Inside The Garden Of Our Imagination. How We Create. Why We Write.

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“I think there are two types of writers: the architects and the gardeners. The architects plan everything ahead of time, like an architect building a house. They know how many rooms are going to be in the house, what kind of roof they’re going to have, where the wires are going to run, what kind of plumbing there’s going to be. They have the whole thing designed and blueprinted out before they even nail the first board up. The gardeners dig a hole, drop in a seed and water it. They kind of know what seed it is, they know if planted a fantasy seed or mystery seed or whatever. But as the plant comes up and they water it, they don’t know how many branches it’s going to have, they find out as it grows. And I’m much more a gardener than an architect.”

                                                               — George R. R. Martin

How we see ourselves creatively has always been a fascinating topic for me. So when I found this excerpt from one of the author’s interviews, I knew right away which camp I belonged. I saw the black and white of it. The explicitness versus the ambiguity. And although these approaches couldn’t be any more different, when it comes to creating, we all start at the same place: the beginning.

For a writer it’s with a blank sheet of paper. For an artist an empty canvas, for a sculptor a lump of clay, and for a novice literary gardener who hadn’t a clue what she was doing … it was nothing more than the dirt beneath her feet. That and vision, I thought when my husband and I first bought the house of our dreams. A house which, by the way, didn’t start out in that blissful condition of completeness nor the small runway strip of garden trailing up the walkway. Both needed loving hands to resuscitate them back to life and a healthy sense of humor which I obviously must have had gazing beyond the rusted pipes, the chipped ceilings, the rotted roof, the leaking swimming pool and the jungle of weeds crawling about—because I didn’t turn and run.

In no time at all I threw myself into the world of gardening. I learned its lingo. I adopted its blueprints, its perfectionisms in order to replicate what Home and Garden and Pinterest promised me. I even suited up in the requisite attire—floppy Aunt Bea hat, Nitrile gloves, gobs of sunscreeen—just to demonstrate my newfound devotion. But devotion wasn’t enough. As plants began dying left and right I realized no matter how quickly I wanted my garden to transform, it was a process. A learning curve. And ridiculously expensive.

I was by no means dripping in money. We had used all our savings as a down payment, so you can imagine the toll it took. But, back then, I was naive and undeterred. Back then my knees didn’t pop like the Tin Man’s. I wanted Monet’s garden no matter what it cost. Like I said … I was naive and undeterred.

Days after work and on weekends when I wasn’t shuttling the children to and from soccer practice and various playdates, I weeded. Up to my eyeballs in compost, I dug. I batted away flies that wanted a piece of me for lunch while watering my charges under a brutal ninety-degree Floridian sun. Weeks turned into months and months turned into years. And as the periwinkles took flight, as the pansies danced their way up to my front door, as the bougainvilleas exploded in purpley-purples up their filigree ladder, I continued to work the garden. Almost every day. Not because I had to anymore, but because I wanted to be surrounded by the comforting silence that had blossomed into a better marriage than the one I had; which was crumbling into ruins.

At a time when I’d hoped my life would take that much-needed uphill turn, the fate gods had different plans for me. So it was there, in the garden, I allowed myself to sink into myself. To reach that sacrosanct place of wounded splendor where judgment, broken hearts, crying babies and monsters did not exist.

Even if it meant for just a little while.

Eventually we got divorced. We sold the house. It wasn’t something that I wanted to do. I had visions of growing old in that house, creating family traditions and watching a life—my life—flourish all around me. But because the financial burden was simply too great for what little I was earning at the time, this place I called home would now be replaced by someone else’s vision. Someone else’s universe.

Yes, I was moving away, but not moving on. That would take a little bit longer.

The decision to write was never a conscious one. Nor did it come to me then. It came a few years later, out of need. The kind of need that feels like you’re drowning and flailing against a silent blue terror. And I knew, just knew if I didn’t at least try to give voice to this feeling, I would be lost.

Why one writes I believe is a question answered differently by everyone. To become famous, to affect change, to alter the course of humanity, to heal those bleeding wounds, to record our stories are the foundations for every work of art.

“We also write to heighten our own awareness of life,” said Anais Nin. “We write to lure and enchant and console others. We write to serenade our lovers. We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection. We write, like Proust, to render all of it eternal, and to persuade ourselves that it is eternal. We write to be able to transcend our life, to reach beyond it. We write to teach ourselves to speak with others, to record the journey into the labyrinth. We write to expand our world when we feel strangled, or constricted, or lonely.”

