Busy, Busy

I'm working so hard this week getting ready to go away for a week to a Doe Branch Ink writers' retreat that I haven't had time post.

Bold Bonus Life Tip #5: Building in extra lives, even only week long, takes a lot of tying up of loose ends in advance.

Back to you soon -- from the North Carolina mountains.





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A Bonus Life of Song?

It takes a bit of chutzpah to keep a sense of humor in some professions.

Take anesthesiology, for one example. Unless you're one of the 5.3 million people who have already heard this, then you must click and listen, for the smile value.



These guys demonstrate Bonus Life Tip #4: one can have an extra life even while the main one is still going on.

Another example: I talked with a successful lawyer this past week who's also in three -- or was it four? -- bands. Probably makes him much better at his work.


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An Extra Life After Ninety

Think you're too old to get a whole new life?

Have a look at this week's New York magazine, which honors nine current high achievers who are in their nineties or over a hundred. (In their hundreds?)



For example, composer Elliott Carter has published 14 new pieces of music since he turned 100.

Turning through the portraits in New York, I was wowed and inspired by what it's possible to do (as long as you're breathing.)

Though maybe it helps to breathe Manhattan air (the location of my most recent and delightful "bonus life" adventure.)

Bold Bonus Life Tip #3: Age is no deterrent. You can get an extra life at any age.





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The Hardest Thing on Earth

Here's a provocative and bracing quote sent by Mamie of Can I Do It?

Risk! Risk anything! Care no more for the opinions of others, for those voices. Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth.
- Katherine Mansfield


Now, taking this literally, the hardest thing on earth for me would be doing one of several things that I don't want done.

But the hardest thing that needs doing? That I'm in favor of. I almost always save answering the most complicated email until last -- and then maybe waiting a day. And I'd love to stop doing that. So why don't I? It's not exactly saber-toothed tigers I'm fighting here.


Bold Bonus Life Tip #2: An "extra life" could simply be a period of sticking to a resolution. This never occurred to me until now. One could decide to get a personal trainer for three months...or volunteer an afternoon a week for x period ... or meet all deadlines early for a set period. Or, what the hell, have red wine and dark chocolate daily for a while. This kind of bonus life could spill over into the regular one, which could (maybe) be a good thing.


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How to Get a Bold Bonus Life

My own most recent "extra life" was, as regular readers here know, the 18 days I spent in August as a New Yorker. I was apartment-sitting on the Upper West Side. For a year and a half, I'd had in mind the goal of enjoying a spell as a Manhattanite. It was a 60th birthday present to myself and I'm now veering dangerously close to 62.

So it took me a little while to get there, but I did and it was marvelously satisfying. I do feel as if I had an extra life. And it was my third one. The first was a month at Berkeley when I was 29, a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to study fiction. The second, three months in the Hindu holy city of Varanasi when I was 42, was when I did my research for my novel Sister India.

I'm now a permanent fan of the idea of fitting in extra lives: abridged immersions in other places, cultures, or jobs. Experiences so different from the usual, and so concentrated and intense, that they truly feel like a different life.

I mean to keep a running list of tips and thoughts and experiments here on the subject. Starting now.

Bonus Life Tip #One: Try out a bonus life with a different career. There are companies that offer the opportunity. Example: Vocation Vacations. Here's a chance to try out (very briefly) the experience of being, say, a chocolatier, a music producer, a horse trainer, a wedding planner, a bed and breakfast owner. This is one way to go get a tiny extra life in a different career.





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Bold Attempt at a Repair

Maybe you build and repair your own cars and refrigerators and such, but not me.

I like instant oatmeal. Processed foods. Processed plumbing. Things already done.

But now and then in the case of my familiar trusty sits-with-me-all-day computer, I get the idea I can fix a problem myself.

Now and then I can and it's greatly satisfying.

But just now I tried to fix a little problem with my blog and accidentally wiped out my entire blogroll. My whole set of lists of links.

And I don't even know yet if I solved the original problem.

Well, I'm told that scientists, inventors, artists, CEOs, etc. should always embrace failure because it shows that we're taking enough risks.

So I'm embracing my lack of a blogroll and calling it a FRESH START.

