Going Nowhere

Posted on April 27, 2012 by Lavinia Plonka

“The world thus appears as a complicated tissue of events, in which connections of different kinds alternate or overlap or combine and thereby determine the texture of the whole.” (Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy, 1963)           

         When you walk through the Northwest Airlines Terminal in Detroit, you enter the Tunnel of Light.  The long passageway between concourses is illuminated in myriad cascades of colored lights dancing through the spectrum ( or chakra colors if you’re from Asheville).  Ethereal music accompanies travelers on the moving sidewalk as they glide, scurry and saunter in silhouette, like characters in a Milan Kundera novel, in both directions.  Ahead of you is an archway with escalators moving into the brightly lit terminals.  Is it the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel or the white light that apparently greets each of us on our transition into the afterlife? Neither.  The escalators deposit you in the glaring light of fast food restaurants, departure gates and slouching guards of the Department of Homeland Security.  Nevertheless, my companions and I joke about the possibility that indeed, we are dead and entering the “bardo”, the Tibetan term for the transitional place the soul visits on its trip to eternity. 

            My companions and I are heading to Rochester for a workshop.  We have a long layover, there are complicated connections from Asheville to Rochester, but we are in good spirits.  Even after our flight is cancelled and we face another 5 hours in the airport, we make the best of it.  Regina and I go  for a “power walk” around the entire terminal. We window shop at stores like The Pampered Pet, where you can buy a fur lined condo for your cat ( would that be like wearing shoes made out of your brother?).  I resist the lure of a massage at the Oxygen Spa, instead purchasing the book Secrets of A Millionaire Mind. The book offers a series of declarations, like “I am changing my financial blueprint.”  After each declaration, you point your finger to your forehead and declare, “I have a millionaire mind.”  The bookstore offers a deal, buy the book and if you return it within six months, you get 50% of the purchase price back.  Millionaires probably don’t think about things like that.  A millionaire would have gone for the massage. As we lie on the floor at the gate doing yoga stretches and Feldenkrais exercises, Betty muses on whether someone could really live in an airport the way Tom Hanks did in the movie The Terminal. We perish the thought and are relieved when we finally board for Rochester.

            The return trip has another long layover in Detroit. With our new millionaire minds, we splurge on a Japanese dinner. One of us voices the unspeakable, “Let’s hope this flight isn’t cancelled as well.” Cancel the thought that the flight is cancelled!  When we return, the monitor at our gate is blank.  I run to the airport screens.  There it is – Flight 864 to Asheville, CANCELLED.  “Rebooking is at gate 21,” an imperious woman tells me at Gate 15.  As we approach Gate 21, our hearts sink.  The line snakes out into the concourse.  We get behind a stocky, Slavic looking man and I ask, “Is this the cancellation line for Asheville?”  He smiles, and in a thick Russian accent that speaks of endless years on line says, “It is the cancellation line to everywhere.” 

            Nothing moves for the next hour as more travelers arrive.  Burlington, Elmira, Oklahoma City – we are all going nowhere. You read about us in the morning paper over coffee, “Thousands of passengers stranded as “Rising Gas Prices force Cancelled Flights”, “Northwest files for Chapter 11, cancels 50% of flights”.  At the front of the line, livid passengers are trying to demand their money back from shellshocked employees who stare blankly into space.  Betty shrugs and says, “Well, at least I’m not getting rescued from my roof by the Coast Guard.”  Yes, yes, we all agree, things could be so much worse. I recall an NPR piece where they interviewed children evacuated from New Orleans.  The reporter asks, “What has the experience been like for you?”

            “We’re having so much fun!  First there was all this water coming in and we had to sit on the roof of our house.  Then these men put us in boats and we got to ride through the streets.  Then we got to sleep in the SuperDome!  And there were so many people to meet.  And we got sandwiches and bottles of water.  And now, we get to go to live in Colorado!”

            “Do you know anything about Colorado?”

            “Oh yes, I know it’s beautiful!”

            As we are herded to yet another line, we get giddy.  We take on the attitude of the children.

             “And we got to spend ALL DAY in this big airport with lots of stores, even a MacDonalds.  And there was this tunnel with lights and music and people could go on this moving sidewalk. And then they cancelled our flight again, and I got to talk to a man from Russia!”   

            They’re putting us up at the Romulus Marriot.  When I call my husband, he admonishes me to watch out for Klingons.  As the rag tag travelers stumble yet again through The Tunnel of Light towards Ground Transportation, a man bound for Allentown engages me in conversation.  “I just came from Green Bay.  Guess I won’t get to work on time tomorrow, I’m a dentist you see.  But my son works with me, he can just work harder tomorrow. And then next week, I do this same trip.” 

            “Are you some kind of dental consultant that you have to travel to Green Bay so much?”

            “Oh, no, this is for fun.”

            “You fly to Green Bay for fun?”

            “I go hunting.”

            “You fly to Wisconsin to hunt.  What do you hunt?”

            “Small birds.  Grouse.  Woodcock.  You know what a woodcock is?”

            A bizarre memory surfaces.  I’m 9 years old and my cousins have been hunting.  They’ve arrived at our house with a bag of woodcock.  My mother has prepared them and we all sit at the table.  My father announces that the way to eat woodcock is by draping a cloth over your head to envelope the plate so that you quaff the odor of the small bird sitting there. That’s how they ate it in the French Court. We are all sitting at the table looking like we are inhaling Vicks VapoRub.  The bird tastes like dirt.  I wonder when my Dad was in the French Court and why he never told me he played tennis.

            “Yes, I know what woodcock is.” 

              At 6 AM, we are back in the airport, now routed through Newark for a connecting flight to Asheville.  We board and take off on time.  I’m excited. I might make it back to teach my one o’clock class.  As the plane descends, Regina jokes, “Well, it would be funny if they don’t let us land for some reason.”  Suddenly, the plane banks and begins circling.

           “Well, ladies and gentlemen, you may have noticed that we’ve on a holding pattern. Apparently visibility in Newark is less than a mile and so no one is landing or taking off.  We’ll be going nowhere for a while.” A half hour later: “Well, ladies and gentlemen, our fuel situation will not allow us to stay up here any longer.  We are being re-routed to JFK.  We’ll keep you posted.” 

            In David Cronenberg’s movie eXistenZ, players in a virtual reality game interact with characters who respond to specific cues.  If the proper cue is not given, or if it is not time for them to enter the game, they stand in a holding pattern until the proper words trigger their involvement.  I ponder the possibility that I am suddenly a non-playing character in someone else’s game.  Something has put me on hold.  

            Needless to say, we miss our connection and were now unwilling guests of the Continental Terminal at Newark Airport.  “And then we missed our flight and we got to ride in this really cool train that rode up in the sky to another terminal!  And the man at the Continental desk was so nice – he fixed all our tickets so we could sit together.  And we got to go through the security thing again.  And the conveyor belt got stuck and this lady’s computer fell off the belt.  That was really funny. And this airport had better stores and a zillion restaurants and we got all our food for free because the airline gave us vouchers!”

 

            Who would have thought that Continental Airport would feel like home? The corridors welcome me. “Hello Jersey Girl.  Hang around.”  I start calling old friends.  Almost make a lunch date before I remember, wait, I don’t live in NJ.  I live in Asheville.  Don’t I?  Or do I live in an airport? As we approach our gate we duck into the ladies’ room.  I head for “my stall” the stall that always seemed open when I’ve been in this terminal.  When I realize I have a habitual toilet stall in an airport ladies’ room I haven’t visited in years, I force myself to choose another.  If I am in someone’s virtual reality game, I’m not going to follow the program. 

 

            . We stop for coffee and tea at Seattle’s Best Coffee.   We are happy we’re not having coffee at Starbucks. Our little Twilight Zone world has over 5 cafes to choose from. We pick a little table “outdoors.”  There are plastic boxwood hedges that separate us from the transients. I hand Betty her Frappucino, except that here they call it a JavaKula with a little TM after it.  Her eyes get big.  “Wow!  Look at all that whipped cream!” She sips.  “Oh, boy, it tastes just like I imagined it.” Regina pulls out her extra long tea bag. “Wow!  Look at this amazing tea bag!  I’ve never seen anything like it!” We all concur.  Life is becoming wondrous. I lean my elbow on the boxwood as we drink in the canned air.  We smile at each other, fellow travelers on a road to an unknown destination. 

 

            We have all the time in the world.  So we go shopping. We wander into the Metropolitan Museum Store.  It becomes very important for me to buy my husband Ron some hieroglyphic rubber stamps since I never buy him presents. And after all, now I have a millionaire mind!  Regina is ecstatic over a computer mousepad that is designed like a mini-Boukharian rug.  But then…“$20!  No way I’m paying $20 for that.  I don’t need a mousepad.”  

