Kyla Merwin's Blog
December 25, 2018
A Tangled Strand of Pearls
In Chapter 3 of
The Lost Codex of the Christian Heretics
our heroine, Katherine, must begin to untangle the threads of her tumultuous past.She would prefer to take the timeline of her life–and her relationships–and “… lay them out neatly in her mind like a strand of pearls, each one leading in natural, logical succession to the next…
“…but no. Her relationships were not that simple. And she was far too close to see where the damage began.”
Throughout the novel, Katherine struggles against any sort of reflection or self-examination. She doesn’t want to look. She doesn’t want to unthread those pearls. She has strung together a life that races forward and never looks back.
She strives forward and upward, always with her eyes on the prize. Her shopkeeper and confidant, Eugene, describes her like this:
Pound for pound, she’s tougher than any man I know. She’s driven in ways I never see in other women, and seldom see in other men. So many times I’ve watched her point a long, red fingernail in someone's direction, and stare straight through their skin. Still, I wonder what she is holding back with that great force of energy that swirls constantly around her?
As the novel progresses, however, Katherine cannot stay safe from herself. She cannot escape the consequences of her past.
Like all of us, I suppose, we travel in circles until we find the way out. And the only way out is through.
Nobel Laureate, Nelly Sachs, wrote:
But perhaps God needs the longing,
wherever else it should dwell,
Which with kisses and tears and sighs
fills mysterious spaces of air –
And perhaps is invisible soil from which
roots of stars grow and swell…
I understand this longing. Unlike Katherine, I find myself compelled to understand what E.E. Cummings calls “the root of the root.”
This reminds of the time I was in Egypt and had hiked to the top of Mt. Sinai on a personal pilgrimage. Bedouins sell coffee, hot cocoa and chocolate bars along the route to top.
They also sell “thunder rocks” to tourists wanting to take a treasure from the mountain where Moses received the 10 Commandments.
These rocks, rather plain on the outside, once broken on half, reveal beautiful crystals on the inside. I was first in line, of course. And I purchased my treasured stones at the top of Mt. Sinai, after I’d watch the sunrise with 20 or so other pilgrims, and before I headed back down the mountain.
Back at St. Catherine’s, the oldest continuously inhabited monastery in the world…the street was abuzz with vendors and camels and kids, all selling trinkets, postcards, key chains, chocolate bars and…wait for it…rocks.
Here is an excerpt from my memoir, Lost & Found in Egypt: A Most Unlikely Journey Through the Shifting Sands of Love and Loss :
It is in my nature to contemplate rocks and sunrises and people. To scrape at the surface of things.
If a rock, broken in half, could reveal beauty, couldn't it reveal wisdom? Couldn't it whisper into my ear: Beautiful and ugly co-exist in the same spaces, in the same moments. Bad things happen to good people. Life is more than it appears. Grief is lovely. Grace is everywhere. Couldn't it tell me that somewhere, broken into pieces, there was something beautiful inside of me?
I think of the grapevines growing in the rocky soil of Burgundy, France. Too sweet the soil, and the grapes become a plain and simple fruit. It's the struggle that gives them their complexity; the journey gives them their character. Wasn't the same true for me? Or was I just a dreamer, who purchased her rocks at the top?
Kyla Merwin • Author • Editor • Custom Publisher
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December 8, 2018
Clomping Through Life in Alligator Pumps
I dream of the house on Woodford Street from time to time. It’s my home base. Always where the homing beacon of my heart points me.
This was where my brother, Ken, and I were raised, in the city with the university, the Mercantile, and the Rose Garden. This is where we went to school, played with the neighbor kids, came of age, skinned our knees and bruised our hearts.
This house was the gathering place of all our relatives––aunts, uncles, cousins, greats and seconds. And even wayward parents. They always gathered at Gramma and Grampa’s house.
We had a little playhouse in the backyard, behind the white craftsman house with the maple trees in front.
I don’t know where my grandparents got that playhouse. It just seemed to appear one day, plunked down in a sweet spot beyond the apple tree.
The little playhouse was about as big as a walk-in closet, I suppose, say, ten feet by ten feet, yellow with white trim.
I was over the moon! This is where I would play house with my friends, wear rummage sale dresses, and pretend to be all grown up…with the world at my feet.
My grandmother stocked the playhouse with dresses and shoes, hats and gloves, the finest in rummage sale treasures she could purchase for 25 cents or less.
Among the fashion she brought to the playhouse were the most beautiful, most elegant and sublime pair of shoes my eyes had ever seen, before or since: alligator pumps.
They didn’t fit me, of course. But I coveted them. I stuffed them with tissue and clomped around in them, awkward and determined, waiting for the day my feet would grow into my dreams.
In the meantime, being a kid in my grandparents’ world was pretty sweet. We had the best backyard, by far, of anyone on the block. Of anyone we knew in the whole wide world, in fact.
And the playhouse wasn’t the only attraction. We also had the following, which pretty much made Ken and me rock stars:
The Swing Set. Our swing set was welded together from one of Gramma’s bright ideas and scavenged pipes. Grampa made it for us with seven silver pipes, some rope, and two wooden slabs for seats. If we swung high enough and hard enough, and pumped our skinny little legs with all our might, Ken and I could almost tip the whole thing over.
The Fire Pit. Grampa took a huge, 6-foot tractor tire, laid it on its side, filled the middle with sand, and voila! we had an outdoor hotdog- and marshmallow-roasting pit. The ingenious part of this contraption was its convenient seating arrangement. We could sit on the rubber rim of the tire and cook our dinner over red-hot coals, just like real campers. Ken and I would sit in a circle with our Grampa and eat wieners right off the stick, like the favored children we knew ourselves to be.The fire was only a few feet from our tennis-shoed feet, though, so we had to be smart––aware of danger. We were expected to come out of our childhoods unscathed.
The Ice Skating Rink. One particular winter, when I saw the Olympics on TV, I decided I wanted to be a skater. We’d trot off to the local skating pond once in awhile, with our rummage sale ice skates, and scrape around the ice as best we could. But…if I could have a rink in our backyard, I could really teach myself to skate, and I could get my Girl Scout ice skating badge.
So, my Grampa built an ice skating rink for me, under the apple tree. All it took was a giant piece a plastic, the garden hose, and a consistent outside temperature of 32 degrees or less. This being Western Montana in the winter, freezing water was no problem.
Two things about ice skating they should tell you before you strap on the 3/16-inch blades:
Your coccyx is very fragile.
Hot chocolate should never be sucked through a straw. That little flat thing with the red stripe? It’s a stir stick.
I did get my ice skating badge from the Girls Scouts, but I lied to get it. On my own, I couldn’t master the Backward Figure 8.
But I digress. The other extraordinary thing we had at our house, which other kids didn’t, was “the sweet piece.” Gramma was always baking something: apple pie with fruit from our own tree, rhubarb crisp with bitter rhubarb from the garden made sweet and juicy. And cinnamon rolls. Oh my God, the cinnamon rolls!
