It all started with the kale, which I’d been eyeing in the garden as it grew bigger and shaggier every day. I knew I should harvest it, but there were so many more perishable things to attend to: cherry tomatoes to pick, cucumbers and zucchini that were still holding on, larger heirloom tomatoes finally ripening, peppers, eggplant, the first blush of fall raspberries, grapes. The kale can wait, I kept telling myself. It’s hearty, and there are so many other things I need to cook and eat.

But last Monday, despite two time-consuming Zoom meetings and a bunch of activism homework, I looked at the yellowing lower leaves and decided the kale really shouldn’t wait any longer. I gave all six plants a severe haircut, gathering the leaves in a large plastic bag. Way too much to eat before it went bad, the only option was to freeze it for soup and smoothies. So I set about the process, which involved washing, chopping, and rewashing two colanders full, plunging them first into boiling water, and then into a large pot of ice water–a chore in itself to make room for in the fridge. Afterwards I gave my hands a workout squeezing the chopped kale into little balls, which I prepared to freeze on a cookie sheet before transferring them into freezer bags.

It took me an hour to wash and chop the first batch, which I did sometime midday, and then it took until mid-evening before I got back to the project–the boiling, cooling, ball formation, and then a repeat for the second batch. It was about 10:30 pm, and I was almost done when I saw it in my hands among the kale shards.

A little worm.

I’ve been gardening long enough that one worm to remove is not going to bother me. But I also know that more often than not, worms travel in packs. So I checked the kale balls on the cookie sheet that I’d spent the last two hours putting together.

Sure enough…a tiny little worm or two hiding in every single ball.

What got to me most was not the ruined kale (it’s pretty easy to get good kale in the fall in New England) but the lost hours—time when I could have been working on writing or activism projects, or shortening the list of household and administrative chores I’d put aside, or finishing my PT exercises, which I was now going to have to stay up late to do.

But in my quest toward mindfulness I didn’t let myself get as upset as I might have been. The moments spent on the activity were not unpleasant. I was kind of enjoying the quietness of the kitchen, the meditative quality of chopping and washing, getting some time for my brain to roam where ever it wanted as I went about the rote aspects of the task. And the shimmering bright green color the kale turned in the boiling water remains a pleasant memory, even days later.

I had a harder time staying mindful the next day when I left my car headlights on and was delayed an hour and a half getting home because my battery had died. It’s hard not to scold myself for my lack of mindfulness that led me to leave them on in the first place, but I’m over it now. And I just looked up what to do about worms in kale. They’re likely cabbage worms, based on the holes in the leaves–which I did notice as I was chopping and washing, but attributed to old age or a few bites from hungry beetles, rather than a major infestation. Apparently, planting marigolds nearby or applying plant extracts can help. I’ll think about that for next year.

In the meantime, I have one previous batch of frozen kale I already put away for smoothies. And in the summer, I’m substituting cucumbers instead. And I am very mindful when I drink my morning smoothie, because in addition to being filled with protein and calcium, it is always utterly delicious! Here’s my recipe:

–2 scoops of whey protein powder (I use Terra’s Organic vanilla–which does not taste grainy. There are also vegan options, but I haven’t tried them.)
–1/2 cup of plain kefir or Greek yogurt (vegan: try calcium fortified almond milk—Almond Breeze is good)
–Splash of beet juice
–Splash of unsweetened cranberry juice
–1 mini cucumber, or 1/3 of a big cucumber (or a small ball of frozen kale if you have some that isn’t worm-infested)
–1 tablespoon of hemp seeds
–3 frozen strawberries (can substitute raspberries or blueberries)
–2 slices of ginger

Blend and enjoy!

Last month, during a weekend visit to my childhood home in Queens, I read through a chunk of my father’s files. My brother had already started this process and created a spreadsheet with name of each folder, a brief description of the contents, and suggestions on what to do after I reviewed it. A few folders were labeled, “keep.” Most said “read and discard.”

And even though I’m the one often chiding my partner about his insistence on holding onto things he doesn’t need, I found it really hard to throw most of these files away. Not because there was anything extraordinary. Mostly I read through correspondence related to his job: thank you letters from people who appeared on the public affairs talk show, Straight Talk, which he produced for WWOR-TV (way before it was owned by Fox) as well as several letters of appreciation and a smattering of complaints. Not surprising, since he didn’t shy away from controversial issues in the talk show, nor in the documentaries he wrote and produced for the station, though he was meticulously ethical about the obligation to present different points of view, back in the days when the FCC’s fairness doctrine demanded balanced media.

There was another file folder where he kept his attempts to market his outside writing: TV scripts and plays in his early years, before he settled into his professional life, and a memoir he attempted after he retired. That file was filled with rejection letters from agents back in the days when agents actually wrote letters and didn’t simply ghost you. I threw away all the ones that said, blah, blah–doesn’t meet our needs, but I kept the ones that were specific, like this one from May 1, 1952:

I even kept this nastier one, because, hey, chances are we’ve all gotten letters like this once in a while. (I have, at least. I hope those of you who are also writers haven’t.)

Even though he never sold any scripts, he persisted. Because writing for the sake of writing, whether or not it got published, meant something to him. In fact, falling asleep every night to the clack of his manual typewriter was one of the first inspirations that led me to becoming a writer.

I’m hoping I’ll find just the right moment to shred all my embarrassing teenage diaries, love letters from old boyfriends, angsty journal entries, and more angsty journal entries disguised as faltering poems and thinly disguised failed fiction, because, yes, I also hold onto things I really don’t need, and because–God forbid–I don’t want my children or grandchildren, or any other relatives stumbling upon them after I die. But at the same time, I’m thankful to my father that he kept so much of his life intact in those folders, and that I can choose some of them to hold onto, even if he’s no longer there.

Happy birthday, Dad!

And to whom does it matter? Should “great art” be confined to those who’ve achieved some recognized level of skill/talent/recognition in a world where we don’t define value as the impact it makes on others, but on its ability to be commoditized. Or should we equally appreciate all attempts of creative expression (even if some may touch us more than others) as an offering from one soul to another, and perhaps a mutual healing?

These are questions I’ve been thinking about ever since I returned to piano and stuffed all the baggage about my musical family, creativity, and judgment (by both self and others) into Imperfect Pitch, a memoir, I’ve yet to publish. But recently, my good friend, Lanette Sweeney, (whose blog, Paying Attention: A New Mindfulness Method, I highly recommend) told me about Vijay Gupta’s Restrung: A Memoir of Music and Transformation.

Like me, Gupta had perfect pitch. And like my younger child, he started Suzuki violin lessons at four years old and figured out in a couple of weeks how to play all of Book 1 when he was supposed to be standing on a pizza box and learning how to bow. But unlike either of us, Gupta was, perhaps, a child prodigy, or perhaps pushed into that box. His very scary, overachieving parents, who hit him when he wasn’t practicing enough or to their liking, and several years later shamed him for only coming in second in a prestigious concerto competition, brought him 90 miles into New York City several times a week, so he could train with highly ranked teachers. By the time he was nine, he was touring as a soloist. At the age of 19 he became the youngest player to ever gain an orchestra position with the LA Philharmonic–the dream dangled before many conservatory students who labor and train for years to try to “win” a job with a reputed orchestra.