            “But think of how happy you’ll be each time you look at it.”

            “It is really great isn’t it.”

            “It’s awesome.”

            “I never use my computer at home anymore.”

            “So take it to work!”

            “Pshaw!  I can’t do that!”

            “Why not?” we chorus.

            “It’s ridiculous.  $20 for a mousepad.  I’d happily pay $10.  Even $15.  But $20.  No way.”  She puts it down. 

 

            After she leaves the store, my millionaire mind buys it for her. The look on her face is worth more than $20. 

 

            “What do you think the lesson is in all of this?” asked Betty.

            “Maybe it was some way to connect the three of us,” commented Regina.  We had barely known each other before this trip, by now we were so close we considered forming a band. 

            “You don’t think it’s just a random universe?” I ask, half joking.

            “Only if you don’t know how to find meaning!” retorts Regina. 

 

We are silent, each pondering our personal interpretation of this bizarre confluence of odd connections. The airport has started to feel like home.  Do we have to leave?  I could get a job in the bookstore.  “We would just need to find a shower,” agrees Betty.  “We could sleep in the Meditation Room, “ adds Regina.  “Maybe I could join the Admiral’s Club,” I muse.  We stare out at the tarmac from our bubble. Did we ever live anywhere else? Suddenly we look up, startled to see the gate empty.  We’ve gotten so comfortable in our new life that we hadn’t heard the boarding announcement.  We lead our wheelies, like well behaved pets, down one final corridor.

 

            The sculptor and philosopher Henri Tracoll once pointed out that in airports, “…we are in total utopia….Utopia means literally ‘nowhere.’  We are nowhere.  And what is extraordinary when one travels is to find oneself in one airport or another and in the end it is always the same:  whether it is Tokyo, Heathrow or Kennedy Airport one is always in the same airport, connected by shuttle from one building to another….I am nowhere and at the same time I am somewhere, and this somewhere is always me.”

 

As the plane takes off, we are all certain that something has changed.  The holding pattern has released.  We’re finally going somewhere.  Or maybe we’ve been there all along.

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Who Me? Biased?

Posted on March 8, 2012 by Lavinia Plonka

Everyone’s a little bit racist
Sometimes.
Doesn’t mean we go
Around committing hate crimes.
Look around and you will find
No one’s really color blind.
Maybe it’s a fact
We all should face
Everyone makes judgements
Based on race.
-From the musical Avenue Q

Short People got no reason
Short People got no reason
Short People got no reason
To live
-Randy Newman

I can hardly wait till we start “colonizing” outer space. Getting our fancy spaceships together.  Loading the eager “colonists” on board.  Who will they be? The poor, the desperate, looking for a better life. The adventurers wanting to make a mark for themselves, or to make a fortune discovering some useful product.  They will leave behind the people they love, in hopes that they can create a better life in a strange land.  They are in for a big surprise. 

I’ve been in direct communication with the species on inhabitable planets via my aluminum foil helmet with the coat hanger antennae.  It’s simple really.  I put on my hi-tech receiving apparatus, chant “Nano nano” for about five minutes. (Thank you, Mork, for the key words).  I then croon the theme from the original Star Trek.  Transmissions begin before you can say “Manifest Destiny.”

Here’s what’s going on on a faraway planet.  Debate is raging about the imminent arrival of illegal immigrants.  All the planets have worked very hard to develop an organized, civilized network of peace loving, egalitarian societies.  Their intelligence sources have warned them that a rapacious, greedy and mucusy race is planning to push past the Van Allen belt they wrapped around the planet millennia ago to prevent their havoc reaching other galaxies.  These “earthlings” will swarm to their pristine planets looking for a better life, opportunity and cash.

When I was in New York City recently, I reveled in the diversity around me.  A sea of many colors, races, fashions swarmed stores, restaurants and theaters.  The variety was a testimony to America’s fabulous gene pool.  I recalled a story I read about Captain Cook and his men being eagerly greeted in the Polynesian Islands by exuberant females who hurled themselves upon the delighted sailors.  It turned out that it wasn’t about a different moral standard.  They were just desperate to diversify their gene pool! I tried to imagine New York without immigrants.  Hmmmmm.

I went to a brunch in the suburbs while I was there, and spoke about how one of the only things I miss living in Asheville is this experience of diversity.  That even white, middle class suburbs there have more intermingling of the races than the streets of downtown Asheville.  A friend I’ve known for 25 years, a Democrat, environmentalist and community supporter harrumphed.  “Well, we’ll have plenty of diversity soon.”  Apparently a black church from one of the North’s many urban areas had purchased a multi acre industrial complex at her town’s border.  They were building a mega church, a school and more.

“Imagine the traffic!” someone else sniffed.  “5000 people coming off our exit every Sunday!”
Another added, “Think of the environmental impact!  All those cars!”
“I can only imagine the congestion in our stores on Sunday.”  Everyone shook their heads.  
Then my friend voiced her true problem.  “My son in law lives in the neighborhood.  I’ve told him to sell his house now.”
“Why?” I asked, “His house isn’t near the traffic pattern.”  
She rolled her eyes.  They’re not just going to go to church here.  They’re going to want to live here.”
Still a bit dense, I asked, “So?”
“Can you say property values?”
“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?” I felt that choking feeling as the Nazi Anthem, Tomorrow Belongs To Me, started to play in my head.
“I’m saying slums.”
I poured myself a Bloody Mary.

Back at the airport, I wait in line to check my bags.  In front of me, a man keeps looking at his watch.  Suddenly, he moves his bag to the rope, ducks under the rope and dashes out of the airport.  I stare at the bag.  Uh oh.  Is this the moment?  I count to 10.  He doesn’t return.  The line moves forward.  My eyes remain glued to the bag.  

My heart begins to pound.  “OK, you’re profiling,” I say to myself.  “He’s black.” (In Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Blink, he describes various psychological tests where people betray their unconscious bias towards the white race.  Gladwell, who is half black, assumed he would be unbiased.  Instead, he discovered that even his choices scored in favor of whites.)

I try to imagine my reaction if a blue eyed blonde left his suitcase.  Tick.  Tick.  Tick. No way.  No one in their right minds would leave their bags unattended at the airport.  As if to mock me, the infernal announcement begins. “The Traffic Safety Authority in cooperation with the Department of Homeland Security requires that you keep your belongings with you at all times….” Arrgh!  Tick.  Tick.  The line continues moving.  I’m moving away from the bag, which continues to stare at me, daring me to cry out, “Bomb!  Bomb!”  But something holds me back.  Something in me doesn’t believe this man is a terrorist.

At that moment, he returns.  He is now clutching a ticket.  What?  He’d forgotten his ticket?  Where?  Was this a rehearsal to see what would happen? And suddenly, the rest of his family appears, loaded with bags, anxious, obviously late.  They speak some rapid African dialect.  Clearly they don’t understand the announcements.  I picture their home airport somewhere on the endless savannah, the heat rolling off the tarmac, children running around, security guards playing dominos, everyone chatting with their luggage scattered about.  It probably had never occurred to him that there was even a problem leaving his suitcase.

I think about what might have happened if I had yielded to my fear.  This family’s day would have been ruined.  I would have probably missed my flight as well.  Not to mention feeling really stupid.  I break into a supreme hot flash, sweat pouring out of pores I didn’t know I had.  

I watch the family run for their plane, feeling a kind of tenderness, remembering all the times when I was young and my Mom misunderstood American language and rules.  Some people were kind.  Others told her to go back to Russia.  Was this family visiting legal immigrants?  Or had they spent the week in a squalid squat making some extra money cleaning floors in a Connecticut suburb?  At that moment, an announcement comes over the PA. “Attention passengers.  Flight #6 to Glasgow has been cancelled.  Flight #6 to Glasgow has been cancelled.”  It was only when I got home that I learned flights to Glasgow had been cancelled because of a terrorist attack.  

What would have happened if…. Instead of beating myself up, I decide to study what made me decide that this man was not a terrorist. Then I flush with shock and shame at my own hidden bias.  This man was over 6 feet tall.  In my mind, terrorists are short.  Osama Bin Laden is tall, but you don’t see him running into a compound strapped with explosives.  That’s why he’s in charge! We trust tall people.  I’m not a racist.  I’m a heightist.  Which is a problem, since I’m 5’2”.  Like Malcolm Gladwell preferring white faces, I like tall people.  In fact, according to Gladwell, the majority of people prefer tall people.  Most CEOs and US presidents are tall. After a lifetime of trying to be free of bias, I realize that inwardly, I’m as bad as the narrator in Randy Newman’s song.  I breathe a sigh of relief to realize that no country closes its borders to short people.

