for connection, salvation, revelation, redemption.

_____________________________________________________
*Lyrics unabashedly stolen from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. "There's a Light."