Morning Pages - Week 2 Day 6

December 30th

1

I've got one word for you: gym. Completely screwed  me over. I am pretty sure that the minute I set foot out the door of my gym, I am unhealthier than the minute I came in with the sole purpose of being healthy. Every time I go there -which is not very rarely- I blow my brains out exercising. Take yesterday for instance. The minute I walked in, my favorite receptionist welcomed me with a giant smile on her face and asked me "Are you here for the pilates class?" A) how can anyone say no to that smile and B) she is my favorite receptionist. She is the one I turned small talk into big conversations about hobbies and hubbies and rent in New York. You know! I might break my legs and tear up my muscles in that class but I will not say no to her. So I say "Of course! What else?" 

It's OK tough. I already I know what I'm getting myself into. It's a class with room full of Jewish New Yorker women aged anywhere from 50 to 80, whom are all wonderful girls but let's face it; I'm practically a shining star in that class. Every time I do pilates with my oldies but goldies, I feel like Kate from Lost at the end of season 1. No joke. I mean what is better than feeling like a champion at 7pm on a Sunday when the next best thing you're going to have to do is go to work on Monday?..You need some Eye of the Tiger spirit in you. I know I do and that's probably the reason why rocking my pilates class wasn't enough of a victory for me. For once in my life, I wish I felt like I've achieved enough. I'm headed to treadmills. What is wrong with me? Somebody help me. 

2

Here's the situation at the treadmill area. There are 12 of them side by side and I get on the one in the middle, followed by a nice looking gentleman getting on the one to my right 1 minute later and cute little college girl, whom I am sure is in a sorority and says "Oh my God" 57 times a day, climbs onto the one to my left 2 minutes after the guy to my right. Here we are running right next to each other with 9 other free treadmills surrounding us. I get the feeling I'm in the middle of something I didn't ask to be a part of but was chosen to moderate.

It's like by minute 7 I am supposed to say "How's it going?" to the girl followed by a wink to the guy and by minute 10, I should get down to business with the tackiest wing man (woman in my case of course) line ever. Something like, "Hey! Have you met my friend Joe over here? He likes running" to which the girl will obviously say "Oh my God, me too!" And then, I will go "Oh yeah? Man what a coincidence! Come on Joe, don't be shy! Say hi." Joe goes "Hi" like a cool man. Oh my he's so cool that the only thing our tiny girl with tiny shorts can reply with is "Hey!", all the while running of course. By minute 22 I should still be running and they should leave the gym hand in hand like characters from one of those extremely boring and unrealistic gym love stories. Luckily, this is real life and my life is not boring, yet.

3

I am not a matchmaker in the actual version of this story but I do make the girl bored out of her mind with my extremely focused running.Yes little girl, I am actually on that treadmill to run. Not to watch TV like you did for 5 minutes before you even started or to text my "Oh my God gang" while I'm taking a stroll at 0.5 speed level on the machine (I know you gym freaks out there know what speed levels I'm talking about) So after 6 minutes of effortless jogging, college girl to my left leaves. The guy to my right however is a persistent runner. Good thing I didn't hook them up. Hell, I might have even prevented another divorce from happening! Double fist pump. I am kicking ass today. Speaking of which, my ass starts to hurt because I've been running for 20 minutes now. Like I said, what is my problem!? 

It seems like the more I run in my own focused way, the more competitive -agitated even- my running neighbor seems to get. He is constantly increasing his speed and the faster he runs, redder his face gets. I for one, am not in the mood for giving heart attacks to strangers. By the time his face gets purple, I decide to put an end to this. I've had enough running and enough drama for a casual Sunday night. What does he do then? The minute I switch to cool down mode, he stops running. I always knew there was an unspoken connection established between people who run side by side but what the hell?! He will just stop as soon as I'm done and walk out on me and our silent running pact? First the college girl and now the psycho runner? Long day at the gym, long day.

Back at home, it takes me only 2 minutes to crash into the couch in our living room, pretending to watch our favorite show, Bob's Burgers with my husband while in fact going into my second level rem sleep. He of course finishes the show, remembers all the good jokes of the episode to tell me next morning, turns off the lights, locks the door and makes sure I am buried neck deep under covers. His level of affection is directly proportional to his efforts of covering every inch of my body with blankets. So I am in fact, very happy to be roasted by him in my sleep.