The Council on the Faraway Planet is in heated debate.  “Clearly they are an inferior species.  I understand they can’t even fly!”
The representatives whir and buzz out of their seats, wings flapping madly in dismay at such a revelation.  
“Perhaps,” says a voice of reason, “They are merely at their larval stage.”
“They certainly look like larvae, all squishy and moist, stuck to the ground, devouring everything in sight.”
“They might be useful,” pipes another, “For those jobs we abhor, driving our land vehicles, tending crops, maintaining our structures.”
“Indeed, “ agrees the first.  “And perhaps if we are patient, they will molt and we will discover their true nature.”
“Balderdash!” says an elder.  “What if nothing emerges?  What if there is nothing beyond this larval stage?”   There is a collective gasp of horror.  
Finally, the optimist clears his throat. “Remember, we too were once illegal immigrants.  Perhaps diversity is not a bad thing. Consider the gene pool.”
At that, the Council calls a recess.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Conversations with Myselves

Posted on January 31, 2012 by Lavinia Plonka

“Of all the things in life I’ve lost, I miss my mind the most.”                                                                       

Mark Twain

“I don’t mind the voices in my head. I just wish they’d reach consensus.”

Asheville Bumper Sticker

            I stand alone in the kitchen carrying on a lively conversation with myself.  “Hmmm, I think I’ll reheat that couscous from last night for breakfast.  Oh, right!  I forgot I’d better call Jeremy. He’s so needy, like the cat. What should I do about the damn cat scratching the new slipcover?  God, remember that house, who was that, right, one of Mom’s friends, her house was a horror, all those cats, made our little hovel look like House Beautiful…..Mom.” For a moment the torrent of words stops as a little clutch in my solar plexus, (is it grief, nostalgia, regret, habit?) ripples  through my nervous system in memory of Mom.  I look up from my kitchen task of filling spice jars and realize that I have poured cayenne into the cinnamon jar because, because….

            You could say I wasn’t paying attention.  Or that I was paying attention to the wrong thing.  Or maybe my mind is slipping.  Frankly, my mind is so busy chattering, I don’t see how it has time to slip.  I stand surveying my spice debacle.  My husband Ron walks in and I hope he’s in one of his oblivious states, “Wife is in the kitchen, engaged in mysterious rituals.  I will bury myself in newspaper and coffee.”

            Instead he pauses.  “That spice jar has two different colors in it.  Is the bottom stuff old or something?”

            Crucial moment.  The mind whips through the scenarios.

            Obfuscation: “Well, yes actually, I’m working on a new spice blend for Mexican hot chocolate.”

            Distraction: “Look, a pileated woodpecker!”

            Defensive parry: “None of your business.”

            Admission of guilt: “Well, I spaced out and poured cinnamon into the cayenne jar.”

            Each potential answer is accompanied by a cascade of neurochemicals that we call emotion: anger, defensiveness, embarrassment, even fear. I fess up, we both laugh and I sigh.  No wonder I never ran for President.  I get caught up in the minutiae of a kitchen mistake.  It’s amazing I get out the door in the morning.

            The Buddhists call it monkey mind, the ever-present companion on our life’s journey: endlessly commenting, questioning, judging, telling me who I am at the moment. According to Antonio Damasio, a neurologist and author of several books on the brain, there are myriad conversations taking place among our sensory organs, nervous system and brain, some communicating with each other, some going directly to the brain, some just rambling, that form what we call thoughts.  No wonder our minds are so crowded!

            When I used to live in New York City, I often encountered pedestrians talking to themselves out loud.  From bag ladies to executives, conversation with oneself seemed safe, even solitary in the anonymity of the city’s throngs.  Of course, with the advent of Bluetooth technology, thousands of people are jabbering away as they stroll, who knows who they’re really talking to?

            I’ve often caught my inner dialogue spilling out in the most inopportune moments.  In a supermarket aisle, I pick up a box of “heart healthy” cereal. “Hmm,” I muse silently, “Where are the ingredients? Damn, they print it so small!” I begin to read them out loud, “Enriched wheat, sugar, SUGAR, the second ingredient in healthy cereal? What are they thinking? Am I that stupid?” when I realize a woman is staring at me wondering the same thing about me.  Yikes. 

            Apparently the road to enlightenment involves stilling this jabbering idiot.  And every once in a while, during a meditation, or a moment of self-awareness, there is a blissful, blanketing quiet.  If I hang out in it long enough, I can feel the stirrings of anxiety.  My nervous system, my sensory apparatus, my cells start freaking out, clamoring for the soothing conversation that tells me what I’m seeing, hearing, thinking, feeling and sensing.  Like Muzac for my mind, it’s all systems back online, smoothly folding the yoga mat as I note the cat puke in the corner, think about next month’s article and smile at the memory of a compliment someone gave me yesterday.

            Moshe Feldenkrais, the creator of the Feldenkrais Method, suggested that it’s not about “stopping” the thought that’s valuable, it’s noticing.  Becoming aware and interested in my thoughts, feelings, emotions and sensations is the way towards a unified self.  Sounds great, but I wonder if I might miss my other selves?  Like a child with her hand in the cookie jar, would my mind meander as freely knowing it will get caught?   Would I miss the fun of the “woulda, shoulda, coulda”  replays of failed conversations with others?

            While writing this article, I’ve attempted to watch my thoughts.  A thunderstorm is approaching, I find myself thinking of the strange weather. I run my tongue around my teeth where I accidentally bit it earlier because I wasn’t paying attention.  It makes me think about lunch.

 I don’t think I have to worry about losing my wandering mind.  It’s nice to know that no matter where I go, I’ll always have a nice bunch of gals to talk to. 

 

            

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Celebrating Sun Spots

Posted on January 18, 2012 by Lavinia Plonka

    It’s the end of the world as we know it.

It’s the end of the world as we know it.

It’s the end of the world as we know it                                              

                 and I feel fine.                                                                                                                       R.E.M.           

            I had not been to NJ in several years, and when I happened to be in town, some friends of my parents invited me to lunch. We sat down around the cluttered kitchen table, with tuna fish sandwiches on white bread. Hal then turned on the TV as if I was a regular who just happened to drop by. It hung suspended above the table, clearly the most important person in the room.  As Hal asked about the family, he surfed the channels, until he settled on a rebroadcast of The Mummy.  I was a little bemused, but figured it was a family habit to have the picture on in the background.  Then he turned up the volume.  Imagine the following conversation punctuated with screams, roars, gunfire, chase music and the occasional earthquake.

            “Did you know that the world is going to end in 2012?” shouted his wife Kathy over the din. (On screen, the earth cracks open, spewing fire.) I froze in mid-bite.  Somehow tuna fish eating Mummy movie fans didn’t seem like Doomsday followers.

            “Where did you hear that?” I asked. 

            “On the History Channel,” she answered, “They explained the whole thing.” (Chase music)

            “You mean about the Mayan Calendar?” I asked. (Girl screams as she falls out window)

            “Yeah,” said Hal. “It says it all ends December 21, 2012. And other stuff, you know like the magnetic poles shifting.  And the precession of the equinoxes.  And the whole thing hits the fan end of 2012.” (Gunfire, boom!  Boom!)

              Hal’s major interests are deer hunting and making fishing poles so this turn in the conversation made me wonder if my red-neck neighbors had been replaced by pod people.  “Never make assumptions,” says Don Miguel Ruiz in his famous book The Four Agreements. 

            As I tried to recover, their daughter Looli walked in, greeted me, looked up at the TV and said, “Oh cool, my favorite movie.”

            “Your favorite movie?” 

            “Yeah,” she answered, “I watch it all the time.” I tried to imagine coming home from work and actually choosing to watch The Mummy every night. 

            “Why?”

            Looli shrugged, “It’s cool.”

            I had now been surprised three times in ten minutes: tuna on white for guests, the end of the world and a passion for the Mummy. My former neighbors had managed to defy my expectations. Nassim Nicholas Taleb, in his book, The Black Swan, tells us to expect not what we predict, but the unexpected.  He titled his book this way because for centuries people asserted that black swans did not, could not exist.  And voila!  They appeared in Australia.  He says that the one thing you can count on is that things won’t turn out as planned.  (This could put a big hole in positive thinking theory!) He’s pointed out that many predicted events did not come to pass, including of course, the end of the world, which has been predicted many times. 

            He cites many erroneous methods of prediction – from making conclusions based on the past, to the bell curve.  Taleb explains what psychologists call the “disappointment effect.” It’s the feeling we have when things didn’t go as predicted. He says it’s because we can’t possibly understand the random nature of things. 