But for Gupta, this was not the dream. As passionate as he was about the music he played (which is obvious in the memoir from his descriptions of pieces he performed) he felt empty. Still reeling from his parents’ abuse and subsequent estrangement, he turned to overeating and alcohol to numb his pain. Until he found himself with a small group of players giving a “charity performance” on Skid Row in LA, where the audience, not adhering to the classical concert etiquette of deathly quiet listening to the point of doing everything you can to suppress a cough, freely emoted whatever they were feeling as the musicians played.

As Gupta listened to the stories of the audience members sharing their lives and their pain, he began to see the reactions of people in Skid Row as a sort of reciprocal music, a mutual gift. He realized that the musicians weren’t there in the role of experts or to change or heal people. In fact, through the experience, they were the ones being healed. Without knowing it, Gupta says, every time I walked into a shelter or clinic with my violin, I was loosening the grip of my own story, rewriting my relationship to my instrument, to my music, and to myself.

Gupta founded Street Symphony, an organization where professional musicians and community members engage in musical collaborations and perform in homeless shelters, prisons, transitional housing and other spaces that are often deprived of the ability to create and engage in artistic collaboration. Its core programs include a songwriting and mentorship series led by survivors of homelessness and trauma and a project inside the Los Angeles County jails that brings together professional musicians and incarcerated artists for shared rehearsals and performances.” Gupta explains in this three-minute video why these kind of collaborations matter so much (and also gives us a taste of his juicy playing).

What I loved most about this book was Gupta’s humility and honesty. So many “music memoirs” I’ve read sound snotty, making me feel (as much as I might want to be) like I’m not really “a member of the club,” but this book focuses on the flaws of being human–Gupta’s, his parents, (whom he describes with admirable understanding, despite the way they treated him) and the many people the Skid Row community he encounters in his work with Street Symphony. Highly recommended as a story of #artforchange and why music–or any creative pursuit–absolutely matters.

Even though I’m a non-observant Jew who’s been leaning further and further toward atheism, I’ve found this process extremely useful over the past five years–ever since a friend and I started engaging in it deliberately and mindfully, sharing things we read or did that inspired us, and checking in frequently over the month to discuss our insights and support each other in our goals for personal growth.

Yesterday, as I went outside to meditate, the sun was just beginning to creep over the mountain, and I thought about the direction I wanted to set for this year: Open without Overwhelm.

I have a pull toward taking on new projects and activities because I enjoy the freshness that they bring to my brain–and to my heart. Yet, I’ve gotten my life to a place where I don’t want to give up any of the things that nurture me, so it’s easy to fall into an anxious frenzy of having too much on my plate.

How can I do both–be open without overwhelm? Or overload?

The night before, despite some niggling anxiety around confronting new social situations (which I’d never had until years of pandemic isolation left me out of practice) I went by myself to an improvisational singing group of complete strangers. This was one of the few group singing activities I’ve tried since I got my voice back. I keep telling myself I want to join a chorus again, but truth be told, I’m really not sure I’d be able to handle it, yet. What I liked about this group was that it was low-stress. I could drop out whenever I wanted to and there would be plenty of other voices to carry on. Since we were mostly improvising whatever we wanted (occasionally someone in the group would act as a conductor and give us a part), I could sing in a range that was entirely comfortable. What surprised me was that it wasn’t musically boring, or weird, or like some big cluttered mess–as I feared it might be. Instead, my musical brain felt happily stimulated in figuring out what I could add to fit in to the pieces we were creating.

Yay! But, oh no! Another thing to add to the calendar. Thankfully, it’s only once a month.

I’m still thinking the key to all this is to be fully present and grounded in the joy of the moment–even if at times that’s easier said than done.

Meanwhile, I’m feeling the need to recommit to the soul-nurturing activities I’ve already taken on, because it’s so easy for them to become pro-forma–another thing I check off the to-do list without always being really present when I do it. And if I can’t do something with full presence, attention, and joy, maybe it is time to take it off the list for a while so that when I come back to that activity, it feels new and fresh. This has kind of happened unintentionally, as I’ve had little time for piano because of all the PT I’m needing to do. So the few times I have made time for piano, I’ve been able to focus on it more mindfully, enjoying it more in the process.

And more good news: the PT is paying off! I’m seeing clear improvements in my posture and mobility, especially in my thoracic spine. When the spine is open, the heart is open. And that is the ultimate aspiration.

Writing is another thing I’ll never give up, though I’ve done significantly less of it over the past few months. But yesterday, I decided to start my morning with a prompt from the amazing Seema Reza of A Little Less Lonely. Seema put out a group of thirty prompts (one/day) in April for National Poetry Month. Here it is, August, and I’m still wading my way through. Her prompt for Day 22: What do you remember about the earth?

My answer:

So, every day the sun comes up, and today there’s a solar eclipse. But the view where I am will be minimal–only 16% at the peak. And it’s at the same time I have an appointment with the eye doctor because my new far-sighted glasses are blurry. What a metaphor! But seriously, they only function at a pinpoint distance. Not any closer or farther. And I’m not willing to accept that, because my goal is to be expansive in my sight, not more constrained. So I’ll miss the partial covering of the sun by the moon. Maybe afterwards I’ll spend some time pulling weeds and opening pathways in the garden, where I do know the earth, and where the feel of the earth on my hands will be one of the best gifts of the day. But I must be mindful. The ubiquitous onion grass I spend all year trying to yank is flowering, and the best thing, for now, might be to leave it and enjoy the blossoms.

I was no exception to the prevailing mood. In fact, I can’t ever remember a time where 100% of my body and mind were full speed ahead focused on writing. There’s always something else that some small (or large) part of my brain fixates on, and tells me I should be doing instead. The trick to my writing success lies with how much I can tune out that nagging voice–which, of course, varies tremendously.

There’s a funny cartoon by Asher Perlman where someone with a truck labeled “Writers Cleaning Service” comes to someone’s door. The caption reads: The process is simple: you tell me to get some writing done and then to avoid getting started I clean your whole house. But chores and administrivia are only a couple of the many obstacles writers can use to distract ourselves. Job responsibilities, young children, vulnerable family members, or personal health issues can legitimately take up a whole lot of our time. And many of us already have other compelling and competing interests that keep us away from our creativity. If I weren’t an activist, I’d have more time to write, but sorry, working to make the world a better place is not a vocation I want to give up on.

Even if we don’t have too many these issues already built into our lives, any project we take on from learning to knit to painting the garage can help us circumvent the feelings of fear and doubt that often arise during the creative process, giving us more reason to avoid it. My writer friend and colleague Linda Castronovo writes about this beautifully in her (highly recommended) blog Starry, Starry Kite, Projects became my Prozac, she says, a coat of armor I constantly reshaped for myself.

Linda, how did you capture the story of my life in just a handful of words? Friends have challenged me many times on my tendency to take on tasks and projects to the point of overwhelm so that I perceive myself as too busy to attend to the things that really matter–relationships and creativity. I wish I were as clear as Linda is on the reasons why I’m always overloading myself, but knowledge of this obstacle and the desire to clear its hurdle is, at least, an important first step.