Gramma also baked bread. She was a baker without a recipe. She’d haul out this big Rubbermaid tub and toss in flour and eggs, sugar and yeast, each in its own turn and heft—a pinch here and a handful there. Measuring cups were for amateurs. She was a one-woman bread machine, kneading and punching, shaping and panning.
When the dough was ready, she’d slice off little slabs, flatten them into fat pancakes, and toss them in hot grease. We’d spread on butter in generous amounts and sprinkle cinnamon and sugar on top. I later came to realize this was called Indian Fry Bread. But I thought Gramma invented it, like she invented everything that was good and sweet and lasting.
(She invented the wedge salad, by the way. She’d quarter a head of lettuce with a butcher knife and spread on a pile of Miracle Whip. It was the Best. Salad. Ever.)
Gramma had other things that all the other grownups also had: choice and knowledge. They could do whatever they wanted, and they knew everything. Being a grownup was going to be awesome.
But the day that my feet grew into those alligator pumps never came. By the time I became a grownup myself, I had long since relegated the little yellow playhouse and all its treasures to sweet and trivial memories.
I had bigger shoes to fill. I had a bigger life to lead, far from Missoula, Montana and the white house with green trim.
But it seems as though I chased the perfect-fitting alligator pumps all my life.
I rarely felt right. In an ironic twist from my neighborhood rock star days, I began to see myself as less-than. It was as though, in the real world, being raised without parents was a grave shortcoming on my part. I carried on my back the secret knowledge that my parents had abandoned me, and that I was irreparably flawed.
If Gramma was a baker without a recipe, then I was a woman without operating instructions, trying to master the Backward Figure 8.
I clomped through my adult life with a naïve recklessness: ill-fitting and uncertain of my place in the world, but also optimistic, with the certainty of that kid who pushed the limits of the swing set, that nothing really bad would ever happen to me.
Bad things did happen, of course. People died. Lovers came and went. Babies weren’t born. Of my marriage, nothing good survived.
But I didn’t see the cumulative wreckage until I was much older. My feet had been too close to the fire for far too long. I had been running on hope, optimism, and an unreasonable amount of booze…
…until it was too late for anything but amends.
Through those amends, I sought to right what I’d made wrong, forgive the wrongs done to me, and seek the shape of my most authentic self. I wouldn’t be defined by my mistakes, or by the mistakes of my parents.
I let go of a life that never properly fit, and found the turn and heft of my own heart…
…one awkward, determined step at a time.
# # #
This essay won an award for "Best Single Line" at the Willamette Writers Conference 2018.
The line?
"I stuffed them with tissue and clomped around in them, awkward and determined, waiting for the day my feet would grow into my dreams."
This was where my brother, Ken, and I were raised, in the city with the university, the Mercantile, and the Rose Garden. This is where we went to school, played with the neighbor kids, came of age, skinned our knees and bruised our hearts.
This house was the gathering place of all our relatives––aunts, uncles, cousins, greats and seconds. And even wayward parents. They always gathered at Gramma and Grampa’s house.
We had a little playhouse in the backyard, behind the white craftsman house with the maple trees in front.I don’t know where my grandparents got that playhouse. It just seemed to appear one day, plunked down in a sweet spot beyond the apple tree.
The little playhouse was about as big as a walk-in closet, I suppose, say, ten feet by ten feet, yellow with white trim.
I was over the moon! This is where I would play house with my friends, wear rummage sale dresses, and pretend to be all grown up…with the world at my feet.
My grandmother stocked the playhouse with dresses and shoes, hats and gloves, the finest in rummage sale treasures she could purchase for 25 cents or less.
Among the fashion she brought to the playhouse were the most beautiful, most elegant and sublime pair of shoes my eyes had ever seen, before or since: alligator pumps.
They didn’t fit me, of course. But I coveted them. I stuffed them with tissue and clomped around in them, awkward and determined, waiting for the day my feet would grow into my dreams.In the meantime, being a kid in my grandparents’ world was pretty sweet. We had the best backyard, by far, of anyone on the block. Of anyone we knew in the whole wide world, in fact.
And the playhouse wasn’t the only attraction. We also had the following, which pretty much made Ken and me rock stars:
The Swing Set. Our swing set was welded together from one of Gramma’s bright ideas and scavenged pipes. Grampa made it for us with seven silver pipes, some rope, and two wooden slabs for seats. If we swung high enough and hard enough, and pumped our skinny little legs with all our might, Ken and I could almost tip the whole thing over.
The Fire Pit. Grampa took a huge, 6-foot tractor tire, laid it on its side, filled the middle with sand, and voila! we had an outdoor hotdog- and marshmallow-roasting pit. The ingenious part of this contraption was its convenient seating arrangement. We could sit on the rubber rim of the tire and cook our dinner over red-hot coals, just like real campers. Ken and I would sit in a circle with our Grampa and eat wieners right off the stick, like the favored children we knew ourselves to be.The fire was only a few feet from our tennis-shoed feet, though, so we had to be smart––aware of danger. We were expected to come out of our childhoods unscathed.
The Ice Skating Rink. One particular winter, when I saw the Olympics on TV, I decided I wanted to be a skater. We’d trot off to the local skating pond once in awhile, with our rummage sale ice skates, and scrape around the ice as best we could. But…if I could have a rink in our backyard, I could really teach myself to skate, and I could get my Girl Scout ice skating badge.
So, my Grampa built an ice skating rink for me, under the apple tree. All it took was a giant piece a plastic, the garden hose, and a consistent outside temperature of 32 degrees or less. This being Western Montana in the winter, freezing water was no problem.
Two things about ice skating they should tell you before you strap on the 3/16-inch blades:
Your coccyx is very fragile.
Hot chocolate should never be sucked through a straw. That little flat thing with the red stripe? It’s a stir stick.
I did get my ice skating badge from the Girls Scouts, but I lied to get it. On my own, I couldn’t master the Backward Figure 8.
But I digress. The other extraordinary thing we had at our house, which other kids didn’t, was “the sweet piece.” Gramma was always baking something: apple pie with fruit from our own tree, rhubarb crisp with bitter rhubarb from the garden made sweet and juicy. And cinnamon rolls. Oh my God, the cinnamon rolls!
Gramma also baked bread. She was a baker without a recipe. She’d haul out this big Rubbermaid tub and toss in flour and eggs, sugar and yeast, each in its own turn and heft—a pinch here and a handful there. Measuring cups were for amateurs. She was a one-woman bread machine, kneading and punching, shaping and panning.When the dough was ready, she’d slice off little slabs, flatten them into fat pancakes, and toss them in hot grease. We’d spread on butter in generous amounts and sprinkle cinnamon and sugar on top. I later came to realize this was called Indian Fry Bread. But I thought Gramma invented it, like she invented everything that was good and sweet and lasting.
(She invented the wedge salad, by the way. She’d quarter a head of lettuce with a butcher knife and spread on a pile of Miracle Whip. It was the Best. Salad. Ever.)
Gramma had other things that all the other grownups also had: choice and knowledge. They could do whatever they wanted, and they knew everything. Being a grownup was going to be awesome.
But the day that my feet grew into those alligator pumps never came. By the time I became a grownup myself, I had long since relegated the little yellow playhouse and all its treasures to sweet and trivial memories.