It takes me 10 hours and 2 cups of coffee to finally figure out why I've been singing a specific song the next day:

Psycho Killer

Qu'est Que C'est

Fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa far better

Run run run run run run run away

After all, I can't deny that I have a gym connection with a certain Jewish pilates mafia and purple-face runners. I love my gym! In fact, I probably love any gym anywhere, minus the exercise part. 

Morning Pages - Week 2 Day 4

1

I started my exercises, thinking exercises. You know, the kind that brings you back to your most awful and most wonderful memories and make you remember shit from the past so that you don't leave any pages unturned and carry the weight over to today. Yes, that kind. It's not fun and it's vastly personal so I'm still debating whether or not to share stuff that happened to me and obviously might not mean the same things to you. It's hard to depersonalize your  own past and put it out in the open in present day as if it's somebody else's past, somebody else's story and you're just the storyteller. It takes courage and I have to have that courage because I signed up for this, nobody else. No matter how hard some parts of this 12-week process are, I said I would do this so I will deal with it. In another blog post, not today. 

One thing I will tell you though is that Julia Cameron, author of The Artist's Way, pushes the reader to believe that s/he is a very talented and creative individual, whom needs to be reminded of his/her capabilities; and reminding begins with you. You have to remind yourself that you are talented so that your talent's shy little head can start poking around. Reminding in my case means writing. So everyday I sit down and write stuff like Oh I am so talented, I am a brilliant writer, I do this so well and so on. When you do this, you are supposed to provoke your Debbie Downer side so that it starts speaking out. That side is what keeps you blocked, or trapped or whatever you might want to call your problem, so you want to work on eliminating it. The more you write how great you are, the more that side will try to convince you of the opposite. I didn't believe it at first but even I was caught off guard when I found myself thinking I write like shit as I was completing my 20th sentence writing "I am a brilliant writer". It was so sudden and sharp but quiet at the same time, talking way back in my mind, my Debbie Downer whispered that I wrote like shit. 

2

Probably because I did see results in exact order that Julia Cameron explained, I decided to just go with it. So now, I sit down at the kitchen table every morning writing I am a brilliant writer for at least 25 times, waiting for my dark side to speak up. The idea here is that dark side has a reason to have moved into your head. What is it? Discover it, deal with it and get rid of it. Easier said than done. I did figure out a few memories already. Now the only thing I need to do is invent a time machine, go back in time, destroy that memory, make sure it never happens or differently if it must, get back on your machine and come back to present, where you already are a famous writer because those bad memories that kept you blocked this whole time, never really happened. Simple, no?

No. So what? I don't know. I've fucking given up on trying to know everything, to be Ms Know It All. I don't know but I'm hoping Julia will tell me in the following weeks and if she doesn't? Screw it, I will have written hundreds of pages of good morning blabber. I would take that over not writing any day under any circumstances. So really, with or without answers, we all win here. I am not trying to sell you on this book by the way, no worries. Salesmanship stops when I get a pen in my hands. Other than those precious times though, I can't stop selling something. I am always either selling an image or a vision or an opinion or worst case scenario a product. Aren't you? Screw you! Yes, you are. We all are always constantly selling something and the problem, personal dilemma, depression, whatever it may be for you, starts when you don't believe in what you're selling. 

So you've just told your best friend that you're in love with your boyfriend when in fact you can't even stand his being and you know you can't. The only way for you to accept that person goes through you changing him. Oh you're so screwed. You'll probably waste a long time of yours and his, not to mention you will add to both of your misery. But go ahead tell your friend he's the one and you love him so much.

3

Wait a second, I like this, what else? Let's think about it here guys. You might have told your aunt a few days ago that you love your fucking job. You just loooove, love, love, love working at the bank as a risk analyst. LOVE IT to death. That's right, you will die doing it if you don't stop...like...yesterday because you know you don't enjoy it. You don't like it, you never have but you aunt helped pay for your college degree on finance with her hard earned money cleaning hotel rooms since 1985 so you didn't have to. Go ahead, tell her you hate it, tell her it was a mistake and her money was wasted for nothing because you don't want to do it anymore. You would rather clean hotel rooms than analyze financial risk. Tell her that! What's that? You can't?  OK wait until she's dead. Then maybe you might quit. 