Last night another friend, a visual artist, called me to briefly touch on the malaise of being in between projects–that What should I do now feeling when you’ve managed to corral the adrenaline and engage in a creative spree that enables you to tune out the competing shoulds of daily life, but alas, the project is now done. And whether the end result is flawed or perfect, you’re suddenly adrift. I can relate to that obstacle, too. It’s one of the reasons I’ve started to shy away from longer work. It’s way easier to begin another poem or short prose piece than to figure out what to do next after you’ve dedicated years of your life to a novel or memoir. As someone with eleven full length novels and one memoir to my name, (two published, the rest, not yet) I know how painful that what next moment can be. But I guess I can give myself credit for not quitting after the first longer work and eventually pushing on. And I know that my friend, who has already completed a large number of paintings, will go on the next leg of his creative journey, even if he first needs to take a breather.

I am so glad I went to the check-in at writing group this morning, instead of following the part of me that wanted to lean right away into the administrative tasks toppling over on my plate. And I’m grateful to my fellow writers for inspiring me by example with their determination to push forward in their writing, regardless of obstacles and obligations. And, hey, I got a blog post done, which is kind of in between creative work and other chores, as it’s another thing on I can check off the weekly to-do list. But it’s also a place where I can set aside some time to take creativity seriously and practice being mindful with my words and thoughts.

Once again, as we passed through the harbor, I thought about my own history with the Statue of Liberty, which I wrote about shortly after going to the refugee camp on the Mexican border in 2020. Here’s the piece. It was originally published in Prose Online in 2023 (you can hear me reading it, here) and then republished in my chapbook, Here in Sanctuary Whirling.

STATUE OF LIBERTY

I.

You can’t really forget a green statue, because when you’re a kid you know that statues are not supposed to be Comet-vomit-green. We took a boat. I was little, maybe four or five, and I couldn’t see over other people’s heads. We might have gone into the statue, but maybe we didn’t because the line was too long and my mother hates waiting in lines. My mother told me you used to be able to go all the way to the torch, but they closed that part off because someone fell, or maybe they jumped. I looked up at the torch and felt cheated. That’s the only part I remember.

II.

I took my boyfriend here when I was in college. He was from suburban Illinois, a land of tall, white, blond people. It was a windy day in January, so there was hardly anyone on the boat. We couldn’t go into the statue because it was closed for renovations. Or maybe we went in and walked up all those stairs to look out the crown’s windows to the harbor, and beyond it, to the open sea. To tell the truth, I don’t remember. To tell the truth, I couldn’t see over his head.

III.

I broke up with my boyfriend because he was blond. That’s the simplified version, though perhaps I broke up with him because he was from not-New York, or because the Statue of Liberty was closed the day we made the trip, or because the statue was open. I broke up with my best friend several years earlier when I was still in high school. She was the Chinese daughter of immigrants. We were on the subway. She was reading Ayn Rand. I told her I was a socialist and she stopped talking to me. Her stop came first. She got off the train and I watched the closing doors.

IV.

I never thought I could leave New York, but I did. That break-up was harder than leaving my blond boyfriend and harder than the day my best friend stopped talking to me. Now I’m living on a farm with tall, blond people and a lot of cows. The cows have the illusion of freedom in the pasture until they graze by the electric fence.

V.

There have been many cartoons of the Statue of Liberty being compromised. There was one where she had a For Sale sign hung around her neck. There was another with the immigrant-hating president ripping off her head and holding it as a trophy. Before he was elected, they put a statue of this president in Union Square. He was naked with diaper rash and a sagging pot belly. The statue wasn’t green, but maybe it should have been.

VI.

I think I went once with my kids to the Statue of Liberty, but they were bored and we didn’t go inside. Or maybe we did go inside and they were bored. Or maybe we just went to Ellis Island, where I remember with certainty that they were bored, even when we found the plaques my parents paid for, which had the names of my great-great-grandparents, who came to the Statue of Liberty on crowded boats where they couldn’t see over people’s heads. It’s hard, sometimes, to raise kids in a land of blond people with too many cows.

VII.

My great-great grandmother came here to escape the pogroms. My great grandmother told me her mother said that whenever the Cossacks came to the door, she would make the sign of the cross and say “Christians Live Here,” or maybe my grandmother told me that story about her grandmother. I don’t remember. What I do remember is they both said the Old Country was very bad. Other people I went to school with were children of Holocaust survivors. We played a game in the schoolyard called Concentration Camp. It was kind of like tag, except the “it” person was the Nazi, and if they caught you, they made you do unspeakable second-grade things. In school we sang, “My Country ‘Tis of Thee,” and “God Bless America.” One year we did an assembly program called “Sing, America, Sing.” I wrote a satire called, “Cry, America, Cry.” Even then I had the leanings of a socialist.

IX.

At the refugee camp in Matamoros, Mexico, there is no Statue of Liberty. Instead, there’s a tall guard at the bridge who won’t let anyone put a foot in the country to claim asylum, or see over his head. A man in the camp tells me of intruders coming to his house with guns. He tells me about being shoved into a car with his eight-year-old daughter by kidnappers demanding ransom. He tells me about being taken by immigration authorities and locked in a cold, windowless room. At least, the statue still has windows. I did climb it at least once. I remember clearly, the day I looked out through the dirty glass.

He was referring to a poem I’d published the day before in Second Coming, a poem-a-day protest against the current administration’s fascist regime, which we both subscribe to on Substack. I’d mentioned how surprised I was that the poem got so many likes. I’ve published there before and usually only received only one or two reactions. This poem had already gotten 13! And they were mostly from people I didn’t even know.

I was touched that he wanted to see more of my poems, although it shouldn’t have been surprising. We met at an open poetry reading in Greenwich Village, and love of poetry has always been a connector for us. But he doesn’t write many poems any more and I have strong connections with other writers, so I don’t generally make him the first stop for feedback. Also, these days, I’m more centered in my writing process and don’t usually share my work with people until I’ve given it a chance to simmer and revised it myself. I also have less of a need for validation for the many things I might jot down in a fit of emotional angst, some of which might end up being publishable pieces, but many of which will not.

So, I explained that all to him, gaining my own clarity as we talked about it. And then he told me he’d made peace with the idea that he’d likely never be more than a mediocre poet. You’re more of a journalist who occasionally writes in poetic form. You have some great images, but I think what’s often missing is that oomph, I told him.

Our conversation morphed into an exploration of the crevices of mediocrity, and how I had also finally made peace with the fact that I would never be more than a mediocre pianist, though I still feel that as a writer, I can rise above mediocrity by touching people, even if I likely will never make it to the “big leagues.” Then we happily reminisced about our days involved in that Village reading, and the poets we knew there, one of whom had made the jump into national recognition.

It was only after we got home and were in the kitchen trying to declutter the abundance of cucumbers and zucchini, that I asked, So, did you like the poem?

He hesitated. Well… I don’t think it was one of your strongest.

Really? What didn’t you like?

He hesitated again. Actually, I don’t really remember it. Let me read it again.

He disappeared and returned a few minutes later. It’s kind of like journalism. I mean I already know about the MAGA fortress on our corner.

It is true that a lot of the images in this particular poem come from our shared experience. But that didn’t seem like a helpful comment. Maybe he was getting back at me for my comments about his journalistic poetry, but he’d agreed with my assessment. And it’s not his style to be passive-aggressive.

I just don’t think it’s your strongest poem, he repeated, cramming his foot farther into his mouth. I did like the image of the girl in the pink dress dancing.

