My Own Worst Critic

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My Own Worst Critic

Let’s be honest, folks. We all have that voice in our heads. The one that whispers (or sometimes shrieks) insecurities like a malfunctioning smoke detector. This eternal internal tormentor, for lack of a better term, is what I like to call my own personal Jiminy Cricket.

Imagine, if you will, a tiny, gremlin-like creature perched on your shoulder. It wears a sensible pantsuit and carries an umbrella while perpetually displaying a frowny face emoji. This is Jiminy, my personal brand of self-doubt. Jiminy specializes in passive-aggressive critiques delivered with the saccharine cheer of a customer service rep keeping me on hold for 45 minutes.

I just finished that presentation? “Wow, you managed not to trip over the projector cord. Baby steps!” I aced that big exam? “Well, at least you didn’t get a failing grade. Participation trophy for you!” Jiminy is the master of diminishing returns, turning victories into lukewarm consolation prizes.

But here’s the thing: Jiminy is not entirely wrong. My memory, for instance, resembles a particularly cluttered Tupperware drawer. I once spent 20 minutes searching for my phone while holding it in my hand, mid-conversation. And let’s not even get started on the time I accidentally signed up for a clown college email list because, apparently, “juggling for beginners” sounded like a good life skill. (Honestly – I still believe that could be possible.)

The problem with Jiminy isn’t his occasional valid point, it’s his relentless negativity. It’s like having a tiny Gordon Ramsay permanently stationed in my brain, critiquing my every move with withering pronouncements like, “Those mashed potatoes are a flavor catastrophe!”

The worst part? Jiminy thrives on my silence. Leave him to his own devices and he’ll happily turn a minor setback into an existential crisis. Spilled my coffee on my shirt before a date? Jiminy throws a confetti parade of “See? You ALWAYS ruin everything!”

So, how do I deal with any internal Negative Ned? Here’s my strategy, folks: externalize the gremlin. Give Jiminy a voice, a name, a small umbrella and a truly terrible pantsuit. By acknowledging his presence perhaps we can take away some of his power.

Next, let’s re-frame the narrative. Instead of Jiminy’s “you barely scraped by” monologue, let’s create a more constructive counterpoint. Did you trip over your words during that presentation? Great! Not a problem, now you know to practice more next time. Did you almost enroll in clown college? Thankfully, a near miss! Fantastic! Now you have a hilarious anecdote for your next party.

Look, I’m not suggesting I should banish Jiminy entirely. A healthy dose of self-criticism is important for growth. But the key is to change him from a nagging gremlin into a helpful – albeit slightly less judgmental personal life coach.

Remember, folks, we are all human. We are all going to mess up, stumble, or occasionally trip over projector power cords. But by acknowledging our inner critic and learning to laugh at him or her and maybe ourselves, we can turn those stumbles into stepping stones, and those spilled coffees into (hopefully) funny stories for Retrospect. Just don’t tell Jiminy I said that. He might try to trademark the phrase.

–30–

Joy and Addis

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Joy and Addis 

I’ve written about the memorable time in the early 1970s  when my husband Danny was working in London for a year and we lived in a rented flat in Chelsea off the Kings Road.   (See Laundry Day in London,  Kinky Boots,  Valentine’s Day in Foggytown ,  and Intro to Cookery)

And I’ve written about the unforgettable British friends we knew there.  (See Inks and Derek: Art and the Cricket Scores and Munro)

Joy and Addis,  who were our upstairs neighbors at 20 Royal Avenue,  are two more who became unforgettable,  life-long friends.

New York born,  Addis was 20 or so years older than us,  and during WW II had supervised the construction of fighter aircrafts.   After the war he settled in Los Angeles and co-founded the Nervous Nine,  a progressive Democratic fundraising coalition,  and went on to be a Southern California manufacturing entrepreneur.

By the 1970s Addis was serving as a management consultant to major American and European companies,   and while working in England met Joy by serendipity at the Coventry railway station,  a sweet story they relished in telling.

Joy was British and about my age,  and when we became their London neighbors she and Addis,  like us,  were newly-weds.  Theirs was obviously a May – December marriage,  and a most loving and devoted one.

Joy was a marvelous cook and the first time they invited us to dinner,  I went up to their flat early to watch her make her specialty – roast beef and Yorkshire pudding.

Danny was a business newbie then and gradually came to consider Addis as a business mentor and they stayed in touch after we returned to New York.  And a few years after that  Addis’ London stint was up and he and Joy left Britain for Malibu,  California.

There over the years we visited them in their beautiful home on the Pacific Coast Highway,  stayed in their guest house,  and swam in their wonderful pool.   And we were intrigued to learn that the artist David Hockney was a personal friend of theirs,  who like Joy,  was a British transplant.  Known for his many iconic swimming pool paintings,   the artist,  they told us,  had painted their pool.   Hearing that,  our young son Noah opined that they first had to drain the water so the guy could get in to paint it!

