Up in the Air

Hi, Boomers,

A few thoughts on travel before I leave for Bali. Bali. It sounds romantic and so "eat, pray, lovish." Let's set the record straight. I'm not going to Bali because of Ms Gilbert's book. While I found her journey somewhat interesting and a bit whiney, I truly believe there are more interesting anecdotes about sappy transformation. She ain't Carl Jung. To those of you who worship her journey, you can all throw rotten tomatoes at me when you meet me.

And while I am on the subject of eat, pray, love, Julia Roberts and Javier Bardem? Please. The guy Ms. Gilbert fell in love with on Bali was much older than she and fully Brazilian. Even though the movie comes out on Friday the thirteenth, it will be a great hit because most females between the ages of 20 and 75 have read her book - except two of my friends and my step-daugher, Camille, and these are ladies whose taste in literature would put book critics out of business. I hope Bali isn't over-run with over-wrought females looking for redemption with that shaman she chased and a Brazilian hunk she fell in love with. I understand from my traveling companion's friend - who just came back from Bali - that her shaman is not a celebrity who says the same thing to everyone who pays him gobs of money to release the evil spirits from their souls. "You will always find happiness." He should work for Hallmark.

I'm laying in bed and beginning to grasp the amount of time I am spending in the air to get to Bali. Probably around 22 hours with a layover in Taipei. My legs are already buckling under me. I lose a whole day crossing the international time line. And I'm leaving at the hideous time of 2 am Thursday morning. I'll sleepwalk into the cabin of the plane, try to get settled in my seat, realize that I have never been so uncomfortable in my life and ask myself why, oh why, I decided to vacation halfway around the world. Answer; it seemed like a good idea at the time - when my friend, Carol, told me on the stairwell of the Math and Engineering building on the UCLA campus after my yoga class that she and Adrienne were thinking about going to Bali for their vacation. I just jumped right in and invited myself. I wasn't even going to take a vacation this year. I was going to wait out 2010 without leaving the U.S

Impulse can be a good thing sometimes. It can be creative and engaging and even exciting. I've been impulsive many times in my life. But as I look around my bedroom with piles of clothes spread out everywhere and a bathroom that looks like tweens have been playing movie star with all my cosmetics and makeup, I'm having more than second doubts about leaving beautiful Santa Monica and the Pacific Ocean. Of course, one cannot swim in the Pacific, so what good is it except to gaze lovingly at its tepid shores.

The energy it took to prepare for this trip, the work I had to finish on marketing my book, getting substitutes for class and giving them detailed instructions about where I teach on campus (min-boggling), engaging my neighbor to water my plants and pick up my mail, excessing about all the details have thrown a damper on my travel excitement. Will it be worth it in the end? All will be revealed when I step off the plane at Denpasar in Bali. Wayan, our driver (almost everyone in Bali is named Wayan), will meet us inside the airport with our names on a sign and I hope I will begin to feel that I am ready for my adventure. After all, my traveling companions and I have outlined in detail all the places we want to go, all the restaurants we want to eat in, all the events we want to attend.

So this once in a lifetime trip is going to be great, right? I am hoping that tonight as I fall asleep, I will begin to surrender to the inevitable.

One more thing. I'm leaving my computer behind. I have not been without my computer for over a year. It has literally become my brain and that's pretty sad. It's time that my MacBook and I separate. It's not a divorce, mind you; it's just a 10 day separation and I can handle that. I'll blog when I return. I'll tell you all about my wanderings. And I swear I will not fall in love with a Brazilian.

PS My new granddaughter, Penelope Sweet, is doing very well. She is eating well and is even gaining back some of her weight. I will miss my daily updates on her progress.

Namaste

Joan

I Just Want to be Loved

Hi, Boomers,

What I adore about blogging is that I can have an idea about what to blog about and I can do it any time of the day or night. I'm up way too early this morning after two late nights of dancing tango, but I can't sleep in this morning because I got an idea in my head about a blog theme. The mind, indeed, is a wonder!

