Patience

“Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.”

-Arthur Schopenhauer

I love how Schopenhauer proves his own point by his use of the word “man.” (And, of course, given Artie’s views on women it’s to be expected.) His observation is astute (albeit depressing), and my response to Schopenhauer would be as follows:

“Ergo, surround yourself with those who possess fields of vision greater than your own.”

-Jennifer Blevins

I spent last weekend (a/k/a my birthday weekend) by myself at a spiritual retreat on a 500 acre nature reserve in South Carolina. It was my third birthday in a row spent in such a way, and this ritual never fails to offer up a veritable crockpot of emotional shit for me to explore. When you isolate yourself with no phone, no internet, no television, no alcohol and limited contact with other human beings on the day of your birth, you can’t help but get a wee bit pensive.

I make this trip biannually, and the handful of days I spend at this place each year are starting to feel like the only real days of my entire life. Everything else feels like some sort of hazy dream that I’m just trying to get through; as soon as I embark on my retreat, I settle down into myself and let my internal monologue reign supreme. Sometimes I fall in love with myself, other times I completely despise myself, and occasionally I am gifted prophetic bits of guidance that I let steer my course once I am inevitably pulled back into my normal hazy dream existence.

My June retreat offered me a very clear directive: “Quit your job.” So I did. I’m still dealing with the aftermath of that decision (especially financially), and was really hoping for some kick-ass, direct-from-the-Divine guidance this time that would solve all of my problems. What I got instead:

“Patience.”

That was the only guidance I could squeeze out of my monumental, almost-on-a-full-moon, golden birthday adventure: patience. Fucking patience.

Fucking fantastic. Thanks a lot.

So I’m supposed to be…patient.

PATIENT.

LOOK AT ME BEING PATIENT.

I shall work on it.

This place where I go twice a year is dedicated to a spiritual guru from India who “dropped his body” in 1969. The entire center is plastered with pictures of him, so everywhere you turn you see pictures of a benevolent, jovial, enlightened Indian man staring at you (there were four pictures in my tiny cabin alone). In some he’s smiling, and in others he’s staring directly into your soul. It freaked me out at first, and now I absolutely love it. Followers from all over the world visit the center, and the first afternoon I was there I wandered into one of the communal kitchens and walked straight into the middle of a birthday party for this guy named Raj from India; Raj was wearing a t-shirt with the guru’s face plastered on it. I told them my birthday was the next day, and suddenly I found myself in the middle of a birthday celebration for me. We ate a feast of Indian food prepared by some of the women visiting from India and then everyone sang happy birthday to “Jennifer and Raj” and we ate cake. It all felt kind of magical…like the spirit of the guru had just been waiting for me to show up for my own birthday party.

That was Day One.

Day Two was my birthday. If you have never spent your birthday by yourself, I highly recommend it. The experience offers a unique challenge: you are responsible for celebrating your own life. You can’t wait for someone else to make the day special for you. You can’t sulk if a friend/significant other/parent doesn’t surprise you properly or get you the right kind of cake. It is you, with you, celebrating you, and if you don’t feel like celebrating you then you are forced to ask yourself: “why not?” And to answer that question you must dive down into your crockpot of emotional shit and can consider any answers you find as a result to be your birthday gift.

There have been times in the past when I did not feel like celebrating me, but this year I did. And I decided to do it by giving myself a new experience. When this center was built in the 1950’s, the followers built a nice little house for their guru in a gorgeous area overlooking the lake. This house is considered a sacred spot, and it is only open during certain times. You must remove your shoes before entering and remain silent the entire time you are inside.

The house was open from 9-11am on the morning of my birthday, so I decided I would go. But rather than just walk through quickly and peek at the exhibits like I had in the past, I decided I would sit in the guru’s bedroom (i.e. the most sacred of rooms) until something happened.

So I went. I removed my shoes at the door, bowed with reverence and love to the watchers of the house as I passed through the threshold, and walked into his bedroom. There was one older man already in the room, sitting in a chair with his eyes closed. A picture of the guru hangs over the bed, and it’s one of the pictures where the guru’s eyes really penetrate you. But not in an intimidating way….more in an “I-know-this-life-shit-is-hard-and-I-feel-for-you” sort of way.

I sat down in one of the chairs near the foot of the bed. I planted my feet firmly on the ground, rested my hands on my thighs, and started to focus on my breathing. I closed my eyes. I asked for guidance. I asked for love. I expressed gratitude for being invited to visit the center. I expressed gratitude for my life. I felt the weight of my body supported by the metal chair.

Then more people joined us. An older woman, clearly in a lot of physical pain, entered the room. She stood over the guru’s bed and started rubbing the top of the bed with her hand and then rubbing that same hand over her lower back. After a few minutes of this, she sat down in a chair near the old man. Then a woman with long black hair who looked to be about 50 years old came in. She knelt down next to the bed and bowed her head so that it was touching the top of the bed. After a few moments of prayer, she got up and sat in the chair next to me.

So the four of us sat there together, in silence, breathing. Praying. I started praying for the others. I prayed for the old woman’s back. I prayed for the old man’s sad heart. I prayed for the prayers of the woman with the long black hair to be answered.

We all cried, but all at different times. I glanced over and saw tears rolling down the face of the old woman in pain. I watched as the old man got up from his chair, walked over to the foot of the bed, and knelt down (with considerable difficulty) to prostrate himself before the picture of the guru. After a few minutes on the ground, he got up (with even more difficulty) and walked out of the room.

I started thinking about patience.

I started thinking about the fact that not too long ago I would not have expressed gratitude for my life. I started thinking about the things that I want to do with this life, now that I actually want it. I started thinking about how 31 is not that old; I am only just beginning.

I started thinking about all of the people I love and who love me; there are so many.

I started thinking about my writing. I started thinking about this blog and those of you who read it.

And then I started thinking about the guru, and I realized what I was seeing play out right in front of me: when a person lives fully in their essence and shares that with the world, others can only benefit from it. Here is a dude who publicly declared at a young age that he was “God in human form” and then spent the rest of his life trying to help and inspire other people. I am sure that not everyone he encountered in his life agreed with his assessment of himself, and I am sure that he experienced a lot of pain and resistance. But because he put himself out there and stayed true to his essence, he changed the lives of countless individuals. I spent my birthday morning in his bedroom with a handful of these individuals, and I saw firsthand the effects of the guru’s love.

The old woman left not too long after the old man. I had been sitting there for over an hour, and I was beginning to get hungry for breakfast. My stomach was rumbling and the metal chair was starting to get uncomfortable. A thought suddenly occurred to me: I want to kneel down at the foot of the bed, too. I didn’t really know why, but I just wanted to do it. So I decided I would get up, kneel down, and then leave and go make myself a birthday breakfast.

But right as I was about to get up from my chair, a new person entered the room. It was a hippie-looking guy, maybe 40 years old, and he immediately planted himself at the foot of the bed. He sat down on the floor and basically camped out. There’s a little note on the bed that asks you to “kindly limit your time at the bed in consideration of others,” but apparently this guy didn’t really care. Because he sat there FOREVER. After about 15 minutes, he was showing no signs of moving.

“But I’m hungry and uncomfortable!” I screamed silently. “You’re fucking with my schedule, hippie-man. I must kneel and eat! Kneel and eat!”

And then I caught the eye of the guru. He looked like he was smiling at me.

“Patience,” he seemed to say.

“Ah-ha,” I silently responded. “Touché.”

Patience.

That night I stumbled into another dinner (which was great, because I hate to cook) and ended up supping with a woman and two men in one of the communal kitchens. The woman was from Utah, one of the men was from Charlotte, the other guy seemed to be a nomad, and all of them were at least 20 years older than I am. When they asked me how my birthday was going, I brought up the subject of patience. We proceeded to have a conversation about the relationship between patience and faith.

Because the more I thought about it, the more I realized that patience demands faith. To be truly and sincerely patient, it helps if you have faith that your patience will eventually pay off. Patience is easier if you have faith that there are things outside of your “field of vision” that you just cannot see.

So you can: a) have patience that someday you will be able to see things outside of your field of vision; and/or b) seek out people who already do see outside of your field of vision and spend some time with them.

Or, I suppose, you can prove Schopenhauer right. But what a boring and depressing life….to assume that all we are is all we can see.

Happy birthday to me; this year I will work on patience.

The Heart, or The Blog About My Blog

The heart is a muscle. It is our center.

The heart uses four valves to ensure that blood only flows in one direction: the tricuspid valve, the pulmonary valve, the mitral valve, and the aortic valve. In a healthy heart, each valve closes as blood travels from one chamber of the heart to another so that the blood cannot go back to where it was before. Blood must keep moving through the heart if we are to be healthy; it shouldn’t go back.

If it does go back, something is wrong with a valve and the heart is not healthy. If your heart is not healthy, you are not healthy.

So it is healthier if your heart knows how to let go…knows how to let the blood flow and doesn’t try to hold on to it or force it back. It is healthier if it knows how to let each valve close at the appropriate moment, trusting that the next valve will open and let the flow of blood continue.