And I will not let this deter me from further attempts at minor fixes.



Ooh--just stumbled onto an article in the Chicago Tribune that tells me: "'Fear of fixing things is typical of women in their 40s, 50s and 60s... because they were reared to believe that only men are capable of doing home repairs.'"

But the article came out in 1987 so it applies to women who are now at least two years older than me. I certainly don't want to be a predictable stereotype.

Do you fix things? Or hesitate/refuse to? Down with stereotypes!


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Nina Vida's Bonus Life

I was just Friended by a writer in California I haven't met, Nina Vida. (We have lots of friends in common.) I looked at her page and was inspired.

It begins: "When I'm tempted to look at life as a series of successes and failures I remind myself that the journey is all."

Note: she became a writer at 50 and now has seven books out from major publishers, most recently The Texicans from Soho Press (with a Starred Review from Publishers Weekly. And she looks about 51, maybe.

Also on her page: "Don't let anyone tell you you're too old to do something you want to do."

This is a woman who is packing in an extra life or two.


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The Gap in the Resume

Cherished careers don’t always stay on track from beginning to end – especially in wobbly economic times.

This can be frightening and painful. A bonus life as a grocery bagger is not what anybody went to school to prepare for.

A commencement speaker at Harvard Divinity School, Professor Kimberley C. Patton, thinks that in profound ways, the difficult, uncertain periods are a good thing.

“…In these career detours, lie gestation and receptivity, what the Japanese call "hollowness" to the divine. In these nonproductive times, new things are hatching, being born in the darkness, if only we do not panic.”

How to avoid this panic?

Simply remember that the time may be very useful, that good things are germinating that cannot be forced. Keep coming back to that thought, because it so easily slips away.


(Thanks to Margaret, who sent me this address: “When the Wounded Emerge as Healers.”)


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Adventures on the Sidewalk

Friday, I dared to spare a few extra minutes.

So often in the course of a work day, I could walk where I need to go, but drive instead to "save time."

Today I walked to and from lunch at the Side Street Cafe. It's maybe nine blocks.

Here's a little of what I would have whizzed past if I'd ridden.



And the smell of a gardenia-laden bush.


Not to mention the honeysuckle. The city even provided regular reminders to leave the car behind and "waste" a little time on the sidewalk.


Getting outside and moving this little bit added a sense of variety and adventure to my work day.




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Bold Political Announcement

I made this announcement yesterday on Facebook and the responses have been so lovely and enthusiastic that I'm going to keep on posting the news everywhere. (Of course, I have other good reasons as well.) Here it is:

My brother Harry Payne is running for the NC Court of Appeals, election day in November. His expertise is labor and employment law--and being a particularly good guy, scrupulously ethical and fair. He has served six terms in the state Legislature, two terms as state Labor Commissioner, and 7 years as the Employment Security Commissioner.

If you're a NCian, please vote for brother Harry Payne in November. His big sister thanks you.


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Bold Money Sense

One of the ultimate bold acts, in my view, is to take an unblinking look at one's finances.

I've just read a book that has relieved me of that dread -- and of the guilt and blame that come from discovering the precise results of one's less good decisions.

For getting rid of the fear, The Cure for Money Madness , by Spencer Sherman, presents a few brilliant and do-able ideas that work:

Figure out the message I got about money in childhood. Replay a specific moment that gave me that idea and catch on that maybe I misinterpreted what was going on, maybe I jumped to some unnecessary conclusions. Come up with some other possible endings to the story.

Okay, just reading this summary of mine, I have to say it doesn't sound so convincing. But for me, it has already worked.

So, if you have mental money issues, forget my little summary and get the book.

(A clear-eyed bold approach to money is very helpful in setting up an extra life.)

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Some After-Effects of My Bonus Life

It's almost a week now since I returned from my 18-day bonus extra life as a New Yorker.

I've noticed a couple of significant after-effects of having tucked in this Plan B Life.

