Well. It was only a matter of time before I joined the pop blog culture; Life has been interesting, and I wanted to share broadly…

For those of you who haven’t yet seen these, here are the posts in question:

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/sea-change/

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/calm-sunday-and-good-enough-friday/

The following mini-rant is not about regaining our sense of privacy in a self-absorbed digital age. It is not about the ravages of social media on our actual confidence and our notion of what matters. It is not even about a too-soft generation taking back responsibility, disappointment, and control. Well, it’s also about all of those things. But it is mainly about reinstating our own core instincts, intelligences, and centers of vitality, and redrawing the interpersonal boundaries required to separate true creative power and personal agency from a slow nuclear leak.

It is about being more ourselves by being less invested in projecting who we are. It is communications advice for individuals (brands are another, also complicated story) which I am certain will upset people — and which I stand by anyway.

Here it is: What you’ve done is not communication, or even art, if your need to express yourself outweighs the benefit to other/s of consuming said expression.

Let me restate this in the cruelest terms: If the only thing you’ve changed by posting or writing or speaking or making something is delivering your own psychic payload, you have not engaged in creation or communication, but have bombed the listener / reader with auto-therapy. (Consuming this form of expression is the legitimate domain of actual therapists or best friends, and, if you are lucky, siblings and parents. We will get to significant others in a moment.)

In the real world, listeners or readers or viewers need to walk away inspired to act, better informed on something they care about, or in some way enlightened, relieved, entertained, or changed. You can assume your receiver is intelligent, but you ought not assume they speak the language inside your head, or want to hear you all the time. No one owes you that. Not for free.

Even if the subject is personal, it is actually not about you – it is about the one you are giving your ideas to. Once these thoughts or feelings are out of your brain, they must be able to do something to or for the intended audience – of one or one million – or they should never have left that cozy grey room.

Your ideas are the components of energy. You have broken your core to let them out: How could they be anything but? Why would you not want to keep them to better run *you* until you were sure their release was strategic, or at least somewhat necessary, rather than wasteful or even toxic?

Think about the most charismatic people you know. Their communication finds the specific listener, like a smart-bomb.

Very few people care simply about your need to express yourself or to create internal order, and as a consequence, those who want to read or hear or see anything filled primarily with angst, anger, self-praise, unwarranted apology, a crazy level of detail or repetition, or over-sharing, will have their own side of the bargain they expect from you. What this is might blindside you when the relationship becomes suddenly bilateral. Such is the nature of proliferation.

No-no’s includes not only excessive complaining but also gushing, excessive praise, which I’ve discovered actually minimizes the receiver instead of building him / her up. Because toxic leaks are not only about angry or crazy or whiny: admiration, too, can feel like work to read or hear when it is offered mainly as a release of need.

This is all especially true for communicating with your boss and colleagues, where sanctions are often subtle but swift. But it is even true for most friends, and also for lovers / partners, if you want the relationship to maintain its fullest power.

Consider the price of another human being holding the sealed barrel with your energy leak. You rely on them to catch your sometimes toxic secondary output, while your fullest creative product, your best behavior, is given elsewhere, to those who won’t hold your worst. Exchanging need is actually not a bad reciprocal arrangement and is often the happiest and most enduring kind of union, but we should call it what it is, which is mutually assured destruction: containment. It’s not a bad deal, often necessary, but it costs you the heat generated by being at your best.

You might be shaking your head and saying – that’s so not fair, and it’s so sad that she thinks that, this damaged woman just set my therapy / marriage back ten years, what a bitch.

That last thing might be true. But it is not especially sad, if you consider all the time potentially saved by people becoming their own centrifuge, and what the human race could accomplish with this savings. We are talking sustainable energy.

What greatness could emerge from more external silence and better tolerated and carefully monitored internal noise?

Maybe people would exercise more from all the frustration, and discover they prefer ripped abs to writing long emails or producing unintelligible art or going straight to Facebook with every observation or complaining for hours to their wife.

Maybe we would work more and work better to avoid making excuses or apologizing or making more and more lists. Maybe our communication would be more significant if we updated fewer statuses and re-learned the power of making people miss us.

Or we’d take a few more risks in life or in love once we’ve thought and planned but perhaps before we’ve spoken or written. And maybe end bad things sooner, instead of burying them in verbiage. Enough saved up energy is excellent at very clean destruction when this is what is called for, with far less bloody carnage than the gradual relationship or job phase-out.

Maybe we’d produce better art as a society, and would not have to choose so often between accessibility and quality.