            All this got me thinking about the end of the world.  I mean it is 2012.  These end of the world predictions can’t be based on either historical evidence or the bell curve.  You can’t average out the amount of times the world has ended, right?  Can we truly trust the predictions of the History Channel? 

          The last time cataclysm was predicted was Y2K. I have friends who stored hundreds of gallons of water and batteries for Y2K, one even put in solar panels for her well, and then nothing happened. I do think some of them were just a little disappointed, probably because they never got to relish the “I told you so” effect. 

             Of course, that was just preparing for a massive power failure. How exactly do you prepare for the end of the world?  I’ve given this a fair amount of thought and I’ve decided that either we are deeply intuitive, Mother Nature has a plan we are blindly following, or we are just brilliant.  You see, we don’t have to prepare. We are already ready; Armageddon here we come. Following are some of the more popular end of times predictions and how humans have solved problems in advance.

            Prediction:

The sun is going to position itself in front of a black hole in the Milky Way, causing massive climate change and natural disasters.

            How we are preparing:

No problem!  By destroying the ozone layer, we have already begun the process of preparing for climate change.  Eye glasses have UV protection in them that change their color from indoors to outdoors.  Sunscreens are now at SPF 50 or is it 80?  As the temperatures rise due to global warming, our bodies will begin to adapt. Those Bikram “hot yoga” folks have the right idea.  Any day now, its founder is going to claim credit for creating a new race of folks ready for our altered planet. Sure, when the planet bursts into flame, some of us won’t be able to take the heat. But those of us who have become addicted to chipotle sauce on everything should be dowsing with habanero sauce soon.  And anyone consumed in flames can be consoled that the planet really needs more organic material to replenish the stores of oil that have been consumed in the last century. 

            As for the natural disasters coming our way; floods, tsunamis and cyclones everywhere are creating a booming industry for rescue products, emergency food packaging and portable medical kits.  It will only be a short time before these new products will be at Target where every family can purchase enough supplies to get them through to 2013.

            Prediction:

Sunspots will cause major flares that affect our magnetic poles. As the poles begin to reverse, the earth will lose its magnetic field.  No one knows exactly what will happen, although (as usual) some doom sayers are already preparing to profit from predictions of disaster.  Author Patrick Geyrl assures us that “…life after a polar reversal is nothing but horror, pure unimaginable horror. All securities you presently have at hand, like – amongst others – food, transport, and medicines, will have disappeared in one big blow, dissolved into nothingness. As will our complete civilization. It cannot be more horrifying than this; worse than the worst nightmare. More destructive than a nuclear war in which the entire global arsenal of nuclear weapons has been deployed in one blow.”  Paradoxically, he calls his website survive2012.com – he’s either an optimist or a magician. I’m not sure what bell curve he is using to base his predictions.  Or perhaps, this being a cosmic event, Mr. Geyrl is channeling wisdom from ancient civilizations.   But he has neglected one important difference between 2012 and 25000 BCE (one of the times our poles reversed).  The ancients were lacking  technology.

            How we are preparing:

Who needs a magnetic pole? Humans have ingeniously become their own magnetic fields. Cell phone use is now creating a global electromagnetic field large enough to save the entire solar system, maybe the entire universe.  It’s a marvel we are not all glowing.  (They say that Mars lost its atmosphere in one of the pole shifts.  If only the Martians had had Verizon!).  This combined with the emfs from our microwaves, halogen lights, HDTVs and of course computers should surely keep us magnetized till the earth re-organizes.

            In addition, each human generates an electromagnetic field.  This could explain the huge boom in our population.  Mother Earth is planning to use all that energy to keep things spinning till the sun spots pass.  Everybody hold hands now.  Which leads right up to ….

           Prediction:

As the precession of the equinoxes moves across the skies we are sitting at the dawn of the Age of Aquarius.  According to author John Major Jenkins, “A door into the heart of space and time will open.” Cool.

            How we are preparing: 

Granny dresses are back in fashion in NYC. As are peace sign earrings.  Madonna has embraced the Kabbalah.  Oprah had Eckhart Tolle on her show.  The Love Guru is in town.  I’m dusting off my Hair album and will be wearing flowers in my hair this spring. If the emfs haven’t made me bald that is.

            Pascal once said, “We are so busy regretting the past and worrying about the future that we forget to be in the present.”  And G.I. Gurdjieff said, “ It is only with  the present that you can repair the past and prepare the future.”  There is no point to building pyramids or nuclear shelters, storing food and stocking up on weapons.  If Mother Earth is done with us, then she will, as the late, great George Carlin once said, “…shake us off like a bunch of fleas.”  But at least if I live for this moment, living every day as if it were my last, it will be a life well spent. 

            I suppose there will be those who will be disappointed when they wake up on December 22, 2012 to find themselves still stuck on the blue globe, their expectations and preparations all for naught.  I’ll be dancing and singing, “Let the Sun Shine In.” Hmm, I wonder if that song was a foreshadowing of the sun spots.

 

 

 

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

And Now, Back to Our Program

Posted on January 8, 2012 by Lavinia Plonka

Last spring, I went on a three week trip to Europe.  Or at least I think I did. In the film Total Recall, based on a novel by Philip K. Dick, Arnold Schwarzenegger experiences a virtual vacation on Mars that turns into a nightmare when he discovers the chip up his nose. As I reflect on my trip, I have to confess that there were moments on that trip that were, well, suspicious.

As my train clacked through the Swiss countryside, blonde cows wearing photogenic bells munched contentedly on the manicured, emerald slopes.  Cottages straight out of a Ricola ad dotted the neat squares of farm and pasture.  Picturesque villages with smiling, rosy cheeked bicyclists whizzed past.  Jet lagged and disoriented, I murmured, “It looks just like Switzerland.” I could imagine Heidi scampering down the slope.  Was that Shirley Temple over there?  As I disembarked from the train, the unmistakable scent of cow manure dispelled my fear that I might be dreaming.

Then I went to Prague.  Like a Disney version of a Kafka novel, the streets of Old Town were a relentlessly cheerful labyrinth of passageways that always led us back to the square with the famous astronomical clock which always seemed to have just finished ringing.  Baffled, I’d stand with the hundreds of tourists staring upward at the clock, waiting for something more to happen than the fifteen second appearance of some statues of saints peeking through a door. Many still had cameras raised in anticipation of some grand epiphany; perhaps a precession of the equinoxes or some herald of astronomical wonder to reward their sweaty vigil.  I’d leave them standing and resume my Sisyphus-like prowl, searching for a bridge to the other side of the river.

Every street held a tribute to Kafka: a Kafka tour, Kafka posters, portraits, T shirts and mugs. If Prague Castle was the model for Disney’s Magic Kingdom, Kafka had become its ironic Mickey Mouse.

After about the fourth time of finding myself in the square, I became suspicious.  Was I trapped in some sort of Sartre play, doomed to eternity with no exit?  I stared at my sister, wondering if perhaps she had been replaced by a virtual model.  And then, there it was, The Charles Bridge.  Reality snapped back into focus.  I wasn’t in a Kafka novel after all.

I was so relieved that I didn’t see the stair I tripped over, falling flat on my face at the foot of the bridge. A concerned crowd gathered as I stood up. I touched my nose. Intact. Looked at my hands, not a scratch.  My pants weren’t even torn.  It was as if it hadn’t happened. My sister stared. I shrugged. “A glitch in the Matrix,” I quipped.

 For those who haven’t seen the movie, The Matrix proposes that all of us are actually living a virtual reality, dreaming a life no more real than the Holodeck on Star Trek. You can manipulate this virtual world once you recognize which program is running.  Clearly injury was not part of my vacation program.  Still….

 I’ve always suspected that life is really a movie where each of us is the writer, director and star.  As I walked through the streets of Cieszyn, Poland, where my father grew up, scenes from my previous visits played out on the transformed yet so familiar movie set of past adventures.

My favorite café had become a Citibank.  In fact, it seemed that much of Poland was owned by Citibank, with billboards, buildings and even the airport shouting its logo.  Had I entered a dimension where Poland had changed its name?  For a tense moment, I rationalized. After all, in our capitalist country we have places like Toyota Center Stadium, US Cellular Field, PNC Bank Art Center.  Why not a country? But surely a country named Citibank would never speak Polish. 

Speaking of which, no one was more surprised than I to discover that after not speaking Polish for thirty years, I suddenly knew the language as well or better than I had before. After a dozen people remarked on my fluency, I began to feel for the chip in my head.