The heart chakra is the fourth chakra in the body; its corresponding colors are green and pink. It is the center of love, compassion, forgiveness, empathy, understanding, acceptance, peace. Of the seven chakras in the body, the heart chakra can be the most difficult one to keep open.

Well, at least it can be for me.

Sometimes I just want to hide from you people. But I made a commitment to myself when I started this blog in April that I would post at least once a week, no matter what. At some point in the last seven months this blog took on a life of its own. I still don’t really know what I’m doing with it. Sometimes I resent it, and other times it seems like the only good thing in my life. It has changed countless existing relationships, started many new relationships, and I continue to be simultaneously shocked and moved by the sometimes very personal things that many of you choose to share with me. It’s like you people think I’m Oprah or something.

Maybe it’s because you trust me. Maybe you feel like I give you permission. Because I remain transparent and authentic in my writing, perhaps you feel safe doing the same with me. If so, that’s beautiful – please keep doing it. I love receiving your brave notes. It reminds me of the scene at the end of Footloose when all of the students are at the school dance they fought so hard to have yet none of them are brave enough to actually get up on the dance floor…not until Kevin Bacon gets up to slow dance with his special lady friend. Then that shit is ON. So maybe, for a few of you, I’m your Kevin Bacon.

If so, that’s awesome.

But remaining transparent and authentic at times like now when all I want to do is hide and close off my heart is very hard.

Another thing that is hard: I think you think you know me. And I don’t blame you; I would think I knew me too, if I were you.

Saturday night I attended a benefit for Visible Theatre in Tarrytown, New York. I saw my lovely friend Julia for the first time in months, and when she started to ask me how I was doing she suddenly stopped herself and said: “Well, I feel like I already know how you’re doing since I read your blog every week. You’re like a celebrity in my life.”

I laughed at her comment and it made me feel good at the time, but it got me to thinking. I started thinking about what it means to be a writer.

When I first discovered I was supposed to be a writer, I didn’t tell anyone about it. I was scared to death of my discovery so I kept it a secret. When I finally did start writing and telling some people about it, I was terrified. Not necessarily because I was afraid my writing wasn’t going to be good – rather, because I knew my writing, regardless of the genre, was going to be revealing and honest and I didn’t know if I was ready to share myself with others. When I did start sharing my writing with others, it started changing my relationships….sometimes positively, sometimes negatively.

I’m still at the beginning of this journey of being a writer, and already I feel invaded. Yet, of course, I was the very one who invited you in.

I often think about what my friend Sherry told me about my astrological chart: “it’s quite possible that the way you are perceived when people first meet you is quite different from your public persona and also how you are on a deeper level.” That’s actually a characteristic of those with my Myers-Briggs personality type (INFJ) as well. It’s the rarest type, and we are frequently mistaken for extroverts.

I wonder who I am to you, especially those of you who read this and don’t know me personally. I imagine that I am crafting my writer public persona as I write this blog, and I have very little control over how you see me. All I can do is offer myself up; you do the rest.

But sometimes this shit is really hard. Ever since I was a kid I have vacillated between extreme emotional states – sometimes jubilant and courageous and manic, other times deeply depressed and withdrawn and hopeless. I developed a generic public persona that hovers somewhere between the two extremes, and it’s rare I venture too far from it in mixed company. I can count on the fingers of my hands the number of people I regularly let pass that threshold; there are probably a lot more people in my life who think they get past it than actually do.

I did that to protect myself and to protect the people around me. The intricate scaffolding I built up around my heart as a very young girl is actually quite impressive; as an adult, I’ve been working years on trying to tear it down. And as I do, I work on forgiving myself for building it in the first place. It was the only solution available to me at the time.

So part of what I try to do with this blog is remove the scaffolding and open my heart for you. I don’t really know yet why I do it. Do you have any idea how terrifying it is?

But we both seem to be getting something from it, so I will continue to do it.

These days I feel: lonely, burdened. My heart feels heavy. It does not want to open for you.

So I’ve been thinking about this gorgeous, powerful muscle I have in my chest and learning how it works. I am fascinated by those four valves.

Because what the mechanics of the heart say to me is that my heart doesn’t just need to open – it needs to move. It needs to flow. Blood needs to keep moving forward; those four valves ensure that it does.

I feel like I’m at a sort of precipice in my life right now. Many relationships and areas of my life are changing and shifting, and I want to continue to let them do so. Those valves are there for a reason…no need to go back.

And I’m going to keep showing up for you, and letting you do with me what you will. Like any muscle, the heart needs a workout if it is going to get stronger.

So consider this my workout.

Magnet

I feel victim to a force greater than myself. I have spent years writing about it, trying to understand it, wanting to get away from it. It is a very personal and private matter and involves another person; how can I possibly write about it in a blog? Let’s see…hm. I shall write about magnets.

A magnet produces an invisible magnetic field. That invisible magnetic field produces a powerful force that either attracts or repels other magnets. Bring yourself back to elementary school for a moment: you are sitting on the carpeted floor of your classroom in your red Oshkosh B’Gosh corduroys, playing with and learning about magnets. You turn two magnets one way and they repel each other; you enjoy trying to make them connect, even though they don’t want to. You turn one of those magnets the other way and it’s difficult to keep them apart. You keep pulling them away from each other, only to watch them find their way back to each other in the end.

Yes. Yes. Yes. I can relate.

Why do they do that? I don’t really know. There are specific, scientific reasons for it, but every time I try to research the science behind magnets in order to write this blog I begin to hear the voice of the teacher from Charlie Brown in my head and can’t focus on or retain any of the information. Science was not my strongest subject in school; you can probably guess what was.

Believe it or not, I actually performed in a show about magnets. Yes…a play about magnets was actually written and I actually performed in it. When I was working at the Barter Theatre (a/k/a the “State Theatre of Virginia”), I was in the Player Company. Player Company members were the non-union bitches. Translation: one day a Player could have a leading role in one of the Barter mainstage productions, and the next day that same Player could be sorting through the recyclables out in the trash shed behind the rehearsal hall. I loved it and hated it and I still consider my fellow Players to be family members to this very day.

The Magnetic Adventures of Moe Mentum was written by a company member to be performed by Players at elementary and middle schools. There were three characters (Moe Mentum, Inertia, Polaris) and more than one Player learned each role so that any random mixture of Players could go out and perform when needed. As Players, our lives were dictated by the call board hanging in the hallway of our actor housing; the schedule for the next day went up every night by 11pm. Each night we would trudge over to the call board in our pajamas, hoping beyond hope that we wouldn’t see our name listed next to an early morning performance of The Magnetic Adventures of Moe Mentum. It wasn’t that we didn’t enjoy doing touring shows for kids per se; I actually consider the production of Charlotte’s Web I did with that same group of actors in elementary and middle school cafetoriums to be one of the best pieces of theatre in which I have ever been involved. We just didn’t like doing Moe Mentum.

My favorite performances were when the cast lined up as follows: Eugene Sumlin as Moe Mentum, Jen Katz as Inertia, Jennifer Blevins as Polaris. Poor Eugene had to wear a unitard. A grown man in a unitard in a middle school gymnasium. Oh, poor Eugene. Eugene also had to learn all of the really hard lines about magnets. As Polaris, I just had to be the bad guy and try to destroy the world with my evil electromagnet. But Moe Mentum’s job was to explain to Inertia why magnets do what they do, so poor Eugene had to stand in front of hundreds of kids in a unitard and try to make magnets exciting.

It never failed that during the Q&A session after the show some kid would ask Eugene a very specific question about the mechanics of magnets. None of us had actually researched magnets, and Eugene only learned his lines for the show (and hell, he barely learned those), so he prepared a stock answer for that inevitable question: “Well kids, that sounds like an excellent question to research in your local library.”

Magnets. Yes: Moe Mentum would explain to Inertia why magnets do what they do. Magnets repel and attract because it is their very nature to do so. It is a mindless, instinctual act on the part of the magnet. You don’t see one of the magnets debating if it should affix itself to the other magnet, or asking the other magnet: “um, do you really think we should?” No. They just do it. They connect. And they stay connected until some other force pulls them apart.

But, given the opportunity, they will always connect again.

I think people may have magnets inside of them. Sometimes you encounter a person whose internal magnet repels your internal magnet. If you are thrust into a particular situation with that person which you can’t escape (for instance: your workplace), then you must find a way to create enough distance between you and that other person so that the two of you don’t experience that crazy magnet-repelling-thing that you created so excitedly on the classroom floor in your red Oshkosh B’Gosh corduroys all those many years ago.

Every once in a while you meet the opposite kind of person. You are drawn to them, and you can’t fully explain why. It seems beyond your control.

You go through life and you encounter people with all different kinds of magnets of varying sizes and strengths that attract your magnet, and you build relationships with those people and mutually enjoy the harmonious connection of your internal magnets.

And then one day you meet the big magnet. The mother of all magnets.

