Eat, Pray, Love: the movie; Pray, Stay, Love: the life
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Eat, Pray, Love: the movie; Pray, Stay, Love: the life

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My rascally and delightful middle daughter wanted some daughter-mom time, so we went together to see EAT, PRAY, LOVE. I haven’t read the book. The movie was charming, often poignant, touching enough to forgive the places where it was too facile. Julia Roberts was wonderful in the lead role. What could be more delectable than staring at creamy warm spaghetti carbonara, or more uplifting than watching a seeker wrestle honestly with the Guru Gita, or more heart-warming than watching love come to a supplicant studying with a Balinese priest?

It left me with a feeling of longing, for the quests I can not take. When Liz/Julia rented her apartment in Rome, I leaned over and whispered to my daughter, “That’s what women who aren’t mothers get to do.” Her big eyes widened: she hadn’t considered such a thing, hadn’t anticipated that I would articulate it.
So I had some envy, too. I had my oldest daughter twenty years ago, and my littlest is only 5. I will be almost 60 when she goes off to college! Here I am, with wanderlust in my soul and my passport always in my purse, just in case today I get to fly to Paris or Sydney…
Yet I have remained faithful to my commitment to be a present and caring mother. Not a perfect mother. That was never my goal. But present, loving, supportive, caring, involved: that was my goal as a mother. To be someone whom my children know they can depend on. When they’ve had mono and Swine flu and bad grades and drug issues, I’ve been there. When they need to hear a lecture about the importance of writing thank you notes or of following through on promises or of doing the right thing when their peers are operating otherwise, when they need to hear a pep-talk because the latest poor choice in guys has dumped them, when they need to hear that they are loved and valuable no matter what–I’m there. If they ever get Ebola or a divorce or need a kidney, I’ll be there, to nurse them or give them my kidney. I never had that kind of support so I made damn sure my children did. From me.
Of course, it matters little to them right now. The older ones are entangled in teenage stuff of great importance: separating, provoking, blaming, individuating. They want to assume adult prerogative without taking on the responsibility that goes along with it. They don’t want to think about the impact of their actions on the people around them. The little one is in that blissful “mommy is wonderful” stage, but she has a cussed independent streak ten kilometers wide. I’ve been around the block. I know where that will lead. They have charmed lives and don’t know it. I haven’t done everything right as a mother–why should I have to?–but I’ve been true to this commitment: to be there for them.
Which often means that I haven’t been able to be there for myself. There’s a kind of …noxious myth… toxic fantasy… of post-liberation feminism that women can have it all: sexy loving marriage, children, dynamic career, fulfilling friendships, self awareness, a full night’s sleep. How awful to scourge ourselves with this chicanery. Was this what our mothers and grandmothers intended, when they battled for us to have equal pay for equal work, and the right to choose which work we want to do?
I have made choices. Other things came second because my children come first. I have a friend who made zillions of dollars and is raising two kids; she is scornful when I say that I would have written more books if I hadn’t had children. But there are things in her life I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. Let her turn her nose up.
So I’ve done what questing I can, internally. I’ve made the trips I can, abbreviated though they are. I’ve explored every possible avenue I can, under the constraints that I’ve taken on. Love is not merely a big oceanic feeling. It’s not just the deep erotic merging with a romantic soul-mate–though I enjoy both of those facets of love. Love is also the dignity of steadfastness. It’s waking up every morning to a daily grind of commitment and responsibility, and still finding something to laugh about and enjoy.
I couldn’t love a man that way, but I do love my children that way. And what I’ve learned is that I must love them that way without any expectation of gratitude or acknowledgment. Because chances are, no matter what a mother does for her children, they will not appreciate it. At least at certain stages of their lives. This is why I’ve come to revere the Bhagavad Gita: “Do the best you can and release the outcome.”
An old friend of mine periodically sends me emails… Meet me in Maine, meet me in Budapest. As if I weren’t married. As if I weren’t tempted. As if I didn’t enjoy my time with him enough to consider it rather wistfully. But it’s not even about him. If I ran off to Bali by my lonesome, would I find a hot young guy to get naked with in the water, or a soul-stirring companion like gorgeous Javier Bardem?!?
But this week, as my husband and my littlest daughter and the dog and I drove to Cape Cod, and the dog freaked out and my husband had to remove him from behind the car seat and doing so, ripped his (husband’s) fingernail completely off his finger, and so I had to drive, which became 8 hours in traffic with my daughter barfing and my husband bleeding profusely and criticizing my driving, I thought to myself, Good times. Would I trade this life for Eat, Pray, Love?
The answer was, Maybe. And then, later on, when my husband’s finger finally stopped oozing crimson goo and he kissed me and thanked me for my patience, and my sweet little one wove her arms around me and told me I was the bestest in the whole world, and we ran along the Cape Cod Bay laughing as the dog chased seagulls, and then when the aforesaid husband and daughter got into an indignant argument that tickled my appreciation for the absurd so I couldn’t stop laughing–the answer was: Maybe not.
The Power by Rhonda Byrne
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The Power by Rhonda Byrne