Maybe we would learn to sit longer with our thoughts and the complexity of our feelings, get comfortable with contradictions and discomfort, and discover we are so much tougher than we thought. So much readier to challenge and be challenged.

Meditation would not be about clearing your mind and being nothingness. It would be about being *everythingness* and containing that, sparing the world our truth until the best and most useful explosion was fully spun.

What greatness could emerge from more external silence and better tolerated and carefully monitored internal noise? I think it could be game changing, and could proliferate quickly.

You can take it or drop it. I’ve spoken enough.

Rome and Paris are deeply embarrassing cities for artists and writers who have abandoned their craft. Before I became the manager of creative processes in the service of selling a secure future to the Jewish People, I was elbow deep in the creation itself, often simply in the service of the process.

In places where beauty and truth intersect purely for their own sake – places like the Sistine Chapel or the Villa Borghese or even a Parisian train station (!!) – one who writes or paints or sculpts but has not done it freely or deeply in a while feels like a dancer-turned-nun in Las Vegas. Bless me, Bernini, for I have sinned.

Now my blog of essays lies in an induced coma and the occasional poem or book outline finds its way to the notes section of my iPhone, but essentially I am these days more a father than a mother of new ideas: I seed them energetically, support them loyally, see them through rough patches and advocate for them… but they are gestated and tended to by others.

In Paris on business following Rome, I was working on crappy WiFi, searching for an old document. Sitting in the undying evening under an impossible kind of sky, I accidentally came across the below poem, which I wrote when I gave up on my 2001 novel manuscript ever being published. This poem told me that it is the motherhood of creation that scares me sans-merde (who can bear the pain, the work, the loss it entails?) and to which I must somehow return.

Can one be both father and mother? There is a room in the Villa Borghese that says yes.

Anyway – here’s the poem:

Bleeding

- SKE, Jan 2008

“I’d like to have money. And I’d like to be a good writer. These two can come together, and I hope they will, but if that’s too adorable, I’d rather have money.” – Dorothy Parker

I saw this quote about a year ago and tried to feel offended, as a purist, roughly – - if one can be roughly a purist, which in itself sounds kind of ironically Parker-esque. Dorothy Rothschild Parker’s preeminent status as poet, screenwriter, critic, editor, and my hero notwithstanding, I felt disappointed in her, artistically speaking. But then I had an interesting year.

It was a year in which I worked long hours for various publications and companies on several freelance and consulting projects which ended up dying on the table – lack of funding, lack of space, lack of decisiveness. To the credit of everyone involved, I was paid for my time. But it still felt ultra crappy, I cannot lie, to have miles of files languish in the dark recesses of digital memory.

I am Sisyphus, hear me whine.

It was a year in which I found out that being better-known doesn’t equal well-known, and in which I learned the exact, very round, dollar value of both when you are roughly a purist. I learned what makes web content viral, but replicating it in a lab – that’s another story. Public mood is, as they say, a fickle mistress.

My fame fantasy is not quite dead though, just frozen until they discover a cure.

(…By the way, does my use of metaphor indicate what I really wanted to be, once upon a time?…)

Raw statistics say that very few people make it to the truly big leagues in any industry, publishing being no exception. That type of success requires an elusive mixture of talent, perseverance, and being in the right place with the right people in the right mood at the right time. Somewhere at the bottom of a shot glass in SoHo is the key to the Kingdom of Words, but I am too tired to play Hermione in that quest, and not at all sure that I wouldn’t be left to drown given some of my opinions.

It was a year in which I pursued several dreams at once in the hopes that one of them would grow some legs in reality. In the end – one of them did, and it’s the one where I remain unnoticed as an artist and, in the meantime, unfulfilled as an entrepreneur. Nor do I revolutionize the world as an activist / journalist, which requires, inter alia, a deep political education, a fierce time commitment to being constantly in the middle of things, and a very thick skin. Things I lack, in the meantime. I take my hat off to those of my colleagues, if I can even claim to call them that, who are truly making a huge difference in this way.

The dream that stuck is the one in which I finally return to corporate routine and the standards of work ethic that brings with it; cool and talented co-workers I can see in person daily; and being remunerated, – every few weeks! – for my hard work and applied skills, which will be a most welcome change. Yes: After a decade of denying my inevitable habitat, I’m going back to work in a hi-tech office.

Hello, again, sweet nanny. There is some fresh soup you can heat up for the kids; I made it at 2 am.