And if we don’t write …

“You are going to feel like hell if you never write the stuff that is tugging on the sleeves in your heart — your stories, visions, memories, songs: your truth, your version of things, in your voice,” Anne Lamott observed. “That is really all you have to offer us, and it’s why you were born.”

They say those authors we read are those influences that tell us who we are, that help to define us as writers. And I believe that’s true. At one time or another we are the students and they are the teachers.

In my wildest dreams I never imagined myself a gardener. Nor a writer. And much like gardening, a writer’s life is a lonely one. We’re left to our own devices, endless hours at a time. Creating worlds in which we sit day after day, sometimes struggling for the words to come, sometimes not. Typing and trashing, sulking and laughing, drinking lots and lots of coffee, committed and bound — we’re a unique tribe. It’s so goddamn hard to bare all to a sea of nameless faces without wanting to curl up in a ball and die. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wanted to give up. How many times I’ve wanted to scream at the air like a motherfucker! The truth is … it’s so many I’ve stopped counting. And yet, there I am. Every morning. Without fail. A graduate from the Glutton-For-Punishment University in front of that same white screen flashing that same reminder: let’s get busy!

And so I do.

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Immigrant Stew. The Stock From Which We Rise.

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It never seems to fail, that just as I’m getting used to one thing, another comes along and takes its place. And the start of a new year is no different

I must admit, I’m glad the holidays are now behind me. I don’t do parties anymore. I’m not much of a drinker and I personally don’t feel any great need for a crowd around. To me small talk is just that—small talk. Though the whole celebrating thing was great when I was younger. When Jack Daniels and I were on a first-name basis, when it wall all about the gathering of family where gifts, love and food overflowed in some magical abundance beneath wintry skies, snowmen and stories of Hanukkah, a requisite not just for me but for the children I would one day have. But now, now that they are grown and gone from my nest, I’m quite content to simply immerse myself in this sense of quietude I feel I richly deserve while assimilating all this newness in my own uniquely me fashion.

Cleaning. Closets, drawers, cupboards. All those projects that require my utmost attention that I’ve managed to put off for some phantom rainy day. However, once I get started, and once there’s a pile of paperwork sitting in the middle of the living room that I know needs at least an hour or two of shredding, I lose interest. I’m already onto something else. And after a few days, or as long as it takes to acknowledge this monstrous heap on the floor isn’t going to get done anytime soon, I shove the papers back into the bottom of the closet with the hope that I’ll at least get to it before the year is out.

Then somewhere in between all that, when the urge tugs at me the hardest, I find myself rummaging through all the family photos. Photos smooshed haphazardly into three huge sweater bins that I’ve managed to have fit snugly underneath my bed. You see . . . I no longer live in a big house. Over the years my living space has dwindled considerably from four bedrooms to one. And through no quest of my own, I somehow in all that moving, became the designated guardian of these photos. These faces lost in the shuffle of time, more precious than gold. My sister as a teenager, lying on the beach looking up at me, her smile full of promise. My parents, both vibrantly young and glamorous. My cousins, my grandparents, my children, old boyfriends, and an ex-husband whose photos I should have put a match to. They’re all there. Even the pictures of me as a curious toddler, as a young girl showing off her white Go-Go boots, granny glasses and frizzy hair out to the wall. God, I was so crazy then. Struggling like everyone else in the business of navigating through the hurtful and muddy waters of trying to fit in. Oh yeah, I remember those years. And well.

As I linger nostalgically over these snapshots, now yellowed and worn, I can’t help but wonder where would they all be now if my grandparents didn’t come to America? Or worse, if the doors at Ellis Island were locked

To them and all the other Jews, Poles, Lithuanians, Chinese, Italians, Irish that fought tooth and nail to get here? Where would I be? Where would any of us be for that matter? Albert Einstein, Irving Berlin, Aldous Huxley, Helena Rubinstein, I.M. Pei, W.H. Auden. Can you imagine what America’s postcard would look like without these geniuses and giants? Or the generation that followed and their contributions we’d never enjoy? There’d be no Steve Jobs. No Walt Disney. Which means no iPhone, Mickey, Minnie and Donald. You can kiss them all goodbye! 