1. I feel very optimistic, as if almost any good thing is possible (and I'm capable of making it happen.)

2. I've been ordering different items for lunch (stuffed pepper!?) at the cafeteria, not my old "regulars."

3. I've had to go off of the dessert-and-pasta binge that I enjoyed so much as a New Yorker.

Number One is a very nice feeling, and likely to be more productive than the rather worn-down feeling I had at the time I got the welcome invitation to apartment-sit on the Upper West Side.

I've had this sudden attitude change happen once before, immediately after my first extra life: when I spent a month as "a Berkeley student" when I was twenty-nine and had received a National Endowment for the Humanities grant to attend a fiction seminar on the California campus.

Shortly after I returned, I passed an acquaintance in the grocery store who abruptly said: "You changed. It changed you."

I didn't feel any different except in one way. My thought was: if I can get the federal government to send me to the Bay area for a month to read good novels and listen to jazz and hang out with a major literary critic and interesting writers from all over the country, there's just no telling what I can do.

And that's when I started publishing fairly frequently in national magazines.

Number Two? Changing my lunch menu? Well, that's not a huge deal, but does indicate that I'm making conscious decisions rather than staying in a rut.

Number Three: What a mistake it was to schedule my annual physical a few days after a major prolonged sugar experience. I flunked triglycerides, and now must eat virtuously.

At least for a while.








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Kickstarter

I'd heard the name Kickstarter, but somehow the startling opportunity there didn't register until recently when my artist stepson Jay Dick brought a particular project to my attention.

Kickstarter is a site/service that allows "artists, designers, filmmakers, musicians, journalists, inventors, explorers..." to raise money for their projects. People can pledge any amount for a project that strikes their fancy, in return for rewards if the project is fully funded. If the full amount isn't raised, then no cash changes hands.

Jay alerted me to a project he's helping to support: for creation of a major catalogue on the work of John M. White. From the project description:

"White has made a significant contribution to California art for more than four decades. An innovative and highly respected performance artist, accomplished painter, sculptor, and inspirational teacher, White has exhibited consistently to overwhelmingly positive reviews. In spite of his remarkable accomplishments, White’s groundbreaking oeuvre is not nearly as well known as that of many of his contemporaries. This retrospective exhibition seeks to locate White’s work in the place of prominence it deserves."

The goal is to raise $7500; and the more money raised, the more extensive and well-designed the catalogue will be. Today there are 33 days left in the fund-raising period, and the money pledged is more than 200% of the goal. Obviously a lot of people care that this project be accomplished and done well. It's surely going to produce one great-looking catalogue.

This kind of money-gathering is called "crowd funding." It identifies a market as well as bringing in bucks.

Think of the possibilities: essentially you could pre-sell books or other art. You could put an invention into production. So Bold!!

If you have a project that needs a financial kickstart, go get it. And let us know when your project is up on the site.

And congratulations to John M. White, Jay Dick, and other White supporters.

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Dream Interpretation Alert!

Worked at home today. How is this bold? Well, it's way too handy to take a nap, which I did do (I sometimes "close my eyes a minute" in my serious grownup office as well, but somehow that feels less risky.)

Daytime naps are notorious for producing weird dreams and this one threw me into a drama that felt portentous. As follows:

I was in a house where a spider more than a foot in diameter kept appearing and re-appearing. It was both very disturbing and a little interesting; each heavy segment of its body was a different color, with a skin of what looked like baked-on enamel.

My brother Franc caught sight of it too. We agreed that you couldn't just step on something like that: "it would be like stepping on a rabbit."

The spider signalled to me, nonverbally, that it needed paper and a pen to write something down. I provided these. With one leg the spider wrote something in a sort of shorthand; in the dream I understood it to mean: housewares. But I didn't know what to make of that. I'm not especially domestic, awake or asleep.

When I woke up, I also thought: Ho Wares or Ho Wears. (Prostitution is an element in a novel of mine.) House also brought to mind "publishing house."

Anyway, it felt important. And writing-related, but maybe not.

I know that telling one's dreams outside the company of students of dreams can be considered tedious and obnoxious.

But it so grabbed me that I can't resist. If it triggers associations in you, I'd love to hear.





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Back in the Saddle

First day back in the office after my 18 day Extra Life in NY.

I arrived with the bold resolve to: "not be a workaholic drudge with eyestrain."