I got an email yesterday from a very, very good friend. If you read my post, "Down and Dirty," he is the one who was summarily dismissed from a woman who thought his penis wan'ts what she was quite looking for to satisfy her desires. I beg to differ with her. My friend is/was more than a friend with benefits; my friend is/was a beautiful human being: conscious, sentient, loyal, passionate, supportive. But, lately, he's just looking for love in all the wrong places.

My friend is finding it difficult to adjust to the woman's rejection. He just can't get his "sea legs" back after this setback. I wrote one of my extra long emails back to him about being careful of believing other people's projections. Those projections are negative and self-serving on the part of the the person lashing out. I told him that if he believed that person's projection, he will never hold on to his true sense of being. Instead, he will fill up with toxicity - the toxicity of the person who rejects him, or leaves him, or uses him, or lies to him, or deceives him. This is the second time in a year that my friend has attracted the wrong kind of woman - a woman who doesn't represent the best in him.

Why do we keep repeating the same old negative behavior - in this case, attracting others who are not going to enhance our lives. Because we just want to be loved and we are not conscious about the kind of love we truly want or deserve. In my email back to my friend, I wanted him to see what kind of laudable human being he is, to respect himself more than he does when a woman offers herself to him, to be able to discern when a woman wants to use him and abuse him for a brief moment in his life, and to take stock of what he is truly looking for in a companion. I'm not saying don't explore the possibilities of finding a companion, but it is necessary to keep in perspective the difference between sex/romantic love and spiritual love that is more lasting. We are boomers now; we are rounding out the edges of youth; we are looking at the big picture of who we really want to spend time with. Fleeting sexual encounters whether they last a week or months should be looked at with a jaundiced eye in our 60's.

My friend was a co-enabler for many years in his marriage. Co-dependents just want to be loved. They want to be seen as a lover and supporter of those they love so they can, in turn, be loved back. Their need to be loved is as great as the addict. It doesn't matter to co-enablers that the love that is returned to them is a dependent kind of love, a love that has ties and strings to it, and that fosters the addiction (any kind of addiction or compulsion). My friend has gone through years and years of therapy and men's groups to understand his deeper needs. But right now, he is pretty angry with himself that he fell, yet again, into a situation that has been a variation on a negative theme: I just want to be loved.

When things go wrong in a relationship that involves one falling in love and the other not falling in love, anger sets in. I know my friend is very angry at himself and very angry at the woman. Anger is a symptom of something deeper inside of him. He knows this intuitively and is back to working very hard again to try to understand his compulsion to love.

One way I think to being this healing process is to understand forgiveness: forgiveness of self and forgiveness of the other. Forgiveness is the beginng of opening the heart again to acceptance and surrender of self. In yoga, our practice is heart opening. We focus on the heart chakra, which takes us to a deeper place in our soul, our psyche. Not forgiving self or others creates negativity, toxicity, and more anger until we are rendered unconscious. When we reside in darkness of the mind, we only see shadows of ourselves. They are illusions. We are in Plato's cave. In the allegory of the cave, or the unconscious, we are stuck in a place where light only rarely gets in and where the darkness comes over us and oftentimes consumers us.

My friend is loved, deeply loved but he is just not seeing it at the moment. He is loved by his mother, brother, adult children, his women and men friends, and he is loved by me in the universal sense of love - that he is a sentient being whose place in the universe is important to many of us who know him. There are many kinds of love and an open heart brings a variety to that love. Love isn't just one emotion. Love is a complication of many emotions and feelings, and if we just look around we'll find it in front of us, around us while we are dancing tango, paying music, making fine furniture, shooting brilliant photos, practicing yoga, meditating, playing with the grandchildren, cooking, writing and a host of other experiences. Love is everywhere in our lives. But if we live in the shadow world, we will never know its existence.

Namaste

Joan

50th High School Reunion Here We come

Hi, Boomers

I've been having a wonderful experience lately. My fiftieth high school reunion is coming up in 2011. I found this out from an email sent to me by a high school friend and the organizer of the reunion, class of 1961, Marin Catholic High School in San Rafael, CA. My friend was also the high school principal of Marin Catholic for many years. Well, the guy was always a straight shooter and one of the guys you always remember when you think of high school. Oh, yeah, the boyfriends come first, but the friends are right up there with "make out" moments at the San Rafael Harbor or under the Golden Gate Bridge.