You become haunted by this magnet. Now that you know this magnet is out there, you can’t help but want to connect with it. It feels like your destiny to connect. After all, that’s what magnets do.

But what if this magnet is inside an asshole? Or a troll living under a bridge? Or a Republican? Well, you might be able to work with those kinds of things. Adapt. Be flexible. Learn to appreciate bridges and Fox News.

But what if this magnet is inside someone you can’t be with? And what if you know that, even if you could be with this person and this magnet, it would be a terrible idea? And what if your logical/rational mind is very clear on this point?

“Bad idea,” says the mind.

“But I must connect,” says the magnet. “For that is what I do.”

Magnetic fields are invisible, yes. But you can feel them. When you flipped those magnets back around and held them apart from each other as a kid, you could feel in your hands how badly they wanted to come together. And there was a certain relief when they finally did…like maybe the universe makes sense after all, and you just need to go out and find the right magnet.

But maybe not. Perhaps the most interesting part is the energy that exists between the magnets….the life force that is created between two magnets yearning to connect. Maybe that’s the whole point.

But, if so, that sucks.

I try to wrap my brain around the magnet phenomenon in my own life, and I find I cannot. And it might be because magnets are brainless and could give a shit about my hang-ups, moral conundrums and circumstance. They don’t adhere to logic and they don’t ask for your permission. Actually, the more I write about magnets the more offended I am by their audacity.

“Fuck you,” says the magnet. “I will have my day.”

At least I know I’m not alone in this, because I can feel the other magnet pulling. Over the years it has pulled with varying levels of strength, but that other magnet is always pulling. The owner of that other magnet is probably just as confused about it as I am.

And I imagine he is also offended by the audacity of magnets.

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Just a reminder: if you read Theblevinsblog, like it, and aren’t too timid to declare that publicly, please become a fan on Facebook. And if you know someone else who likes it, send them an invitation to be a fan! I don’t really know what good it does me to have a fan page on Facebook, but my friend Jeff thought it wise. And it does offer me solace in my darker moments. And it is a bit ironic. And there’s a picture of me on there as a little baby with schnoot all over my face.

Special

Why I am more special than you

If I could pick one week of the year in which to spend eternity, it would be the final week of October. I never feel as alive as I do in late October, and the buildup to the most beloved pagan celebration never gets old. Halloween is arguably the coolest holiday we have, and it also happens to be the day of my birth. When I was a very little girl, my mother would dress me up as a black cat every Halloween/birthday in a black leotard, tights, kitty cat tail, whiskers n’ ears and I would greet trick-or-treaters at our door. I naturally assumed that the entire holiday was a global celebration of my birth; how depressing to grow up and learn of my relative insignificance.

When my younger brother and I got a little older my father would take us trick-or-treating around the neighborhood. It was my favorite night of the entire year. My mom and little Italian live-in granny would stay home to handle the trick-or-treaters who came to our door while my brother, father and I set out to conquer our suburban neighborhood. The stakes were high on Halloween for the entire Blevins clan; we each had a job, and we each took that job very seriously.

Team Blevins would set out in full costume around 5 o’clock and continue to trick-or-treat late into the night. We would hit really good houses twice, hoping that they wouldn’t remember us the second time around. The three of us would make occasional pit stops at home; while we went to the bathroom and/or downed some Gatorade, my granny and my mom would sort through our loot and take out the crappy candy to recycle. The crappy candy would go to the next round of trick-or-treaters who came to our door and Team Blevins would hit the streets again for Round 2. Round 3. Round 4. We were unstoppable in our quest for free candy and cheap thrills.

My dad would hang back at each house, letting us work our little kid magic. When we would rejoin him after the deal was done, he’d ask, “Whadja get? Anything good?” We would collectively assess our loot and discuss whether it belonged in the “crappy candy” pile or the “to be eaten” pile. When we had trick-or-treated all that we could trick-or-treat, we would head home and strip off our ceremonial garb. Then would come the coolest part: our parents would let us eat the candy. There was no “pick out your favorite three pieces and then go to bed”….no “human beings aren’t meant to consume that much refined sugar in one sitting.” Nope. They would let us sit down on the floor in front of the t.v. in the living room and pig the hell out. My brother and I would launch into a frenzy, pinging off the walls from all of the sugar and excitement and electrolytes and pure little-kid-joy.

Then we’d get sick and pass out. I would wake up on November 1st another year older and severely depressed that I would have to wait 364 days for my next Halloween/birthday.

You can’t help but feel just a little more special than all of the other kids when your birthday falls on a holiday…especially a holiday as cool as Halloween. I must confess that I have carried that sensation with me into my adult life and I still feel more special than all of you non-Halloween-born plebs. Like I was chosen for greatness by a mystical power that determined I would be born at 2:03pm on October 31st in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Like I’m Harry Potter, predestined to battle Voldemort and save the world. Except instead of using magic I’m going to fight him by pelting candy corn and little boxes of Nerds and chalky Double Bubble bubble gum at his head while dressed up as a sexy nurse.

Recently my friend Sherry was kind enough to share her knowledge of astrology with me by checking out my chart and telling me what it means. When I was born, both the sun and the moon were in Scorpio. And so was Mercury. And Venus. And Mars. And Uranus. The moon, the sun and 4 planets were all in Scorpio the moment I was born. So if you don’t like Scorpios, perhaps we should not be friends.

Sherry says I have a “pretty fascinating chart.” See? I told you I’m more special than you. I was kind of overloaded by everything she told me, but it all resonated and made sense. It made me feel a lot better, actually. Like maybe there is some design/explanation for all of this life shit after all. But my planets are all clustered together in an intense way under the most intense sign, so I imagine that it could be difficult to be in a relationship with me. Sorry. She said that the way those planets are positioned in relation to my ascendant means “it’s quite possible that the way you are perceived when people first meet you is quite different from your public persona and also how you are on a deeper level.” So….yeah. Good luck with that.

As we were talking about my chart and her chart, I thought about the universal need to be seen/understood/special. Isn’t it funny how we all crave so desperately for someone to tell us who we are? The plethora and popularity of Facebook quizzes alone is proof that we are obsessed with being told all of the ways in which we are unique.

I wonder if this need has something to do with a basic survival instinct. Maybe our cave-people ancestors planted the roots of our Facebook quizzes. Because you have to be pretty self-focused to survive dinosaurs and sabertooth tigers and the like. If you weren’t self-focused, you’d probably just let them eat you and get it over with because, hey – what the hell does it matter anyway? But if you know which Sex in the City character you would be and which decade you really belong in and how effective you would be in a zombie attack, you are no longer just a random cave-person. You are special. You are unique. You are Carrie and you really should have lived in the 1960s and when the zombies attack you’ll be on the front line. So you are one-of-a-kind and have a lot to lose if you let that sabertooth tiger eat you.

But yes, we do all need to feel special. Unique. One-of-a-kind. Like I do every year when I experience my first Halloween decoration sighting in a drug store. We adore it when we are told the ways in which we are different. We crave it. And I think it has to do with love.

Part of the process of entering a relationship/falling in love with someone is telling them all of the ways they are special. Irreplaceable. Unique. When you love someone, you try to reflect back to them all of the best parts of themselves. And if you succeed, they love you more. And then they stick around to find out what other amazing things you’re going to say about them. And if you are truly able see the beauty of their essence and report back to them about it, they are putty in your hands.

We want to feel special because we want to feel loved. The best love relationships in life are the ones where you love the self that is reflected back to you by the other person…whether it be a lover or a parent or a friend. The need to feel loved is a universal need; I think it’s natural to crave it.

One Halloween when we were living in Charlotte it rained. Rain during the day turned into a torrential downpour that night and our parents told us that the weather was too nasty to go trick-or-treating. I think I was about 10 or 11 at the time. I went and sat in my room and cried my eyes out. I sobbed. Maybe because a part of me knew that I didn’t have many trick-or-treating Halloweens left before I got too old…I don’t know. But I was devastated. My father found me sitting in my room, crying. He told us to put our costumes on – we were going trick-or-treating. He drove us around in the pouring rain, waiting in the car while we walked up to each house underneath umbrellas to get our candy.

I felt really special that night.

Mirror

We put so much trust in strangers. The people who supply/prepare our food. The people who drive our buses/trains/planes. The people who care for our young. It’s just easier that way, isn’t it? It’s easier to assume that the turkey sandwich you ordered in the deli is not going to poison you. The flight from LGA to GSO is not going to crash and kill you. The day care worker is not going to harm your child.

So why do we find it so hard to trust ourselves?

I understand the difficulty in trusting God/spiritual practices/religions/etc. You cannot always see/know/have proof of the Divine, and that’s actually the very definition of faith – trusting in someone or something that we can’t always see/know/have proof of.

But we see/know/have proof of ourselves. Actually, it’s the most intimate relationship we will ever have. Far more intimate than the relationship we have with the guy who made our turkey sandwich. So why is listening to and trusting our inner voice one of the great challenges of life?