I had bigger shoes to fill. I had a bigger life to lead, far from Missoula, Montana and the white house with green trim.
But it seems as though I chased the perfect-fitting alligator pumps all my life.
I rarely felt right. In an ironic twist from my neighborhood rock star days, I began to see myself as less-than. It was as though, in the real world, being raised without parents was a grave shortcoming on my part. I carried on my back the secret knowledge that my parents had abandoned me, and that I was irreparably flawed.
If Gramma was a baker without a recipe, then I was a woman without operating instructions, trying to master the Backward Figure 8.
I clomped through my adult life with a naïve recklessness: ill-fitting and uncertain of my place in the world, but also optimistic, with the certainty of that kid who pushed the limits of the swing set, that nothing really bad would ever happen to me.
Bad things did happen, of course. People died. Lovers came and went. Babies weren’t born. Of my marriage, nothing good survived.
But I didn’t see the cumulative wreckage until I was much older. My feet had been too close to the fire for far too long. I had been running on hope, optimism, and an unreasonable amount of booze…
…until it was too late for anything but amends.
Through those amends, I sought to right what I’d made wrong, forgive the wrongs done to me, and seek the shape of my most authentic self. I wouldn’t be defined by my mistakes, or by the mistakes of my parents.
I let go of a life that never properly fit, and found the turn and heft of my own heart…
…one awkward, determined step at a time.
# # #
This essay won an award for "Best Single Line" at the Willamette Writers Conference 2018.
The line?
"I stuffed them with tissue and clomped around in them, awkward and determined, waiting for the day my feet would grow into my dreams."
November 25, 2018
The Great Potato Chip Explosion (And What I Learned From It)
This is the story of an exploding bag of potato chips and the worse possible response.
I was pissed. I’ll admit that upfront. I’ve been stewing about something from my past for oh, going on about eight years now.
(I know how to hold a grudge. And the thing is: I’m holding the grudge against myself. Pretty smart, huh?)
Anyway, let’s shove that under the carpet for now and get to the good part of the story.
There I am, churning over my resentments while trolling the grocery store for junk food to make myself feel better.
I come upon a family-sized bag of Wavy Lays potato chips. Yes! This is going to be awesome. Add a little sour cream and ranch dip and I’m good to go.
But then, then, something really bad happens. First, I should mention, it feels these days as though I’m holding my sanity together with packing tape and paperclips…and a thin thread of optimism. (This goes back to that eight-year long resentment.)
So when the child at the checkout stand botches the bagging of my groceries I. Am. Upset.
My bag won’t sit upright. The Kleenex boxes are all crooked, because they’re sitting on top of the cat food cans, which were thrown in willy-nilly instead of neatly stacked, and the whole thing resembles a fallen stack of building blocks. Hence, the potato chips don’t have room to nestle, and…
…they keep falling out of the bag! (You can see why I’m so upset.)
I pull my cart out of the check stand and dock it a few feet away. I’m going to show these people how groceries should be bagged, dammit. (A place for everything and everything in its place!)
Kleenex on the bottom, cat food on the side, chips on the top. How hard can it be?
Well…I just can’t seem to make it all fit properly. As hard as I try, I’m making the whole situation worse. By now, I’ve about HAD IT. So I give up completely, and shove the chips, with reckless disregard for breakage, into the shopping bag.
And that’s when the Wavy Lays explode, loud as a gunshot, echoing through the aisles, past the frozen foods, all the way to the Bakery Department.
And the chips go flying.
Now I. Am. REALLY. Pissed. And mortified. I have to hold on to my anger, though, to keep myself from succumbing to total humiliation.
At this point, I have a few choices:
1. Calmly apologize and help clean up the mess
2. Sit on the floor and cry
3. Charge out of the store with my head down
You can guess which choice I make. Really though, it feels as though the choice was made for me, before the bag even broke, by the same restless freak who has been spinning my mind for decades.
Here’s a truth: I love being angry. It’s such a juicy, self-righteous feeling. Even as anger thrashes its way through the pastoral fields of my brain, crushing everything in sight, I’m secretly enjoying that sweet, hot feeling of indignation.
Anger is a tricky thing, though. It has a way of feeding on itself, stoking itself into full-on rage…and believe me, nobody wants to be in that fallout zone. (Just ask my ex-husband.)
Here’s another truth: I tend to be a pretty happy-go-lucky person. I was born with an attitude of optimistic smiley-hood. It’s how I navigate life, and cope with what I perceive to be an unjust world.
Underneath all the goofy lightheartedness, however, a volcano of fury simmers and roils.
Which is fine, right? Who doesn’t feel a little rage now and then?
So now you understand: It could be no other way. In the split second it takes me to recover from the shock of the Wavy Lays explosion, my mind is decided:
I put my head down, pretend it didn’t happen, and charge out of the store.
Yes, people are looking at me with shock and amusement. Why? Because I’m not just walking out of the store with my head down. No, as I march from one end of Fred Meyer to the other…past the long row of check stands, past the customer service desk, past the home décor, the electronics section, and the garden department…
…I’m leaving a trail of potato chips in my wake.
I am now barreling to the exit as fast as my remaining dignity will allow. And what do I find when I finally get outside? I’ve walked out the wrong door.
My car is parked as far as possible away from where I’m standing, on the opposite side of the building.
So now I’m trailing potato chips outside––on the sidewalk, around the corner, down the length of the building, around another corner, and thank God, there’s my car!
At this point, my seething anger gives way to humiliation. I’m not as embarrassed about what others think of my bizarre behavior, as I am of my own shortcomings.
How did I get this angry? This crazy? This publicly obnoxious?
I have tools to deal with anger:
Meditation (The Science of the Mind)
If I start my day with a meditation–deep breaths, stillness and a slowing of my hamster wheel of my mind–I can live in the eye of the storm, and face whatever comes my way with some amount of grace.
One of my favorite meditations is the metta bhavana, the practice of loving-kindness, benevolence, amity, and interest in others’ wellbeing. It’s very powerful medicine.
Surrender (The Practice of Letting Go)
I’ve learned over the years that there are certain things I cannot change: the weather, men, current interest rates, crappy grocery baggers, and bad drivers, to name a few. So what’s the point of raging against them?
I do have a choice, however, over how I feel, what I think, how I behave, and how I choose to react to outside circumstances.
Detachment (The Art of Witnessing)
Making good choices (surrendering to what I cannot control) is easier when I’m calm, grounded and centered (see Meditation above).
If I can detach from my emotions, and watch myself from a distance–as if I’m watching a character in a movie–then my emotions don’t hold sway.
Witnessing myself makes it easier to practice compassion, to forgive, and to let go of my need to be right.
But meditation, surrender and detachment take effort and commitment. Indignation and Resentment, on the other hand, are easy. They are familiar and trustworthy friends.
Along with their first-cousin, Blame, they are just waiting in the wings, poised to rush in when things don’t go my way. They are particularly restless when I’ve been stuffing things I don’t want to face. Things like, feelings. Things like, asking for what I want. Things like, forgiveness and grace.