I was encouraged to sign up on a Facebook page, an idea I have put off thinking about for as long as there was Facebook, and before the My Space age. I didn't want to have people connect with me because I suspected that I wouldn't remember many people from my past. But I did sign up; I did remember most of the people; I did have a good time doing the task. Then my friend began to post high school pictures, even grammar school pictures (most of us went to one of two Catholic elementary schools), and even the announcement of my engagement and marriage to my ex-husband. Blast from the past! Oh, my God, did I really wear that Jackie Kennedy pill box hat. Astounding!

So, I put my picture on my Facebook page and then, with all due haste, I put my book title under it - SIXTY, SEX & TANGO, Confessions of a Beatnik Boomer - with the notification that I am blogging.

One classmate, I remember him well because he was the boyfriend of my best friend in high school, read my blog the other day. I think he thought I was sad or unhappy or in too much pain. I think he might not have gotten my my self-effacing humor and thought that I was really lonely or was still struggling with some kind of past pain. It was a good email to me; it made me think again about the state of my being. My response to him is below:

Dear Frank,

How nice of you to take the time to read some of my blogs. I am a writer and writing for me is a way of staying conscious about my life. I try daily get to get in touch with myself is through yoga and meditation. I teach yoga all day, every day and am blessed with my work. I am also a drug counselor and have attended to the spiritual needs of people in recovery.

I have embraced my struggles, find humor in them and take each day with grace. I carry no regrets. My pain is my joy. As the yogis say, "It's all good." I have many gifts which I am grateful for every day. I am grateful, too, that I have used my gifts well, have had positive influences on my students, friends and family. My journey has been unique, fun, loving and welcoming. And I am not sad or lonely. I am at peace.

The direction in my writing is derived from (and this is in my book) the strangeness of waking up at 64 and finding surprises in life that I had not actually prepared for or thought of. It has been a process of re-discovering, re-thinking, and re-learning the truth of my life without the playbook or script that in other decades had been somewhat predictible. I've always used humor to cope with the many changes that life has brought me, and that humor in turn, has brought much joy to my living experience.

So, my friend, don't worry about my state of being. My place in the universe, although not static, is quite wonderful.

Namaste

Joan

The Single Drive

Hi, Boomers,

I got up at 5 am today to drive back to Los Angeles from Las Vegas. I rolled out of bed and, sans makeup, dragged my bags into the car and took off in the dark of early morning.

I don't usually drive the LA to Vegas route. I'm a once a month Southwest weekend flyer. But there is something so appealing about driving at 4 or 5 am in the morning. I get to drive with the truckers and see the sun come up. I listen to Howard Stern and the drive goes fast. I've listened to the shock jock for years, ever since I introduced my sons to him on the morning school drive. It was one of the ways we bonded. Anyway, I think the guy is pretty smart and very funny. Not the smut part, but his "take"on the human condition is fascinating.

Along the way on this single drive, my mind flips back and forth between missing my family, especially those adorable grandsons, that I just left and missing David, my long ago significant other. I usually have a good cry, one of those missing cries, and it actually doesn't make me feel any better. It just makes me miss more.

Along the way, I saw that my new man friend had called me an hour after take off. I had told him we needed the clarity of space until he returned to his home in Montreal. But he didn't exactly adhere to our plan and I was secretly happy. It was sweet of him to call after me. I didn't mind because it felt good to be watched over by someone, to be cared for from afar.

I just read an article about loneliness. Loneliness can be a by-product of depression but not always. I am not usually lonely. I like my own company. But sometimes I bounce off a few walls, especially when it comes to waking up in the morning and I would really like a man's arms around me. Of course, the feeling passes and I get out of bed, make my espresso and get on with my day.

I get that feeling when I drive alone sometimes. The wide, flat expanse of the desert, the sun rising in faded orange and yellow colors reminds me of how small we are in the universe, how this journey is transitory, our lives merely borrowed for a time, and how important it is to honor the present.

Sometimes driving is good for the soul.