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The Power by Rhonda Byrne

Rhonda Byrne, author of The Secret and now The Power, is close to people who are close to my husband, so I had the good fortune to meet her. She was lovely, with the contained grace that I associate with people who live from a strong sense of purpose.

Byrne advised me to read The Kybalion by the Three Initiates and The Secret Teachings of All Ages by Manly Hall. With my insatiable reading lust, I acquired the books immediately. I devoured them promptly. I’m glad I did; the old Hermetic teachings have a lot to offer. The sense of paired, complementary qualities reminded me of the Kabbalistic Sephiroth winding along the Tree of Life. I love these ancient, eternal paradigms of thought!

So, being favorably impressed with Byrne, and wanting to support her because she’s friendly with some of my husband’s favorite people, I ran out and purchased two copies of The Power. One for me, and one for my husband, who refuses to share both food and books. The first bit of territorial prerogative always surprises me. I had my oldest daughter twenty years ago and I haven’t eaten an entire plate of food by myself since 1990. Someone is always sticking a fork in and grabbing a bite. Lunch is my happy time, when I’m alone in the apartment. I can eat standing up and walking around, which I prefer, and enjoy my tuna and peanut butter sandwich in peace, with no grimy fingers trying to steal some.
But I understand why Sabin won’t share a book with me. I use them up. I ravish them. Books are comestibles and I scribble in the margins, apply post-its, and turn down corners. Once I’m done with a book, it wants to take a shower and a nap.
The Power is no exception. It’s juicy and interesting, ripe for plundering. There’s a lot here, most of it good stuff. Opening the mind and heart to love can only benefit people. Thinking in positive ways about what you want is wholesome. When you ride a horse, you have to look where you want to go, and that is subtly communicated to the animal, who then goes there. It’s the same way with your mind and your life. Your mind has to focus on what you want and love, and then the great beast of your life can trot in that direction.
In general, I like this “New Age” the Secret and positive vibrational stuff. It’s got flaws, like everything else in this marvelous, imperfect, blissful, agonizing world. Gossip claims that one of the guys from the original movie of The Secret is in jail. And there’s sometimes a lack of groundedness in these teachings; elements of fantasy creep in. “Blame the victim” arises.
My most serious qualm with this school of thought has to do with karma. As I currently understand it, Karma is a complex law with a long, long arc. I’m not so certain that it works so simply as “Do good and think nice, and because you’re sending good and nice vibrations out into the universe, good and nice will come back to you.” I think that sometimes what you did twenty-five years ago, or twenty-five centuries ago as a temple dancer in Egypt, can come back to bite you in the tushie. Sometimes we reap the fruit of a seed we planted eons ago.
Then there’s the relational dynamic. We have karma not just as individuals, but as members of our family, our generation, our country, our religion. We also have dyad karma. I am stretching the meaning of karma here to apply to the invisible field of thought and feeling, emotion and expectation and communication within which two members of a couple live. Eg, if you’re married to someone who thinks badly of you, or who is convinced that you embody a certain negative trait (which is probably their shadow anyway), it’s hard to overcome the stickiness of that. It’s easy to get trapped like a butterfly in a spider web. It can be just as toxic within a family or any other community, like a school. Structures of thought and connection arise, and they can be cages.
Still, The Power is full of truth and light. It is passionate in its desire to give to the reader and to improve the reader’s lot. I’m writing my personal reservations in the margins, but it’s worth reading. It’s always helpful to return to the fundamental touchstone of life: am I acting out of love or out of fear? That’s the choice. Love or fear. I like to read these kinds of books at night, so I’m uplifted in the hypnogogic state. I like to think that the positive impact on me will be more profound, if words about love and joy and peaceful abundance are sailing through my dreams.
I also recommend Mary T. Browne’s The Five Rules of Thought and Geshe Michael Roach’s The Diamond Cutter. Like Byrne’s book, they give to the reader. What all three books share, though The Diamond Cutter approaches it differently, is the need to discipline the thoughts. We spend decades learning how to read, write, and cipher, but we have to seek out the knowledge of how to use our own minds constructively. The Power can help with that.
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First Wives Always Know, and other inconvenient truths