I write this not to garner sympathy. Truth be told, I was more inclined to laugh at my partner’s floundering than cry about his lack of support, because I knew he was genuinely trying to be supportive, even though this poem clearly didn’t grab him. He even deliberately went to back to Substack to give the poem a like and make a comment, as he does on so many of my posts. However, it is a cautionary tale. Be careful about what you ask for from those you love and whose opinions have extra weight. In other words–beware your darlings. (This is different from the phrase, kill your darlings, a standard trope of writer advice that warns you not to let something something stay if it doesn’t belong in a particular piece, no matter how precious you might find your crafting of a particular phrase.)

This is why I don’t often share my writing–especially writing that is more raw and still-in-progress–with close friends and family. Instead, I depend on my writing communities, where feedback structures have been specifically designed to provide support and all members share mutual goals and a common understanding, coated in respect without other interfering baggage.

But once something is published, it belongs to everyone. That’s what publishing means–making public. All cards on the table. All comments allowed. From anyone who happens to see it. I’m just happy I haven’t gotten very much hate mail.

So have at it. Would love to hear your stories–the good, the bad, and the ugly–about sharing work with those you love. Or if you want to read the poem in question, it’s here. And BTW, I did share this particular piece of new writing with my partner before posting it to get his okay, out of respect and the deep love we have for each other.

Like most writers, I’ve spent many hours of my life searching for exactly the right word. But these have always felt like hours well spent. I have fun thinking about the subtle differences of various verbs, or the different nuances implied by changing the order of words in a phrase or adding/subtracting a qualifier. I enjoy contemplating whether I actually need an adjective or whether or a strong noun will suffice. I also like playing with the sounds of words. In poems, I’m often looking not only for a stronger verb or noun to replace what I’ve written in a first draft, but one that might slant rhyme, or add an extra syllable for a more pleasing rhythm, or resonate with a line’s alliterative qualities. True confessions: I love my thesaurus, because my aging brain can’t always access all the possibilities. I highly recommend wordhippo.com as a great starting place when you can’t find the word you’re looking for.

Words are also building blocks in our everyday world, often the lifeblood in interactions with our friends, colleagues, and loved ones But even though I’ve had some training in effective and appropriate communication and generally try—especially as a teacher—to be affirming and encouraging when I interact with students, I’ve paid less attention to the power of words in relationships. This is partly because, at least in oral communication, we don’t always have the time to pause and consult resources to construct the perfect phrase or consider what impact the words that spill out of our mouths might have on others. Two things I’ve recently read highlighted how important it is to think more carefully about words and their nuances.

Christopher and Anne Ellinger’s book, Getting Along: Skills for Life-Long Love, contains a treasure trove of resources for people wanting to cultivate more ease and connection in their relationships: I read the first edition of this book a while ago and was impressed with the compassion and wisdom that lay under their creativity and sense of play, as well as their openness to the different needs of readers who might engage with this book, which evoked the feel of an invitation to explore rather than a didactic set of instructions to follow.

Recently they released a third edition of this book with some new sections. One of these explored how simple and seemingly unimportant interactions, can potentially create a block in a connection, rather than enhance it. For example, if two people are working on a project together and Person #1 suggests they take a short break and go for a walk, even if Person #2 does not want to go, she can bridge the connection by actively appreciating the invitation before refusing, and then possibly offering a reason or alternative idea. Or she can block the connection by ignoring the invite or dismissing the idea without validating it. This brought to mind my business school teaching days on how to write a letter rejecting a customer request. The principles are the same: Empathize with the audience first by anticipating their needs and putting yourself in their shoes. Then, give a sensible and rational explanation about why you are rejecting the request, inviting them to consider the situation from your point of view. Finally, end with more empathy and appreciation, so that you haven’t broken the potential connection with your customer.

The main point is that words matter.

The day after I read the section about bridging and blocking in Getting Along, an article appeared in my inbox that emphasized how wording nuances can make or break harmonious relationships in the workplace. In Defense of Nuance: 4 Things Managers Shouldn’t Say gives clear examples of how and why typical “workspeak” phrases can compromise people’s emotional wellbeing, creating blocks, and then provides expertly rendered alternative wording that facilitates more connection.

I invite you to enjoy this five-minute read, and also to check out Christopher and Anne’s book. Full disclosure: Christopher and Anne are long-time friends, and Alana Horowitz Friedman, the author of the article, In Defense of Nuance, is my daughter. But while I’ll admit to being a shameless promoter of people I care about, even if I’m generally not a shameless self-promoter, I would not have spent the time blogging about either of these pieces of writing if I didn’t find them intriguing and useful. And I just loved the serendipity of both of these dropping into my brain within 24 hours, prompting me to think about the many ways words hold power, and how I can use my own love of words not only in my writing life, but as inspiration to keep striving to find just the right ones for whatever situation I’m in.

Of course, writing this did make me think of how yucky political rhetoric manipulates our minds—but that’s a topic for another day.

So, for this reason, I’ve always been wary of mirrors, or any item like video or audio recorders, that attempts to cast some aspect of myself back at me. It’s hard for me to watch images of myself in motion or listen to myself speak. When I taught classes on public speaking, I told my students that while recording themselves could be helpful in noting areas they could improve on, it would be better not to record if they didn’t have the stomach for stepping out of their own self-perceptions and seeing themselves as others saw them.

Over the years, I’ve grown more immune to this schism in self-perception. Now, when I look into a mirror, I have an expectation of what I’m going to see, and the resulting reflection doesn’t surprise me, even as my aging body is becoming more angular, my hair slowly more gray. I can laugh when I see interviews of myself using my hands when I talk, and enjoy listening to myself reading poems. While I still don’t like my voice, which seems to be growing grainier and more old-ladyish by the minute, its New Yorker inflections continuing to underly my roots despite 40 years out of the homeland, I can appreciate my expressiveness as well as the echoes of my family legacy–inflections that poignantly evoke my mother and grandmother.

But last night, I took a big step into the void between self-perception and reality. I recorded myself singing.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I completely lost my ability to sing without croaking a few years ago, and it took a year of lessons before I could get my voice back. This felt like a big investment because didn’t have a strong solo voice that felt worth preserving. But I missed being able to sing in choruses or community gatherings so much, it felt essential to my mental health. One of the most fun things about voice lessons was practicing solo songs, so since then, I try to devote a couple of evenings a week to doing vocal exercises and singing along to Karaoke tracks or accompanying myself on the piano. It’s a blast!

Truth be told, when I think of myself as a singer, I’m kind of like that picture of a cat who looks in the mirror and sees a lion. At least, that’s what the wishy part of me wants to see. Mirror, mirror on the wall, whose the fairest singer of them all? I knew that recording myself might quickly put a pin in my inflated self-perception, but I felt that it was finally time to do what many public speakers do: listen to themselves with minimal self-deprecating judgment, but a clear focus on what they can improve.

So I turned on my cellphone recorder and hit play, totally prepared to delete the recordings if they were too painful to listen to.

What did I hear? Yes, my grainy, New York, old lady voice. But good breath control and good vibrato. On pitch nearly all the time with just a few flat notes I could work on.

Did I sound like someone I’d want to listen to on Spotify? No. Could I sing competently in a group, or lead a song if I wanted to? Absolutely.

And that’s what I used to tell my public speaking students. You may never speak like Martin Luther King, but that’s not the point. You can get to a place where you feel more competent, more confident, and hopefully begin to like what you’re doing.

Truth: I did delete the recordings after I listened to them. But not because I was ashamed. I think I just wanted to hold onto the illusion of the cat seeing the lion in the mirror. Better than the little girl who couldn’t see herself, even when she was dancing.

