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Genart Hosts the Nice Fashion Collective

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My life consists, right now, in raising children, writing, and wiping up our new yellow lab puppy’s pee. And have I mentioned child rearing? Whole weeks go by when I wear my yoga clothes until my husband sniffs at me and orders me, firmly but gently, to take a shower. So it was with vast, oceanic pleasure I found myself invited to the GENART Nice Fashion Collective Show.

On arrival, we were whisked through the line of plebes into the special portal for those invited by GENART. We were given seating tickets and then ushered through a red carpet where photographers snapped pix. I was really glad to have pulled the spinach from my teeth and shaved my legs. Actually I was wearing a black skirt, suede boots with 4″ heels, and the Spanx hose that make my tummy look as if I haven’t had 3 children. I’d also taken care with my make-up. I’m humbly hopeful that I didn’t look as old as Methusaleh, who seems like a youngster to me on all those mornings where I’ve been up once, twice, or thirty times during the dusky hours of night. If my 4 year old isn’t having a bad dream and needing cuddles, or the puppy doesn’t need to pee, or my 18 year old isn’t returning from a night of debauchery at 3:00 am, then I wake up to see why not.

There was free alcohol and lots of it, and swarms of people with strangely lacquered hair and high contrast eye-liner. My husband sniffed and claimed everyone looked like art students from an art college. There were goody bags on our chairs filled with eye cream and tequila, and naturally the tequila prompted the notion of a strip-tease. I reined myself in and instead hollered risque things at a man in an aviator hat who was climbing the rafters. I think he was supposed to be performance art. I mentioned this supposition to my husband, who snarled, because he was checking out Aviator Man’s biceps and feeling jealous. Maybe I shouldn’t have been screaming, “Take it all off, nakedness is more artsy” ?

“Yes,” my husband the Renaissance sculptor spat from between clenched teeth, “this is the difference between artsy and art.”

But who cares, it was fun!

Then the clothes: Dickensian pickpocket chic with a twist of Afghani rebel and urban ghetto ‘tude. There was lots of smeared gray eye shadow, matted hair, and angry ‘do rags. A couple of models sauntered through with their faces covered, so I called, “Robbed any banks lately?” It made my husband snicker.

But I did like the monochromatic vesty, bowler hat Oliver Twist look; it seemed to fit the gray economic times. Brought up images of dark bleak London filled with coal smoke. I wasn’t quite as thrilled with the union suit look and I was pretty sure one of the models was stuffing his codpiece. If not, I feel sorry for his boyfriend. Nor did I love the shiny white scuba pants on the female model, but they could have been white leather, hard to tell. Either way, they’d be hard to wear if you weigh more than 85 pounds and have the body not of an adolescent boy, but of a woman with curving hips and an indented waist.

All in all, an enjoyable evening, a break from the usual fare. There was still plenty of kid & puppy stuff waiting for me at home.

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I Still Support Gay Marriage

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I support gay marriage.

It doesn’t matter whether the bodies of the betrothed couple are both male, both female, or one of each. We’re going to discard the bodies anyway, after 80 years or so. And what is left is the journey: gay, straight, or bi, people have an inalienable right to the dignity of a journey that includes marriage.

Any two consenting adults over the age of 18 should be allowed to marry. Moreover, they should be congratulated and supported on this momentous undertaking. Marriage is unfathomably hard. It’s painful in too many ways to articulate. You have to live it to really grok the exquisite mental, emotional, and relational agony that is marriage.  Two people committing to it need all the help they can get from their community. They are co-creating a fundamental unit of society, and should be bolstered and praised for that effort.

I suppose some people object to what is perceived as an overly promiscuous lifestyle that can be part of the gay community. I never liked that either–if it was true. But I don’t like excessive promiscuity in straight people, either. There’s a point where healthy sexual exploration becomes soul-numbing, heart-deadening–that’s not good for anyone, whether straight or gay.

But gay people who want to get married are acting, it would seem, to settle down into a life of open-hearted, soul-united monogamy. So how could a promiscuous gay lifestyle be used as an excuse to oppose gay marriage? I just don’t understand.

Are people really that concerned about which body part goes where? Why should it matter?

On Beauty
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On Beauty

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On Beauty

I have been reading Rumi.

I do this whenever I am heartsick, soulsick. Usually it’s for something I can’t identify, though there’s always some exterior thing like a convenient hook to hang it on: my dog bit my little one and had to be surrendered; my 14-year-old told me a great big whopper; my in-laws have rejected their own grand-daughter and disinherited my husband as a means to communicating their supreme dislike of me; my husband is cranky with exhaustion and overwork and a long string of fourteen hour days; the publishing industry is in a stupid place, and largely, in my view, because publishers publish the same damn crap rather than searching out interesting work, and then they wonder why people don’t want to buy it; our financial situation is fraught, as is our situation with our two former spouses…. There’s no end to people and matters that will serve as an excuse. Rumi says, “Everyone chooses a suffering that will change him or her to a well-baked loaf.”