When we arrived at our hotel in Budapest, we were greeted by a huge poster announcing that all the art in the hotel was painted by someone named Donald Sultan.  The first sentence on his bio read, “Donald Sultan was born in Asheville, NC.” Really, out of all the cities in the world, I picked the one hotel in Hungary that references the city I live in. A New York friend I haven’t seen since he moved to Hungary fifteen years ago showed up carrying an Asheville Art Museum tote, with no memory of how he had acquired it.  In the movie Dark City, where citizens are re-programmed with different memories every night by evil aliens, William Hurt carries around an accordion that he says his mother gave him.  Thing is, he can’t remember his mother’s name.

 My sister and I joke about all the coincidences.  Being from LA, she can’t imagine why Asheville would be so prominent in a city so far away.  I try to convince her that Asheville is famous. “Why even Obama came here,” I say.  “He had lunch at 12 Bones!”

 I flew home the next day, my sister stayed on.  At Atlanta airport I got a text from her. “I just walked across the Danube and passed a guy wearing a 12 Bones T Shirt.” Perhaps, As Marc Talbot proposed in his book, The Holographic Universe, we really are creating reality every second. 

The first morning I awoke at home, I opened my eyes. My room was vast, with fresco paintings on the wall, a chandelier and a castle view outside my window.  “Where am I, where am I?” I muttered.  I closed my eyes and opened them again to my nightstand, my softly snoring husband, the half open closet door, the comforting sound of towhees in the yard.  Finally, I had created home.

 

 

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Going To Extremes

Posted on December 26, 2011 by Lavinia Plonka

 I’m into extreme sports.  I know, I don’t look it. Soft around the middle, gray roots peeking out of the bright red henna, vertically challenged.  Wikipedia defines extreme sports as “certain activities perceived as having a high level of inherent danger.” It also says that “Extreme sports tend to be more solitary than traditional sports.” That’s what I love about my dangerous activities, I get to compete with myself.

Wikipedia also says that most extreme athletes are young. I did begin at a young age with each of my chosen sports.  I trained hard, and while the thrill is gone from some of the challenges, I still often find myself going for “the gold” more often than someone my age probably needs to do. For those of you who think that you’d like to include extreme sport in your lives but can’t figure out how to integrate it into your lifestyle, I offer the following primer.  But remember, only you can assess how much adrenaline you really need to feel good. 

Race Against the Clock

This began as a passive aggressive strategy to drive my parents crazy when I was a teenager.  Every morning, I would find some way to delay departure for school.  Sometimes I needed to listen to the last part of the Moody Blues “Nights in White Satin” one more time.  Or start the homework I hadn’t done the night before.  Maybe the Dippity Do had glued my hair to the curler and I was turning into a sobbing, tangled mess.  Each day, my parents would take turns screaming upstairs till I finally charged down the stairs, skidded out the door, powerwalked the half mile to the school, raced to my homeroom and slid into my seat as the bell rang.  It was before the era of pumping fists and happy dances, but inwardly I gave myself points for how late I had left, how many delaying tactics I had employed, and how close to the bell I had arrived. 

More than forty years later, this has been refined into a whirlwind dance.  Often I’ll actually be ready to leave the house on time.  If I walked out of the house at that moment, I could drive the speed limit to my office or appointment and arrive with a few minutes to spare.  But something in me can’t do it.  I must rise to the challenge. It could be as simple as deciding to pay a bill online in the thirty seconds I have left before I’ll be “late.”

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, her fingers are flying across the keyboard.  Will she get the site up on time?  What was the url anyway, was it ATT.com? . Net? Or was it myatt.org?  The clock is ticking.  There it is. But wait!  The password.  Did she change it?  Damn!  Invalid log in or password!  Security question!  What was the make of your first car.  Well it was a Volkswagen.  Or did I spell it Volkswagon? Or are we talking about the Plymouth, yes!  I’m in!  But wait, why does it say my bill is $434?  What have they done now? I have to call them, NOOOOOO! The buzzer goes off. 

I have been known to start making stock five minutes before departure.  Dye my hair twenty minutes before leaving.  Have a fashion fit moments after I should have already left.  Finally, I dash to the car, load the trunk, slip in the seat, then remember: the cellphone, the folder for the meeting, lunch, kiss your husband, or all of the above.  Sometimes I have to run three times from the car.  Who needs cardio?      

I fly down our driveway, cut off the car coming down the hill, slide through yellow lights, zip around sleepy pedestrians, and arrive on time.  Yes!  Happy dance, slap me five, I have beat my personal record.  The adrenaline pumps.  You rock, baby!

Hindu Goddess or the Multi-tasking Championship

 I’ll be talking to my sister on the phone. “What are you doing?” I ask. 

“Baking cranberry muffins and folding the laundry,” she replies.  “And you?”

“Great idea! I’m googling cranberry muffin recipes as we speak. Got my Ipad in the kitchen so I can keep making the pesto, while downloading some songs from Itunes and, hold on a second, “ I hit the food processor to blend the pesto, and turn to load the dishwasher as the processor whirs, “OK, I’m back,  you there?”

After a pause, my sister says, “Huh? Yeah, I’m here,” my sister replies.  “I was just photographing the hummingbird nest outside my window while I waited for you.”

Of course it started when we were young.  My sister blames the combination of Catholic School (idle hands make a devil’s workshop) and a wildly chaotic upbringing. She said our multi-tasking compulsion is the result of a psychological need to fill every corner of the mind so that we wouldn’t have time to fear inevitable family dramas.

But I think it was more about doing what I wanted to do while I was doing what I was supposed to do. I began training at around age nine.  Forced into early accordion bondage, I was supposed to practice on the cursed squeezebox an hour a day.  My parents’ dream of getting me out of the poverty cycle was to turn me into a child prodigy so I would someday get to perform on Lawrence Welk.  I’m not kidding.  They would make me watch Lawrence Welk every Saturday night and each time Myron Floren came on to play Lady of Spain or Flight of the Bumblebee, a parental unit would slap me on the shoulders and say, “If you keep practicing that could be you!”  Little did they know that I was secretly nurturing the desire to become a Hulabaloo dancer and felt like the Ancient Mariner carrying the albatross around his neck each time I donned the instrument.  (Years later, I’ve come to love the accordion.  But it’s a known psychological phenomenon that victims come to love their torturers….)

I learned to improvise simple gypsy melodies that from the kitchen, sounded somewhat like music.  My mother, who loved anything in a minor key, would lie on the couch in her perpetual migraine haze, sighing about her life in the Old Country.  Meanwhile, on my music stand was the latest Nancy Drew novel, which I could read as my fingers flew across the keys.  I eventually mastered memorizing my history lesson while playing so that I could dispense with two distasteful tasks simultaneously. 

To this day, nothing gives me greater pleasure than the challenge of cooking, talking on the phone, and googling information for both activities all at the same time.  I can have a business phone conversation while spreading manure for my garden without the other person ever suspecting that while bull shitting, I’m also shoveling shit. My husband Ron will sometimes come home to find me talking, stirring and dancing simultaneously. 

The danger factor?  Oh yes.  Multi tasking while driving. No I don’t text. But I eat, look up addresses, listen to audio books and talk on the phone simultaneously. No law against that! Yet.

 Pile It On! Weight Lifting Competition

 Ron has a saying, “You never know you’ve had enough until you have too much.” As a mature business woman who has worked to embody principles like, “Listen to your inner guidance system,” “Only accept things that make you feel good,” “Follow your bliss,” etc. etc.  I should know better.

But there is something about being needed that is such a dysfunctional rush, like doing some illicit 70’s party drug. Nothing gets me going more than someone asking me for help.  Except maybe the thrill of then having them say, “Wow, thanks, no one can do it like you.”

 Back when I was in showbiz, this need to be needed landed me at gigs where I had to play a sexy, drunken elf, pretend I was the girlfriend of the host flown in from France, dance the Paso Doble in platform shoes and tell fortunes to Fortune 500 executives (“People don’t really appreciate your creative side. And I see some profit coming up in the next quarter.”) Nowadays I write, edit, counsel, cook, organize and speak in addition to my “day job.” I’ve rescued horrendous articles, given talks at elder day care centers, cleaned out closets and held hands just because people said the magic words, either, “I need your help,” or “I’ve got a cool idea for a project!”

Then to make it more exciting, I add a project of my own.  (“I think I’ll write a book!  And I’ll have it ready in two months!”) But that’s not enough.  Because there are still a few hours left in the week.  So I’ll start a new garden.  Or clean the attic. After all, you can’t just “think” all the time.  Someone once said that workaholism is society’s legitimized addiction.  The worst that can happen is you get a better resume.  I don’t do it for that.  I just like to see how I score. 

 There are so many more. Can I make it down our snaky hill without having to hit the brakes? Can I make it through Sam’s Club without buying a gas grill or fuzzy slippers? How fast can I print and trim one hundred schedules? And of course, no one has to know about the batch of schedules I totally messed up. Or the fourteen glitter t shirts I ended up with from Sam’s. I only count the winnings.  Life, when played with gusto, is its own extreme sport.