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Novelist Rick Moody thinks authors shouldn’t blog. Maybe he’s right. What do I know, other than when I was at grad school at Columbia, scuttlebutt had him putting rips in his own jeans to give himself credibility, because we all knew he came from a rich family?

He’s a decent writer. Being loaded and coming from the Upper Middle Class doesn’t preclude talent. I acknowledge his competence, though I am not interested in his work. I personally think cynicism is the easy way out. It’s what spoiled, entitled folk give themselves instead of the more difficult dignity of faith and hope. They seem to mistakenly think that the “sophistication” of such negativity is faith and hope. Whatever. If people like his work, they’ll buy it.
I am an author, and I blog. I think voraciously, I am evolving, I am exploring, and I blog. What I think now might not be what I think in a year, or ten. I am engaged in this inscrutable question of life as a human being in this vale of tears. I am learning and growing.
Hence this blog, the title for today’s posting having been suggested by Al Gore’s movie. I like Al Gore. He would have made a fine president. I don’t care that he’s divorcing Tipper and that he fell in love with a woman who wasn’t his wife. Gore is still a smart, decent man. I have that feeling about him.
Besides, what do I know about global warming? I’m not sure I believe in it. From what I can tell from my own research, and yes, I’ve done some, the Earth goes through long periods of complicated climate change and weather instability. It may be a neat ‘n’ easy package to blame the military-industrial-pharmaceutical-biotech complex for causing greenhouse gasses. But can we really be sure? I mean, I want to blame and hate industry. I fork over the extra $$ for organic veggies, after all. I am heart-broken over the rending images of our beautiful Mother Earth in disarray. I’m just not sure that in this case–and I pretty much see Monsanto as the face of the 666 Anti-Christ and herald of the Apocalypse–I’m not 100% convinced that it’s all so tidily laid at one ugly, fungus-riven, toenail-shrivelled foot.
It goes this way: people think anything natural, in the wild, is wonderful and clean, etc. But there are plenty of rivers in Colorado you can’t drink from because the beavers are crapping, tainting the water. And there are plenty of natural substances I don’t want to ingest, like cobra venom.
This may get me scorned by a lot of other card-carrying registered Democrats, of whom I am one. But one thing, in an insecure world, is for sure: no one is more vicious than an angry liberal whose set-in-stone, holier-than-thou truths have been questioned. Those people are out for blood. Notice how much vitriol they spew when Obama is questioned–the same people who called Bush 1 and Bush 2 anything but a human being.
I wasn’t crazy about the Bushes, either. Marie Antoinette, anyone? Which leaves me wondering, where the hell are the moderates? The socially-liberal, fiscally moderate folks who aren’t trying to shatter our Constitution and turn our country into a replica of socialist France? I am pro-gay marriage. I am pro-life and pro-choice, both at the same time. I am hawkishly pro Israel. I am pro having an entire government comprised of people of color. I just don’t want a big, paternalistic government who takes money away from the middle class: are you listening, President Obama? Give scholarship money back to the middle class. Stop “going beyond the Constitution.” Stop it right now. I like the Constitution.
I don’t care if people worship Adonai, Jesus, Buddha, or Zeus: I surely don’t want a mosque on the World Trade Center site. I was in NYC on 9/11, standing on the roof of my husband’s parents’ building, watching the towers fall in a viscous cloud of soot and poison. I am always up for a slanted perspective on things, but I think those people are CRAZY NUTSO CUCKOO who claim it was the US government or Israel who caused the collapse.
So I like Senator Joe Lieberman, who seems to share many of my values. But if he teams up with Sarah Palin, who is a first class idiot, I will have to send him a strongly worded letter expressing my dismay.
Enough of politics, a topic which came out of my riffing on truth. We all know that politics and truth are incompatible bedfellows. I meant to say this: first wives are always right about their husbands. They just are. This said, a second wife can know something else about the same rasty man–and so get better results out of him. I’ve seen that a lot, too. Men can learn. Women can learn. People do change, if they want to. If they’re willing to work REALLY hard on themselves.
And teenagers are always up to something. There are two kinds of parents in the world: those who accept this truth, and those who are delusional. The parents who are the MOST sure that their baby boy would never use such vile language, or that their precious daughter would never act like a slut, are exactly the parents who son is widely known to be the most foul-mouthed kid to walk the high school halls in twenty years, and whose daughter was surfing internet porn at age 10 and sending cell phone pix of her bare boobs to boys when she was 13. This is fact. Watch the parents. The more controlling they are, the more they try to regulate who their kids see, the more judgmental they are about other parents: the farther out on a limb their teens are going. Some kids have good parent-management skills and hide it well, that’s all.
Having teenagers is a lesson in humility and, if you can keep your sense of humor intact, ruefulness. It’s a divine comedy. I was just emailed this by a psychologist who knows my intelligent, talented, precocious, beautiful, wild teenage daughters all too well: “Don’t feel stupid. My advice going forward is not to ask ‘are you?’ But to say ‘how much are you?’ to whatever question you are asking.”
When parents go to a kindergarten party, they can take a page from my book of life: realize that half these adorable kids will be dealing drugs before they get out of 11th grade.
What else? I don’t know, I’m still in a process of discovery. Was this worth sharing? Can’t say for sure. Moody may have a point.
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Bittersweet: About Karma