Dina's Substack: Music and Musings

Living a Creative Life in a Creatively Challenged Universe

By D. Dina Friedman

But despite positioning myself clearly in the quadrant of “not superstitious,” it’s still a long road between there and the end of the axis: trusting that the universe will take care of you.

A few days ago, in Burlington, Mass., a six-year-old girl was on her way to her kindergarten graduation. ICE grabbed him out of his car, and brought the two of them to the holding site where my friend was one of several hundred people who show up several days a week to witness. She watched as the little girl came out alone with an ICE agent, crying and screaming, Mami! Papi!

What superstition could this man have adopted to prevent ICE from ripping him away from his family and severing his dreams? If he ends up on the fast track for deportation, which, thanks to two Trump-appointed judges on the DC Circuit Court, was reinstated after being blocked by lower courts, what shirt should he wear to keep the plane from crashing?

And the little girl: What inheritance will she carry from her Papi, locked in a crowded room never meant to be a jail, with no showers, one exposed toilet, and no food except what can be bought bulk from Amazon and put in the microwave. Will this girl ever attend another graduation without thinking of this day? What was she wearing? A pink dress? Or overalls—taking the first necessary step we all must take to buck the little girl princess stereotype? What will she carry in the deepest cavities of her heart—an inheritance that will be hers forever? Will she remember the shadow face of the agent who ignored her screams and smirked as he handed her off to a neighbor to bring her back to her mother and baby sister? Will she remember the faraway voice of her Papi in a distant land? How carefully will she choose her clothes to keep her mother safe? Will she trust in a divine benevolence as so many of the people I met at the border did, despite the rapes, the gangs, the loss of loved ones?

Can superstition save us? Any of us? All of us?

But in my own personal life, I’ve realized that one of the key manifestations of my struggle with perfectionism is the way I can so easily frazzle into an “all-or-nothing” mindset, berating myself for the things I didn’t get done, rather than acknowledging with gratitude what I’ve accomplished.

Take the last few days where I feel I’ve been spinning my wheels, unable to ground myself in my writing, eschewing any activism-related task that didn’t affect other people or didn’t have a deadline, and once again putting the pile of administrivia I told my partner I’d finish last week (or was it last month) on the I don’t have the mindset to deal with this right now pedestal. And yet, I still felt so harried and busy I didn’t even have time for walking the ersatz dog in the woods, a nurturing and healthful habit I’ve resolved to keep up ever since my four-legged personal trainer passed away many years ago.

So, what did I do instead? I took care of my grandson; worked out at the Y (where I need to do weight training for osteoporosis), did some PT exercises and yoga/cardio at home, made an elaborate dinner trying to use up as much cilantro as I could from our generous farm share, tried to catch up on a week’s worth of local newspapers, had a long impromptu strategy call with an activist colleague, picked several pints of blueberries and raspberries that are coming in and ripening faster than we can gather them, and pulled just enough weeds in the garden to keep them from taking over.

And I cleaned the garage.

This mucky job has been so low on the list it’s underwater. But we’re getting some work done on it, and our contractor offered us quick and easy debris removal if we could clear it out now.

So, for the first time in years our garage looks habitable, though sweeping the floor alone took at least 45 minutes and required a good dust mask. We’ve added considerably to the heap of construction debris and put a few things out on the corner for people to take if they want them.

So, I should feel good, right?

But in the all-or-nothing mentality that my perfectionist brain lives in, I keep pivoting to what I didn’t do. Even though I am finally getting the insight that this kind of thinking does not serve me. It’s what prevented me from truly enjoying the piano for so many years, because I couldn’t accept my imperfect playing. (Side note: Another thing I’m annoyed with myself about is that due to what feels like other must-do time commitments, I’ve barely played the piano in weeks! ☹️)

And this is what also gets me feeling so down in the dumps in my social change work, and shut down and triggered by others who do more than I do, or who are purer in some way in the political and lifestyle choices that they make.

So now it’s time to think about other ways I can be sabotaged by an all-or-nothing mindset, so I can try to make some changes. And I’d better do this all the time, because otherwise, I will be a total failure in eradicating (another good all-or-nothing word) my perfectionism. 😊

I’d love to hear about other people’s struggles with all-or-nothing. And what you do to address it.

On my mother’s side, my grandfather, Pop-Pop, was a symphony violinist. He lived next door to us when I was a child and I spent many hours watching him frown at the full length mirror as he practiced, carefully positioning the bow and playing each note over and over until he got it exactly how he wanted it. From him, I learned the importance of striving for perfection, even though reaching for it might seem impossible.

My father’s mother’s family, the Glicksteins, were just as passionate in their love of music and equally accomplished in their ability to play from the heart. My great-grandfather Abe Glickstein, a clarinet player, was known for giving Sunday afternoon living room concerts featuring his seven talented children for his immigrant neighbors at the turn of the 20th century, and for offering the services of a three-man klezmer combo (him and his two sons) to the community if music was needed for a wedding or other simcha. These great uncles, Max and Dave, went on to have notable musical careers, while their sister, my Grandma Jeanne, made her living teaching piano and recorder, and running summer music programs to spread the joy that fueled her life.

The curse of this story, as I wrote about extensively in my yet-to-be published memoir, Imperfect Pitch, was feeling that I had some sort of impossible musical bar to live up to, and I didn’t have either the patience or or the desire that Pop-Pop had to spend agonizing hour after hour at my instrument to achieve it.

But the blessing, which I think comes at least in part from my family constellation, is a love of the stage. Not so much for musical performance, since I’m still not as confident as I might want to be in that area. But give me a podium, and I’m in my happy place, whether I’m reading my poems or stories, talking on a panel about some aspect of writing craft, recounting my witness trips to the border and the Homestead Detention Center, standing up impromptu in front of a group of protesters on the street, or teaching the basics of classical argument theory to a room of bored college students.

There is something so magical about being listened to.

So, I get how disappointed my three-year-old grandson Manu felt when his parents told him they were going to take him to see the Tokyo Paradise Ska Band, which he has been totally obsessed with for a year, but, no, he was going to be on the stage with them, as he enacts when he listens to the videos, donning his sunglasses and strutting around his stage set of stacked mats, toy saxophone in one hand, mic in the other.

Because even though a seat in the audience can be a safe place, a time to relax, reset, and feel comfortably anonymous, there is something about getting out there on stage that can add a bit of technicolor to our often muted sense of self. Even if the journey there might feel like you’re standing on a balance beam above a pot of boiling oil, as I know it does for many who experience very real stage fright.

If that’s your story, I recommend, as my co-facilitator and I taught for many years in a course we developed called Public Speaking for the Terrified, to start small: read your work, share your art, play a song, or speak your heart to a trusted group of friends in your living room, making them promise that they will give you only praise for what they liked and what resonated. At some point you may be ready for a combo of both praise–never forget the praise–and critical feedback, but make sure to have a notetaker to write both of these things down. Otherwise, all you’ll remember is the criticism.

Whether it’s genetic or environmental or some of both, I’m grateful to my forbears for modeling not only their love of their art, but their passion for sharing it. And grateful that, for the most part, stage fright is not an issue for me. Perhaps some day I’ll take a more terrifying step and sign up at some large, anonymous karaoke bar. Or not.