These things don’t come easy for me. But they’re in there, somewhere, under the things that are under the carpet.
Something odd occurs to me as I stare at the unruly pile of chips in my shopping cart, feeling the full weight of the wreckage I’ve left in my wake.
When everything goes wrong, when I don’t get a do-over, when there’s no one else to blame:
Eat a chip off the top of the stack.
And do better next time.
I was pissed. I’ll admit that upfront. I’ve been stewing about something from my past for oh, going on about eight years now.
(I know how to hold a grudge. And the thing is: I’m holding the grudge against myself. Pretty smart, huh?)
Anyway, let’s shove that under the carpet for now and get to the good part of the story.
There I am, churning over my resentments while trolling the grocery store for junk food to make myself feel better.
I come upon a family-sized bag of Wavy Lays potato chips. Yes! This is going to be awesome. Add a little sour cream and ranch dip and I’m good to go.
But then, then, something really bad happens. First, I should mention, it feels these days as though I’m holding my sanity together with packing tape and paperclips…and a thin thread of optimism. (This goes back to that eight-year long resentment.)
So when the child at the checkout stand botches the bagging of my groceries I. Am. Upset.
My bag won’t sit upright. The Kleenex boxes are all crooked, because they’re sitting on top of the cat food cans, which were thrown in willy-nilly instead of neatly stacked, and the whole thing resembles a fallen stack of building blocks. Hence, the potato chips don’t have room to nestle, and…
…they keep falling out of the bag! (You can see why I’m so upset.)
I pull my cart out of the check stand and dock it a few feet away. I’m going to show these people how groceries should be bagged, dammit. (A place for everything and everything in its place!)
Kleenex on the bottom, cat food on the side, chips on the top. How hard can it be?
Well…I just can’t seem to make it all fit properly. As hard as I try, I’m making the whole situation worse. By now, I’ve about HAD IT. So I give up completely, and shove the chips, with reckless disregard for breakage, into the shopping bag.
And that’s when the Wavy Lays explode, loud as a gunshot, echoing through the aisles, past the frozen foods, all the way to the Bakery Department.
And the chips go flying.
Now I. Am. REALLY. Pissed. And mortified. I have to hold on to my anger, though, to keep myself from succumbing to total humiliation.
At this point, I have a few choices:
1. Calmly apologize and help clean up the mess
2. Sit on the floor and cry
3. Charge out of the store with my head down
You can guess which choice I make. Really though, it feels as though the choice was made for me, before the bag even broke, by the same restless freak who has been spinning my mind for decades.
Here’s a truth: I love being angry. It’s such a juicy, self-righteous feeling. Even as anger thrashes its way through the pastoral fields of my brain, crushing everything in sight, I’m secretly enjoying that sweet, hot feeling of indignation.
Anger is a tricky thing, though. It has a way of feeding on itself, stoking itself into full-on rage…and believe me, nobody wants to be in that fallout zone. (Just ask my ex-husband.)
Here’s another truth: I tend to be a pretty happy-go-lucky person. I was born with an attitude of optimistic smiley-hood. It’s how I navigate life, and cope with what I perceive to be an unjust world.
Underneath all the goofy lightheartedness, however, a volcano of fury simmers and roils.
Which is fine, right? Who doesn’t feel a little rage now and then?
So now you understand: It could be no other way. In the split second it takes me to recover from the shock of the Wavy Lays explosion, my mind is decided:
I put my head down, pretend it didn’t happen, and charge out of the store.
Yes, people are looking at me with shock and amusement. Why? Because I’m not just walking out of the store with my head down. No, as I march from one end of Fred Meyer to the other…past the long row of check stands, past the customer service desk, past the home décor, the electronics section, and the garden department…
…I’m leaving a trail of potato chips in my wake.
I am now barreling to the exit as fast as my remaining dignity will allow. And what do I find when I finally get outside? I’ve walked out the wrong door.
My car is parked as far as possible away from where I’m standing, on the opposite side of the building.
So now I’m trailing potato chips outside––on the sidewalk, around the corner, down the length of the building, around another corner, and thank God, there’s my car!
At this point, my seething anger gives way to humiliation. I’m not as embarrassed about what others think of my bizarre behavior, as I am of my own shortcomings.
How did I get this angry? This crazy? This publicly obnoxious?
I have tools to deal with anger:
Meditation (The Science of the Mind)
If I start my day with a meditation–deep breaths, stillness and a slowing of my hamster wheel of my mind–I can live in the eye of the storm, and face whatever comes my way with some amount of grace.
One of my favorite meditations is the metta bhavana, the practice of loving-kindness, benevolence, amity, and interest in others’ wellbeing. It’s very powerful medicine.
Surrender (The Practice of Letting Go)
I’ve learned over the years that there are certain things I cannot change: the weather, men, current interest rates, crappy grocery baggers, and bad drivers, to name a few. So what’s the point of raging against them?
I do have a choice, however, over how I feel, what I think, how I behave, and how I choose to react to outside circumstances.
Detachment (The Art of Witnessing)
Making good choices (surrendering to what I cannot control) is easier when I’m calm, grounded and centered (see Meditation above).
If I can detach from my emotions, and watch myself from a distance–as if I’m watching a character in a movie–then my emotions don’t hold sway.
Witnessing myself makes it easier to practice compassion, to forgive, and to let go of my need to be right.
But meditation, surrender and detachment take effort and commitment. Indignation and Resentment, on the other hand, are easy. They are familiar and trustworthy friends.
Along with their first-cousin, Blame, they are just waiting in the wings, poised to rush in when things don’t go my way. They are particularly restless when I’ve been stuffing things I don’t want to face. Things like, feelings. Things like, asking for what I want. Things like, forgiveness and grace.
These things don’t come easy for me. But they’re in there, somewhere, under the things that are under the carpet.
Something odd occurs to me as I stare at the unruly pile of chips in my shopping cart, feeling the full weight of the wreckage I’ve left in my wake.
When everything goes wrong, when I don’t get a do-over, when there’s no one else to blame:
Eat a chip off the top of the stack.
And do better next time.
November 24, 2018
Good-bye My Pirate Lover
Chocolate for a Lover's Heart: Soul-Soothing Stories that Celebrate the Power of Love
He was a pirate and I was a gypsy.
He was wild and daring and ragingly fun. I never stayed in one place long enough to land. We were so different and so the same, there was going to be hell to pay. But when we met it was like finding each other’s missing half. We believed that when we touched each other, we were reaching ourselves. We were two separate trees with the same roots, leaves intermingled, branches reaching for the sky.
I wish I could frame this story in a larger, clearer perspective to show you my pirate lover without telling the story’s end. But the ending has become so vivid a part of the whole that it mixes itself in the middle and becomes, even so, a part of the beginning.
So that is where I’ll begin: in the end. In the end, he dies. My pirate lover dies. And this is our story.
Terry asked me to marry him the first night we met. I said no. He was as adamant as he was charming. And just that fast, perhaps too fast, we were living together, laughing and loving and letting the rest of the world fall away.