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Earl: “Look! Shampoo that’s not tested on animals. I feel bad for those lab animals running around with dirty hair, but if it’s better for the environment, that’s the sacrifice they have to make.” Jason Lee as Earl Hickey, MY NAME IS EARL Karma is a funny thing

 
There are some humorless men in my life. A few months ago I sent an email to two of them. It was pretty funny: UFO’s, aliens, subliminal programming with muzak, ex-CIA agents who can be hired to forcibly waterboard someone, without their consent, and beating my rascally middle daughter with a stick in Riverside Park were all mentioned. Admittedly, my sense of humor is offbeat and irreverent. Still, this email was juicy. But did they respond to it AT ALL? Oh, nooooooooooo. They just pretended it didn’t exist.
 
This current husband of mine read the missive before I sent it. “Don’t send that,” he said, with a flat expression. Hmph. My third husband will have a rich sense of humor. He will be able to laugh with me. At me, okay, that’s gonna happen, alas. Even I spend plenty of time laughing at me. (Definition of ‘rueful,’ anyone?) But, definitely, also, with me.
 
Over the last few years I’ve been working with Buddhist concepts and with the Bhagavad Gita. In the spirit of “what goes around comes around,” I have to wonder, when did I not laugh at people that has reached fruition with this overabundance of humorless men in my life?
 
Should I rack what’s left of the gray matter rattling around my cranium to recall anyone whose joke I did not get, then make a list, seek them out, and make restitution by letting them tell me their favorite jokes, which culminates in my laughing uproariously? Will that plant new seeds for me, seeds that will sprout into men with some sparkle to their personality?
 
Maybe it’s a past life thing. I was an uptight guy in the 17th century who inflicted lethal self-seriousness on the long-suffering women in my life. Now I’m reaping my just rewards, and there’s no going back to pull the poker out of my former derriere. Karma’s a complicated thing, and hard to navigate exactly. Those of us like me who aren’t enlightened can’t parse it.
 
It’s easier to see the working of karma in other people’s lives. I tread carefully here, being mindful of Rabbi Jesus’ words, “Why worry about the mote in your brother’s eye when there’s a beam in your own?”
 
But I am a careful observer of people, both because people are a novelist’s raw material, and because I’m fascinated with human beings, those conscious and inconsistent creatures. While not positing myself as a perfect person, I can discern. I can learn from others.
 