This doesn’t fit in with image I project to most who know me, or the words I might use to describe myself: writer, activist, gardener, nature-lover. And like most, I abhor the money that casts its dark shadow over this and other big sports events. $10,000 for a ticket to Madison Square Garden is obscene. Even $1,000 that Mayor Mamdani spent for standing room at the top of the arena is obscene. And unnecessary. Sports should be for the people. All the people. Not a commodity that can be manipulated to squeeze as much money out of hopeful hearts as possible.

Yet, every night of the playoffs, I’ve tuned in on my free-trial Youtube TV subscription (which I will cancel at the end of its 21 days) my heart with the hordes and multitudes at the watch parties in Central Park. I have not lived in New York for 46 years, yet, this doesn’t make many any less of a New Yorker. There’s a certain “Only in New York” way we have about how we relate that transcends our diverse backgrounds and brings us together. I still remember being on the subway in 1969 when the Mets were in the World Series. Everyone who had one had their transistor radios glued to their ears. When Tommie Agee homered in Game 3, the entire subway car erupted in cheers.

This is the kind of comeraderie I often long for, a swelling excitement and connection among strangers for a common goal. I hate to say that I’ve felt this more often at sports events than at peace demonstrations, but unfortunately that’s true. There have been occasional exceptions–The Women’s March in DC in 2017; March for Nuclear Disarmament in New York 44 years ago today on June 12, 1982. But I can often feel a more compelling swell of excitement huddled around a television with people rooting for a similar outcome, even if that outcome is random and doesn’t really matter in the wider world. Or maybe because the stakes are lower, it’s easier not to feel the thick of fear and disappointment one might feel in the wake of a devastating Supreme Court decision or a harmful act committed by our government or another country.

To put this all in a little more context, I grew up in a sports-dominated household. No one played, but the TV was always on: baseball, football, basketball, hockey…I don’t know if I would have survived my teenage years without the Mets and the Knicks to divert my attention from my own angst to something random that was totally outside of my control, yet–at the time–mattered deeply. Finding friends who shared that passion made it easier to stay away from experimenting with the wilder world of drugs and alcohol and sex. We could ground ourselves in the safer land of fandom. I guess we could have also been as passionate about other things that I might consider more in my bailiwick now, like music or art. But sports was what was offered in my house–and in my city–as a balm of connection.

There’s a lot more to my sports story, but even now, I’m self-conscious about nerding out on too many extraneous details people are unlikely to want to hear. In fact, due to some hard-to-shed embarrassment, I’ve been procrastinating about writing this since Wednesday (the day I usually blog). But I guess that’s a good thing, because then I wouldn’t have been able to end with the Knicks’ amazing comeback in Game 4.

(And yes, I totally believe T jinxed Game 3. If only instead, he’d donated some of his billions to buy everyday New Yorkers some tickets–what a PR coup that would have been!)

A differently wired person might approach this conundrum with a higher degree of rationality. Pick the 3–or 4, or 5–most important things. Focus on them and forget the rest.

But it’s all important! I argue. I might enjoy some activities more than others, but when I think about the overall benefits of the things I choose to do with my life: whether it’s writing or music; spending time with friends, family, or my grandson; walking in the woods; gardening or food prep; activism; or all my meditation/exercise protocols; there’s not a single thing I want to cut down on. And while I don’t like most other household maintenance tasks, there’s just so much I can afford to let my anxiety rise at the worry of leaving them undone.

So, instead, I’ve been experimenting with how I’m looking at the totality of my life and the activities and tasks that comprise it–a circle, that if anything, keeps widening rather than shrinking. For the last few days, I’ve set the intention to focus well on one thing at a time, rather than getting distracted by all the other “shoulds” that constantly ping like little cat bites on my ankles reminding me that they’re still here and need my attention. This has been somewhat successful–at least more successful than dealing with my cat, who really does bite my ankles all the time when he wants attention.

It’s true that at the end of the day, the list of things I didn’t get to is still much longer than what I got to, but the “consolation prize” of feeling more happy and content, and ensconced in the minute-to-minute experience of whatever I’m doing, has definitely been a mood booster. And, as consolation to my perfectionist overachiever self, I can absolutely sense how allowing everything else to blur into the background while keeping my attention on whatever I’ve chosen to do has enabled me to do whatever I am doing much better and with much more satisfaction.

What’s also important to acknowledge is the immense privilege and gratitude I have in being able to lead the life I want, even if I might consistently want to do more than I’m able to achieve. This isn’t a consolation prize. It’s a huge way of shifting how I look at the whole Issue.

I don’t think I’m ever going to cure my “ADHD of the Soul,” nor am I willing to take any real or metaphorical drugs to taper my plethora of interests and desires. There’s just too much out there that begs to be engaged with. But any interventions I can employ to stop making myself feel bad because I “should” be doing more of it–if not all of it–are certainly worth trying. I’d love to from others about how you’ve addressed this all-too-common problem among those of us trying to live satisfying, meaningful and creative lives in a creatively challenged universe.

At the same time I was reading a book, I didn’t want to finish because it was so good: Apeirogon by Colum McCann, a novel, about Combatants for Peace, a group of Israelis and Palestinians who have lost close relatives in the conflict and yet have been moved to embrace trust and mutual respect for each other, rather than fear and revenge. Based on real life characters, that was enough of a reason to read the novel. But what made the book SO exceptional was the way it was written, in small and larger bursts of intensely poetic but also clear and accessible prose, with some sections going on for a few pages and others compressed into just a paragraph or two, sometimes a single sentence. In every section, a cascade of images, emotions, history, context, and open ambiguity circled around and around in itself like the whirlpool of a fall once it hits the water.

In his poetic cascades, McCann weaves through many topics that seem to be unrelated to the plot and theme of the book, but he brings them back beautifully again and again, showing how everything reverberates on everything else and nothing can be viewed without looking at it from an infinite number of angles. In fact, the book’s title, Apeirogon, refers to a mathematical shape with an infinite number of sides and vertices. And that’s how I felt when reading this book. Whether I was reading about birds, or a 19th century failed expedition across the Dead Sea, or the tragic stories of one man’s daughter killed by a rubber bullet shot by Israeli border guards and another man’s daughter dead from a suicide bomb in Jerusalem, I wasn’t asked to park myself in any given spot. I was just asked to sit and observe what felt like a beam of light bouncing off a room full of angled mirrors.

In my MFA program as well as in previous fiction writing workshops, lectures, and books, there’s a strong emphasis on the notion of scene. In very basic terms, a novel or a story should consist of a set of scenes where action happens based on what the characters do within these scenes. And these actions are motivated by what the characters need or want. There is certainly room for exposition, description, and (if one wanted, but it wasn’t required) poetic prose, but the basic questions asked at workshops were things like What’s at stake? Who are these characters? What do they want? We were warned, strongly, not to let our love of the written word go wandering off into nowhere.

I’m not dissing these questions and this approach. It’s definitely important to understand these basic fictional elements. And I also know that once someone becomes skilled in a convention, they can more easily and successfully break it. This book’s strength was in its exposition and description; yet, all of it masterfully flowed back to the main theme. It stood out from other so-called “experimental” books I’ve read that broke from heavy scene/character mold because each “cascade” was a mini-story that landed somewhere and I could be on its journey as it sheeted over rocks, or pooled in a corner, or joined another tributary and kept on swirling.