I’ve been thinking a lot about this question these last few weeks. I feel very alone with my inner voice these days…like we’re standing across each other in a boxing ring and no one’s in the audience to witness our fight. Every morning when I walk into the opulent office building in midtown Manhattan that houses my current long-term temp job, I think: “dear-god-what-have-I-done.” It feels like a step back rather than a step forward, and at the end of every day I emerge exhausted; the last thing in the world I want to do is to come home and write.

But right now I’m trying to trust myself. I’m trying to convince myself that, like with the guy in the deli or the pilot of the plane or the random stranger taking care of the child, it’s just easier to trust. Things have been put into motion and my life will be revealed to me as I live it, so it’s just easier to eat the sandwich. Get on the plane. Drop off the child.

But I wonder: do we really see/know/have proof of ourselves? Is that the very reason why we find it so damn hard to trust our inner voice?

When it comes to my relationship with myself, I tend to turn to Rilke for guidance. From his Letters to a Young Poet (“for fundamentally, and precisely in the deepest and most important things, we are unspeakably alone”), to The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge (“I am a beginner in my own circumstances”), to the Duino Elegies (“But we: we vanish in our feelings. Oh, we breathe ourselves out, and out; our smell dissolves from ember to ember”), Rilke is my go-to guy when it comes to sorting out the complexities of solitude and knowing myself more fully. But did Rilke even really know himself?

I just wrote an article about Rilke for Lit Drift, and in my research for the article I learned that Rilke was a bit of an asshole. Self-obsessed, arrogant, childish and vain, Rilke also had quite a reputation with the ladies. He spent a lifetime trying to make “things out of fear” and find ways to eloquently express the inner workings of his heart, but for all of his solitude and navel-gazing it seems as if the most significant progress towards this end came through his relationship and correspondence with Lou Andreas-Salomé. Fifteen years his senior, Andreas-Salomé played the roles of “mother, lover and child” throughout the course of their tumultuous relationship, and apparently Rilke came to rely on her insight and feedback as a guide for his life and his art. It seems as if Andreas-Salomé served as a sort of mirror for Rilke. As such, I imagine he loved her and hated her, resented her and needed her.

It reminds me of the scene in The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge when the protagonist recalls being alone in a room as a child and trying on a mask:

“Hot and angry, I rushed to the mirror and with difficulty watched through the mask the working of my hands. But for this the mirror had just been waiting…it forced me, by what means I do not know, to lift my eyes and imposed on me an image, no, a reality, a strange, unbelievable and monstrous reality, with which, against my will, I became permeated: for now the mirror was the stronger, and I was the mirror. I stared at this great, terrifying unknown before me, and it seemed to me appalling to be alone with him. But at the very moment I thought this, the worst befell: I lost all sense, I simply ceased to exist. For one second I had an indescribable, painful and futile longing for myself, and then there was only he: there was nothing but he.”

I think I have had an obsession with seeing/knowing myself ever since I was a little girl; my childhood diaries and writings chart the origins of an individual concerned with her relationship to herself and to the world. Yet for all of my now almost three decades full of committed self-exploration, I still feel like one of the greatest challenges I face is finding a way to see myself truthfully. To strip away the delusions and the guilt and the blame and the masks and be accepting of what lies beneath.

I think this process is hard for any human being, and I wonder if it’s part of the reason why we have trouble trusting ourselves and the guidance we receive from our inner voice. And maybe we all need someone to serve as our mirror.

I can relate to the ecstasy and agony of Rilke and Andreas-Salomé’s relationship and correspondence because a couple of years ago I fell into a similar correspondence myself. It was lovely and wondrous and terrible and stressful and, like Rilke and Andreas-Salomé’s correspondence, eventually went on a long-term hiatus, I think in part because the mirror became too painful and demanding on us both. I can’t speak for the person on the other side of the correspondence, but I can say that for me it was a life-altering experience, the ramifications of which I am still discovering two years later.

Yes, it was lovely…and it was downright fucking exhausting. It became our crack cocaine; we could never get enough, and it depleted all of our resources. There is something incredibly addictive about diving deep into yourself with another human being…like you form some sort of unspoken pact to “get to the bottom of all this shit once and for all” and not give up until you do, yet you can never get to the bottom of all of this shit so you just keep diving deeper and deeper until one of you freaks out or joins a cult. The self reflected back in that sort of exchange can indeed become “this great, terrifying unknown before me” and you can’t stand it yet you can’t look away.

I think that level of intensity is natural when you’re in it, but the greatest benefits for me came long after the correspondence was through. Once the heat and passion of the exchange had died, I was able to see the relationship (and my role in it) more objectively and know things about myself that were kind of painful to know. But holy shit is that knowledge helpful. And I can’t help but wonder now if that crazy exchange two years ago laid part of the foundation for the leaps I have been making in my life recently. I know absolutely that it has affected (and will continue to affect) my work as an artist.

But it’s a bit depressing to realize that, like most things in life, it was mostly about me. Because it follows then that for the other person in the exchange it was probably mostly about him. To quote John Barth: “Everyone is necessarily the hero of his own life story.” Hm. Yes.

I am grateful for the things I saw in that mirror, and I get better and better at holding up the mirror for myself. And right now when I do I see someone who needs to breathe, relax, and trust that something bigger and greater than her knows what’s up.

Working Girl

Man, this blog is gonna be a fucking mess. So if you’re a regular fan of Theblevinsblog and ever feel like skipping an installment, this one would probably be a good one to skip.

But if you insist, you may continue reading.

I wish you could all collectively hold me right now. Maybe one of you could pet my hair and tell me I’m pretty, someone else could bring my recycling downstairs to the appropriate bins, another one of you could balance my checkbook….which I’m still too frightened to open.

As most of you know, I recently took a leap of faith and quit a horrible job that sucked my soul and gave me nightmares. I experienced a couple of terrifying weeks with absolutely no employment and no income, and then I was offered a long-term temp position. I started this position Monday. It will last 3-4 months.

I will never reveal in this blog where I am working, any details about my job, or the people I work with. All I will say is this: it is in a huge, opulent building in midtown Manhattan. I do monkey work. I have to dress up. It is full-time. My energy/attention is completely consumed every moment I am there. My commute is over an hour each way. Every day this week I’ve gotten out of bed at 4:45am, chanted and left the apartment by 5:45am, gone to the gym, gone to work, and not returned to my apartment until late. I am completely exhausted. This is literally the first thing I have written all week; ergo, in all likelihood it will resemble ass. So again I say: this one would be a good one to skip. Go back and read an oldie but a goodie – like Douchebag Jamboree or My NYC Blog. Don’t read this one.

But if you insist, you may continue.

And now for the bullet points swimming and colliding in my head:

-Gender divide/sexism/glass ceilings
-Totem poles
-Sisyphus and his rock
-Ego as impediment
-High heels as Satan
-Old men with money

As I begin this blog, it is 9pm Wednesday night. For dinner I ate edamame and two Skinny Cow Ice Cream Sandwiches. I am not proud of this fact. You really should stop reading this blog and do something about my recycling or checkbook.

So I suppose I’m the mysterious “new girl” in the office. Temps are shrouded with a certain mystique the first week or two: Who is she? Where is she from? Is she straight/gay? Single/married/other? Are her eyes really that color? Is she a murderer/ whore/ cannibal/ hermaphrodite/ leper/ drummer/ Scientologist? And why does she keep looking at me like that? And why does she want to eat alone in the dining hall? And why does she go to the bathroom so much? And will she have sex with me in Conference Room B?

Yes, my eyes are really that color. Yes, I am a murdering whore, drummer and Scientologist. And yes, I will absolutely have sex with you in Conference Room B….but only if when we’re through I can eat your heart after I rip it out of your chest.

This week I’ve been thinking a lot about the person we are to ourselves vs. the person we are to the world. Every individual in this office is meeting me for the very first time this week, and I keep wondering how they see me. Throughout my life, many different people have told me that they find me “intimidating,” “a lot to take,” or that I make them “nervous.” I used to feel uncomfortable when people said these things, but recently it has been making me feel good. Because I know my internal landscape so intimately, I know that I am so not intimidating. I am a mixture of jumbled-up vapors and volatile emotions and profound sadness and unspeakable joy and 99% of the time I’m not thinking about YOU anyway…so why on earth would I be intimidating?

And then it makes me think about people in my life who I have found intimidating and it makes me smile. Because I would bet good money (if I had any, of course) that they are even more internally jumbled-up than I am. So why on earth did I ever find them intimidating? And why do we ever find people intimidating when we’re all just people? And why don’t we just level the playing field and all throw on some bathing suits and go wrestle in a big pool of chocolate pudding?

To quote Pete, the diner owner in Muppets Take Manhattan:

“Big city, hmm? Live. Work, huh? But. Only peoples. Peoples is peoples. No is buildings. Is tomatoes, huh? Is peoples, is dancing, is music, is potatoes. So, peoples is peoples. Okay?”

People, I do not belong in an office. I belong on a space ship, battling aliens. Or in a cabin on a deserted mountaintop, writing my novel on an old-fashioned typewriter and socializing with the neighborhood goats. I belong in a rehearsal hall with vibrant artists I love and who love me. Or riding in a hot air balloon with an orangutan, teaching us both how to play the flute.