The day has been no shorter than usual. But I've certainly been more relaxed. Not once all day have I thought while doing one piece of work that I really should be doing another.

However, I find that I'm the only person working today in my five-person office building. Very quiet. Do you suppose they've all run off to have extra lives? (I do know that one is taking her son off to school, which is certainly the start of a new life.)



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A Bold Confession or Observation or Something.

You'll have to admit, it takes some cheek to say this:

My focus is shifting from accomplishing things to having fun.

I noticed this during my recent 18-day extra life in New York. I did accomplish a few things, both for clients and myself. But I didn't drive myself crazy over it. And it's entirely possible that the results were, as a result, better.

But whether they were or not, I feel my devotion to self-discipline fading.

I meant to lose three pounds in all that walking in New York. But did I? No, I ate ice cream at some point on probably every hike. On the morning of my return, I weighed exactly the same amount, to the tenth of a pound as I did the day I left. And didn't berate myself about it. (I used to have an eating disorder, so this is significant.)

And I didn't go straight to my office after my overnight bus ride home from Manhattan. In fact, I haven't been there yet. Instead I've been hanging out with Husband Bob and catching up on a few things at home. After all, it's the weekend. And the Emmies are on tonight.

This hedonism may fade; I've seen it happen before. Or it may hang around, and then we'll just see what happens....

In the meantime, it's a good thing that on most days I love doing most of my work.





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My Bold Bonus Life: 18

Friday was the final day of my 18-day extra life as a New Yorker. As Audrey Hepburn at 28.

This two-weeks-and-four-days experience was a tremendous success for me. I loved it. I do feel satisfied now that I've had a Manhattan life. Just as I feel satisfied that I had a life in India, in the three months I spent there researching my novel Sister India.

These were not mere trips. They felt entirely different. They included laundry, and ups and downs, and seasonal change, and neighbors. And enough time to dabble, and get lost, and have second chances.

I feel so lucky and grateful to have gotten to do this. And I'd had my mind set on it for almost two years, so I'd really built up an appetite.

My last day was, as usual, a long long walk. Some of it in circles. I decided to "do" a large chunk of the East Side, especially the area sometimes known as Spanish Harlem. I began by setting out to walk from the West Side apartment across Central Park. I decided I knew the place well enough by now that I could take a path instead of following the road.

After 30 or 40 minutes of walking, I saw traffic and buildings ahead. Success! I walked a few blocks into what I took to be the East Side. Then came upon Broadway. But that's on the West Side!! I'd made a great loop through the park and come back close to where I'd started.

So I headed back into the park and this time came out on the other side. Took a subway north to begin my walk back.

Then I got off the train too soon and saw only a few blocks of Mexican restaurants, and a Dominican one (harking back to the Dominican Day parade on my arrival day) and was soon into the cushiest neighborhood of New York, browsing designer windows. On an earlier day I might have gotten back on the subway and started again. But I was running down. I decided to settle for luxe window shopping, with an emphasis on shoes.

Food report: prosciutto and mozzarella sandwich.

Photo report: random things that caught my eye, including moss between stones on a wall in Central Park (a visual metaphor?).


That night, my overnight, amazing-bargain-for-$30, express bus was to leave Chinatown at 10 p.m. For about twenty tense minutes, I thought I was going to miss it. Once again on this last day, Manhattan took the opportunity to show me that I didn't exactly have a grip on the place.

First, the subway ride was longer than I thought. Then, for the second time in the day, I confusedly got off a stop too soon. Then got bad directions and ran in the wrong direction with computer and heavy, heavy suitcase. Realized I'd gone wrong, and picked up speed in the other direction. Then thought: Get a cab, you idiot! (My sweet shrink husband Bob says to me at such moments: Don't talk that way to my wife.)

Cabs passed me by. With luggage, I looked as if I were heading for the airport at a time when it would be hard to get a fare back.

Finally, a nice driver stopped for me. He hadn't heard the name of the cross street before, but we figured it out. Got there only about 30 seconds after the supposed deadline.

The bus was then delayed a full half hour, waiting for three people who were running late.