I’m tempted and inspired to see if I can write a selection of prose poems that works as story. Or a story in the shape of a heartbreakingly beautiful series of cascades. Perhaps some of you may be as well, but whether or not that idea calls, and no matter where you might stand on issues regarding Israel and Palestine, I highly recommend this novel. It will open your heart and your sense of what’s possible–on the page, and perhaps even in the world.

This is not a complaint or a boo-hoo moment, and, as I’ve counseled others, I didn’t take it personally. But I’d been used to a slightly higher (10-12%) batting average than what I’d been getting. True, I might have been skewing my submission strategy to a higher number of “reach journals” from which I’d be more likely to get rejected, but I still always made sure to include many others that seemed in my ballpark.

Until this past week, where three journals accepted seven poems.

It’s important to recognize that what happened this week didn’t start this week. Two of the journals that accepted my work were places I’d published before, and though I don’t know either of these editors personally, I was touched that they each went out of their way to personally solicit a submission from me. There’s little more gratifying to get an email out of the blue that says, Hey Dina, we haven’t heard from you in a while. Our next theme is __________ and we would love you to submit your work. I’m paraphrasing the wording, but it’s the implication, rather than the words, that matters. Your work touched me. It was memorable and I’d like to see more of it. And share it with others.

Wow! Do I really have a fan base? Part of me feels uncomfortable even thinking such a thought. I tend to bristle in spaces where writers and other creatives get too blatantly self-promotional. I know there’s a certain amount of PR that has to be done, but I can usually discern when people are a little too connected to their egos, rather than seeing themselves as merely a conduit for the work they’re doing. I know that is a highly judgmental statement, and I’ll probably need to unpack it–and apologize to anyone I might have offended. But I will continue to stand firmly in an aura of humility, rather than arrogance, though hopefully maintaining enough balance not to fall into self-effacement, as one Jewish spiritual practice, the Mussar, teaches.

And taking that significant step away from self-effacement, I’m glad to take this moment to affirm that it’s ok–more than ok–to acknowledge that somewhere there are people out there who love my work.

Which is why I do all these submissions. And write this blog. Because I want to expand my reach beyond the boundaries of my communities to others in the ether, whom I hope will be touched in some small or large way by my words and the messages behind them. Ultimately, what I want is connection, whether it’s through my words or (in the cases of writers/artists/musicians, etc. of whom I’d call myself “a fan”) theirs.

Note: this is not a quick process. It has taken years, and many, many rejections and disappointments to cultivate these relationships. Likely there are editors out there who will love your work once they become aware of it, but the amount of time this takes will try your patience and fortitude.

However, it is a great way to feel connected–and to get your words out there to a wider audience. It’s also been personally gratifying to friend some of these editors on social media and get to know just a little bit about them as people, as well as to follow journals I like and get a deeper sense of why these editors have devoted so much time to the unpaid labor of love of spreading words into the universe.

So thanks to Katherine McDaniel at Synkroniciti, Michael Broder at Second Coming, Abby Murray at Collateral, Elizabeth MacDuffie at Meat for Tea, Nadia Arrioli at Thimble, Emily Perkovich at Querencia Press, Matthew Krajniak at Consequence, Hayley Haugen at Sheila-Na-Gig, Lee Desrosiers at Wordpeace and the Naugutuck River Review, Sally Zaino at Earthshine, and many others that I’m missing here for your dedication to forging connections between writers–and readers.

This question was posed last night to three writers from my community at a reading last night: John Sheirer, Darlene Elias, and Fin Finley. These are writers I’m happy to know and even happier to listen to, all of whom were authentic in using language beautifully, clearly, and compassionately to tell their own truths. John is a master of the 100-word story whose turn at the end leads you right back to wanting to hear the whole thing again. Fin always impresses me with her eye for detail and a voice that straddles a perfect edge between snarkniness and vulnerability. Darlene writes passionately about her own life as a Puerto Rican woman with roots in the barrios of the Bronx and Holyoke, MA, evoking much deeper questions about racism, generational trauma and womanhood.

People asked several questions at the end, but the one about knowing when your work is finished was the one that stuck with me. I hadn’t heard the “it’s a draft until you die” quote, but I’d heard a similar sentiment: Projects are never done they’re just abandoned. Still, I appreciated what each writer had to say on the subject.

Even as I was reading my story tonight, I was rewriting it in my head, John said (paraphrased as best as I can remember). I had to laugh, because I do exactly the same thing. Sometimes I’m swift enough to change a phrase on the spot from the inferior phrase that’s written on the page, even as the cruel inner judge starts its rampage–How did that crappy sentence ever make it into print?

Fin had a more positive response, (also paraphrased): There’s often just a point when you feel something. It could be tears, or some kind of oomph or other emotional reaction. And then you know that you’ve said whatever it is you really wanted to say. I resonate with that one, too. Some snotty writing pundits decry such sentimentality, but ultimately, while most of my writing is intended for an outside audience, it still has to get through the gatekeeper audience of one: me. So if I’m moved, that’s a good beginning. The question is whether I’ll still be moved when I read the piece tomorrow, and the day after that, and the week, month and year after that…Is the impact momentary or can it hold?

Darlene talked about the importance of deadlines–timelines in which pieces had to be done, perfect or not. And this is also a good thing to remember–especially for recovering perfectionists. I make it a point to spend no more than one-to-two (well, occasionally three) hours on a blog post, and I’m determined complete each one in a single day. So, while I do read over my drafts several times before hitting the post button, making little tweaks here and there, I don’t obsess on getting getting my posts perfect and think of them more as musings in progress. They might turn out very differently if I gave them a week to simmer, but I’ll never know.

Poems, stories, or essays targeted for journals are an entirely different matter. I can’t read over prose I’ve written without omitting at least a few sentences and words that clearly don’t need to be there, though in most of my “finished” stories (which have gotten to a point where I have the emotional oomph) I don’t tend to mess around too much with the plot or the characters. But I have often deleted a page or two at the beginning or end. Or a random paragraph in the middle, or added something to a scene that felt chopped off.

And I do have some poems in my file that have 5 or 8 or 10 different versions. Sometimes when I take them out to work on, the tenth version seems no better than the first version. Often it seems worse, but the first version also feels like an idea that’s only half-baked. These are the projects that are abandoned. No flood of tears or emotional oomph in sight. But every once and a while a year or two will go by and when I’m going through my files and “Kondo-izing,” I’ll find a gem in these abandoned piles that I can polish into sparkle–and, dare I say, finish it!

Everything will be grand, then–until I read that piece at a reading somewhere and rewrite the whole thing in my head.

She was referring to the break-up of former Yugoslavia, which she described as “a union of south Slavic peoples,” into six separate republics: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia/Herzegovina, Macedonia, Serbia and Montenegro. The wars and ethnic cleansing campaigns in the 1990s that are attached to this break-up resulted in the deaths of thousands, and more than 2 million people (nearly half the population) were forced to flee their homes.

As we inched forward in the long line of cars, trucks and buses (a similar experience from one we’d had a few days before when crossing from Croatia into Bosnia/Herzegovina) I couldn’t help think about the song, Paradise Has No Borders, which I’ve heard far too many times, thanks to my three-year-old grandson—an obsessed fan of the Tokyo Paradise Ska Band. When we play the videos, he likes to shout along while holding a toy sax in one hand, a toy microphone in the other: No Borders! No Borders! Paradise Has No Borders!