 What’s your extreme sport? 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Of Money and Mushrooms

Posted on July 23, 2011 by Lavinia Plonka

The other day, I was hiking along Laurel Creek.  In the summer, I always bring a bag for wild discoveries: from porcinis to wine berries.  I had forgotten to bring one, so I grabbed my car trash bag.  I felt a little silly walking through the woods swinging my little trash bag, especially because there didn’t seem to be a mushroom in sight and some other hikers had obviously cleaned out the blackberry patch. But I KNEW they were there.  My eyes raked the clearings, I lost interest in conversation.  I had become The Huntress, the woman on the prowl, and mere conversation became trivial.  Someone told me to give it up and just enjoy the walk.

And then I saw one bolete.  It was well past its prime.  Sodden, bug ridden, collapsing on itself and absolutely inedible.  “Looks like you missed the harvest,” someone commented. I picked it up and it disintegrated in my hand. But I knew – where there’s one, there’s more. And suddenly, there were mushrooms everywhere.  Every fourth step was a porcini, or one of the delicious milkies.  Soon enough, my little auto trash bag was jammed and we were walking carrying mushrooms in our hands by the stalks.

It seemed as if we had picked every healthy, edible mushroom along the way.  Imagine our surprise to discover MORE MUSHROOMS along the same path on the return trip.  Chanterelles suddenly appeared.  I gleefully gathered more, stuffing them in my friends’ pockets. “You see,” I gloated.  “I KNEW  there would be mushrooms.  When there is no doubt, you manifest what you desire – I just needed to carry a bag.”  “Hmmph” said one person.  “If that’s the case, why are you wasting your time manifesting mushrooms?  Why aren’t you manifesting money?”  Properly chastened, I turned to walk down the path.  Sitting on the path in front of me was $15.

I wasn’t sure whether the universe was thumbing its nose at my friend, or at me. I found myself casting surreptitious glances on the trees to see if they would suddenly sprout cash.  It is a holographic universe after all, and anything at all can happen.  But alas, my compatriots’ belief system cancelled out any potential miracles and no more money appeared.

I was raised to believe that money was scarce and that I was a have not.  Any time it seemed like things were looking up, even a bit, something went down – the car broke down, I was felled by bronchitis, the ceiling fell down (honest to god, the ceiling fell down in the house).  It was as if the universe itself was conspiring to keep me down. Finally one day, when I was feeling particularly triumphant about having actually paid more than the minimum on my escalating credit card bill, I went ice skating, did a twirl and fell with a crash on the ice.  I dislocated a rib and was in horrible pain.

I finally gave in and went to the chiropractor, who set me straight and told me I’d have to come back a few more times.  I burst into tears.  “I can’t!” I wailed.  “I can’t afford it! I am so broke I can’t even pay attention!  I don’t even have enough money for groceries. What am I going to do?”  I wept.  The chiropractor shrugged .  “Then don’t pay me.”

My head shot up.  “What?”

“Money is just another form of energy.  If you don’t pay me, I’ll get the money from somewhere else.  Or you’ll pay in some other way.  Everything in life is paid for, money is just one kind of currency.”

I was utterly shocked.  She wasn’t giving me a handout.  She was giving me a lesson.  I went home dazed.  If I haven’t been paying cash for things, what the heck was I paying with?   I sat down and wrote down how I spent each day.  I realized that I spent a good hour a day worrying. Worrying about the bills.  Worrying about my career.  Worrying about the future.  Could it be possible? “I am rich, “ I thought.  “I’m loaded with worry.  I’m rolling in negativity.  I have a wealth of fears. If I spent half the time focusing on allowing money into my life that I spend penny pinching and angsting, I’d probably be a millionaire!”  Time became a currency.  Emotional energy became a currency.  It was clear I was wasting time and emotional energy.  Was it possible, that in spite of all my apparent efforts, I was wasting money as well?

You bet!  I was wasting money on interest payments, late payments and penalties.  I was wasting money repairing a car that should have been replaced years ago.  I was wasting money on cigarettes that I thought I needed to calm me down.  I was wasting money on gas driving to perform at gigs I didn’t want to do, eating take out food because I had no time to pack a lunch.  Suddenly everywhere I looked, I realized I was leaking cash.  I was a money sieve.

If all you need to manifest mushrooms is a bag, what do you need to manifest cash?  My Dad used to make fun of people who believed they could just get rich.  “Sure thing, just open your wallet and let the cash fly in!”   Of course!  It’s the wallet!  If I never open my wallet, nothing can enter, right? And if each time I open the wallet, it’s laced with worry ….. I decided to invest in something positive and enrolled in a training for the Feldenkrais Method.  The next day, out of the blue,  I was offered a fabulous job working for the Guggenheim Museum that paid my entire tuition for the next four years.  Later, as I was struggling to develop my practice, it felt like money was flying out, nothing was coming in. An inner voice kept telling me to go to India, but I refused because “I couldn’t afford it.”   I got so sick I couldn’t work, even if there was any work to be had.

Heeding the lesson, I bought a ticket to India with my credit card and went with borrowed cash.  When I returned, flat broke, but absolutely inspired, I once again got an unexpected call, this time to join a medical practice and start their movement education division.

I realize it’s not just about emptying the wallet.  It’s about being ready for it to be filled.  Like the mushroom bag, I need to KNOW that the cash is there waiting for me. And it’s a skill.  You can’t just pick any mushroom.  And you have to be in the right environment, mushrooms don’t grow on sidewalks and money doesn’t grow on trees.  If I spend my energy wisely, I am amply rewarded – with cash, friends, health and learning.  If I waste energy, close off my wallet, tighten my heart, there is no flow.  Things stagnate and poverty ensues – poverty of the heart as well as the pocketbook.

Once I became a Feldenkrais teacher, I found many of my students needed a chiropractor.  Guess who I referred them to?  That chiropractor’s investment in me yielded way more than I would have paid her alone. I remembered the law from High School physics – energy can never be created or destroyed.  It can only be transformed.  With just a change of attitude, anyone can transform the energy of worry into the energy of money.  Just open your wallet and let the money fly in.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Forget Something?

Posted on June 14, 2011 by Lavinia Plonka

Scarecrow “They took my arm and they threw it over there!  And then they took my legs and threw them over there!”

Tin Man “That’s you all over.”

I have several vivid memories of forgetting.  The first one was about age eight.  My mother had discovered the Sears outlet and we were diving into bins of underwear like pirates into a treasure chest.  “Mine, all mine.” I clutched all the new panties my chubby fingers could grab.  Never again would I worry about being in a car accident and having the hospital staff cluck cluck over my ragged briefs.  I could move on to more weighty subjects like ending the Cold War or how I could con my father into more spare change so I could win the Mission Money collection contest and get a glimmer of approval from Sister Giovanni.

As we stood at the check out, my mother looked at me with a rare smile, clutching her lace trimmed slip with the adjustable straps.  Then she got the look: eyes bulging, eyebrows raised, head forward.  She hissed, “Where is your pocketbook?”  In the orgy of new lingerie, I had misplaced my first, my best, my only pocketbook, a red patent leather fantasy with a cool clasp that you turned to open.  The blood drained from my face.  I had $3 in that purse.  My mother swerved out of the line, dragging me back through disgruntled women who were busy burying themselves in discounted blouses.  We tore the underwear bin apart.  Looked through all the socks.  Tears streaked my desperate face.  This was it.  I’d never have a pocketbook again.  Let alone cash.  A woman approached us, holding my little purse.  “Did you lose this, little girl?” she asked kindly.  My mother thanked her profusely and turned to me.  “What are we going to do with you?  I swear you’d forget your head if it wasn’t attached!”

Shortly after that, I lost the pocketbook again.  Terrified that my mother would find out, I resorted to supernatural help, earnestly beseeching St. Anthony, the Catholic Patron Saint of Lost and Found, to help me remember where I put it.  A few days later, I found it in the attic in our cool junk bin.  I never told my mother. I was sure St. Anthony had put it there for me to find.  I would have never done that.

Since then, I have left my purse at parties, in shopping carts, in cabs and in restaurants. I rack my brains to try to retrace my steps, to remember where it may have gone astray, then finally turn to my patron saint.  Only then do I remember.  It is a vivid experience, as if suddenly, everything has come together. Like the Scarecrow, my parts were scattered, and now I’ve reconnected the neurons that keep my thoughts together, my head on my shoulders, my purse beside me.