The ride back wasn't as easy as the straight-through bus ride that had brought me to New York. This time, we stopped twice. Each time the bus driver turned on the lights and announced a ten minute break. Thus waking everyone who'd gone to sleep. Twice that happened.

In the morning, we rolled back onto my home turf. Exhausted, I went home and went to bed.

Didn't even blog.

Now, a day later, I'm recovered. I'm back in the regular life I most want: living with Bob out in the country, driving most days to my little office in Raleigh. I also have the full feeling of just having had a whole extra life-- in Manhattan.

I so love this idea of tucking in a bonus life.

I mean to keep writing on the subject here -- different kinds of extra lives, and how to make them happen. What could be bolder?

I'd love to hear your story about your own such experiences, and the one you're planning.




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My Bold Bonus Life: 17

On my penultimate day as a 28 year-old New Yorker (my mini-life on the Upper West Side ends tomorrow), I took a bus to the Bronx.

It was the borough I hadn't yet hit. And I wanted to see it slowly and aboveground instead of popping up out of a subway. The part I saw around 145th, not far across the river, was jammed with fast food and bargain stores and sidewalk merchandise. Lots of narrow and crammed-full stores. One heavily devoted to voodoo. I chose one devoted to ice cream as my turn-around point for heading back to Manhattan. Food report: pralines and cream.

Earlier in the day, I'd had the best bagel of my life (this 18-day one at least) at Hot & Crusty, a bakery/deli a few blocks from the apartment. Twice before I'd been there and not been able to find a table. This told me to keep trying. I was glad I did.



Then for dinner tonight: pasta at Bella Luna, also nearby: cappellini with broccoli that was neither too raw nor too cooked and sun-dried tomatoes and warm goat cheese, etc.

I'm slowing down in the amount of New York I cover in a day, definitely on a trajectory toward my regular life.

At the same time, I feel as if I have all the time in the world. No need to cram anything in, which is a relief, because I'd never be able to cram it all in, even if I had two more days.

I like this feeling about time. I hope it follows me back into my Main Menu life.


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My Bold Bonus Life: 16

I revisited some of my New York past yesterday. That's probably an important piece of an extra bonus life like my 18 days as a Manhattanite.

First, I had a very pleasant coffee and re-connect with the literary agent who sold my first novel, Revelation and The Healing Power of Doing Good, and with one of her colleagues.

Then, by chance, I wandered past the famously artsy hotel, the Chelsea (in photo), where I spent a week in the mid-70s at $11 a night. My room included a dead refrigerator, an appliance that was landfill-ready. There were and are much more splendid rooms available.

But the aura of the place was fabulous. From the website:

"...The hotel has an ornate history, both as a birth place of creative modern art and home of bad behavior. Bob Dylan composed songs while staying at the Chelsea, and poets Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso chose it as a place for philosophical and intellectual exchange. It is also known as the place where the writer Dylan Thomas died of alcohol poisoning on in 1953, and where Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols may have stabbed his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen, to death on October 12, 1978.

Famous visitors and residents of the Chelsea Hotel include Eugene O'Neil, Thomas Wolfe, and Arthur C. Clarke (who wrote 2001: A Space Oddyssey while in residence). Janis Joplin, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, and the Grateful Dead passed through the hotels doors in the 1960s.

Virgil Thompson, Larry Rivers, William Burroughs, Willem de Kooning, Jasper Johns, Patti Smith, Arthur Miller, Dylan Thomas, Quentin Crisp, and many, many others stayed here too."


As usual, I walked and walked, in the West Village and Chelsea areas, the Meatpacking district (boutiques and nightclubs), and along a section of the new High Line, an elevated train track turned into a garden walkway with views of city and Hudson River. A quick turn through the design museum at FIT, the Fashion Institute of Technology.

Then attended another good play in the NYC Fringe Festival. This one, Miss Magnolia Beaumont Goes to Provincetown. It's about an antebellum belle who takes up residence in the body of a 33 year old gay man. She helps him with his emotional problems and his interpersonal skills during a trip to the beach. Funny and good.