Years later as Noah’s bar mitzvah approached,  we invited Joy and Addis,  and to our delight they flew to New York to celebrate with us.  Over the years Addis continued to be a trusted business mentor to Danny,  and we were heartbroken when in 2005 we got the sad news that our old friend had died.

We stayed in close touch with Joy,  and when Santa Monica friends invited us to their daughter’s bat mitzvah I called Joy to say we’d be in southern California for a long weekend.  In order to spend as much time together as we could,  Joy took a room at our hotel.  When my Santa Monica hostess learned that,  she thoughtfully invited Joy to the bat mitzvah and luncheon.

Since then Joy’s health has been failing and we hope to get to the west coast to see her again.  But I’m so grateful for that last lovely California weekend we spent together!

David Hockney,  Pool with Two Figures

– Dana Susan Lehrman

The Others at Myristica

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Because I’m an animist (one of the reasons I was so enthusiastic about Dana’s Shinto post) I don’t collect “stuff” so much as welcome new pals to the posse.

Julie and I are minimalists with penchants for toys, books, and outsider art.  (And ground hogs.  Our resident groundhog, the latest of many generations, just passed through the backyard gate on the way to his burrow under the shed.)  Our house is small, so the crew congregates. We don’t get into appliances.  No air fryer or microwave, but one well-loved set of Le Creuset picked up over the years at yard sales, and a stack of Lodge cast iron skillets acquired the same way, except for the ten-inch skillet which I got from my landlady in Deale, Maryland in 1974, an oysterman’s wife and pot grower, who said, as she gave it to me: “I’m gonna give you this skillet since you like to cook, but you ain’t goin’ anywhere with it until I teach you how to season it.)

Oh, we thin books that “didn’t grip”, and take used clothes to CC’s Closet, the local community services store, although I get about 15 to 20 years out of pants and shirts (old clothes know how to drape when you’re standing and envelope when you’re sitting, or better, napping).  But we’d never abandon our tchotchke pals.  We save abandoned tchotchkes who like our looks.  Myristica (the name we’ve given our home, after Myristica fragrans, and its bond of nutmeg and mace) is a safe house and rehab center for others.

Our others have stories.  I use my grandmother’s bread and batter bowls, for baking cookies and bread.  When my mother married my father, my grandmother gave her the wooden spoon I use.

Many years ago, I met a beautiful old woman while waiting in line at a fruit stand.  She was luminous.  Silver hair, glowing skin, wore a honeydew green cotton dress and a thin white, violet print cardigan. We got into a conversation about making biscuits.  Compared shortenings.  I said I liked butter.  She advised lard. (Which I tried but stuck with butter. Crispier crusts.)  Then she gave me a “I’m gonna let you in on a secret” look and said: “Use bowls and utensils that have some baking history.  They know how to bake.”  I told her about my bowls and spoon, and that my friends who dropped over for biscuits on Saturday morning called me Aunt Jo-Mamma.” We laughed, simpatico.

Julie and I know a new recruit when we’re in a shop and hear it say something like “Hey! Get me outta here!”  We also love objects found serendipitously on the street or in the woods.

Julie is a fantabulous artist and craft person.  Look closely at the featured image (the north and west walls of my nest).  She made the dolls lining the top of the woodcarving of three dancing men (which she also painted), made the dolls on the top of the box theater hanging on the wall, and drew the picture of Mr. and Mrs. Santa Claus.  Who downsizes love?  Many others in Myristica.

There’s a quality to others that often gets dismissed when they’re only seen as materialistic stuff.  Sometimes when I feel uncertain or vague about what I’m doing, I look at the things I’ve collected, and they remind me of who I was at the time and help me bring into focus qualities I want to maintain, qualities I had when I obtained them, feelings that are still fine, not useful, life is not a utility, no matter bidness jive about “human resources.”

One more look at the picture.  Beneath Sargent’s portrait of Robert Louis Stevenson is a twig wedged on top of the carved white cat face. I found that twig wobbling in water near the bank of a reservoir in Raccoon Twp, PA, in 1969.  That twig, the water, the light, and the buzz, said, “ya know, life is tres groo-vi,” and it’s always helped me remember that.

We’ll all get out of here in a box, but here’s to a long, loving wear out.

Stuff – The Tyranny of Things: A Treatise on Material Malaise

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Right, let’s talk about stuff. You know, that ever-expanding collection of… well, stuff. It’s the creeping crud of capitalism, the flotsam and jetsam of consumerism clinging desperately to our lives like a toddler covered in ice cream. We buy it, we hoard it, and then we spend the rest of our days muttering darkly about “where the bloody things went?”

First, there’s the daily stuff: The sacred spatula that you wouldn’t dare flip a burger with anything less. The coffee mug emblazoned with a motivational quote so generic it could inspire a sloth to, well, maybe open one eye. These are the comrades in our domestic drudgery, the trusty tools that prevent us from burning breakfast and starting a personal crises over matching socks before 8 am.