We lived in an enchanted realm. We explored the landscapes of our home, our hearts, our bodies. We discovered secrets. Terry asked me to marry him every single day of our lives together. Eventually I said yes. But it never happened.
Soon enough, perhaps too soon, the demons surfaced. Insecurities and obsessions tugged at us from shrouded corners, unwilling to stay in the dark and unable to bear the light. The things that drove us together and drove us separately, eventually drove us apart. Years and months passed, and our wild love affair calmed to a tender friendship.
It was this tenderness that held us together during the tumultuous months of one particularly dark autumn. We spent time looking after each other the best we could, while we nursed our own private pains. We drank tea by the fireplace, watched movies and painted. In teaching me a little how to paint in oils, he had begun, finally, to paint again himself. I thought we both had hope.
Fall was turning to winter, and the air was gray and ice, the night I drove to Terry’s house, urged there by a haunting concern. He had stood me up for lunch that day in November. I tried to reach him by phone all afternoon and into the night, leaving one after another unanswered message on his machine.
Those many messages were captured by a little red light near the phone that blinked in the dark kitchen when I arrived. The front door was unlocked, the living room fully lit, the air quiet and still. I had walked through that door a thousand times to see him sitting on his couch, watching a movie, with a glass of Chardonnay on the coffee table.
But that night he wasn’t there. My heart beat like a bird trapped in my chest. My face grew hot. “Terry?” I called. “Terry?” Over and over as I moved through the house––the bedroom, the kitchen, the long hallway into the garage. I knew if his bronze BMW was not in the garage, that everything was okay. How would be out driving, which he had come to do to ease the gathering pressure of a life collapsing.
I opened the garage door, and there sat the shiny car. I didn’t have time to plan what to do next before I glanced over my shoulder. There, some five feet away, hanging by a nylon chord, still and lifeless, was Terry.
In that moment, a fallen angel came to rest on my shoulder. There it landed and there it stayed, constantly whispering in my ear. I can still hear the voices of terror, guilt and unspeakable loss: “Terry! Oh my God, oh my God. Terry…”
To this day, many years later, there are moments I still cannot believe he did it. I can’t believe he climbed on top of a red and white cooler and stepped, irrevocably, into another world.
Every year, on November 15, four days after our nation celebrates Veterans Day, I hike into the secluded wilderness. I return to the place where an aqua-blue pool makes magic just by being. There, the McKenzie River rises from underground to a deep, cold pond created millions of years ago by a now-dry waterfall.
Terry called it Hobbit Land. He took me there many times on a secret descent through the woods and down a rocky cliff shaded with overgrowth. This place gave him perspective, he said, where his troubles didn’t seem so big. A place where the world looked different.
The entire world suddenly looked different to me, without Terry in it.
After his funeral, after all the friends came and went and cried and remembered, after most of the questions stopped coming, after his family came and collected up all his things, after the hundredth question why, I found the symbol of his torment and my peace.
There, in the bottom of his dresser drawer, scattered with a few pennies, an old love note, broken sunglasses and a golf ball, I found the Bronze Star. Passed over by his family–maybe because the ribbon was missing, maybe because they never knew he earned it–the Bronze Star lay safe and waiting for me. For courage.
Heroic or meritorious achievement, it reads. Here is the story that came with his honor, of the desperate, horrific night in the jungles near the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
Terry’s friend, the one who carried the radio, was blown to pieces in front of him. Bombarded and behind enemy lines, the entire battalion was in chaos. It was Terry, blood-splattered and battle weary, who saved their lives.
But who could save Terry? Who could save him from the nightmares he brought home?
And who could save me from mine? I wore that Bronze Star on a chain around my neck every day and through each sobbing night for months and months. Like I wore his sweaters every day. And remembered every day.
After a year, I was told I should “let the pain go.” But I didn’t want to let it go. I didn’t want to stop hurting. I didn’t want to forget and move on and live as if the world wasn’t upside down and backward.
Slowly, ever so slowly, the tears began to spend themselves. When I think of Terry now, my sorrow mixes with tenderness and joy for who he was on this earth. Joy because I am lucky enough to have been sprinkled with the magic of this extraordinary person.
My pirate lover had hoisted his sails and cut the anchor. He set sail, face to the wind, onward of a silver-peach sky, never ever to look back. He protected his heart, and lived with a vengeance––to laugh, to love, to take what he could and give back what he couldn’t, always looking to the forward horizon.
Who could have seen the phantom anchor, treading silt, digging deeper, deeper, silent and sure, slowing his freedom ship to its doom?
The pirate ship began to sink, heavy with its load. Terry’s grand white sails lay in tatters around his boots, where the ice-cold water lapped at his darkest thoughts. And Terry didn’t have a life-line. He lacked the belief, the trust, that he could ask for help and get it. It was simply not how he viewed the world.
For me, I know I can ask. I know I am loved. And I remember that love never dies. It make look different, take on different shapes, ebb and flow, flicker and blaze. But it is the one thing in this world that never ever dies. It gives me grace to know that.
Sometimes, particularly in Hobbit Land, I think I see something: a shadow, the tip of a wing, the silhouette of the pirate’s blade across my path. I wonder if he’s watching me. Does he wait for me, my pirate lover, my heart’s other self? Or do I dream it, because I need him to be?
I still hear an angel. It’s a different angel now, leaning close, whispering, courage, courage.
Reprinted from Chocolate for a Lover’s Heart under the title “Silhouette of the Pirate’s Blade.” (Simon & Schuster, 1999)
Read more at kylamerwin.com
He was a pirate and I was a gypsy.
He was wild and daring and ragingly fun. I never stayed in one place long enough to land. We were so different and so the same, there was going to be hell to pay. But when we met it was like finding each other’s missing half. We believed that when we touched each other, we were reaching ourselves. We were two separate trees with the same roots, leaves intermingled, branches reaching for the sky.
I wish I could frame this story in a larger, clearer perspective to show you my pirate lover without telling the story’s end. But the ending has become so vivid a part of the whole that it mixes itself in the middle and becomes, even so, a part of the beginning.
So that is where I’ll begin: in the end. In the end, he dies. My pirate lover dies. And this is our story.
Terry asked me to marry him the first night we met. I said no. He was as adamant as he was charming. And just that fast, perhaps too fast, we were living together, laughing and loving and letting the rest of the world fall away.
We lived in an enchanted realm. We explored the landscapes of our home, our hearts, our bodies. We discovered secrets. Terry asked me to marry him every single day of our lives together. Eventually I said yes. But it never happened.
Soon enough, perhaps too soon, the demons surfaced. Insecurities and obsessions tugged at us from shrouded corners, unwilling to stay in the dark and unable to bear the light. The things that drove us together and drove us separately, eventually drove us apart. Years and months passed, and our wild love affair calmed to a tender friendship.
It was this tenderness that held us together during the tumultuous months of one particularly dark autumn. We spent time looking after each other the best we could, while we nursed our own private pains. We drank tea by the fireplace, watched movies and painted. In teaching me a little how to paint in oils, he had begun, finally, to paint again himself. I thought we both had hope.