As children we’re created to see the world through innocent wonder. We leave the chaos of it in the hands of those we imagine to be older and wiser. But that sense of purity only lasts so long, because the way of the world intrudes its ugly head and forces us to endure small skirmishes of hatred and bigotry dished out by neighborhood bullies labeled as nothing more than rites of youthful passage—when in fact they’re anything but, leaving us stained forever. I remember the first time I heard the world “kike.” My sister was eight and I six and we were in the school playground. I needed to go the bathroom and my sister being the eldest, led me there by the hand. Little did we both know that a group of older girls would storm in after us, would grab my sister by the hair, turn her upside down and beat the shit out of her, while I watched on sobbing. As the word continued to pummel into her, I knew it was just a word, but it sliced through me like a knife, nevertheless.

Me and mari2

I suppose the seed of bitterness starts at moments just like this. And while that day remained seared to my brain throughout my life, that and many others that somehow could have, should have broken me, I refused to allow that type of thinking to color my world.

I refused to hate back. Coming from a family whose culture was terrorized and annihilated by some psycho with an ugly mustache, the idea of doing likewise seemed abominable to me. I only had to look at my grandmother. A woman I adored tremendously, who spoke not a lick of English and stood no taller than a breadbox with breasts that swallowed you whole as they sucked you into her embrace, to know that everything I am, I owed to her. A woman of good stock. Someone from humble beginnings that despite the grave risks ahead, trekked willingly across dangerous waters in search of something more out of life, something better.

flo and grandma 2

Who doesn’t want these things? Aren’t we getting tired, getting angry that a day doesn’t go by without news of yet another school shooting? A mosque or synogogue or train station being bombed? People dying just to cross a border? What does it matter that we don’t all look the same, dress the same, pray the same? Isn’t a donut still a donut even if it doesn’t have a hole? Isn’t it much more important for us to see past those differences of ethnicities and focus on all those commonalities of emotion we do share? I’m talking about the basic stuff. The critical and inherent things. Wanting a long life, a healthy life, not to be poor or alone, and a safe place for our children, all our children to thrive and aspire.

Sometimes we easily forget that while the face of America has changed, its beating heart remains very much the same. Yes, things have gotten more complex. Even scary. Yes, we need to take different measures to protect and preserve. But in doing so, we can’t ever lose sight of our most basic premise: We are a nation of immigrants. Those blending cultures, seasoned ideas and colorful talents which in every surging wave built bridges, dams and railroads, towns, villages and cities that in time transformed and spanned across a wondrous and sprawling continent as far as the eye could see.

In Hebrew, the word “reshit” means beginning. Now, I’m not so sure one always needs to hit rock bottom before acknowledging it’s time for a change and to start over, but I do believe that’s exactly where we are. At the bottom. And the best I can do is hope, no pray that we collectively, as people branching out from this magnificently rich pot of immigrant strew, embrace the new year as the beginning to our something better. Okay, maybe it’s a stretch. Maybe I’m just California dreaming here. But miracles do happen every day.

Or so I’ve been told.

 

 

 

Photo credits:  Donsky/Phillips archive

 

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Split to the Core

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As a young girl growing up in New York, I was required to attend Hebrew School. My parents, following in the tradition of their parents, their upbringing, felt that this was where I belonged every Sunday morning, and as I got older, every Wednesday evening as well. They must have imagined I’d miraculously absorb the sense of God somewhere within those walls. Had they known then that I would turn into such a doubting Thomas and forsake the idea of any God, I absolutely believe they would have put their time and money to much better use.

In those early years before I hit the age of twelve, I admit I was a believer in all things magical. My young mind hadn’t yet the wings to think for itself. So, I listened in awe to the telling of all those magnificent Bible stories. Joshua and the Battle of Jericho. The Maccabees and Chanukkah. Noah and his Ark (scratch that Russell Crowe version from the brain. K?). David and Goliath. Bathsheba. I loved them all because they were the seeds from which I sprang.

Holidays were celebrated with the appropriate pomp and ritual. Family and friends would gather around the table on Passover with my father at the head reading through the prayer book, and us kids at the other end wanting the whole shebang over with as quickly as possible so that we could run off in search of the afikoman (matzo) and the dollar bill to whoever found it first.

Nothing then made me want to challenge the universe in which I lived. A universe which as I transitioned from blissfully ignorant childhood to painfully awkward pre-teen hood, had me too distracted and grappling with the uncertainty of my place and who I was in this perky-nosed, skinny, straight-haired world where you were only as good as the body you lived in, to be bothered with anything else.

Perhaps it wasn’t the most religious of upbringings. Even though my father came from Orthodox roots and my mother’s side kept a Kosher home. I imagine that this second-generation from which both my parents stemmed were so caught up in the aftermath of a war, digging their heels into Middle America and keeping up with the Smiths and not so much the Cohens, that they didn’t deem it quite so necessary to be as religious as their parents. So I grew up following a minimal Judaic practice. Which entailed only celebrating and observing the most significant holidays (Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Passover, Chanukkah); going to Temple on only two of them; and lastly being Bat Mitzvahed. (Not sure if that’s a word here folks, so just go it. Thanks!)

And while it seemed all my Jewish peers were doing pretty much the same thing, following this quasi Jew for a day routine, the closer I got toward that pinnacle point of standing in front of a whole congregation of faces I did and didn’t know, reciting a portion of the Haftorah, pledging my commitment to God on my thirteenth birthday, somewhere in between my direction of heart changed. Changed in a way that came as swiftly as learning the Easter Bunny didn’t exist, and as profoundly with its unspeakable dawning that I found myself pivoting away from all that I had known, to search out something more, something impactful that made sense to me. I mean “real” sense.

As you can imagine this upset my parents terribly. While they might have been tourists in their own faith, they still saw themselves as Jews and couldn’t understand my growing need that now led me down a different path toward Buddhism. A path that didn’t materialize right away, rather manifested itself over time after dabbling in numerous abstract schools of philosophy way above my mental pay grade, first. They were horrified to see me kneel before an “alter,” which in reality was the Gohonzon. An encasement that symbolically “reflects the state of Buddhahood inherent in life.” They couldn’t possibly know what it felt like to be welcomed into this world of thinking disciples, who like myself were also seeking an alternate road to that “something more” that didn’t require a belief in a mystical being—only a belief in myself.

That I remained a practicing Buddhist for many years in my OCD world where it’s impossible for me to stay true to anything longer than a minute, was a major feat. When I walked away though, I didn’t walk away empty-handed. I carried a deeper understanding of who I was and would always be. A Jew. Those are my roots right down to my core, an inescapable fact of my being.

In truth, people search their whole lives for all sorts of reasons. For justifications on why things happen the way they do? What does it all mean? What’s our purpose here? It’s simply part of the process. And because asking those questions for which there are no right answers, will only drive you bonkers. I learned that one the hard way. On my sister’s deathbed. So, I simply don’t go there anymore.

How do any of us figure things out, if it isn’t the hard way?

Many times when we view life in retrospect, it’s pretty damn easy to all be bloody geniuses with crystal balls the size of Texas. And for me, it seems almost comical, ironic even and yet not, that I had to travel so far to learn what had been there all along. My mother used to constantly shake her head at my “pigheadedness,” she called it. Always fearing that late night call from the police that I’d be lying in a ditch somewhere. I just don’t know how to do things any other way. Taking the easy route means nothing, sweating out the victories means everything. Even if the conclusion is the same.

Because you see . . . it’s all about the road trip getting there. I had to determine for myself what those defining parts were in order to come to this particular place I’m now standing. A place of bittersweet understanding of my role and my own concept of what it truly means to be a Jew. A person who’s only real job is to carry the cherished stories of my heritage with me wherever I go. And should I somehow pass this sense of embodiment onto my children . . . well, then . . . two points for me!

Look, I realize the sensitivity of this topic. And believe me when I say, “to each his own,” that they are words spoken with the utmost of sincerity. This is what makes this wonderfully, crazy, ridiculous world of ours so great. Or should be great, that we can feel okay about expressing our opinions free of fear and recrimination. When you look at the kaleidoscopic landscape of our society, seeing how different all these moving parts are—all shapes, sizes and flavors—you know, you just gotta love the beauty of it.

In any case, today is Rosh Hashanah. And I will celebrate it. Celebrate the small part I play in this remarkable tribe of people, the beginning of our New Year, the anniversary marking Adam and Eve’s creation. And regardless of your race, religion and slant on reality, from the bottom of my heart I wish to all of you 365 days of health, of prosperity, peace, love and happiness.

L’shanah tovah!

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