Namaste

Joan

The Single Life and Bali Here I Come

Hi, Boomers,

I was musing today about being single. After years of fighting the odds to mate with man, I have succumbed to the freedom, the joy, the bliss of being single. Don't get me wrong, I haven't given up sex. Being single and sex are not antithetical to one another. I love sex now as much as I loved it at 19 when some hunk took my virginity at UCLA on New Year's Eve. Funny, we never forget who took our virginity. Oh, well, sorry, "took" is not appropriate since I was the other half of the consenting situation. I can still remember that small, dark motel room in Manhattan Beach, past midnight, January 1st, with a little light coming through the faded white, shabby venetian blinds. His name was John and I was madly in lust. But I digress.

So being single is being able to come and go as I please without checking in with anyone. It's being able to be in Las Vegas with my family and not worrying about whether I have called my significant other today to let him know that I miss him and I promise to be home on Saturday afternoon. It's fully planning my day without questions, planning my trips without censure, planning my meals without a thought for anyone else. I can go to bed when I want and get up when I want and take my computer to bed and read at 3 am if I want and listen to the silence. I can get up to feed Baby Jude Love at 4 am and gaze into his little face with love.

I'm going to Bali in August with two single female friends. I am visiting my tango friend, Brenda, who, with her husband, built Desa Sanctuary in Ubud. Check out the website. It's so very beautiful and special.

The way this trip camd about was that Brenda emailed me on Linkedin to connect with me and to say she was reading my blog. Bali had been in my head for a long time and I felt I needed to get there before the Eat, Pray, Love movie came out this summer and the followers of Ms. Gilbert began to pay homage in Ubud to her personal journey. A few days before, my friend, Carol, a yoga student of mine at UCLA, was talking about going to Bali with her friend and I immediately invited myself. I showed Carol and Adrienne Desa Sanctuary and everyone was hooked. It took us 3 days to make the plane reservations and reserve a sanctuary for a week. Women are so smart and efficient with organizational execution because we know what we want and communicate efficiently. Bali, here we come.

Last year I went to southern Spain and Morocco with GAP Adventure Tours and I was the oldest of the seven women. It was a fabulous journey and one that I will remember always. The year before I went to Costa Rica for a yoga retreat and then an eco tour with my guide friend. Another great adventure. Being single allows me to plan my travels intuitively and take fully advantage of my curiosity. I used to think that I could never, ever travel without a man beside me. Life sure plays funny tricks on us.

So while I think that I may be falling in love as indicated in my last post, I am not rushing to fall in love. This is probably the first time I have been reserved in a relationship process. I have some things at stake this time around. I'm older and maybe a little wiser and maybe, just maybe, happier with who I am, my family relationships and my dearest friends.

Life is beginning to work out very well for a change.

Namaste

Joan

CAN WE REALLY FALL IN LOVE AGAIN?

Hi, Boomers,

At the moment, I am surrounded by my 4 grandsons and thinking about falling in love again.

How does all this love energy work together? I have no idea, and I am trying to figure it out.

I've been keeping a secret to almost everyone in my life. I met a man last Saturday night who is enlightened, more evolved than most men, dances tango as elegantly and as passionately anyone I have ever danced with, plays tangos on his guitar beautifully, is looking for a mate, makes love like an angel, and maybe is falling for me. Besides that, we have a strong connection with our professional work. More importantly, we want to make a relationship.

What man puts it out there like that to a woman? What woman could walk away from this man without serious consideration.

Oh, and I forgot to say that he lives in Montreal six months out of the year; winter is spent in Los Angeles where he hangs out with his two adult children and grandchildren.

Long distance relationships. They are a plague. They mostly don't work. How do we do this and keep the emotional connection? I tried it before. It lasted 7 months, which is pretty good, I think. But now I'm older and wiser and have settled into singleness with joy - finally.

I didn't get enough face time with this man. He's complicated in a good way. I'm settled in a good way. But we are both looking for companionship. And I think we could be right for each other.

I'm wrestling with how to do this and we have just left each other. Do I really want to fall in love again? Big question after all this work on myself. I think I do but I don't know if I can.