Then there’s the stuff that arrived with a flourish: The juicer you used once and now emits a whimper whenever you approach the cupboard. The bread-maker that promised artisanal delights and instead dispenses lukewarm indigestible bricks. These are all the emperors with no clothes, the empty promises that gather dust bunnies faster than a tumbleweed in a ghost town.

But the real fun starts with the unmentionables: The “collectionables” we hide from guests like state secrets. That kind of cute porcelain frog collection Aunt Mildred insisted on inflicting upon you. The “sentimental” Beanie Babies that haven’t seen the light of day since Princess Diana was alive and relevant. These are the skeletons in the consumer closet, the things we hold onto with the tenacity of a toddler gripping a soggy Cheerio: ”mine, mine, mine”.

So, what do we do with this ever-growing mountain of…stuff? Some folks become organizational wizards and overlords: Purchasing containers within containers, color-coded chaos with labels that would make a librarian weep with joy. Some people can locate a single paperclip from 1997 with the precision of a heat-seeking missile. The rest of us, frankly, just shove it all in a cupboard and pray it doesn’t develop sentience and declare a garbage rebellion.

Then there are the purge-aholics: Fueled by Marie Kondo, the queen of organizing, and a healthy dose of self-loathing, they embark on decluttering crusades that would make Attila the Hun blush. One minute your house is overflowing with knickknacks, the next it resembles a monk’s cell – all clean lines and an unsettling air of judgment.

Personally, I fall somewhere in the “burying my head in the sand” school of stuff management. Out of sight, out of mind, right? Until, of course, that inevitable moment when you need that “special” screwdriver to fix a leaky faucet, and discover it’s been mummified under a rogue yoga mat and a box set of “Cheers” DVDs.

The truth is, there is no one easy answer. Stuff is a relentless tide, washing over us and threatening to drown us in a sea of spatulas and porcelain frogs. But hey, at least it keeps the metaphysical dread at bay for at least a little while?! So, the next time you find yourself contemplating the meaning of life while surrounded by enough coffee mugs to share with a small village, just remember: you are not alone. We’re all slaves to the tyranny of stuff, united in our glorious, messy humanity. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a date with my spatula and a very, very, very important pancake.

–30–

We Dance

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We Dance

Shintoism has more followers in Japan than any other religion including Buddhism.   A polytheistic and animistic religion,  Shintoism,  like other Eastern faiths,  includes the practice of meditation and prayer,  and Japan boasts 100,000 Shinto shines.   But Shintoism has no central authority and its practices vary greatly among it adherents.

Although possibly apocryphal,  it is said that Joseph Campbell,  the famous academic who wrote The Power of Myth,  reported the following conversation at an international conference on religion.

An American philosopher told a Shinto priest,   “We’ve been to a good many ceremonies,  and have seen quite a few of your shrines.  But I don’t get your ideology.  I don’t get your theology.”

The Japanese paused as though in deep thought and then slowly shook his head.

”I think we don’t have ideology,”  he said,  ”we don’t have theology.  We dance.”

– Dana Susan Lehrman 

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Kevin and Khati covered all my salient thoughts about meditation.  I meditated formally at the Shambala Tibetan Buddhist Sangha in Lexington, KY, and with yoga instructors over the years.

I once visited the Furnace Mountain Zen Center in Clay City, KY.  The Center is gorgeous and located on a thousand acres of stunning foothills at the edge of the Daniel Boone National Forest.  But my meditation experience did not go well.

THEY WANTED ME TO EAT KIMCHI AT 5 AM!!  “I said, in these shoes?  I don’t think so.”  (An allusion to Kirsty MacColl’s song.  Well worth meditating.)

https://youtu.be/oW0GK2bVqI0

Harpo Marx is my patriarch, and in his lineage formality is weird, disturbing.

I enjoy informal meditation. The kinds described by Khati and Kevin.  When I managed a book store in the mid-80’s through 90’s, I often drove to a local park for my lunch and dinner breaks and practiced the breathing meditation Khati described.  Through the back window of an old house I rented during the same time, there was a lovely view of a bird feeder near a honeysuckle bush.  I’d meditate and watch sparrows and cardinals come and go like my thoughts.  Bird brained.

During NFL season I keep the chip bag location “fixed firmly in consciousness” to reach it without missing a play.

That’s satisfactory (as Nero Wolfe would say) for me, as far as meditation is concerned. From my experiences with sanghas, centers, and serving “enlightened” diners when I was a waiter in a hippie sprout house restaurant, I feel a focused society would be much like the Star Trek Landru episode.

I prefer freewheeling Crazy Cloud Zen masters and poets, like Li Po, who drowned drunk trying to kiss the moon, or Ikkyu, who preferred playing ball with village kids instead of sitting on a zafu.

One of Ikkyu’s poems is a favorite mantra:

Nature’s Way

The wise heathens have no knowledge,

They just keep their mind continually set on the way.

There are no big-shot Buddhas in nature,

And ten thousand sutras are distilled in a single song.

Wild Ways: Zen Poems of Ikkyu, trans. John Stevens