Let's not forget that troubled sister you've been supporting for god knows how long. She is so delicate, so young, so clueless of the real world you have been facing since you were 16. You don't want her to go through the same troubles but at the same time you're fucking sick and tired of being the big sister, aren't you? You want to be taken care of sometimes, hell you deserve it more than she does. What did she do all her life? Be pretty, be smart, read a lot of books, eat all the right foods and wear all the right clothes? You could have done those easily but you were never given a chance, only a role. The big sister role that you are tired of playing but when your mother asks you how things are, you say "Great, she's great. I love her and I am happy supporting her. She will become a great XYZ." Bullshit, you don't even think she can make an omelet on her own but you prefer lying. Well, you shouldn't have sista. 

I don't know...Examples are endless. These are just what comes to my mind first. Love, work and family. Whatever your little lie could be, you have to stop it. Or else? Honestly, nothing would change but that is precisely the problem. 

Artist Date 1

1

I went to a park for my first official artist date, which was a highly spontaneous decision. Because of a tiny little argument with my husband, we dived right into our typical weekend dilemma instead of lingering on it: he wanted to be at home while I wanted out. Especially thinking that the weather was confused outside thinking it was spring instead of winter, I skipped hesitations like I should be with my husband on the weekends, or I should do nothing but chilaxing (relax + chill) on the weekends. I hit the road running. 

It really was a spontaneous decision though because I was actually out for laundry not self discovery, which is not the most rebellious activity I should admit. It is the exact  opposite if anything. After all, cleaning was one of the earliest responsibilities used to define womanhood. It was right when this feminist / activist / nature-friendly / outdoorsy person ], who lives inside of me, started jumping up and down screaming STOPPP that I decided to stop. My whole being is because of her harassment anyway. There's not a single moment, when she stops talking, it's only a matter of how loud she is and she's probably not even a real woman, more like a little boy.

2

When you step out the laundromat door, you have two options. You can either go right and reach Central Park or go left and reach the Riverside Park. I have exactly 29 minutes before I have to put my clothes into the dryer. Riverside is not my best option here only because it's closer but also because it's right by the water, Hudson River. Having lived in Ankara for 24 years (a pretty dry, inland city) I can't help appease my thirst for water. This one is a no brainer. I turn left and start walking towards Riverside Park.

With my first steps I start thinking about this book I finished the week before. It's about famous authors and their daily routines. What I would expect for a male author lived in 1800s London to be very different from a female who lived in late 1900s United States turned out to be in fact surprisingly similar. Walking was one of those rituals. One who wants to write also wants to walk. I think it has to do with how the writer gets a chance to air out what's inside his head to let some sunshine into his thoughts as well as how he invites new thoughts into his head in the meanwhile. It could be because of few pages moved nicely into my subconsciousness or simply because I too prefer to be walking while talking to myself without even knowing it; I'm not sure of the reason but I obviously preferred to be walking out in the open for my first Artist Date. 

3

By the time I arrived at the marina, it was clear to me that I wasn't there to clear out my head that day, I was there to let new thoughts in and create more chaos in there. New sights, new smells, new people, new conversations were all the little details that made my artist date absolutely perfect. I want to leave you with some of these awesome details of life that winked at me on that perfect spring-like Saturday morning. I was thrilled to watch:

 

A woman who wore one tiny bell on each of her running shoes. Appropriate to her choice of shoes, she was in fact running but for those running ahead of her, she sounded like a biker trying to open her way through. With each step she took, the person ahead was sliding to the right and giving her way only to find out she wasn't on her bike but she was on her ringing running shoes. Watching the reaction on their faces while they watched this lady breeze in through the crowd of runners was indeed a detail not to be missed.

A couple in their 70s doing Tai-Chi moves that looked like love making through fight moves or tango through war, ying through yang and love through death. It was as though they stopped time with each move and started back with a swing of their hands. I've never seen people their age move so smoothly and inspiringly. I don't know how to describe it well.

If I had an amazing experience wathing them, just imagine what the Mexican guy walking by thought of them. He had the sweetest shocked person expression I have ever seen. It didn't seem like he came from a culture where women were allowed to fight, let alone fight against men in equal circumstances or at age 70. He was surprised but you could see easily that it was in a good way. It seemed more than anything like he wished his wife or daugther or sister did exactly what that woman was doing when they reached 70. It seemed as though he himself was going to encourage women around him to be more of a gogetter than sit around and wait for it . It seemed as though he was going back home to teach his loved women how to fight life so that he could fight with them and not for them.

I loved my Artist Date and all the details I got to observe. I also love New York and everything in it. I am grateful that I live in a city that provides me with an endless source of inspiration. I feel like story of Dee vs. New York City is just beginning to unfold.