I thought I would never fall in love again after my last relationship. After almost 4 and a half years of his running away and coming back, I ended it. He broke my heart and my heart is still broken. I think I'm on the mend and then I'm not. My therapist would say: "Sit with it, be with it, let the emotions embrace you."

I am and I'm trying. In the meantime, I have enough testosterone around me to last a lifetime. Tonight I'm going out to dinner with my 2 sons and their wives to celebrate family.

I'm full of joy.

Namaste

Joan

I'm Too Old For This Life

Hi Boomers,

I've been thinking that my blogs go into cyberspace and no one is going to read them.  I'm right about that, I know, because I should have a website and blog on my website and I'm not there yet.  I'm waiting until I publish my book (stupid) or get an agent (I should be so lucky) and I'm not really kicking ass like I should.  

I'm 65 and too busy working.  Can you imagine teaching 27 classes a week in yoga and one tango lesson to my best friend?  By Friday I can't walk or talk.  Don't get me wrong.  I absolutely love teaching yoga and meditation.  In fact, I'm taking a seminar in Kundilini yoga tomorow for 4 hours at UCLA through the Mindfulness Center.  It's all very wonderful every day, but the physical toll on my body worries me.  Someone said to me, "That's why you're in such good shape," and I responded, "It's overrated."  

More angst this week with my old lover returning and the same pattern materializing.  I finally got up on Friday morning and wrote the email of all emails to him about how I see our relationship developing if he would just get out of his mother complex long enough to listen to his heart and stop running away.  

Which leads me to ask:  Do people really change?  Do men change?  I was talking to my ladies in recovery (from drugs and alcohol) in their meditation class  on Thursday and I posed the question to them.  Well, they are in recovery and, of course, they feel people can change.  They are changing, for God sake!  But these are women - nurturing, open, compassionate women and in this moment of their lives fully conscious for the first time in decades.  But can men change?  Can we change the strips of a zebra?  I do not know.  I will let you know if there is a man that can change when I find one.

I'm closer to publishing my book, SO YOU'RE 60, GET OVER IT:  CONFESSIONS OF A BEATNIK/BOOMER.  I have 2 agents to hear from and one publisher and my contract with another publisher and then I'll move forward.  I'm feeling low on energy right about now.  It's the lull before the storm.  I need patience.  That's why I meditate 4 times and day.

My iPod shorted out this week.  On Monday, no less, with the entire week ahead.  I play music in all my classes.  My iPod is my life!!!   It had 80 GB and they don't make those anymore.  I got a nano iPod with 8 GB and it isn't enough to hold all my favorite music.  

I'm off to see the new Chinese gardens and the Chinese art exhibit at the Huntington Museum in Pasadena with one of my male best friends.  Andrew will help me load my 8 GB iPod.  Really, men can be great in other ways.  They really don't have to change.  I wouldn't want Andrew to change a hair on his head.

Namaste

       Joan

WHEN AN OLD LOVER RETURNS

Attention Female Boomers,  (this is not a man's issue)

     I am single, living alone and learning to enjoy the fruits of my being.  I was just dancing along in my life with three great days of tango dancing when suddenly an old lover returned. 

 

     Almost five years (in July), I began to date on the Internet.  I first signed up for J-Date (the preference is for Jewish men) thinking how impossible it would be to find an age-appropriate Jewish man near retirement.  But what what the heck, nothing to loose and my yoga client kept prodding me into it.  All right, already, I did it and, lo, behold, the first man out of the starting gate was the man I fell in love with.  Now, come on, what are the odds?  Playing craps has better odds.  More and better, he fell in love with me.  I write lots about him in my book, SO YOU'RE 6O, GET OVER IT:  CONFESSIONS OF A BEATNIK/BOOMER. We hit if off like Sonny and Cher, like Abelard and Eloise, like Brad and Angelina.  It was magic.  Forty-five minutes after we met at my Starbucks, we were making love.  It was that clear we were meant for each other.  But as my mother says, repeating the words of a song made popular by Tina Turner, "what's love got to do with it?"  Boy, is she and Tina right.

 

     But three days later, in the throws of lust, he asked me to marry him.  

      "Where do we do that?" I asked him.

      "City Hall," he responded casually.