I do not belong in an office. Of course…I know this. We all know this. This is known.

So why am I back in an office?

It is now 5:30am on Thursday morning.

I am back in an office because I need to pay my bills.

Last December I had a very disturbing and beautiful dream that I have shared with you before. In it, I killed the most precious part of myself (my creative gift/inner voice which appeared in the form of a small bird/fairy-type creature with colorful feathers) just because I was not paying attention and was not thinking. I made a vow to that part of myself after the dream – I told her that I would take care of her no matter what. She has been acting up these days and she is super pissed at me for sticking her back in another office. But I find that I’m much better at being my own parent now. I keep making deals with her…deals similar to the ones I see my dear friend Patrizia make with her four-year old daughter Isabella. I keep speaking to that most precious part of myself and saying: “Look, I’m working on it. I promise I will get you out of here if you behave just a little while longer. Then we can play. Don’t worry – I love you very much and we are not going to be here forever. I don’t know how I’m going to get us out, but I promise I will find a way.”

I have to make this deal with her about ten times a day.

Worst-Case Scenario & Letting The Formula Fall Away

The tornado that is my current mental/emotional state is so all-consuming and overpowering that it would be nearly impossible for me to write this week’s blog about anything else. As I come to the end of week two of Operation Leap-of-Faith/Leave-Your-Job and still do not have employment, I find myself in fascinating, blog-worthy territory. Every moment of my life feels ripe; the dramas being played out by the obsessive thoughts in my head have risen to such a heightened level that I expect them to very soon put on masks and begin acting out Medea. I keep trying to remind myself of my own advice – Don’t Think. Thinking is bad. This problem is not going to be solved by thinking. Yes, this I already know. So why do I keep thinking? And why do those thoughts keep turning morbid?

I keep playing out the worst-case scenarios in my head. I suppose that’s human nature – we naturally tend to fixate on the negative and prepare for the worst. My worst goes a little something like this:

I keep looking for work and do not find any. I run through my measly savings. I stop paying my bills. I stop being able to buy food. I stop paying my rent and barricade myself in my apartment. When they are finally able to break through my barricade, they discover my corpse rotting on the futon…half-eaten by Chester, my 20-pound feline ward.

But I’m a fucking Buddhist. And because I’m a fucking Buddhist I know that this ripe and terrifying time in my life is the perfect opportunity for profound growth and unprecedented triumph. I am stirring the pot of my own potential and resistance-training my soul. So I live in a constant battle between the mask-wearing Medea bitches and the enlightened sages of my inner voice. Internally I feel like I’m in the midst of a Saturday morning cartoon battle, complete with cliffhangers before every commercial break.

I’ve been working on setting positive intentions. Visualizing positive outcomes. And because I’m a Buddhist I also believe in karma. It seems as if a big-ass part of the karma I inherited in this life was money/financial karma. Buddhist karmic philosophy is based on cause and effect – i.e. causes that you made (either in this life or in previous lives) produce corresponding effects. A lot of people have trouble accepting this way of thinking because it places the responsibility of the course of your life entirely in your own hands. I had trouble with it at first, too. But then I realized: if I am responsible for everything in my life, then I can change anything in my life. Everybody has their own unique karma to contend with, and for me a lot of it is the money shit. I constantly marvel at the fact that so many people are either: a) born into money; or b) able to make money easily. I am determined to work through this karma and get over my long-held, deeply ingrained belief that it is impossible to be both an artist and financially successful.

So instead of visualizing this:

I have been trying to visualize this:

Visualizing Scrooge McDuck swimming laps through his fortune seems much more helpful right now than visualizing Chester on my futon next to my corpse.

I’m not just sitting around waiting for work to come to me; I have registered with oodles of employment agencies and I call a new employment agency every day that passes and I don’t find work. I have worn a suit more in the last two weeks than I have in the last four years. I hate wearing suits. I really, really, really hate wearing suits. And considering the fact that my weight has fluctuated so dramatically over the years, I basically only have one suit that fits me right now. One of the other suits is so large that I could probably wear it pregnant, and another is so small that I should just go ahead and donate it to a poor Barbie.

One of the agencies I registered with is the same agency I used when I first moved to New York over five years ago. The same recruiter I used five years ago is still there. When I went in for the interview, I discovered that the same receptionist from five years ago is still there; she is even angrier and the lines in her face have traveled even deeper. As I sat in the waiting area, I listened to her joke with co-workers about how terrible the job market is right now and how they should just be grateful for having jobs. It was sort of like starving in a Turkish prison and listening to the guards complain about their lamb kabobs and baklava. But no, it was actually more than that – it was the perfect example of the fear that has pervaded our society. Her sentiment also served as an echo of the voices that have been moaning in my head for most of my life: all that life can offer you is misery, so it’s much better to hold on to your current level of misery than to risk being even more miserable out in unknown, miserable territory.

Part of registering with an employment agency in NYC is taking their stupid fucking computer tests. You must prove that you can do the things you say you can do on your resume. So they stick you in a windowless room, set up a computer to assail you with a series of ridiculous tests, and leave you to contend with Microsoft Office. While I snagged a near perfect score in Microsoft Word, I only received an 87% in Excel. I was then told that in order to get higher-paying positions I could go home and take a tutorial in Excel and try to get a higher score. Apparently my degree from Wake Forest, years of work experience, and superb command of the English language all magically disappear if I forget the “wrap text” command in an Excel spreadsheet.

The biggest internal battle right now seems to be fear vs. faith. Will I be able to cling to my faith that this is all going to be alright, even if I am knocking on the door of the worst-case scenario? Will I be able to assert my worth when I am being told that I should be grateful for and jump at the chance to take jobs that pay $15/hr and wouldn’t even cover my basic expenses?

“Leap and the net will appear.”

Um, really? As I write this blog, I am smack dab in the middle of this concept – I have leapt and the net has not yet appeared. I do not regret the leaping, but I’m having trouble with that net. And this, I suppose, is the very essence of faith. Maybe the net is ten feet lower than I want it to be. Maybe knocking on the door of that worst-case scenario is exactly where I’m supposed to go.

But it’s really scary. It’s an issue of basic sustenance – will I be fed? It’s connected to a very young place inside of me. Inside all of us. The need to be fed is our most basic need. Peel away everything else and that need still remains.

I am fully aware of the irony of my karmic situation. Part of the reason I am who I am is because of this battle. I would not be the same Jennifer Blevins if I had been born into a different karmic challenge. I have been working steadily since I was in high school, I have rarely worked jobs that I actually liked, and I carry a massive financial debt like an albatross around my neck. Clearly this is a big piece of my life/karma I am supposed to work through.

But it also seems to frequently be the karma of an artist: the battle of asserting your self-worth and holding fast to your higher calling in the face of financial hardship. One of the biggest things I have learned about being an artist in the real world since graduating from college is this: there is no formula. None. NO. FORMULA. If you are smart, articulate, physically attractive, moderately disciplined and responsible, up to a certain point in your life you can follow a certain formula-for-success and it will usually serve you well. I noticed this a lot in my classmates at Wake Forest: I was surrounded by many smart, articulate, physically attractive, moderately disciplined and responsible individuals who had been riding the wave of this certain generic formula-for-success throughout their younger years (just like I did), and they continued to ride that wave at Wake Forest. Most of them chose career paths that offered yet another formula to follow – i.e. pre-med students went on to med school, others started the law school track, others started the accounting track, some started down the path to academia, etc etc etc. I actually have a very vivid memory of standing on the quad and talking to one of my sorority sisters about her future. She was a couple of years older and was enrolled in the 5-year accounting program at Wake. At the end of the 5 years, she could begin working as an accountant. As she stood there and basically mapped out the rest of her life for me, I remember being simultaneously jealous and repulsed. I was jealous that she had a specific, concrete formula to follow; I was repulsed that she had this formula and already pretty much knew the route her life would take.

It’s a trade-off we make as artists. There is no formula, and many who try to cling to one only find themselves deeper in debt (i.e. grad school) or clinging to another human being who provides sustenance, or clinging to a job that undervalues them and makes them bitter. As artists, the formula that worked for us up until college no longer applies. It took me years to see this, and then a couple of more years for me to accept this. “It’s not fair,” I thought. No, it’s not. But if you follow Buddhist philosophy, it’s actually really awesome.

Because it’s those very moments of adversity/challenge/crisis that offer the greatest potential of attaining Buddhahood (i.e. an enlightened state). According to this philosophy, we should actually crave these formula-free, terrifying opportunities as an avenue for growth. And I know IT’S HARD to accept this, but it’s the greatest piece of advice I can offer to artists in their early twenties just leaving a college environment: the quicker you can let the formula drop away, the happier you will be.

And I speak from personal experience when I admit how very hard it is to do this. For me, the experience of quitting my job without having another one was part of dropping this formula. I don’t know why it had to be that way, but it did. And no matter how scared I get, I have not yet been able to bring myself to regret it.