I took exception to the critical review in The New York Times yesterday of the festival. The writer bashed the whole series based on a handful of plays out of the roughly 200 staged. Okay, I guess if I'd hit four duds, I'd be mad. But three out of the four I've seen have been very engaging.

Food Report: cheese blintzes for lunch and a milkshake and sweet potato French fries for dinner. A shake at the sleek burger joint had won top billing in New York magazine. I plan to eat lots of leafy green vegetables when I return to my regular life where I don't walk all day. As a hiker fitting a lot into a short-term life, I really do need to load carbs.



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My Bold Bonus Life: 15

Audrey Hepburn came home.

For new arrivals here, this is the way I think of the New Yorker whose apartment I'm "sitting" in for my extra mini-life as a Manhattanite. Her glamorous job called her back a few days earlier than she'd planned; she's now staying with a friend so that I can finish out my life here.

It was a happy meeting. (She's the daughter of a friend of a friend and we'd never set eyes on each other before; though, after two weeks in her sunlit studio, I felt I knew her pretty well.)

Well, she's everything you'd expect of Audrey, plus outgoing and at ease. And totally unworried about the health of her plants in my charge. (see plant crisis)

Yesterday turned out differently than I'd planned. This is not a new phenomenon in any of my lives. It was chilly and raining pretty vigorously when I went out. By the time I'd walked a few blocks, my shoes were soaked through as were my jeans to a level up above my knees. No museums or long hikes.

I came back to the apartment and worked most of the day, except for a break for my first-ever bowl of matzoh ball soup at a nearby deli and my late-afternoon meeting with Audrey.

Then last night, dinner at a little place I stumbled upon near the little theater where I was going to see another of the Fringe NYC festival's plays. Mission Cafe is what I think of as a shotgun restaurant: one narrow room with a bar on one side and a single line of tables on the other. (see photo above)

I ordered one of the dinner specials: a deep bowl of penne with shrimp and salmon, with bread plus olive oil to sop it in, and a glass of pinot grigio, all for $10.95. And it was all good!

The evening's Fringe play was Faye Lane's Beauty Shop Stories: a one-woman musical about her growing up in Texas in her mom's beauty parlor. I didn't realize that comedian Joan Rivers had attended the play the night before and the word of this had spread as a sort of endorsement. On this last night of the run a crowd was waiting outside the door.

I got in line. There were eight tickets left. I was number eleven in the queue. The two guys in front of me left. I was number nine. Waiting, I chatted with the Dutch theater studies student in front of me who was reviewing the festival for a Dutch online publication. (I'd find the idea of reviewing a string of plays in Dutch a little daunting.)

The line started to move. The student reviewer in front of me apologetically got the last available ticket. I was told to wait; maybe some of the press seats wouldn't fill. I leaned against the box office window and chatted with the woman who sold tickets.

The line of admirable people who had planned well and bought their tickets in advance filed past us into the La Ma Ma theater. We waited. Then: two more tickets. One for me and one for the tall texting fellow behind me. I didn't even have to be the one to smile ruefully at whoever was first to be turned away.

The show itself was a delight. "Volumptious" Faye Lane told and sang her story of being a fat little girl doing song and dance before the captive audience of women under hair dryers. And then as a young woman selling everything she had and lighting out of Texas with $1100 and a ticket to London.

Spoiler Alert: In her first three days in London she met and moved in with actor Anthony Hopkins' daughter and had a director ask to do a movie of her life. Six months later flying back into England after a trip to Cannes, she was given 24 hours to leave the country because she didn't have a work or student visa.

The next day she was back in Texas. Two days after that she answered the pay phone in the beauty parlor where she was again at work: "Casa Vale Beauty Shop." It was the director. He asked her to marry him. They rendezvoused at the Chelsea Hotel in NY, and "never checked out."

Their twentieth anniversary is next week. Faye Lane gave a warmly emotional performance that felt fresh and genuine. I got the strong impression that "the director" was in the audience up near the front on the left side last night.

Guests leaving the show were each given a banana Moon Pie, an important item in the life of the young beauty shop star. Faye Lane stood out on the sidewalk (see photo) greeting people at the end of the show.

I never expected to end the day walking through the East Village eating a banana Moon Pie. But you never know how things are going to go.


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