But I think that is preferable to avoiding the suffering, and failing to rise. That happens, too.

So there is all this stuff amenable to being blamed for my anguish, not to mention that it is that time of the month. But is the body or its relationships or its contexts really the reason for this melancholy seeking without an end?

Yesterday this poem of Rumi’s manifest itself to me, in a moment of bibliomancy, or at least I like to think that the Divine was smiling wryly at all my flailing about, and granted me this mouthful of grace.

Coleman Barks calls it THE MOST ALIVE MOMENT:

“The most living moment comes when
those who love each other meet each
 
other’s eyes and in what flows
between them then. To see your face
 
in a crowd of others, or alone on a 
frightening street, I weep for that.
 
Our tears improve the earth. The
time you scolded me, your gratitude,
 
your laughing, always your qualities
increase the soul. Seeing you is a 
 
wine that does not muddle or numb.
We sit inside the cypress shadow
 
where amazement and clear thought
twine their slow growth into us.”
 

(THE SOUL OF RUMI, translations by Coleman Barks.)

I cried after I read it. I found excuses to cry all day. It’s something I rarely do. And then my husband showed me this photo on his iPhone of his Apollo’s outstretched arm. Even in process, it was beautiful: gesture and form, a supreme example of artistry. I cried some more, alone, in my bathroom, so no one knew I was being so silly. And I remembered why this man, this life, this set of choices that has led to this moment in all its bittersweet, empty fullness.

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Leverage

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Money is good and I like it.

That’s one of my mottos. It has arisen out of my observation of the good uses of money: good health care, great education, travel that uplifts and inspires, the ability to charitably help others, good food, beautiful objects that enrich the environment and exalt the soul. Having abundant resources allows life to have a certain ease and facility that relieves stress and facilitates self actualization. Money gives free time in which art, sport, charity, and conviviality can be pursued. Money can be a great blessing.

It can also be a source of evil, cruelty, and pain. I’ve seen parents use it as a weapon against their own  children, such as in families where one child is disinherited as an act of destructive communication; inevitably such acts cause lingering pain and bitterness. Parents who do that are always remembered through the taint of their unkindness. Money can be used as a drug to keep people dependent. It can be used to bribe, manipulate, or exploit people. Money is power in and of itself, and there will always be people who abuse power. This doesn’t even take into account what the lack of money causes people to do.

Money can also be used to make people feel special. I know a man who inherited great wealth, and was consistently helped by his mother before her death, so he never had to live exclusively on what he earned. Because he votes Democratic instead of Republican as so many recipients of ‘old money’ do, he cherishes a self image that he is profoundly ethically correct. He sees himself as morally right and superior all the time. Meantime, his family has fallen apart and he pays no attention to the disintegrated emotional bonds, how siblings don’t relate, his wife doesn’t talk to his son, his granddaughter wants nothing to do with her grandparents–because she saw them reject and act parsimoniously toward her little sister, after they had been loving and generous to her. But he is morally superior, because he’s rich and he still campaigned for Obama.

This isn’t the only example of the hypocrisy and self-delusion that money engenders. Living in New York, I have met a lot of Wall Street types. Bankers, brokers, and the wives of such. What struck me about so many of them (not all!) was how convinced they were that having a lot of money made them special. Especially the successful ones. The bigger their bonus, the more special they were. I suppose we all need to feel special and every human finds qualities about themselves to designate as special.

Having met so many Wall Street people, I can say categorically that Wall Street used to nurture a culture in which people prided themselves on being assholes. They were convinced that being an asshole was valid because they were so rich and successful. There was even a term some people used: “BSD,” which stands for “Big Swinging Dick.” They were proud of being BSD’s. I can remember a conversation I had with someone about a man who was then a partner at Goldman Sachs.

“He’s a jerk, his own wife has to take valium to go on vacation with him,” I pointed out.

“Who cares, he’s rich,” said the other person.

I would like to point out that, by all appearances, the man in question has reformed. He’s much kinder to his wife and has mellowed in the years since retiring from Goldman. Everyone can pursue better paths; each of us has the ultimate freedom to pursue our better self.

But there was definitely this swaggering, self-congratulatory arrogance about Wall Street. However much Wall Street helps Main Street, Wall Street was convinced that it was better than Main Street. That’s what the New York Times article this morning about the antipathy from Main Street toward Wall Street failed to mention: the air of superiority with which Wall Street indulged itself. We in Main Street tolerated it when Wall Street was helping us, even though we weren’t as stupid as Wall Street assumed: we KNEW that Wall Street was helping itself $100 for every $1 that it helped us. It’s that quality of condescension that has made us loathe Wall Street now, when our tax dollars are rescuing them from their runaway greed.