No matter what our utopian vision of paradise might be—borders or not, I think the question of nationalism is a good one to stop and ponder. How useful (or damaging) is it to break up the world into nation-states based on our religious and ethnic heritage?

As a Jew living in the multicultural United States and as an immigration justice activist, I tend to have a low opinion of nationalism and of borders. Most of my ancestors came to this country during the great wave of immigration in the later part of the 19^th century, a time when it was easy to sail past the Statue of Liberty and begin a new life. But even as a fourth generation American who only had distant family affected by the Holocaust, fearful stories of persecution of Jews filtered down through my American-born, very secular grandmother, who still felt compelled to tell me about the pogroms and how her grandmother pretended to be Christian whenever the “bad men” came to the door.

While I support the right of all peoples to live in safety, I don’t believe that safety can be achieved by establishing areas where one ethnic, racial, or religious group has dominance and more rights over others within those borders. And I don’t believe it works well to partition an area into sections for different religions or ethnicities. We’ve seen too many instances in history where all that does is lead to more wars and more oppression and violence.

I know the notion of open borders is off-putting to many, but what would our planet be like if we could call home wherever we might choose to settle? Yes, many people might flock toward areas where there were more economic resources and the hope of a better life. But for others, economics might not be as much of a motivating factor as family, community, and ties to a familiar language, culture, and lifestyle that would keep people where they were already choosing to live.

As long as they could be safe…

A momentous task to be sure, but we just need to create more paradise… in as many places as possible.

Paradise with no borders.

For inspiration—a few paradise-inspiring photos I took from Croatia, Bosnia, and Montenegro

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So far on this trip, I’ve climbed 4 belltowers, a total of 645 steps.

I will insist to anyone that this is way better than a Stairmaster. No sweaty gym smells, for one thing. And at the top: open air and rewarding views.

But I don’t do it to photograph the views—or even for the exercise. Or because it’s a tourist kind of thing that lots of people want to do just to say they did it.

I do it to try and claw back those nostalgic days as a college chimesmaster.

Not that I want to be in college again, or as young and naïve as my 18-year-old self. But I did adore the zingy feeling of being at “the top of the world,” (or, at least, at the highest point of my college campus.) I also loved the metaphorical aspects of being at the tower’s apex--the sense of power I got from ringing out tunes the whole campus could hear, while enjoying the anonymity that no one knew it was me who was playing (other than a few random folks who happened to climb up that day). I could do the musical thing without worrying about judgment.

As I look back over my life’s musical journey: from the disempowering piano lessons of my childhood, to all the dabbling I did in various choruses and bands, then giving it all up and taking refuge as a “music mom” before finally tentatively returning to piano and recently recuperating from a vocal injury that left me not being able to sing at all—playing the chimes was (no pun intended) a high point.

We started our bell tower journey by climbing the tower of the Cathedral of San Giusto in Trieste, Italy. This tower was only 90 steps, about half the height of the other three, but the view was still well worth it.

In Rovinj, Croatia, on the Istrian peninsula, the bell tower is the landmark of the city, as shown here.

This was the most challenging tower to climb, due to the very rickety stairs. And its older, rougher appearance brought back all our dumb chimes jokes about Quasimodo. I would not have been surprised to see his ghost come floating through the belfry.

Unfortunately, none of the bell towers had a full-scale carillon or chime, but we did catch some of the noise of the Cathedral Bell Tower at Diacletian’s Palace in Split, Croatia, when we were silly enough to climb directly at high noon. Here’s a 12-second video:

The view wasn’t too shoddy either, though the first few flights of narrow stairs won the prize for steepness.

The bell tower in Zadar, Croatia had a similar style to the one in Split, with way fewer crowds and just as pretty views.

I’m grateful to my partner, Shel, who cheerfully climbed all the bell towers with me—not that I couldn’t have gone by myself, but it was way more fun to do together. Of course, I’ve also done a few things on this trip that I might not have put on my A-List. Life is all about compromise, but I’m glad that we’re mostly compatible in our travel styles and choices.

And he was happy to climb for the exercise and the photo opps at the top.

We have one more place to visit before coming home. I’m told Dubrovnik has a bell tower, but they don’t let you climb it. Oh, well…

I hadn’t been much aware of Italy’s Jewish history other than the obvious knowledge that their population was impacted by the Holocaust. What drew me to starting my trip in Trieste was not this gruesome history, but the current joie de vivre I’ve come to associate with Italy based on previous trips: outdoor cafes lining all the little alleys offering good coffee, good wine, stellar desserts I’d deny myself at home, and places to watch the sunset over the deep blue Adriatic Sea.

But I generally have checked out Jewish museums and synagogues in my travels, so it was totally in character for us to visit the small Museo Ebraico in the old city. Now that many synagogues in the U.S. are often under police protection, I shouldn’t have been surprised to see a security vehicle in front of the building, patrolled by two men in army camouflage gear, but of course, I was. It’s hard not to cling to the illusion of feeling safe wherever I go.

Even though I’ve been to many Holocaust museums before and had to do extensive research when writing Escaping Into the Night, something about visiting this museum hit me harder than usual. Perhaps it was the emphasis not on the Shoah itself, but on the period leading up to it: how the encroaching fascism in the 1930s split so many of Trieste’s Jewish families—some supporting the move toward greater order and authority, and others eschewing it in favor of communism or socialism.

Sound familiar?

Or perhaps it was the slow creep of laws restricting rights for Jews and others targeted by the rise of the new regimes. Or the longer overview of all the the times Jews didn’t have rights in Europe, which even though I knew that from past studies, it’s still a concept that’s hard for me to wrap my 21^st Century American brain around.

Even with what’s happening right now in our country.

And with what has continued to happen in many places throughout the world.

It’s much easier to embrace the daily joie de vivre, even when I’m not on vacation. And on the days that joie de vivre seems out of my grasp, to focus on the day-to-day household and life problems I can solve, rather than things that are out of my control.

And ultimately it was the deportation stories that tied the threads between then and now. Photos of person after person deported to Auschwitz, never to return. And in front of the pension where we were staying, several blocks away from the museum, plaques commemorating the Jewish family that used to live in that building--all of them ending their lives in Auschwitz.

The owner of the pension, who asked in a whisper if we were Jewish, told me her mother, now 102, lived in Trieste at the time of the Shoah, but escaped with her family to Assisi, where they were hidden in a convent. If it weren’t for that, I wouldn’t have been here, she said.

Some of the families in Trieste didn’t go to Auschwitz. And most were sent originally to Risiera di San Sabba, an old rice mill just outside of town that was converted into a holding facility and deportation center.

Sound anything like current plans to convert warehouses into massive detention camps?

We could have visited the site, but we chose not to. We were on vacation and I didn’t want to see the crematorium. So we chose to go to Miramare Castle instead, and bask for a few hours in lifestyles of the rich and famous, while enjoying the views of the sea.

When we came back we sat outside at a gelato bar enjoying mixed cups of cioccolato nocciola, fragola, tiramisu, e pistachio while listening to a street musician play My Way and Hit the Road, Jack on the saxophone. Later that evening, we walked a few blocks to an Indian restaurant for dinner in order to take a break from all the white flour pasta and pizza we’d beem eating. When the owner said he looked forward to coming to the United States again, we told him he’d be better off waiting a few years until things changed.

And now it’s up to all of us to make sure things do change. Soon.