There’s a man I know who’s recently had many business reversals. He’s brilliant, educated, competent, personable. Indeed, he exudes a charm that many people can’t see through. I’ve watched with breathless awe as he’s snowed them totally. It’s a virtuoso act.
 
Unfortunately, the charm obscures a negative side. He’s acted from that negative side over the last several years, threatening me and others with litigation, co-opting tactics of bullying and intimidation, twisting reality to suit the ends of malice, never using a kind word when hostility will make the point for him. And there seems to be no one in his life who will call him on his stuff. His family has always lent him blind entitlement, and his close friends only affirm his better points, of which there are many.
 
I suppose this is when I am grateful that my close friends hold me to a high level of personal accountability. “So Traci,” my friend Gerda will say, in her patient voice, “are you acting out of negative intent? Are you acting out of fear or out of love?”
 
Or even my friend Marcia will ask, “Yes, but is that about your self-esteem? Can you phrase that in a way that’s less ambiguous?” Rachel usually foists a zinger, with less concern for my vulnerability and more concern for the bull’s eye of painful truth.
 
But I don’t think the benighted man in question, may all the gods bless him, has anyone speaking this way to him. Nor does there seem to be anyone reminding him about the Law of Return, that whatever you give out inevitably comes back to you. So it is no surprise to me that, despite his many talents, he is suffering business losses that cause him personal anguish.
 
Not that he would or could ever see the relationship between his abusive actions and the unfoldment of his life. It’s hard for all of us. There is the real cause of things and the apparent cause. What is apparent is the economy, the paternalistic government, the state of the world, etc. But in this view that seeks to go deeper than appearances–and even the Talmud talks about “measure for measure” and “As one does, so they do to him”–we are all guided toward spiritual forces of cause and effect.
 
Which leads me back to the lab animals with dirty hair, making sacrifices for the environment. I can only hope they transmigrate species, and reincarnate as higher beings. Perhaps humorless men.
 
Daniel Silva’s THE REMBRANDT AFFAIR
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Daniel Silva’s THE REMBRANDT AFFAIR

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THE REMBRANDT AFFAIR by Daniel Silva
The Rembrandt Affair by Daniel Silva: Download Cover

My former father-in-law, whose qualities of intelligence, groundedness, and sanity have caused me to appreciate him more over the years, called me a week ago to discuss his grandchildren, my daughters. He thinks they’re great, and isn’t that the sweetest gratification for a mother? At the end of the call, he inquired about my writing. Then he brought up Daniel Silva.

“Why can’t you write more like him?” asked the father of my former beloved.
Or maybe he didn’t actually say it straight out–though I never mind when people talk straight to me. Maybe I projected the question into a heavy implication, out of my own writerly envy. My former in-laws, much as I admired them, had a talent for minimizing my accomplishments. Whatever.
Either way, Silva remains one of my favorite writers. This is no small feat: I read everything, literally, everything. I sat once with a literary agent, who, after running through, well, all of the pop culture authors, said, “Yikes, you really do read everything!” I could claim that it’s market research. I could say I’m keeping an eye on my competition. Both are true. Truer still is that I just love BOOKS. BOOKS ARE LOVE.
And I love story. Here is my current working definition of story: story is how your protagonist doesn’t get what he or she wants. The transcendence of story is how we attain enlightenment. In which case: I’ll be seeing you around for another 10,000 lives, because story rocks!
Daniel Silva tells a good story, and he tells it well. Line for line, his prose is wonderful, and it’s getting better with every book. I’ve been following his Gabriel Allon character for years. With every book, the characters get more sharply drawn, the prose gets more musical yet always accessible, and the plot gets more interesting.
Silva is growing with his craft. I love to see that, and I admire it. There’s a lot of drek out there. Most bestsellers are mind-numbingly badly written. If people are reading less, it’s the fault of publishers: why would anyone eat when they are being served crap? They lose their appetite.
Which makes Silva even more of a pleasure to read. Great characters, great story, great writing. And I’m not just saying that because he deals with one of my other passions, the Old Masters. Sure that gives Silva an additional 100 IQ points in my estimation. But I’d read a well-told story about something I dislike–like the IRS. Oops, did I say that out loud? I totally admire the IRS.
Pick up a copy of THE REMBRANDT AFFAIR and be fascinated. Be swept away. It’s compelling reading.