I’ll keep you updated.

____________________

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Healthcare Reform & The Deal With Yo’ Shit Generation

It started innocently enough: “Why don’t I write this week’s blog about healthcare?” The idea came to me Sunday night while I was chanting/meditating. I got up from my zafu, walked over to my computer, and sent a note to one of my friends from high school who recently delivered her first baby in New Zealand’s public healthcare system. Then I sent a note to a friend who works in an ER in Memphis. Then a note to a friend who is an oncologist in North Carolina. Then some notes to a few other friends. And the more I thought about this potential “healthcare blog” and the more responses that poured in, the more I thought: “what the hell did I just get myself into?”

Brilliant, Jennifer. Brilliant. Take on this shattered, broken, highly controversial machine that you barely understand and deeply fear. Shoulda just written another damn blog about your fucking job…and/or a recent douchebag adventure.

But no! I can do it! I can tackle this beast! Watch me:

OK. I shall begin with a disclaimer: I know jack shit about this whole healthcare mess. Well, I take that back. I probably know more than some, but definitely a lot less than others. I’ve glanced through some articles in the NY Times…watched some videos of interviews posted on Facebook…read some editorials on The Huffington Post website. The information has been trickling to me through the power of the media, but mostly I just don’t wanna know. I want someone else to figure it out…to fix it. Kinda like I’ve been hoping that by the time I have to start getting mammograms technology will have advanced to the point where someone can just wave a ray gun over my chest à la Dr. Beverly Crusher in Star Trek rather than shmushing my sensitive boobies in-between two cold, metal plates.

But I have a feeling that the boobie-shmushing is inevitable, just as wading through this vat of healthcare diarrhea is inevitable. I have gone through periods of my life without health insurance, and those have been some rather scary periods. If history teaches us anything it’s that ignoring shit and waiting for the next generation to sort that shit out is a really bad game plan. So my generation just needs to sit down in front of this vat of healthcare shit, put on our rubber gloves, and dig in.

Like any good student, I started with research. But I didn’t want to return to all of those websites and articles and interviews – I wanted some information directly from the mouths (or, more accurately, fingers) of people I know/trust/love who might have experience and/or knowledge that could help me write this blog. So I started with Shana Gallentine Fonnesbeck.

I went to high school with Shana. Shana recently gave birth to her first child (Zach) in New Zealand. New Zealand has a public healthcare system. When I asked her how the experience went, she replied: “I’ll be the first to admit that the NZ system is not perfect, but we were basically pleased with the care and I think Kiwis are generally happy with their system.”

I did not know that New Zealanders called themselves Kiwis. Bet some of you didn’t know that either. We’re growing! We’re learning! Life is good! Moving on:

“We spent $75 out-of-pocket for the entire pregnancy.”

Holy fucking shitballs, Shana! Did you give birth in a back alley surrounded by vermin?!

“Probably the coolest thing about maternity care is that the midwife does follow-up home visits for five weeks after the baby is born…This is where my midwife took kind of an aunt-like role and really helped us out.”

Not only did she not give birth in a back alley surrounded by vermin, but she was supported by the healthcare system even after she walked out of the hospital.

Apparently there are some out-of-pocket and co-pay expenses for Kiwis, but those fees are waived if the patient lives below the poverty line. Shana did cite one drawback: “the public hospital and public GP clinics are not as modern as what I’m used to in the US… but I never worried that they wouldn’t have the supplies they needed.”

Shana’s overall assessment?: “I don’t necessarily think that the Kiwi system would easily translate to the US, in large part because of scale — you can be a lot more creative with only 4 million citizens to care for and a much more homogeneous population.”

Thank you, Shana.

Next I connected with my friend Erin Wade. Erin and I went to Wake Forest University together. Erin works in an ER in Memphis, Tennessee in one of the “rougher” parts of town. I sought Erin out because of a Facebook status she posted earlier this month:

“Erin Wade thinks everyone who is against universal health care should be forced to work in the ER for a few days… just like bad tippers should be forced to wait tables.”

Excellent status update, Erin.

Erin sees a lot of people who don’t have health insurance. A lot of these people are poor and/or unemployed and let basic health problems progress to the point where they become life-threatening, all because they do not have health insurance: “When a patient comes into the ER after letting their foot rot from diabetes because they were too scared and too poor to seek medical attention, something is wrong.”

Erin’s overall assessment?: “Another thing that I think most people don’t understand is there is gonna be bullshit no matter what. Right now we have bullshit from the insurance companies. If the government steps in we will have bullshit from them. I think we should spread around the crap.”

It seems as if Erin is already onboard with my vat o’ shit metaphor. Great minds think alike. Moving on:

Next I connected with Stacy Wentworth. Stacy is also a college friend; we were in a sorority together at Wake (yes, I was in a sorority….judge me if you must). Stacy is now a physician in North Carolina. I’m glad I sought out Stacy’s input, because she led my brain in new direction.

Stacy opened with a pretty bold statement: “Americans will not tolerate socialized medicine and that is not being included in any of the proposals currently out in Congress.” I imagine there are a lot of people who agree with her.

Stacy feels like we should start by examining our legal system:

“It is my belief that if you want to cut health care costs, the only way to do it is through tort reform. You have to decrease the ability for lawyers to sue doctors and win millions of dollars over many medical mistakes….Unfortunately, most of our lawmakers (including our president) are lawyers and tort reform is not what they are interested in.”

Stacy also cites self-care/prevention as part of the problem:

“People need incentives to take care of themselves. We are currently probably spending 50% of our budget taking care of tobacco related illnesses. We are paying to take care of people who chose to do something we all knew was bad. Why is that? The next thing we will all be paying for is obesity.”

Yes, agreed. Understood. I have much to say on this…but we’ll get there in good time.

Stacy’s overall assessment?: “I wish I had the answers. I love my patients. I love my job. I do not love insurance companies.”

Last but certainly not least, we come to Nick Kinder. Nick is another WFU friend, now working in an ER in Chicago. I kept bugging him while he was on the night shift, so finally to shut me up he responded with what he feels are the primary problems he sees in his ER:

“Lack of preventive / primary care and people using the ER as a primary care office… Lack of health literacy. People don’t know about their bodies or how they work…. Pharma companies are out of control. Brooke Shields needs fucking eyelash regrowth medication? Sick.”

Nick’s overall assessment?: “We are BADLY in need of a major fix.”

To all my friends who responded to my requests for information: thank you, I love you, and I am so glad you are in the world.

Moving on:

My probing into this matter is by no means exhaustive, but even after having barely clipped the tip of the Titanic-sinking iceberg I can see something very clearly: I’m not the only one who doesn’t understand all of this. I actually have a sneaking suspicion that NOBODY understands all of this…even the lawmakers and doctors and insurance companies and people writing article after article about it. It’s almost like everyone’s pretending to understand it….but deep down everyone is like me: we all want someone else to fix it, and we all really hope that Dr. Crusher shows up with her ray gun thingy.

Now more than ever we need a dream team of people working on this vat of shit. Yes, we need money/numbers people and medical people and lawmaking people and all of those kinds of people in gray suits and white coats…but we also need to throw some visionaries in there. Some people who are in touch with a deeper current. Who can see the problem in a new way. Some writers/artists/healers/poets/etc. Some people who keep raising their hand and reminding the team that “We are all human and the whole point of this life-journey-thing is to help each other out.”

A society is judged on how it treats its weakest members; according to this equation, we suck ass. Nothing is more isolating and terrifying than being really fucking sick, needing help, and not being able to get it. When someone is sick, alone, and in need of some help, they are among our weakest members. I don’t care who they are, what country they are from, or how much money they have. I know it’s “not that simple”….but it also is just that simple.

So how do we do it? Excellent question.

I do not count myself among the gray suit/white coat members of the dream team; their jobs are jobs I don’t understand and would never want to perform. I count myself among the potential members of the Visionary Committee. Actually, I would like to formally nominate myself to serve on that committee because: i) the problem is not going to go away; ii) people I love are going to continue to get sick; and iii) I have a plan.

Well…don’t judge my plan too harshly yet, people. This plan is in its infant stages of development and I’ll continue to work out the kinks. But there’s no time like the present, so here goes.

And now for the Jennifer Blevins Plan For Healthcare Reform:

Deal. With. Yo’. Shit.

DEAL WITH YO’ SHIT!!!!!!!!

All of it! Everything! Leave no stone unturned! As a society and as individuals, we must begin with the root chakra and work our way up. Because until we build a solid, healthy foundation for our lives, we will forever be duct-taping together the feeble attempts of our ancestors to duct-tape together their shit just long enough to pass it on to us. And I mean shit on every possible level – personal, national, global. Mental, emotional, physical. Healthcare, global warming, Social Security, Medicare, self-care, self-love, etc….put on the gloves and dig in, folks.