Which brings me to a great new TV show, LEVERAGE. It airs on TNT. It’s a Robin Hood show of the most satisfying kind. We get to watch greedy bankers, greedy real estate types, greedy corporate types of all kinds GET THEIR COMEUPPANCE. It’s a show for this moment, now. It’s enjoyable to see the greedy, selfish bastards take a fall.

Too bad it’s only a television show…..

The President as Hottie

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I think it’s well established now that not only is President Obama an august statesman, eloquent orator, brilliant writer and thinker, and, really, the hope of America–he is also fine.
It’s not just the lean, chiseled face and eyes sparkling with intelligence. It’s not just the easy smile, the taut physique, or the gracious demeanor. It’s also the way he treats his wife. The obvious respect and affection which he continually exhibits toward her is really, really sexy. What did he ask at one of the inaugural balls–“How good-looking is my wife?” She looked gorgeous, and he couldn’t have been hotter than in that moment of proclaiming it!
But what will it do to the national female psyche to have such an attractive president?
I can imagine some of the discussions because I am a frisky, red-blooded woman living with a tribe of frisky, red-blooded women: 4 daughters. Well, 3 and a step, but I consider the step one of mine. Even the 4 year old discusses nail polish, though I won’t let her have lip gloss yet.
Here’s an imaginary conversation:
American woman: “President Obama’s oversight rules for the financial industry will bring much needed stability, and meticulous integrity, to it.”
Her girlfriend: “Yes, and his plan for health care reform is shaping up to help and empower the American people. Glad he’s put limits on the salaries of health insurance executives.”
First woman, sighing: “And didn’t he look good last night on the address? He looks out from the screen with those soulful eyes and it’s like he can see right into the depths of your being!”
Girlfriend: “I think he’s doing more push-ups lately, his shoulders are luscious….”
First woman: “I have got to tell you about the sex dream that Anne had about him….”
From there the conversation goes into explicit detail. Then they discuss Anne’s hair cut (good), Barb’s new eye-liner (not good), and Carol’s boss, who’s hitting on her. Then the conversation circles back to foreign and domestic policy change and implementation, stem cell research, and the books they’re each reading in their respective book clubs.

Top Three Items to be Fixed by the New Administration

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There are many problems facing this country right now. Here are my top 3 on the hit list for President Obama:

1. Health Care reform. My husband and I are self-employed, and our monthly health insurance bill is staggering. It went up 20% from last year, and it’s a crappy policy. We have a small child so health insurance isn’t optional for us.
I’m no lawyer, but from what I’ve heard, one huge expense in health care is malpractice insurance. Doctors might get sued for $4,000,000,000 for a mistake or accident, so they shell out enormous quantities of cash for malpractice insurance.
Ok, so now it’s time for what lawyer friends tell me is tort reform. Meaning, we have to place a value on human life and limb. So, if you go in to have an appendix removed and the surgeon removes your left leg instead, he only pays $5 million. Or if you’re having a baby and the obstetrician drops the newborn and its head smashes open and it dies, she can only be sued for $10 million. Let’s place those limits so we can bring down the cost of malpractice insurance so that EVERYONE CAN AFFORD DECENT HEALTH INSURANCE… without having to sell a kidney!
To implement this, we will also need better oversight of doctors. They make mistakes; they’re human. I propose oversight composed of both medical doctors and laymen.
2. Education. “No child left behind” sounds good in theory, but in practice what it has done is forced frantic teachers to teach for tests. They used to teach a curriculum. Now they teach the kids how to answer specific questions. This is not helping our children learn, or learn how to learn.
I propose that every district have an oversight panel, and every school have a committee of kids who give reports on the teachers. Here’s the thing: the kids always know which teachers are good and which aren’t. And the teachers always know which kids are decent and honorable, and which aren’t. 
For instance, in my daughters’ school, there is a terrible science teacher. He doesn’t prepare the kids for college science–the kids who’ve graduated all agree on that. But he’s head of the science department, so he’s always going to be there, failing to teach adequately.
For which reason, let one of the committees, either the kid’s committee or the oversight panel, reach out to college students to ask them: Who prepared you for college, and who didn’t?
3. Sharp limits on salaries and bonuses of executives in industries which receive bailout money. Dear President Obama: you are using my tax money to rescue avaricious business people who refused to consider the long-term effects of their actions. Please don’t reward them for their greed and lust for immediate gratification. No executive, from mid-level management up, in one of those rescued industries, should earn more than $100,000 in all wages and compensation for five years. Let them sell some of their assets. They should pay, too, just as we ordinary citizens are paying for their selfishness.
There are at least ten other vitally important areas to be addressed. These are one woman’s top three.