Elephants, Part I

I have a friend who keeps reminding me I have not written on my Blog since July 8th. I have been writing a lot actually, inside my head. I just don’t bother writing it down or typing it in the computer. The words are always floating around. They string themselves together like strands of pearls and I turn them into imaginary necklaces only I can see hanging (around my neck, like a noose).

I am not really inside my own body. I have written about this before. I may be repeating myself. I may be repeating myself. I am definitely repeating myself. I don’t want to go back and search through all my old blog entries to see if I have written and posted this material before. Besides, even if I did, who is going to remember? The two or three real people who read this blog or my imaginary friends (they last a life time) who are talking to me right now: “Oh, good lord, we have heard this one before. Yada Yada Yada, tell me something new.” I guess my imaginary friends watched Seinfeld. I would respond to my many imaginary friends (I am very popular inside and outside of my imagination)
“Don’t Yada Yada Yada me! I need motivation, I need spiritual guidance. I need Yoda Yoda Yoda.”

So, when Paul (a real person) threw out an idea, “write about Facebook,” while I appreciated the prompt I was hoping for something more. I wasn’t sure what or how to ask for it. Facebook has been overdone, to say the least. I am trying to stand out, write something unique and profound that will get me energized to produce even more.

Then I remembered, all Roads Lead to Rome! I just saw “Eat, Pray, Love”. I thought the movie was okay. I thought the men in it were really hot. Oh yeah, the meaning of the movie, I almost forgot…(now you can see why writing is so difficult for me. I am all over the place mentally). If I can’t follow a train of thought, how can I construct a piece of writing someone else will be able to follow? Are you still with me?

Okay, back to the movie, “Eat Pray Love”, and the lessons it was supposedly sharing with the rest of the world. I think the main lesson was about deep breathing. I deep breath, usually when I am making obscene phone calls, but it has yet to provide me with the keys to the doors of knowledge Julia Roberts as Elizabeth Gilbert is finding all over the globe. So much for breathing, but I will continue to breathe anyway because even if it doesn’t enlighten or motivate me, it does allow me to keep tapping these keys.

Another key element in the movie spoke to me on a more personal level. Yes, more personal than heavy breathing during obscene phone calls. I think I am procrastinating. I am doing things, just not the things I think I should be doing. I think I should be writing a book of short stories or a novel, or essays to mail to magazines. But instead, I took a stand up comedy class (YouTube: StandUpShowcase7). I agreed to teach some children’s classes for a local business. I started obsessively playing Banangram with my 11 year old daughter. I wish Banagram had a solitaire version for the hours when my daughter is in school. I never develop a strategic plan because I cannot choose a goal. No goal, no plan. It is simple. I hop from goal to goal like a hooker hops in and out of cars on a busy night.

In the opening scene of the movie, it shows the main character married to a man who just can’t find himself. He is thinking about all these different professions he could be pursuing, but he can’t commit to any one of them. I feel his pain. I think the movie and its author/lead character had three main points to share.


l. Deep Breathing – yeah I do it all the time. Hasn’t helped.

2. Can’t find myself or choose a clear path for a profession. I am so glad I did not marry Elizabeth Gilbert, the woman who wrote “Eat Pray Love”. She dumped her indecisive husband like a hot potato. My dedicated husband encourages every New Adventure I come up with and there have been many:

A business to help care givers
Writing
Stand up comedy
Selling things (don’t ask, don’t tell).

So here we are still married and living off only his income (I have no idea how we are going to pay for college for two kids – next job idea: “would you like fries with that?”) But the truth is, eventually I need to find a way to pitch in financially. I am done producing humans/children and now I need to produce an income. My timing could not be better. We are knee deep in a recession and America is on the road to becoming a third world country. Hopefully our desire for fries will be unabated. I guess I can always learn to clean the grill. I am more worried about how I will get along with my co-workers and the customers. I never did win any congeniality contests when I had to work in an office environment. Perhaps that is why I am determined to find a way to make money without having to deal with the politics of being in public. Which leads me to the third and most important point of the movie.

3. Wait a Minute! There is an Elephant in the Room:

In the movie Julie Roberts as Elizabeth Gilbert buys a Ganesh Elephant icon at an idol store. It is part of the Hindu religion which is not monotheistic. I have no business thinking about icons since in my religious background, they were nothing but trouble! No idols allowed. I don’t even watch American Idol. That is how afraid I am of worshiping anything I can actually visualize. Keep it blurry – cloudy. The lord is around us and within us. Do Not attempt imagining or personifying G-d in any way or someone is going to throw two big stone tablets on top of your head!

Okay, but my religion does not prevent me from attributing deep meaning to symbols and signs that pop up, does it? I am wearing a Jewish Star. I tied a red ribbon around the cribs where my babies slept and I even tied one around my mom’s hospital bed. I kiss the Torah as it is passing me by on High Holidays. And my own mother said if you “want your prayers answered, say them while the ark is open and your prayers will be answered. I got a husband by sticking a note in the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem (it is TRUE). So I am back to the premise presented in the book the Celestine Prophecy. There are no such things as coincidences. Pay attention. Everything means something. You just have to look a little deeper, between the lines, under the layers, and inside the molecules. A writing instructor once told me the key to good story telling was in the details. And remember, I am looking for the keys. So come back tomorrow for part II of my version of Eat, Pray, Love. I have decided if I cannot come up with a unique idea on my own, I will just steal someone else’s and customize it so it is no longer recognizable to the viewing public (real and imaginary). And that is my final decision. I think. Good thing I wasn’t watching the Godfather over the weekend. Who knows what this post would have looked like.

For Paul

This is dedicated to Paul. No, not my favorite Beatle, my friend!

Okay Paul, I hope you are happy. I have just spent 3 hours writing. I will have to edit and re- write and add a lot more later, but now I have to get on with my day. So I am unable to put anything up of substance at this time. I hope to have a better entry later but

I tried. I really tried. I sat and typed the whole morning stopping only long enough to put loads of laundry in and out of the washer and to reload my cereal bowl (one box of Cheerios and one box of Fiber One have bought the dust – or should I say recycle bin). But, I have other obligations. I am overweight and out of shape. I should be exercising. I have errands to run and bills to pay. This writing thing takes forever! I have been sitting here and the only parts of my body getting any exercise are my fingers. I guess I would save time and be more productive if I stopped eating dry cereal throughout the process, but I firmly believe every writer should be allowed one vice. I mean Hemingway and Williams had alcohol. Hey, now I know where I am going wrong! Damn it! I picked the wrong addiction. No wonder my writing sucks. I will write more later, now I have to jog over to the liquor store.

Love Benita