A woman’s purse is like a limb, sometimes even forming a hollow in the shoulder from the years of hauling apparently unnecessary things.  Then comes that moment when someone says, “Does anyone have a nail file, bandaid, lozenge, mint, hairbrush, tampon, aspirin, pen, the Yellow Pages, a map of the NYC Subway system, the original eight track of Helen Reddy’s “I Am Woman”, the solution to the world energy crisis?” And you casually root around in your purse, muttering something like, “I think I have one in here somewhere,” producing the requested item to the delight and surprise of the onlookers.  Unfortunately, this magic does not work when you are looking through the same collection of items for your keys as the rain is pouring down, a strange man has followed you into the parking lot and you have paper shopping bags you can’t put down.  It’s a mystery.

When I have the opportunity to travel somewhere without my purse, there is inevitably a moment where I stop dead, trying to figure out what’s missing. What have I forgotten? And sometimes, I have my purse, but I’m so used to carrying it, that I forget it’s there.  “Oh my god, I forgot my….oh, heh heh, here it is.” Men are no exception to this phenomenon.  I’ve watched my husband Ron, an endless source of entertainment, ransack the house looking for the glasses perched on his head.

Neuroscientists are always poking around in our heads trying to find our memories.  Some speak about the functioning of the amygdala, a tiny little part of the brain that seems to store the unforgettable memories. I’ve hoped that I could delete some of my old memories so that there might be room on that little hard drive for remembering names of people I meet and recent conversations.  Surely there is no reason to keep remembering the time I forgot about a concert engagement and got a call from the stage manager asking me where I was.  Or that pre-pubescent period when I decided that my parents couldn’t possibly be my real parents and I renamed myself Sredni Vastar after a ferret in a short story by Saki.

Then there’s the myelin – the fatty protein coating on the neurons.  Apparently this carries information through the nervous system.  There’s even a theory that low fat diets can cause myelin loss.  So now I eat butter and say I’m feeding my neurons.

Muscle memory is bandied about as the reason certain habits don’t quit, like the limp that remains years after a sprained ankle.  I once had a student whose ribs were held as tightly as armor. All attempts to introduce movement came to a dead end. “It’s muscle memory,” she announced.

“Oh, were you injured there?” I asked.

“No, it’s from the corset.”

“Corset?” I didn’t quite understand.

“In my last life, I had to wear a corset.  It was during the 19th century you see.”  I can’t remember where I put my keys, and she can remember her last life.  Where is the fairness in this? Then again, I’d hate to imagine the state of her amygdala.

When I was a girl, I had no idea that my Mother, who had survived capture by the Nazis, had Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Neither did she, since no one had heard of it yet.  I did not understand that certain triggers catapulted her brain’s hard drive into replaying scenes from the war. Whenever my father was even a minute late from work, no matter what the weather, she’d put on her coat and hat, grab her purse and start walking the streets looking in the gutters for his dead body.  It was really embarrassing when people brought her home. Even worse, my Father, coming home minutes later, would launch into violent cursing as he tore out of the house looking for her. So one day, we hid her purse.  She tore the house apart, then collapsed on the couch.  Instantly, my 7 year old sister, my 2 year old brother, who thought it was a marvelous game, and I jumped on her, pinning her to the couch,.  “Where is my pocketbook?”  she wailed, “What have you done with my pocketbook?”  By the time my father got home, five minutes later, we were all sobbing on the couch.  My Mother held onto her purse even when she was in hospice.  I still can’t bring myself to get rid of it.  I’ll forget I put it in the credenza, then suddenly there it is, and with it the rush of memories washes over me in a tsunami of nostalgia and grief.

But what really mystifies me the most is when I forget myself.  It can happen at any moment.  I’ll be driving down the highway, and suddenly realize that I’m on the highway heading away from home when I was just taking a trip to the health food store.  Or I’m walking along a beach, so deeply in conversation with an imagined adversary that suddenly I say out loud, “I really don’t think so,” just as I pass an elderly man who looks at me pityingly.  For a split second, I experience clarity, like the moment I remembered where I left my purse.  Except in this case, it wasn’t my purse that got forgotten somewhere, it was me.  My thoughts are in the past or the future, my body is scattered all over town, and then whoosh!  Everything comes back together, I am re-membered.   I reach into my purse for my notebook to jot down this moment of enlightenment.  As I grope,  I realize my wallet is not in my purse.  I left it on the kitchen counter. Thank goodness that at the bottom of my pocketbook is at least $4  in change from the time I forgot to properly close my change purse…..

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Embracing Change, Bracing for Change

Posted on January 21, 2011 by Lavinia Plonka

Due to the vagaries of circumstance and fortune, I spent a period of my adult life reading Tarot cards at parties as Madame Lavinia.  I look back on that time and wonder if that was yet another unplanned detour from my still mysterious life purpose, or part of the big plan. It had begun by accident: an agent who knew I dabbled in Tarot called me in hysterics, their psychic was sick (couldn’t she have predicted that?). Could I, would I throw together a gypsy costume and read cards?  “I can’t do that!  I’m not psychic!” But no excuse would deter her from her conviction that a phony seeress was better than none.

I sat at this party feeling like a cross between a con artist and a blithering idiot.  “You’re going through some big changes at the moment,”

“Things have been tough, but it’s all going to change,”

“You need a change.” Whenever I was at a loss as to how to interpret the cards, I just had to couch my oracular pronouncements from the perspective of change and I was on a par with the Delphic Pythoness.  Somehow, word got around and next thing I knew, (although I should have seen it in the cards), Madame Lavinia was booked for events ranging from corporate picnics to graduation parties.

Now that we live in a gilded age where “it’s all good” and I’m constantly reminded to be grateful for the abundance I’m manifesting as I flow downstream in my canoe that is attracting all the things I want in my life, and I’m no longer allowed to whine or wallow in self pity when somehow the law of attraction has gone awry, I rarely read my own cards anymore.  After all, why bother reading your cards if you know that everything is always going to turn out well? That bad is the new good?

Of course, we all want change for the better.  In the past, during particularly dreary days, before I realized that “all change is good”, I’d pull out the cards and say to myself, “Yes, things are pretty Sh%*#@y right now, but they are about to change.”  Then I’d lay out the cards.  When the spread dared to intimate more of the same misery, I would quickly gather them up, saying, “Clearly I haven’t shuffled enough.  Give me something better than that…now!”  Deep inside however, I always believed the first reading, and would inwardly hear one of my Mom’s many negativity mantras, “Things always get worse before they get better.”

Now however, I just have to remember to re-frame my attitude toward some of those negative cards and make it positive. For example, there’s one called the Tower.  It shows screaming people leaping out of a burning castle or skyscraper.  One could say, “Uh oh, there’s a catastrophic change ahead.”  But if we re-frame it from the new, “everything is beautiful” perspective, we could say, “You are about to experience a magnificent opportunity to liberate yourself from old attachments.”  One of my favorite doom and gloom cards is the 10 of swords.  A person lies face down, stabbed in the back by 10 swords.  The Tarot historically defines this as ruin, betrayal, utter despair.  What a wonderful time to treat yourself to a massage! Better yet, let’s look at the therapeutic quality of being punctured. Maybe it’s just that a few sessions of acupuncture are in your future.

All the great philosophies tell us that change is inevitable. The I Ching is actually called The Book of Changes. Just when you think things couldn’t get worse, they do.  Although when you’ve been knocked up side the head by the 10 of swords, be comforted that even this can be interpreted positively, there’s no place to go but up!

There is a Persian folk tale about a caliph who charged his ministers with the task of finding something that would always make him smile.  Of course, he threatened them with death for failure.  On the appointed day, the ministers presented him with a ring.  When he looked at the engraving, he smiled.  On the ring was written, “And this too shall pass.”

Change is inevitable, whether you do anything or not.  If I don’t drink my opened bottle of wine, it will turn into vinegar.  On the other hand, if I forget about the apple cider in the fridge, it becomes hard cider.  See?  It’s all good.

While there are people who create change, thrive on change, are addicted to change, from movie stars re-arranging their anatomy to people who need to move every two years, I would argue that even their need to change is habitual and connected with trying to make things predictable.  Truth is, even though we know change is inevitable, most of us fear, abhor, despise, run away from even the thought of change. As if that would do any good.

However, when do you let change happen and when do you initiate change?  Or is even my decision – whether it’s a fashion fit before a party or quitting my job – really mine, or am I just a random particle bouncing about according to laws I don’t understand?

Everything is always changing, even when we don’t notice it.  I imagine a conversation between two rocks sitting on the bank of a river.

“Hey.”

“Hey what.”

“I’m eroding.”

“I’ve noticed you’re looking thinner.  You look great!”

“I dunno.  I could probably still lose a bit on the bottom.”

“Well, you better be careful.  Try to change too much and you’ll do something radical.  Did you see what Al did?
“How could you miss it?  He went right over the edge of the bank.”