Fall was turning to winter, and the air was gray and ice, the night I drove to Terry’s house, urged there by a haunting concern. He had stood me up for lunch that day in November. I tried to reach him by phone all afternoon and into the night, leaving one after another unanswered message on his machine.
Those many messages were captured by a little red light near the phone that blinked in the dark kitchen when I arrived. The front door was unlocked, the living room fully lit, the air quiet and still. I had walked through that door a thousand times to see him sitting on his couch, watching a movie, with a glass of Chardonnay on the coffee table.
But that night he wasn’t there. My heart beat like a bird trapped in my chest. My face grew hot. “Terry?” I called. “Terry?” Over and over as I moved through the house––the bedroom, the kitchen, the long hallway into the garage. I knew if his bronze BMW was not in the garage, that everything was okay. How would be out driving, which he had come to do to ease the gathering pressure of a life collapsing.
I opened the garage door, and there sat the shiny car. I didn’t have time to plan what to do next before I glanced over my shoulder. There, some five feet away, hanging by a nylon chord, still and lifeless, was Terry.
In that moment, a fallen angel came to rest on my shoulder. There it landed and there it stayed, constantly whispering in my ear. I can still hear the voices of terror, guilt and unspeakable loss: “Terry! Oh my God, oh my God. Terry…”
To this day, many years later, there are moments I still cannot believe he did it. I can’t believe he climbed on top of a red and white cooler and stepped, irrevocably, into another world.
Every year, on November 15, four days after our nation celebrates Veterans Day, I hike into the secluded wilderness. I return to the place where an aqua-blue pool makes magic just by being. There, the McKenzie River rises from underground to a deep, cold pond created millions of years ago by a now-dry waterfall.
Terry called it Hobbit Land. He took me there many times on a secret descent through the woods and down a rocky cliff shaded with overgrowth. This place gave him perspective, he said, where his troubles didn’t seem so big. A place where the world looked different.
The entire world suddenly looked different to me, without Terry in it.
After his funeral, after all the friends came and went and cried and remembered, after most of the questions stopped coming, after his family came and collected up all his things, after the hundredth question why, I found the symbol of his torment and my peace.
There, in the bottom of his dresser drawer, scattered with a few pennies, an old love note, broken sunglasses and a golf ball, I found the Bronze Star. Passed over by his family–maybe because the ribbon was missing, maybe because they never knew he earned it–the Bronze Star lay safe and waiting for me. For courage.
Heroic or meritorious achievement, it reads. Here is the story that came with his honor, of the desperate, horrific night in the jungles near the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
Terry’s friend, the one who carried the radio, was blown to pieces in front of him. Bombarded and behind enemy lines, the entire battalion was in chaos. It was Terry, blood-splattered and battle weary, who saved their lives.
But who could save Terry? Who could save him from the nightmares he brought home?
And who could save me from mine? I wore that Bronze Star on a chain around my neck every day and through each sobbing night for months and months. Like I wore his sweaters every day. And remembered every day.
After a year, I was told I should “let the pain go.” But I didn’t want to let it go. I didn’t want to stop hurting. I didn’t want to forget and move on and live as if the world wasn’t upside down and backward.
Slowly, ever so slowly, the tears began to spend themselves. When I think of Terry now, my sorrow mixes with tenderness and joy for who he was on this earth. Joy because I am lucky enough to have been sprinkled with the magic of this extraordinary person.
My pirate lover had hoisted his sails and cut the anchor. He set sail, face to the wind, onward of a silver-peach sky, never ever to look back. He protected his heart, and lived with a vengeance––to laugh, to love, to take what he could and give back what he couldn’t, always looking to the forward horizon.
Who could have seen the phantom anchor, treading silt, digging deeper, deeper, silent and sure, slowing his freedom ship to its doom?
The pirate ship began to sink, heavy with its load. Terry’s grand white sails lay in tatters around his boots, where the ice-cold water lapped at his darkest thoughts. And Terry didn’t have a life-line. He lacked the belief, the trust, that he could ask for help and get it. It was simply not how he viewed the world.
For me, I know I can ask. I know I am loved. And I remember that love never dies. It make look different, take on different shapes, ebb and flow, flicker and blaze. But it is the one thing in this world that never ever dies. It gives me grace to know that.
Sometimes, particularly in Hobbit Land, I think I see something: a shadow, the tip of a wing, the silhouette of the pirate’s blade across my path. I wonder if he’s watching me. Does he wait for me, my pirate lover, my heart’s other self? Or do I dream it, because I need him to be?
I still hear an angel. It’s a different angel now, leaning close, whispering, courage, courage.
Reprinted from Chocolate for a Lover’s Heart under the title “Silhouette of the Pirate’s Blade.” (Simon & Schuster, 1999)
Read more at kylamerwin.com
February 5, 2017
The Ill-Matched Threads of Her Life
This is how Chapter 1 of my novel, The Lost Codex of the Christian Heretics begins:
And so, this is how I will begin this series of blog posts, which offers Wisdom sayings that have inspired me over the years … and may inspire you, too.
At a recent book signing event, someone asked me how my own life’s journey parallels the journeys of the main characters in The Lost Codex. The journeys of those characters, in turn, parallel certain revelations from The Gnostic Gospels (Wisdom teachings from the time of Christ that were omitted from the Bible for their heretical concepts).
I thought the question was a good one.
For Chapter One, I chose an excerpt (above) from Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God, because this sentiment frames the story about to unfold for the readers, just as it frames my ongoing search for the Divine inside me.
It seems to me that we all have some “ill-matched threads” in our lives – broken pieces and parts, failures, losses, regrets. In my case … as with some of the characters of the novel … I had to journey into the past to reconcile mistakes, hurts, confusions.
Best practices: Be brave and forgiving. Replace fear with faith. Choose love. It also helps me to read wisdom and inspiration from authentic sources.
And so I offer Rilke’s beautiful poem in its entirety:
She who reconciles the ill-matched threads
of her life, and weaves them gratefully
into a single cloth—
it’s she who drives the loudmouths from the hall
and clears it for a different celebration
where the one guest is you.
In the softness of evening
it’s you she receives.
You are the partner of her loneliness,
the unspeaking center of her monologues.
With each disclosure you encompass more
and she stretches beyond what limits her,
to hold you.
--- The Book of Hours: Love Poems to God, I, 17
Sneak Preview: In the next installment from Kyla Writes, explore the ancient Sanskrit saying that begins, “As a bee seeks nectar from all kinds of flowers, seek teachings everywhere…”
Peace and Blessings, Kyla
And so, this is how I will begin this series of blog posts, which offers Wisdom sayings that have inspired me over the years … and may inspire you, too.
At a recent book signing event, someone asked me how my own life’s journey parallels the journeys of the main characters in The Lost Codex. The journeys of those characters, in turn, parallel certain revelations from The Gnostic Gospels (Wisdom teachings from the time of Christ that were omitted from the Bible for their heretical concepts).
I thought the question was a good one.
For Chapter One, I chose an excerpt (above) from Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God, because this sentiment frames the story about to unfold for the readers, just as it frames my ongoing search for the Divine inside me.
