LIMBO, ANYONE?

March 18, 2014Limbo. Wasn’t that a dance craze back in the 50’s, two people holding each end of a bamboo pole and everyone bending over backwards to pass under it? Is that what we try to do when faced with something hanging over us, bend over backwards to escape its touch?My manuscript is currently with 2 editors an agent and a consultant all of whom said they would be reading it right away; right away, of course, being an immeasurable amount of time completely dependent on a) what else is going on in the editor/agent’s life that might be even more important that reading my novel and b) whether or not my novel grabs them enough on page 1 to make them want to read it ‘right away.'Suffice it to say that until I hear from anyone of them with a) hopefully, a yay or b) a no accompanied, hopefully, with helpful feedback, I am in limbo. As I said to my daughter via Skype today, working on the manuscript now would be like knitting a third sleeve for a sweater that already has 2, one or both of which need a bit of unpicking and re-knitting before being ready for wear.So there’s that limbo. And then, until yesterday there was nearly a week of limbo waiting for Joel’s spirit to arrive, his body having arrived right on time last Tuesday. Of course, the first day of reunion was the giddy, giggly, pinch-pinch-you’re-here, reality. But then over the next few days I began to feel he wasn’t really here. For sure, jet lag always plays its evil part, sledge-hammering one, without warning, with its life-sucking force until, like the zombie you now are, you stagger to the nearest horizontal surface and become one with it.But it was more than jet-lag going on for my Joely: he was also decompressing from 2 months of living in New York. When I first met Joel, nearly 24 years ago, it was as he was nearing the end of 4 months of summering on Cape Cod. Although he was reeling somewhat from the confusion of his 28 year-long marriage having ended some months prior, he was nonetheless at ease in his body, relaxed about time, and seemingly free of the desperation that drives ambition. He was brown and lithe and living by the tides instead of the clock. He was beautiful. I didn’t know, then, about Joel, the New Yorker. I was quite surprised when I met him a few weeks later. Nicely surprised by his metropolitan sexiness, his ease of rhythm on the streets, the Leica continually on the way up to his eye. These elements of Joel were animalistic, tactile, sensual and rather nicely laid back. But it didn’t take long before I also saw in him what I see to some degree or other in everyone who works and lives in a big city: a driven quality; driven to do more, earn more; these two ‘mores’ eventually melding into the drive to ‘be’ more. Think about that: to live believing that you need to ‘be’ more. More than, or of, what?There is no end to this need, as I well know. And the irony is that this erroneous belief, that we are not enough, becomes a need which actually erases the beautiful ‘we’ that we are, so that we then really aren’t enough because a part of us, the natural part of us, has been subtracted.I’ve struggled with this energy every time I’ve lived in a bit city whether it was London, New York, Los Angeles, Vancouver, San Francisco or Toronto. And I’ve watched my man over these years, promise himself upon returning to the city, (then from Cape Cod, now from Europe) that this time in New York it will be different; this time, he’ll say, I’m going to play. Ha!And so it was that on Sunday, when I lay on one couch while Joel napped on the other, that I began to weep for him, because I understood what he had just put himself through.I spoke, in the last blog, about having bumped – to put it mildly – into a few immovable objects in Paris and how I had realized that a year of country living had expanded my experience of space; that my body had come to not only fully inhabit itself, but also the space around it.In a city like New York, unless you are a narcissistic, megalomaniacal, filthy rich, bully, it’s pretty hard to take up space because it’s already full. This is what I always see reflected on Joel’s face after a few weeks of city-living; a pinched a quality that has nothing to do with age or wrinkles.So, there was that limbo. And now we’re entering another type; the transition from Provence to Tuscany. Although we don’t leave until 15th April, the sorting and packing have already begun in my head. Over the reality of our fireplace here, I superimpose an image of our yet-to-be-seen fireplace there. And I’m on the hunt for various articles I’d like for the house there: old metal shutters, a rustic sideboard, linen made up into curtains, perhaps another pillow or two for the new sofas. And as I make my lists and rummage through broccante stores, I remind myself that I’m not actually in limbo. I don’t have to bend over backwards to make it under a suspended line. I’m here, sitting in the sun, looking at the hazy hills.In a little while, I’ll drive Joel to a much-needed massage. We’ll pass cherry orchards where the other day we went walking with our friend Sharon. To our joy, a couple of the trees had been pruned, their bud-laden branches lying on the ground. We each took armloads home and have had the pleasure of watching them open. Limbo doesn’t exist in nature. In nature, there is no here, no there, no need to be more. Nature is full of itself, as you will see from this little video Paul made.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzJpwPf1O4UPaul and Sharon were having lunch when this bud fell from one of the branches  Unattached to either the branch or its death, it expressed its vital energy. It didn’t care that it would never become a cherry. Instead it spent its life force dancing on top of a table.Way to go!