OK. First and foremost, I think we should celebrate the fact that we all agree that the healthcare system is severely fucked. I have heard very few people (from either political party) claiming that things are perfectly fine the way they are. So that’s a triumph right there! We all agree! Hooray! Since I believe that celebrating success is far more effective than beating yourself up over failures, I propose that we throw a nationwide party to commemorate this momentous feat. I would host, but I live in a studio apartment in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. Um…hey Jen Katz – can we hold it on your roof in Park Slope?

Next, allow me to briefly lay out the basics of the Jennifer Blevins “Deal With Yo’ Shit” Plan For Healthcare Reform:

1) Stop placing blame.

2) Take responsibility.

3) Love.

4) Cultivate awareness.

5) Accept the natural cycle of life/death/rebirth, and let things that don’t serve you/us fall away.

We all agree that the current system doesn’t work, but we also have totally justifiable reasons for fearing/doubting a government run system. So right now we need a third option. And that third option is the Jennifer Blevins “Deal With Yo’ Shit” Plan.

The real problem is not tangible. We keep pointing in its direction and assigning blame to the consequences/side effects of the real problem, but the real problem itself is such a nebulous, ethereal cloud of vagaries that we don’t even know where to begin.

For instance, there’s the problem of self-care. I understand and connect with self-destructive behavior. I understand why people smoke/drink/overeat/self-destruct. Please believe me when I say that I not only understand, but have plenty of firsthand experience with self-destructive behavior. So the issue seems to me to be why do so many people in our society seek solace in tobacco/alcohol/food? Yes, we want them to stop…but before we can get them to stop we have to try to understand why they started. And as we begin to dig, we will discover that there are far deeper and scarier issues to deal with than healthcare reform.

I could cite any of the 3,452 reasons why our system is fucked and peel away the top layers to reveal the same basic problem: as a society, we are really bad at dealing with our shit. There is this strong, silent undercurrent of sadness that pervades our nation, and we really don’t know what to do with it. We try various solutions: medicating (pills and/or self-medicating with self-destructive behavior), blaming other people for our problems (doctors, politicians, fast food restaurants…anything and everything outside of ourselves), amassing wealth and convincing ourselves money brings happiness/security, ignoring the problem and waiting for someone else to fix it. Yes, we do all these things and more.

I don’t think most people can even see that they’re not dealing with their shit.

As I started working on this healthcare blog and honing in on the essence of our national problem, I started thinking about my personal journey of the last 2-3 years. Right before I turned 28 I discovered my true calling in life was to be a writer. It scared the shit out of me and I ignored that calling for a while. It scared the shit out of me because I knew that if I was gonna do this, I had to do it all the way. And in order to do it all the way, I had to commit to peeling away every layer of shit in my life, examine it, and begin truly accepting who I am. I knew I had to start from the base (i.e. root chakra) and work my way up. Rebuild my life. Deal with my shit. Because until I did, I knew that anything I wrote would be tainted by fear and pervaded by sadness. Not that writing coming out of places of fear and sadness are bad or wrong – I just knew that if I was going to be the kind of writer I truly wanted to be, I first had to go on this personal journey. Maybe in part so that I could one day help others do the same.

So I did it. And I’m still doing it. It’s a healing process that, once you put in motion, never ends. You just have to set the intention to heal, set the intention to deal with yo’ shit, and then stay the course.

I look around me and I see some really amazing people. When I was scrolling through my list of Facebook friends looking for people to contribute to my blog, I was overwhelmed by how many brilliant, compassionate, amazing people I have in my life. Doctors, artists, social workers, lawyers, mothers, fathers, dancers, healers….the list goes on and on. If even just the 361 people I’m friends with on Facebook set out to solve this problem, I bet eventually we could do it. If we really committed to dealing with our shit, that beautiful intention would begin to spread and flow out into the world and affect every area of our society, healthcare system included.

I would actually like to propose that we rename our entire generation. Forget all this X,Y,Z crap…I consider people currently between their late twenties and early forties to be a part of “my generation.” And I think that my generation needs to officially become the “Deal With Yo’ Shit” generation. To paraphrase Phil Collins: “I won’t be coming home tonight/ My Deal-With-Yo’-Shit generation will put it right.” Let’s not leave this shit for anyone else; we already know from experience that doesn’t work.

Phew. Alright folks, this blog was massive and I’m putting an end to it RIGHT NOW. But clearly this is not the end – we’ve only started to explore this. Just like I think it’s only a matter of time before gays have the right to marry (in every state), I also think it’s only a matter of time before we figure out this healthcare shit. Remain positive. Throw on the gloves. Dig in. Thanks for reading.

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September 11, 2009

Tomorrow is the final day of the job that I have been working for the last four years. Tomorrow is also the eighth anniversary of 9/11.

This is the wall I have been staring at for the last four years:

This is the site where thousands of people died eight years ago tomorrow that I pass by on my way to this job:

After I put in my notice, I told my boss that I would continue to work until either: a) I found another job, or b) he hired my replacement. I have not found another job; he hired my replacement. After he hired my replacement we agreed that I would work for two more weeks….randomly making my last day of this job Friday, September 11th.

But maybe not so random.

The moment that I did the math and realized when my final day would be, I smiled. Because it made perfect sense. God, did it ever make perfect sense. I started on my birthday (October 31, 2005) and I knew right away that I was going to be absurdly unhappy in this job. But I stayed in this job for almost four fucking years, in part because it wasn’t until very recently that my happiness became the top priority in my life.

I have been passing by the WTC site on a regular basis ever since I moved to New York five years ago. When I lived in Jersey City, I would frequently take the WTC Path train into Manhattan. The train slowly snakes around the construction site as it enters the station; you can see the workers and their progress, and it feels like you are on some sort of bizarre Disney ride. But like all things, you get used to it. Numb.

I used to be able to see the beams of light tribute from our kitchen window when I lived in JC. Because I’m an insomniac with a very small bladder, I spend a lot of time awake in the wee hours of the night…and every September 11th evening when I’d get up to pee I’d spend time standing in front of the kitchen window, marveling at how close the WTC towers would have been and how massive they were. And then in the morning they’d be gone.

Amputees say that they still feel their amputated limbs. They know that those limbs are gone, they see that those limbs are gone, yet the feeling remains. And sometimes what they feel is pain. So they go about their lives, minus the limbs, all the while feeling something that no one else can see.

I now understand why New Yorkers not in New York on 9/11/01 wanted to be in New York. But I can only imagine the pain of losing someone you love in such a horrific, violent and sudden way.

I am finding it very hard to write this blog. It feels like there is a deep level of emotion inside of me that I am reluctant to explore. Like some silly part of me thought it might be possible to access the fruits of that level without having to go there. But I think I have to go there.

We push through our lives and we place things on shelves inside of our hearts because we think if we felt those things all of the time we’d be pools of pain sauce on the ground.

I used to do that. I don’t anymore. I used to have neatly labeled shelves in my heart for all of the epically painful and scary things that I feared if I felt would paralyze me. I thought it was admirable and mature to be so emotionally organized.

But now I’m the woman who cries almost every time she passes that WTC site on her way to the job she hates. I’m the woman who sits on the bus as it passes by on Church Street and tries to hear the cries of the dead, hungry for their guidance.

I am not numb. I don’t do “numb” well. I feel profoundly…deep down into my toes and up through my scalp and in my belly and my heart.

I am smart. For most of my life I thought you could not be both smart and a profound feeler…like maybe the two were at odds with each other and I could not be a respectable smart person if I kept crying in the middle of yoga.

But at this moment I’m having a lot of trouble with both. I feel all jumbled up. I have spent the morning reading through my diaries of the last 4-5 years, and they have made me frustrated and angry and stuck. Which makes sense, because I have spent a great deal of the last 4-5 years frustrated and angry and stuck. I suddenly feel violent and shaky. I kind of want to throw up.

4/25/06: “I’m feeling like life is a series of events and we try to get from one to the other without thinking too hard about our lives and without killing ourselves.”

5/5/06: “I feel like one of the reasons I’ve been so depressed, frustrated, angry is that I need to shed something that’s very hard to let go. It feels like every aspect of me is at war right now. It’s terrible.”

5/9/06: “I feel stuck. Fucking stuck. Like I’m a tape being played and I can rewind or fast forward as long as I don’t leave the tape. Why am I so paralyzed? It’s terrifying me some days and boring me others.”

8/15/06: “I have trapped myself in a cage of my own design. I have carefully crafted it over years and years of careful practice and fear. I’m in unbelievable pain, yet I remain.”

1/29/08: “Hate that man, hate that office, hate that job. Misery. Pure, fucking misery…I forget who I am and what I want when I’m in there. I just want it all to be over with. I want my life to be over with.”

I’m glad I have these journals. They chronicle my journey and they help me see myself. But right now I want to burn them. I want to cry.

I have long known that this job is just a job and I could/should leave it. I had the awareness to see that, and that awareness made it even more painful. But somewhere along the way this job became a symbol, or a personification of all of the stuckness in my life. For me it was a job; for you it might be something else. We project internal pain on external circumstances and assign blame and convince ourselves that we can’t move forward.