It seems to me that we all have some “ill-matched threads” in our lives – broken pieces and parts, failures, losses, regrets. In my case … as with some of the characters of the novel … I had to journey into the past to reconcile mistakes, hurts, confusions.
Best practices: Be brave and forgiving. Replace fear with faith. Choose love. It also helps me to read wisdom and inspiration from authentic sources.
And so I offer Rilke’s beautiful poem in its entirety:
She who reconciles the ill-matched threads
of her life, and weaves them gratefully
into a single cloth—
it’s she who drives the loudmouths from the hall
and clears it for a different celebration
where the one guest is you.
In the softness of evening
it’s you she receives.
You are the partner of her loneliness,
the unspeaking center of her monologues.
With each disclosure you encompass more
and she stretches beyond what limits her,
to hold you.
--- The Book of Hours: Love Poems to God, I, 17
Sneak Preview: In the next installment from Kyla Writes, explore the ancient Sanskrit saying that begins, “As a bee seeks nectar from all kinds of flowers, seek teachings everywhere…”
Peace and Blessings, Kyla
February 20, 2014
Save $4, cuz it's my birthday
Thanks for the Goodreads love, dear friends. I thought I'd offer free shipping on my new book, today only, just for the fun of it. I get to do whatever I want on my one-and-only-very-special-day-just-for-me, right?
Follow this link to PayPal for free shipping day! http://kmc-media.com/books
Thanks! Kyla
image:
Follow this link to PayPal for free shipping day! http://kmc-media.com/books
Thanks! Kyla
image:
December 8, 2013
Split-Aparts: Broken Into Magnificence
I thought of Terry as my split-apart, my soul mate -- the same person, split apart in the Heavens and sent to Earth as two separate pieces of the same whole, with the driving need to find our other half. We were two trees with the same root, endlessly reaching for each other.But when we finally found each other, all hell broke loose.
When Terry died, I took myself to Egypt on a pilgrimage to reconcile that which was fractured in me, to heal what was broken.
Five years to the day after Terry died, I was watching the sun rise from the top of Mt. Sinai. I had thought if God talked to Moses on that mountain, maybe He would talk to me, too.
I threw everything I thought I'd need for two days and nights into my leather backpack: a change of underwear, a toothbrush, cigarettes, passport, cash, my journal. I was to climb Mt Sinai, and what I took with me, I would carry up 2,600 vertical feet. And back down. So I was traveling light – without the highly coveted blow-dryer for my hair, without my Lewis N. Clark Model DK2000 Dual Converter with Adapter Plugs, without a jacket, without a change of clothes.
From St. Catherine’s Monastery, a motley cast of tourists launched our attack on the 2,600 vertical feet rising between us and the summit. There, the sun would light upon the very same place on earth where Moses received the Ten Commandments of God. And we would be its witnesses.
But first, the Steps of Repentance. Orthodox monks built 3,750 steep steps into the barren mountainside, adorned with arches and chapels of stone. This path has also been called the Stairway to Heaven. The distinction, I believe, depends on whether you are heading up them, or down.
Most tourists who climb Mount Sinai choose another path, a longer path, gently sloped and winding to the top. Still, a four-hour excursion waited them, in the dark, on an unfamiliar path. It is said that the local Bedouins – with camels for rent – just hang around and wait for people to collapse. I chose the steps.
The Bedouins sell hot cocoa and chocolate bars from little tents on the mountain. They rent pads and blankets to keep us warm. They also sell stones from the mountain, about the size of eggs, as souvenirs. Each one is broken into two pieces, dull and rough on the outside, but embedded with magnificent crystals. Two halves of a whole, soul mates, split-aparts, like Terry and me.
It's in my nature to contemplate rocks and sunrises and people. To scrape at the surface of things. If a rock, broken in half, could reveal beauty, couldn't it reveal wisdom? Couldn't it whisper into my ear: Beautiful and ugly co-exist in the same spaces, in the same moments. Bad things happen to good people. Life is more than it appears. Grief is lovely. Grace is everywhere.
I thought of the grapevines growing in the rocky soil of Burgundy, France. Too sweet the soil, too easy the journey, and the grapes become a plain and simple fruit. It's the struggle that gives them their complexity; the journey gives them their character.
Looking back, I can see that to be broken is to reveal the beautiful, to experience the magnificent.
Excerpted in part from Lost & Found in Egypt: A Most Unlikely Journey Through the Shifting Sands of Love and Loss.
December 4, 2013
The Stairway to Heaven
I left Cairo on a bus and a prayer to the rural regions of Sinai, to climb the mountain of Moses on my own personal pilgrimage.Sinai is a shield of land wedged between Egypt and Israel -- an emptiness covered from one coast to the other with mile after mile of nothing but hot dry sand, and then more sand; a strategic piece of real estate won hard and fought over often; its canal the shipping route of war and commerce; a coastline rich in marine life, coral reefs, pristine waters and European tourists; the land of Moses and the Ten Commandments, and the great parting of the sea by the hand of God.
I threw everything I thought I'd need for two days and nights into my leather backpack: a change of underwear, a toothbrush, cigarettes, passport, cash, my journal. I was to climb Mt Sinai, and what I took with me, I would carry up 2,600 vertical feet. And back down. So I was traveling light – without the highly coveted blow-dryer for my hair, without my Lewis N. Clark Model DK2000 Dual Converter with Adapter Plugs, without a jacket, without a change of clothes. I did pack lipstick, though. It weighs almost nothing. And moisturizer, of course. And, according to lifelong instructions from my grandmother: a cotton handkerchief.
Gardens and cypress trees surround the monastery, but hard dusty scrabble covers the rest of the land, rising toward the jutting edifice of Mount Horeb. The centerpiece of St. Catherine's, its reason for existence, the source of its mystery, and the living artifact that has drawn thousands of pilgrims for hundreds of centuries, is the Burning Bush. The Burning Bush, through which God spoke directly to Moses. If such a thing could really happen, could it happen for me, here in this place, at tomorrow's new light? Could I hear the voice of God? Even if it was just a word? Even if it was just a whisper?
From the monastery, we launched our attack on the 2,600 vertical feet still rising between us and the summit. There, the sun would light upon the very same place on earth where Moses received the Ten Commandments of God. And we would be its witnesses.
But first, the Steps of Repentance. Orthodox monks built 3,750 steep steps into the barren mountainside, adorned with arches and chapels of stone. This path has also been called the Stairway to Heaven. The distinction, I believe, depends on whether you are heading up them, or down.
Most tourists who climb Mount Sinai choose another path, a longer path, gently sloped and winding to the top. Still, a four-hour excursion waited them, in the dark, on an unfamiliar path. It is said that the local Bedouins – with camels for rent – just hang around and wait for people to collapse. I chose the steps.
Read more: Download the FREE chapter, “I Remember Sinai,” from the new memoir, Lost & Found in Egypt: A Most Unlikely Journey Through the Shifting Sands of Love and Loss.
November 19, 2013
The Hotel Bar
My First Night in Cairo
I love hotel bars. They are little islands of respite for weary travelers, lonely travelers, excited travelers, and traveling travelers.