      My head was exploding off my body.  I couldn't believe what was happening.  A little voice whispered slow down.  Be cautious of all of this sexual madness.

     "We only known each other three days.  Maybe we should take more time."

     Four months later he told me to date other men.  He thought I hadn't had enough experience dating.  I had been in a long term relationship for almost sixteen years, but that ended two years prior to my meeting the Jew from the Internet.  But I was sure and he had already started running away from love, from me, from commitment.

     Our dance, the Ben and Joan show, has lasted for almost four years.  He would call, see me, leave me for seven months, call again, see me.  It was a sad and painful loop because I really fell hard.  He loved me, too, but he didn't want a relationship.  So really, he didn't love me, right. He was care-taking his parents, still is, busy with making documentaries, and I understood, really understood and I moved on. 

     I really did move on, worked on myself, went to therapy, had a boyfriend, broke up with the boyfriend (maybe I still loved Ben), saw a few men along the way, had a few one night stands with much younger men, considered myself cured and then....

     A call at the beginning of March.  This time a little shy of seven months.  But right on time. 

     "Are you married yet?" he asks.  He always asks that.

     "No."

     "Are you dating?"  He always asks that.

     "No."

     "Why not?"

     "Because I seem to only attract schmuks."

     "Like me?"

     "Like you."

     "This is ridiculous, Joan.  You are vibrant, beautiful..."  Yada, yada, yada.  

     The catch up.  Everything is fine.  Family good.  Finished the book.  Still teaching all the same clients, lots more yoga at UCLA.  All is good. Goodbye.  Be well.  Conversation over. Thought nothing more of it.

     End of March:  Email:  "I give up."  I called.  

     "What are you giving up about?" I asked.

     "I can't find your number," he lied.

     "You just called me at the beginning of the month," I said boldly.

     "I've looked all around...."

     He was tired of missing me, tired of being alone without a buddy, getting older, growing older...wanted to see me...saw me, love at first sight again.

     But is it love at first sight again?  I was finished with him in my book.  It was cathartic to wright about it.  I loved that it had ended.  In my heart, I knew he could always come back for a phone visit.  I could always conjure up a phone call when I felt like talking to him.  I felt like a witch but it worked.  But in person was something different now because I'm different.

  

     When an old lover returns, when the intensity is still there, and there is still no promise of consistency let alone commitment, what's it all about Alfie?  At this moment, writing this blog on a Sunday with no call (it's a weekend, buddy!), I am sure he is the same man five years ago.  I knew he couldn't bring himself to be available on a Sunday when a couple in love likes to hang out at a movie or at the local art fair today.  He never did before and he cannot do it now.  I'm not close to the top of priorities.  His promise to work on changing is nothing but wishful thinking.  He can't.  I told him men don't change.  A zebra cannot change its stripes.  He is just lonely, needs a buddy, a hug, sex from time to time, but his priority remains the same:  he is his priority.  His needs, his responsibilities.  I told him once, near the bitter end, that he expects the woman to give everything and he gives nothing in return.  If he gives it is at his convenience. Maybe it's common for men; maybe it isn't.  Women give no matter what.  We are givers and nurturers and, sometimes, fools.

     The good news is that I have no expectation and attachment to an outcome.  I'm still having fun in my single life and it feels good.  How long will this situation last with the same old, same old with Ben.  Not very long.  I'm wiser now, more confident.  You'd think it's about time since I'm blasted 65!

     Oh, but age doesn't matter in questions of love.  Isn't it odd that women's relationships with love and men, no matter the age, is fraught with common threads if obsolete expectations and romantic fantasies.  We've all experienced these common threads since we started to date and fall madly in love with the high school football quarterback.  Gender relationships are difficult enough to sustain, but you'd think by 60 that things would just mellow out.  It can be the case or it doesn't have to be the case.  Stay balanced and in the center of your being.  It works.

     So the lesson here is to be slightly detached about the whole business of old lovers, new lovers, old husbands, new husbands and not let our emotions get ahead of the present moment. I am in the present and it's very powerful.

     

     I salute all our divine sisters who have ever been in love.

     Namaste

     Joan