And then something like 9/11 happens. Or some other tragedy/death/major life event. And we are violently beaten awake by something outside of ourselves. So many people, both New Yorkers and non-New Yorkers alike, made radical life changes after 9/11. The shelves in a lot of people’s hearts came crashing down as a result of that tragedy, and as such it served as the impetus for major personal growth.

But it doesn’t have to happen that way. What these journals show me is the power of setting an intention. “I know that it has to be me, no one else, digging me out of this place. No one is going to come and rescue me or do it for me…and ultimately, I wouldn’t want them to” (10/2/05). What I see from reading these journals is that I didn’t have to know how I was going to heal/move forward, I just had to want to heal/move forward. The how of it all works itself out along the way.

And it is because I cannot be numb that I moved forward. It is because I feel so profoundly that I am an artist. And it is because I am smart that I was able to figure it all out. And my sincere intention in this life to put it all together and create a piece of art that helps other people do the same.

I regularly pass by a gaping hole in downtown Manhattan that serves as a constant reminder of why nothing is more important than the present moment. Nothing is more important than love. And happiness. And life. I still feel the appendage. I imagine you do, too.

This is me happy:

This is where I will stay.

Douchebag Jamboree

So…I probably shouldn’t be writing about this encounter in such a public forum, but I find that I really can’t help myself. The universe, in its infinite and ironic wisdom, has thrown douchebag after douchebag in my path of late, and one of the most recent douchebag experiences was so fascinating that I simply must share it. There is a slight possibility that he may read this, but I don’t think I really even care. Actually, it’s highly unlikely he will read it. Because even though I sent him my blog and even though we met in part to “discuss writing” and “how to have a career as a writer,” I could tell within the first five minutes of our conversation that he has never read a single one of my blogs. I could tell within the first 30 seconds after sitting down at the bar that I was about to have one of the prime douchebag experiences of my life. So because I’m feeling more than a bit saucy these days, let’s throw caution to the wind and deconstruct a douchebag.

First, let us begin by examining the term “douchebag.” While it always hovered in the insult stratosphere during my middle school and high school years, it seems to have gained momentum and prominence in recent days. A “douchebag” (I like combining the two words…just a matter of personal taste) is different from an “asshole.” Whereas an asshole has a bit of a bite, a douchebag is mostly innocuous. A douchebag may even aspire to be an asshole, but his douchebagery makes him clownish. Ergo, he is a douchebag. Or, for the purposes of today’s blog, a “DB.”

Because I don’t want to be an asshole or a DB myself, I am going to try to execute this blog with as much sensitivity and anonymity as possible. While in this instance there are many examples of douchebagery to explore (including the fact that the top two or three buttons of his shirt were unbuttoned so that I could have the pleasure of experiencing his chest hair), there is one example in particular that really got my goat. So I’m going to focus on that one, and only write things that I would feel comfortable saying directly to his face (and some of these things I actually did say to his face).

I am fascinated by fear. The less fearful I become the more I can smell fear in others and the less I absorb it when someone tries to project their own fear upon me. Oh, don’t get me wrong – I still have moments of fear from time to time, especially when I try to figure out the logistics of how I’m going to pay my bills when my job ends on September 11th. But the more awareness and compassion I develop, the more I am able to let fear enter and exit…or drift by like a cloud on a beautiful September day.

I am reading a wonderful book right now that was recommended by my healer: When Fear Falls Away; The Story of a Sudden Awakening by Jan Frazier. Frazier chronicles the experience of when fear completely left her life after a spiritual awakening. I’ve been enjoying it, mostly because I can really relate:

“All I can guess is that energy has been freed up, or space, or something. In the wake of what has gone, there is abundant room for newness to flow in. So much is gone. And in its place? A broad expanse of sky.

How can it be that I’ve been holding this at bay, holding my shoulder to a bulging door all my life – all my effortful, fearful life – trying against all reason to hold away this thing that always did want to come in and overwhelm?”

Fear takes up so much space. Runs our lives. But rarely can people see it as a choice. Most individuals live their lives and make their decisions based on fear. This particular DB is clearly one of them.

The fear coming at me that night in the bar was so thick it was chewy…like a veritable Snickers bar of fear. Before I continue, let me be clear on one point: he was not a DB because he was full of fear. He was a DB because he was an insecure bully who seemed annoyed that I was not full of fear. He probably thinks I’m a silly idealist who will never make it. He remarked that while I am “clearly a bright girl,” I would most surely have to compromise my artistic integrity at the beginning of my writing career if I ever want to get anywhere. And “getting somewhere” seemed to be the entire point to him, since he called artistic expression that no one ever sees to be merely “self-masturbatory and cathartic.”

According to DB, all of this is true for 99% of writers and artists and I should be afraid….very afraid. Even if I sell some of my writing, it could end up in a vault somewhere and no one would ever see it. Or not see it until after I am dead. When I brought up Emily Dickinson (i.e. the fact that she wasn’t published/discovered until after her death, the profound effect her work has had on me and countless others, etc), he basically said that there had been no point to her work because she did not get to benefit from her fame during her lifetime. So, according to DB’s theories about art and writing, Dickinson had been simply masturbating.

He spoke a lot about this 99% of writers, and he seemed to group us both in with them. DB clearly has a lot of money, but it seems he earned that money through a profession other than writing. He complained that he only received $15,000 for one of the books he had published, and when I told him that $15,000 would be enough to support me for six months while I finish my first novel, he literally rolled his eyes at me. I guess he didn’t believe me? I don’t know. I don’t care.

Because you know what? Sitting at that bar I decided something. I have been on the other end of these fear-based lectures before (in relation to writing, a career in the theatre, a life in the arts, etc), and I have decided that until I sit at a bar with Toni Morrison or Tony Kushner or any of the other amazing artists whose work has changed my life and receive this lecture from one of them, I am not going to believe it. Until one of the amazing artists who has changed the fabric of our society and received an honor like the Nobel Prize or the Pulitzer Prize tells me that I have to compromise who I am and what I have to say if I want to be a writer or that I shouldn’t even try because nobody ever becomes a successful writer, I will do what I did that night with the DB: I will listen, nod my head, sip my Jack & Coke, and smile.

He asked me if I was drunk. If you’ve ever gone drinking with Jennifer Blevins, you damn well know it takes more than a couple of Jack & Cokes to get Jennifer Blevins drunk. No, not drunk. I was nodding and smiling because I have a theory of my own. And my theory goes a little something like this:

That 1% of artists/writers are the 1% because they don’t absorb the fear of the 99%. They are the 1% because they have faith…faith that they have something to say that people need to hear and faith that their work will find its audience. Faith that their artistic expression is beautiful and pure and necessary, even if no one else ever sees it. And as far as the issue of masturbation is concerned: quite frankly, I can’t think of a better way to spend one’s time.

DB spent some time talking shit about the “idiots” who make decisions in the publishing and film industries. I believe him, and I believe that he has been wounded by them. I am sure a lot of people have been wounded by them. I think his fear and this wounding has left him very bitter and jaded. In the slim chance that he is reading this: I am so sorry, DB. I hope you find some peace. But you should really button up your shirt.

It can be scary to have faith that your work will find its audience. It can seem much easier to cling to formulas and accepted ways of doing things and to placate the “idiots.” But I’m just going to try something different. I am going to operate from the belief that they’re not all idiots and that some of them are brave and intelligent.

And as far as finding an audience for my work…you know what? My work has already found one. You.

You are small but strong and steady and lovely. Right now you would at least fill up my high school auditorium to capacity. I don’t know about DB’s standards, but I call that a mother fucking audience.

And what an audience. I started this blog mere months ago, and already it has become one of the most beautiful experiences of my life. It has changed many existing relationships in my life and it has started many new ones. Every week I receive responses from readers, and those responses feed me energetically and creatively. And they’re not just “You’re a great writer” or “I really dig your blog” – people are sharing their lives with me. Their experiences. It seems as if my willingness to be courageous and transparent encourages other people to do the same. Every note/email/comment I receive is precious, and I consider it payment. I may not be getting paid money for my writing yet, but I am most certainly being paid. And actually, I did receive my first paycheck for my blog: after the blog about quitting my job, one reader wrote to me and asked for my mailing address. A week later I received a check and a letter from him in the mail. In the letter, he shared with me what my writing has meant to him and he encouraged me to keep going. He told me to spend the money on “whatever the fuck I want.” The money paid for my August Metrocard, and the letter made me cry.

There has never been a better time to be an artist. While I’m sure that DB is right and many of the people who make decisions that affect artists’ careers are “idiots,” the day of their reign is almost over. The power of the internet has changed everything. Absolute power no longer lies in the hands of the select influential few who make those kinds of decisions. Yes, they have the money…but we now have the power. The spread of artistic expression is becoming a true democracy. If someone’s blog or YouTube video really speaks to you, you pass it on. If enough people pass it on, even the DBs and the “idiots” can see that your work has potential.

People, join me in the revolution. The Anti-Douchebag Revolution. Our day has come. The reign of the DB is over. Viva la resistance!