I’ve traveled quite a bit over the course of my life, starting when I was very young, and was carted with my brother, Ken, between our grandparents’ home in Missoula, Montana to our dad’s house in Seattle for holiday visits. Then I traveled between college and home, on work assignments, a zillion weekend getaways, a few exotic vacations, too many mad dashes for the dead and dying, and a year of running away from home.
I’m no stranger to bars, either. My mother took Ken and I on our first excursion into this shadow world when we were in pre-school. Wait, no, that was a “shopping trip,” which just happened to end up in a bar. Ken and I dangled our feet from the tall stools, sipping sweet drinks while my mother slammed a few bourbons with her Kool Filter Kings. (My grandmother would have killed her if she’d known.)
So when I arrived in Cairo, Egypt – late at night, weary, unnerved and without a hotel reservation - I surrendered to fate and headed for the hotel bar.
This is where Patrick and James come into the story.
Patrick was a communications manager with Hyatt Hotels. Hailing from Holland, he was tall, slender, and utterly professional in that totally hip, young, successful way. I recognized part of myself in him, when I was 27 and on the rise in a mega-corporation: smart, capable, and with my whole, great, grownup life ahead of me.
Patrick instantly got on his cell phone and started calling around downtown Cairo for a room somewhere for me. The man next to me, meanwhile, James from South Africa, listened to me ramble on about the minutia of my novel and my research trip to Egypt. His genuine interest seemed like a good omen to me—that this adventure was real and right and good—and for the first time in a long time, I started feeling better.
I bought Patrick and James both a beer and we started swapping travel stories. The conversation went on for over an hour, then another hour. Hotel bars are dark and transient ports of call, witnesses to endless comings and goings and happenings in between. I think of them as human waypoints and I love them.
I didn’t even notice, until James pointed it out later, that I was the only woman in the bar. Neither did it occur to me that not that long ago, women weren’t even allowed in bars in Egypt. I had also forgotten the hunger and the weariness that brought me there. The Princes of Egypt and I were enjoying that happy, intense and temporary friendship that only passing travelers know. And for two blessed hours, I felt as though I wasn’t alone in a great, big, weird, heartless country.
Excerpted in part from, Lost & Found in Egypt: A Most Unlikely Journey Through the Shifting Sands of Love and Loss.
I love hotel bars. They are little islands of respite for weary travelers, lonely travelers, excited travelers, and traveling travelers.
I’ve traveled quite a bit over the course of my life, starting when I was very young, and was carted with my brother, Ken, between our grandparents’ home in Missoula, Montana to our dad’s house in Seattle for holiday visits. Then I traveled between college and home, on work assignments, a zillion weekend getaways, a few exotic vacations, too many mad dashes for the dead and dying, and a year of running away from home.
I’m no stranger to bars, either. My mother took Ken and I on our first excursion into this shadow world when we were in pre-school. Wait, no, that was a “shopping trip,” which just happened to end up in a bar. Ken and I dangled our feet from the tall stools, sipping sweet drinks while my mother slammed a few bourbons with her Kool Filter Kings. (My grandmother would have killed her if she’d known.)
So when I arrived in Cairo, Egypt – late at night, weary, unnerved and without a hotel reservation - I surrendered to fate and headed for the hotel bar.
This is where Patrick and James come into the story.
Patrick was a communications manager with Hyatt Hotels. Hailing from Holland, he was tall, slender, and utterly professional in that totally hip, young, successful way. I recognized part of myself in him, when I was 27 and on the rise in a mega-corporation: smart, capable, and with my whole, great, grownup life ahead of me.
Patrick instantly got on his cell phone and started calling around downtown Cairo for a room somewhere for me. The man next to me, meanwhile, James from South Africa, listened to me ramble on about the minutia of my novel and my research trip to Egypt. His genuine interest seemed like a good omen to me—that this adventure was real and right and good—and for the first time in a long time, I started feeling better.
I bought Patrick and James both a beer and we started swapping travel stories. The conversation went on for over an hour, then another hour. Hotel bars are dark and transient ports of call, witnesses to endless comings and goings and happenings in between. I think of them as human waypoints and I love them.
I didn’t even notice, until James pointed it out later, that I was the only woman in the bar. Neither did it occur to me that not that long ago, women weren’t even allowed in bars in Egypt. I had also forgotten the hunger and the weariness that brought me there. The Princes of Egypt and I were enjoying that happy, intense and temporary friendship that only passing travelers know. And for two blessed hours, I felt as though I wasn’t alone in a great, big, weird, heartless country.
Excerpted in part from, Lost & Found in Egypt: A Most Unlikely Journey Through the Shifting Sands of Love and Loss.
November 17, 2013
Egypt Calls a Woman
I was the most unlikely woman in Egypt in the winter of 1999. Unlikely, unprepared, and underfunded. I didn't even have a hotel room when I arrived. The frenzied city of Cairo hit me like a jackhammer.
With ten places I had to see, two weeks of time, and not enough money to spend, I would call on Egypt. In her turn – with her demands and her offerings – Egypt would call on me.
Wide-eyed, I walked the streets of Cairo by myself: the chaotic downtown core, the enormous, open-air bazaar of Khan-el-Khalili, the Christian museum in Coptic Cairo, and the mosques where Muslims go five times a day to pray in gratitude to God. Then I left on a bus and a prayer to the rural regions of Sinai, to climb the mountain of Moses on my own personal pilgrimage.
There was no mistaking me for a savvy traveler. At any given moment I would be lost, frightened, exhausted, or looking desperately for a place to pee.
I had the time of my life.
Traveling alone is different than living alone. Living in solitude, as I had for many years, like my grandfather and father before me, can harden a person. As can sameness. Loneliness had closed me up, like darkness and chill will cause a lily to fold in upon itself. At dawn, though, that same flower stretches herself toward the sun, recreating herself. Travel can be like that: the promise of dawn. The promise of change.
Excerpted from "Lost & Found in Egypt: A Most Unlikely Journey Through the Shifting Sands of Love and Loss."
With ten places I had to see, two weeks of time, and not enough money to spend, I would call on Egypt. In her turn – with her demands and her offerings – Egypt would call on me.
Wide-eyed, I walked the streets of Cairo by myself: the chaotic downtown core, the enormous, open-air bazaar of Khan-el-Khalili, the Christian museum in Coptic Cairo, and the mosques where Muslims go five times a day to pray in gratitude to God. Then I left on a bus and a prayer to the rural regions of Sinai, to climb the mountain of Moses on my own personal pilgrimage.
There was no mistaking me for a savvy traveler. At any given moment I would be lost, frightened, exhausted, or looking desperately for a place to pee.
I had the time of my life.
Traveling alone is different than living alone. Living in solitude, as I had for many years, like my grandfather and father before me, can harden a person. As can sameness. Loneliness had closed me up, like darkness and chill will cause a lily to fold in upon itself. At dawn, though, that same flower stretches herself toward the sun, recreating herself. Travel can be like that: the promise of dawn. The promise of change.
Excerpted from "Lost & Found in Egypt: A Most Unlikely Journey Through the Shifting Sands of Love and Loss."