“Well, he’s been on the edge for a long time.  I warned him.”

“Yeah, but to just go like that.”

“Crazy, huh.”

“Hey, he’ll survive, he likes to take chances. Anyways, let’s face it, you never know when change is going to hit you.  Look at Ilsa, man.”

“I know, she totally cracked!”

“Who would have expected Ilsa to fall apart like that.  She was such a rock!”

“It’s always the quiet ones.”

“And now she’s in pieces.  I don’t think she’s going to be able to get herself back together.”

“Well, she was no spring chicken.”

“Yeah.  We got time.”

“God willin’ and the creek don’t rise.”

“I hear you, man.”

When we decided to leave NJ for the mystical mountains of Asheville, I felt reborn.  I ran up and down stairs, packing boxes, organizing yard sales, giving things away.  I couldn’t wait to start over.  Whenever I began in a new school, a new camp, a new job, it was an opportunity to try again, to re-invent myself. All the missteps of the past were completely erased, like an angel coming and wiping all the black marks off my soul after a really good confession. No one in Asheville would know I’d ever been a mime, or a fortune teller.  I would have no past, except what I was willing to divulge. Of course, as the saying goes, wherever you go, you take yourself with you.  So many times in the past the same mistakes, the same fears had leapt in to cause a re-run in my life’s movie.  Now, once again there was the possibility that I could succeed in becoming the new me.

The other day, one of my students came a bit late to class.  “Please start without me,” she said, “I’m going to the bathroom to change into something else.”  For just a moment, I experienced a little thrill run through me.  What was she going to change into?  In that instant, I imagined her emerging as an illuminated superheroine, or one of the witches in Macbeth, or  a bunny rabbit, even as my prosaic self accepted that she was merely changing from her jeans to sweats.

While I packed our house in NJ, I barely noticed that my husband Ron would slip out of the house in the morning and return in the evening without so much as packing a box.  I assumed he was busy packing up his studio.

But he wasn’t.  He was sitting in his studio, paralyzed.  A week before the move, I asked him how it was going and Ron assured me he was almost done.  When the movers arrived at his studio, they not only had to finish packing his stuff, but they had to order another truck because Ron’s “few boxes” amounted to another whole move.  Even after everything was gone, the house was empty, the studio was empty, the new family was waiting outside, Ron just stood in the house.

I asked him if he was scared. “No, why?”

“Because you’re standing stock still in the middle of our former house.”

“Huh?”

“It’s time to go now. We’re moving to Asheville.”

“Right, right.”

To this day we, or rather I, joke that Ron’s heels left skid marks on the floor in our old home as I dragged him to his new life.  He doesn’t think it’s funny.  And of course, now that he’s here, he claims he couldn’t wait to leave NJ.

We’re settled here in Asheville.  People found out that I was a mime, and they think it’s cool.  My garden is slowly evolving to look like my garden in NJ.  I have moments of road rage on Patton Ave. So I guess I’m feeling pretty comfortable. I decide, why not read my Tarot cards?  They come up – two of disks: change, five of cups: disappointment, The Moon: fear of the unknown.  I quickly gather them up and say, “Clearly I haven’t shuffled enough!”  Then I tell myself, it’s all good, this too shall pass, and I put my paddles into my canoe and hold on tight.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

New Beginnings

Posted on January 1, 2011 by Lavinia Plonka

January 1 is an arbitrary date, decided by a pope or an emperor somewhere in the mists of time. There are many cultures around the world that celebrate a different New Year. Yet they’ve all come to agree that for practical purposes, we all start anew on January 1.  In a time when it seems like the world is being ripped apart by sectarian violence, separatists and who should have won American Idol, it’s easy for us to miss how fantastically unified the world is comparing to the way it was even fifty years ago.

Who would have thought that an Ohio housewife would be adding cumin to her beans? Or that Swedish pop stars would hire Muslim Qawwali singers as back up? As we speak, millions of people of every nationality are watching Kim Kardashian, an Armenian-American celebutante, shop, fight with her sisters, have sex, and sell perfume without once thinking that her great grandparents fled genocide, or even about whether she’s American or Armenian. Small children know what they want at the Chinese take-out place.  I never even tasted Chinese food (except an unsatisfying encounter with a can of Chun King at a friend’s house) until I was seventeen.   Tea Party members use phones manufactured in Korea and watch Hi Def TVs made in Japan.  Leftist environmentalists fuel their cars with biodiesel made from palm oil grown in Indonesia. Taliban fighters post on Facebook and make You Tube videos. We really are the world.  And for the world at large, the new year begins on January 1.

There are those  who believe that the Earth is a living being, some even go so far as to say a female being.  I got to thinking about how she’s looking at 2011.  Is she done with us?  Does she have any advice for the new year?

So I got in touch with Mother Earth, (it’s in my unlimited plan from ATT). It took a while to find a common language, my cellphone translation app couldn’t seem to understand EARTH.  We finally settled on an email chat which I translated on Babelfish, a name she really appreciated.  Ma Earth of course had no need to type, since she is everything.

Me: So, Mother, may I call you Mother?  Is it true? Is the human experiment over?

Earth: Oh my goodness!  Is that what you call yourselves?  That sounds so serious.  I was just having a bit of fun when I let you all start running around all over me.

Me: What do you mean?  We’ve dumped billions of tons of plastic, poisoned the air, wiped out countless species, waged wars that have killed millions.  You call that fun?

Earth: Well I thought you’d enjoy participating in the terra forming.

Me: What?

Earth: I’m wanting a new look.  You know, things have been pretty much status quo for a few eons.  Even before you all appeared, things had pretty much evened out.  Oh sure, I’d get a visit now and then from a passing asteroid or comet, bringing in some new material, some new ideas.  And the sun is good for a few solar storms here and there.  But really, since I messed around with splitting the continents and tipped the axis a bit so I could get a a little snow, OK a lot of snow, life’s been pretty ho hum in the creativity department. I admit I did get a little carried away with that Ice Age.

Me: So what are you saying, that we are doing what you want right now?

Earth:  #%&k0*! Oh oops.  That got lost in translation. I was just laughing. Gotta be careful, that’s been known to set off volcanoes in Indonesia. Of course you’re doing what I want!  Do you actually think you’re in charge?  Oh, ho, ho, that is precious!

Me: Um.  Yes, Ma’am, Mother, um.  Are you saying we’re NOT responsible for global warming?

Earth: Well, now that depends on your point of view.  6 billion bodies riding in cars, not to mention the 100 million tons of methane from farting cows has been a big help. Oh yes, and the plastic.  I’ve been wanting to get all that oil out of my pores for ages.  Which reminds me, do you think I look fat?

Me: What? Fat?  I mean, you’re, you know, round…ish. But you’re a planet, aren’t planets supposed to be round?
Earth: Someone said I’m pear shaped.  How rude is that. I’m just trying to expand possibilities. After all, galaxies can be whatever shape they want.  I just think I’d look cute with a little cinch around the equator, maybe a gaseous glow above China.

Me: I think there’s one there already.  Smells bad though.

Earth: How can anything smell bad?  It’s all organic! So what did you want to know?

Me: The future. Our future.  Humanity.  Are we going to be extinct?

Earth: Now whatever gave you such an idea?  What would mosquitoes eat?  How would all my viruses survive?  Why a world without humans would be a disaster!  Look what it was like before you got here, same old same old.  Nobody messing with the chemistry.  Nobody altering the environment.  Sure the dinosaurs did a little reconfiguring, but then they got wiped out, oh that was a depressing time, it took me FOREVER to clean up after that asteroid came by.  Left some good minerals though.  Humans also have such high entertainment value.  Honestly, I never know what you’re going to do next.  One minute you’re blowing each other up, the next minute you’re all dancing to Beyoncé.  One minute you’re sacrificing animals (whose idea was that anyway?) and the next you’re protecting them.

Me: Gee, I never thought about myself as entertainment.

Earth: The ultimate spectacle!  You’re better than the movies.

Me: Ahem.  So, do you have any advice for us?  I mean is there anything we should be doing?

Earth: Who do you think I am, your mother?  Oh, right, I guess I am.  I don’t know what anybody SHOULD do.  Only thing I’d suggest is to stop being so afraid of each other.  I mean, it’s not like anybody really wins in the end.  Go find someone you hate and give her a big hug.  From me.  Gotta go, one of my glaciers is calving and I need to be there for the delivery.

Me: Well, thanks, I guess.  Great talking to you.

Earth:  And chocolate!  Eat more chocolate.  When you smile, I smile.  Ciao.

So there you have it.  Chocolate and hugs.  Sounds like a plan.  Happy New Year.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments