Friendly fun

Yesterday, all day, I looked forward to the fun I had planned for last night. It’s something that had been on my calendar for quite some time … something I don’t do nearly often enough: I met up with some girlfriends and just talked and listened … and talked some more.

Was very fun to bring in the first week of the New Year with two of the smartest women I know south (and maybe even north) of the Mason-Dixon Line. These are the kind of women who know politics, know Sarasota, and know how to toss off the words “deus ex machina” in casual conversation.

We swapped stories about dating, marriage, careers, the economy, Alex Sink, New Year ambitions, and when the topic of ambition came up, I mentioned a quote from my newly acquired fun 2010 calendar — “Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition.” (Hey, I didn’t write it, I just report it! — and you won’t believe who said that, by the way, Timothy Leary! … of course he was the same guy who infamously said “Turn on, tune in, drop out” or something to that effect.)

Anyway, it was two hours of fun — even though the topics were often serious — it’s hard not to have fun when you’re with two women you like and admire so much. Which brings me to another quote from my new, obviously highly quotable 2010 fun calendar: “In my friend, I find a second self.”

After I said goodnight to my friends, I drove home (don’t worry, I hadn’t had even one martini!) and when I went to bed, I dreamt of dancing. Dancing on a big floor crowded with people. Dancing a bit clumsily, with no partner, and feeling a bit self-conscious, but still with an admirable portion of abandon.

Dancing! Having fun! Even in my sleep!

Now that’s the kind of fun I’m talking about.

New Year … New Attitude!

The Sarasota Herald Tribune is running an essay of mine in today’s (New Year’s Day, 2010) paper — page 17A for the printaphiliacs among you. (Yes, I think I made that word up!). Or, online at This Year, Let’s Get Happy.

Here’s a snippet:

Do I really want another year of struggling to lose 20 pounds and scrambling to replenish my decimated savings? Isn’t re-caulking the bathtub, reading “Remembrance of Things Past” and clearing out that mess of who-knows-what from under the bed aiming awfully low?

HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Faith, fact and why MC is singing

Last night I woke up in the middle of the night, felt a knot in my stomach and recognized the worry: about family, deadlines, bills, clients who haven’t paid me for work I did last summer, and a retirement account that equals zilch.

It was pitch black; I couldn’t see a thing, but still I climbed out of bed and made my way down the hall to the fridge for some cold water. I took a long drink and leaned against the kitchen counter, looking out the window, wondering, “How did I get here? – to this point in my life where so many worries had piled up so high, and “How will I find my way out of this mess?”

I’m not alone. 2009 has been a year to rock the faith of even the most earnest believers. (more…)

A tigger, not a tiger

“Bouncing is what Tiggers do best.” (A.A. Milne)

Ah, and Tiger Woods is bouncing right now. Bouncing in a slightly different way from when he bounced from his mistress(es?) bed to wife’s, but bouncing nevertheless.

Bouncing is what tiggers do — that’s all they know how to do. Because a real tiger knows when he’s got steak at home versus hamburger from the fast food joint down the street (a la Paul Newman) and apparently Tiger Woods is really just a Tigger after all — all bounce and no bite.

But he's still awfully cute huh? And I hear he's loaded!

Because, ergo, it takes bite, not to mention balls, to not f*ck around. That’s the easiest trick in the world, cheating. C’mon, it’s so passe as to be, um, passe. Show me a man who can keep it in his pants — not because he has to, but because he wants to — and I’ll show you a real tiger in bed. Non-cheaters, and yes, I think I’ve known at least one in my life, are better in bed because they know how to partner for the long haul, not for the tigger-conundrum of “Oh, I like everything I see and everything I taste!”

That’s what happens when you have no character. Everything looks good when you haven’t an ounce of discrimination in your bones. You go from tiger to tigger in the folding back of the bedsheets.

You bounce, and you tippety-toe through likes and dislikes and fancies and non-fancies, and the wives you wed but no longer want to bed and the women you wouldn’t consider marrying but don’t mind bedding.

But let me say this: I could give a rat’s arse about Tigger’s alleged infidelities. It’s all in a nation’s work, that, and we’re a nation of cheaters — whether actual fornication occurs or not, very few are loyal — to our wives, to our jobs, to our collective “values”, to the people who elect us to high office, to our communities, to say nothing of our disloyalty to our own selves. Day in and day out. We deceive ourselves into believing something about ourselves that our actions say, blaringly loud, is categorically untrue.

Here’s the only person I feel sorry for in this case: The Woods baby. That kid will grow up thinking “Sheesh, my Dad couldn’t even wait for me to be out of the womb before he hit it with someone not my mother.” Well, he or she will have plenty of money for therapy visits, at least.

And a word of advice to Tigger’s wife, though I know she won’t take it: Leave him, sweetie. Leave him and never look back and don’t take a dime. Take the kid and work at Mickey D’s if you have to. The schmuck’s not worth the two seconds it would take to cash his check.

Cougar myths … debunked!

This column appeared in print in Creative Loafing newspaper 10/7/09.

The topic of cougarsome cuties chasing cuddly cradle-dwellers is about as tasty an intellectual morsel as dining at the Olive Garden is a gastronomic one. Whether or not women d’un certain âge have sex with younger men is a topic as culturally passé as older men using little blue pills to make it through the night. It’s done; it happens. Why all this talk today about something so yesterday?

MC tries (tries being the operative word) to strike a cou-girrrrrl-icious pose.

The dogma of dogs

I have a love/hate relationship with seeing a car go by with a dog poking its head or sometimes its whole upper body out of a car window. Head raised, ears flapping back, often a tongue hanging out flopping in the wind.

Photo courtesy of engnr_chik on Flickr (some rights reserved)

Feeling that deliciously heady sense of freedom that comes from going fast, feeling the wind on one’s face, knowing somebody else is at the wheel and you’re safe, knowing you’re hair will be a rat’s nest, maybe even having to spit the occasional bug out from in between you teeth when it’s all over … and still … loving every single second of it.

I gotta get me some of that doggie dogma.

*link for engnr_chik

September 11th … remembered

This is a column I wrote in 2007 … entitled Out on a Limb for Love

Another September 11th has come and gone. Six of them now since the first, and we’re still afraid. Maybe even more afraid. Of terrorists, of global warming, of war, of the stock market.

But mostly we’re afraid of each other.

Every day I hear at least one person express a desire for love – romantic, familial, friendship — but they’re too afraid to reach out and ask for it. Too afraid of rejection. To afraid their ego will take a hit. So frozen with fear that they’d rather live without the love they desire than go out on a limb and really, specifically, ask for it.

Single friends of mine are afraid they won’t find someone to love them. Married friends are afraid their marriages are failing or are numbly disconnected. Older parents I know are afraid to ask their busy middle-aged children for attention and time, something more than the occasional obligatory phone call or annual visit.

Fear. How can we let it be more powerful in our lives than love?

In the days that followed September 11th, everyone in America seemed willing to go out on a limb for love. Willing to call family members from whom they’d been estranged, to take the hand of the spouse they were cheating on and promise never again, to tell themselves they’d never send their children to bed without looking them directly in their eyes and saying “I love you more than the sun and the earth and the moon.” Willing to invite a stranger to dine with them or smile a greeting to the person who passed by on the street. Willing to be the first to say “I’m sorry.”

Six years later? Not so much.

We’re back to our old ways. Families are still fragmented by petty arguments and marriages still destroyed by laziness. People still twist their faces in angry grimaces at the elders who move too slowly in front of them. Friends still haggle over who “started it,” and who owes who an apology.

Six years ago, everyone said that those planes crashing into buildings and fields, those families decimated, those lives lost, would teach the rest of us the lesson of a lifetime: That we must not wait until we are confronted with death to say what was left unsaid. That life is to be lived and people are to be loved. Now, not later.

If you had just a few minutes left to live on a plane hurtling toward death, whom would you call? Whose voice would you want to hear? Whom would you forgive? Whom would you ask for forgiveness? To whom would you whisper, “I love you;” who would your heart break to touch and hug just once more?

What are you waiting for?

The lessons of September 11th are many, but the one that stands out above all is this: Love the best you can, as often as you can, while you can. Ask for love. Give love.

Writing my religion

I write frequently about truth and lies in this column. I guess it’s because I believe, bottom line, that truth, lies, and the intentions behind them, are what make our character.

And the pursuit of character — which for me means living with integrity, honor, and truth – is as close to having a religion as I come.

I often falter or outright fail in the practice of my faith. No surprise there. I comfort myself, though, with the hope that perhaps character lies at least partly in the effort to have one in the first place.

While I’m forgiving about my own lapses, I’m sometimes less so when it comes to the lapses of others. Not very fair, huh? Still, I prefer to be around people who are at least trying to live with integrity — people who have evolved past the self-serving truthiness, the “I didn’t tell you because you never asked,” kind of ethos that worms through most relationships.

A while back, I told a friend I felt he wasn’t being straight with me. As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I knew what his response would be. I could see it in the panicked flicker of his eyes, the involuntary scrunching of his shoulders – and sure enough, out it came: “Everything I’ve said to you was true …” he began confidently, then added sheepishly, “… I just didn’t tell you everything.”

Ah. The slippery slope.

I didn’t feel hurt personally by his lies of omission (whatever they were, at that point, I didn’t even want to know) but my spirit took a blow, as if a great fissure had cracked across the continent of my religion.

We were friends; good ones, I’d thought. He didn’t need to be coy with the truth. I’d already given my friendship, my acceptance. His dissimulation wasn’t worthy of him or me. And that’s what hurt.

The question isn’t whether we owe the complete and total truth to everyone, about everything.

The question is: are we telling and disclosing everything someone would want to know, should know, deserves to know, in the context of their relationship to us?

Or are we just telling them what we want them to know — to avoid confrontation, an uncomfortable conversation, or worse, to manipulate a situation the way we want it?

The difference is something you know and feel in your bones. And so does the other person. Truth will out, whether it’s spoken or not.

I’ve told my share of lies, unfortunately. And whether it was an outright lie, a white lie or the ever-popular “lie of omission,” every single time, my distortion of the truth cheapened the relationship with the person to whom I lied, and, more importantly, it cheapened my own character.

We’re bombarded with lies and half-truths and double-speak every day. It’s become the norm to play fast and loose with the truth. But I don’t want to live that way. I want to believe character matters, despite way too much evidence to the contrary — despite my own shortcomings, despite the shortcomings of others.

I don’t want to lose my religion.

Here’s to your health! Chin, chin. Salut! — but you better have healthcare first!

Tim Sukits, staff writer at Creative Loafing, sent some good info on the health care issue …. I’m a strong proponent of health care reform — in a way that insures that all citizens have access to good, regular, and affordable health care, so I thought I’d share Tim’s message with my reality readers as well. Your comments — pro or con — are welcome at this post! (more…)

Le penseur

When I was working in Paris, my favorite museum was the musée de Rodin … August Rodin, the French sculptor.

MC outside le musee de Rodin, Paris.

That’s pretty highbrow stuff, and I’m a big fan of the sculpture, if not the man, but I think his words need just a bit of tweaking for us less self-immolating folks:

For a person to live … he must have a fire in his belly for living.

Yup. That’s an MC-ism. You can quote me on that one.

Here’s my list of things you need to do to breathe air to those little embers of fire long-languishing like slowly dimming candlelight in your belly — the ones barely hanging on to their fire-essence — and fan them back into a fierce fire for living:

• Step outside in a rainstorm and don’t run for cover. Extra points if you dance with someone while raindrops are literally falling on your head.
• Go to the beach, plop down and curl your toes in the sand.
• Take a chance on something … anything. And if you screw it up, go back and try it again.
• If you’ve been cruel to someone, stop right now and call or write them. Ask for forgiveness.
• If someone asks you for forgiveness, give it straightaway.
• Choose the path of moderate to most resistance. Easy is for candles, not fires, in the belly.
• Skinny dip. Yes, stand at the edge of whatever body of water is near you … pull off your clothes and jump in. Head first if the water’s deep enough. Extra points if you make love while you’re in the water … with someone who isn’t named Loch Ness.
• When you’re showering tomorrow morning, sing. SING!
• Take a crazy, heart-stopping chance on love. Do it! Before you chicken out.
• Laugh so hard you snort through your nose and your belly hurts. Then come over to my house and make me laugh that hard too.
• Give your word … and keep it.
• Never complain. Never explain.
• Go to Paris. Fly Air France if you can.
• Send me a postcard or better yet, take me with you.
• Visit the musée de Rodin.
• Stand in front of le penseur – the thinker – and don’t think.
• Just feel that fire in your belly.