Of course, there are more dreams on the horizon, but they all require cash, and a certain amount of stability that comes with doing things in the proper order and on a realistic scale (HT Shira Abel) on the way to greater things. If I sound high on the suburban crack-pipe, it’s because they were on sale at Target.

I will still be blogging here, of course. It keeps the freezer running – - and the fame dream, like the soup, mustn’t thaw. Not just yet.

Yes: an affiliate marketing conference. Here’s where I discuss it in full.

Your thoughts, as always, most welcome.

Illustration: Dali's Melting Clocks

I have always been troubled by what my mother calls time management. I’m sure other people call it that, too, but I heard it first when I was twelve, trying to get ready for school but repeatedly getting sidetracked for reasons hair-related. “Boy, do you have a problem with managing time,” she would say. I had no idea what she meant, of course, because time, as I knew, could not be managed, only experienced, or – perhaps – tamed and ridden, like a horse, or a wave.

One of us was missing the point entirely.

My relationship with time has only gotten more intense over the years, although what suffers now is not my productivity – which is actually quite impressive given my life stats (although not necessarily in pecuniary terms) – but the amount of time I sleep, or do anything much outside of “have to.”

I am also usually either 10 minutes late or about to be running 20 minutes late, or doing something way too close to the deadline, or almost just past it, or doing what my father calls “shitting around,” which is basically self-explanatory. (Or else I’m giving a child a bath or tucking another one into bed. THAT, somehow, I manage to do right on time.)

It is not that I am at odds with structure, and actually find much satisfaction and competency in routine. I am, in fact, Queen of the List. Super Organized and Neat. Almost…A Jewish Bree Van de Kamp…Well, not really.

But still: RUSHED. Late. Preoccupied with what I’m not doing. Making new lists to compensate for what wasn’t done…..

I don’t want to disregard time. Really. I’m just 1. probably unrealistic as to how many hours a day has (what was the number again? ); 2. powerless, it would seem, to control time the way schedule-y people talk about doing.

It will blow on without my permission, manipulations, and illusions of punctuality. I’d simply like to be its friend, if it will have me. Harness it, and allow it to gallop freely, and hope I don’t fall off.

Because despite what the Clairol, Loreal, and Filofax people will tell you, time has a mind of its own, and we need to just be partners with it. Relatives will call to talk; special invitations pop-up unexpectedly; friends drop by to visit; a community or school function is at the worst time, but…; the need for kindness or hosting arises suddenly… in short: life happens. And saying no to some of these things on account of managing time really robs life of too much texture, too much love, too much opportunity.

Of course, saying yes to all of them is suicidal. My stay at home mom friends already know (after a few times of being actually kicked out by me when they showed up at my door…so sorry!!!) that I don’t do daytime chats, because despite all evidence to the contrary, I’m not REALLY home.

Also, the line between riding opportunity / diving into life and drowning completely in your own inefficiency or sleep deprivation or inability to say no is VERY thin. In my case I’d say, thin as a single hair. (Which no longer takes up any of my time, by the way. Ponytails and Headbands R Us.)

Those of us in creative fields are especially wary of this say YES! / say NO! dialectic, as web surfing / reading / social networking / blog commenting (all within reason) is not “shitting around” but actually part of creating and doing business. (Right?! Right?!)

Two of my colleagues, Marc and Sean, wrote excellent posts recently on their own blogs, variations on the theme of being a writer worthy of the title, managing to earn a living, gaining inspiration, and living with time, all in the same dimension. In fact, Marc wrote his in response to my distressed Twitter plea. Hats off, gentlemen.

But wristwatches: On.

1. Switching closets from winter to summer, seeing as I failed to do so before Passover;
2. Work for client X, due tomorrow; DONE
3. Work for client Y, due tomorrow;
4. Several technical and networking tasks involved in getting this site more spider-worthy, way overdue.

And yet. (This beloved two-word sentence is a Nicole Krauss-ism, which I have been widely borrowing, even in my everyday speech.) There is a familiar pit in my stomach that tells me I must put something down on paper. So to speak.

It’s a pit that reminds me of other pits, that makes me 16 again, and 26, all the years joined by a common physiological sense of being carried by an idea or a feeling, literally hungry for something to write. Medical science will tell you that the pit is the work of the vagus (yes, pronounced like the city in Nevada) nerve in my abdomen, which has translated the meandering chemicals of emotion from my brain into an ache of sorts.

This is all well and good but I think it’s more about the weather.

Today in Israel is what Winnie the Pooh would call a very, very blustery day. It is hot as an oven (not like a sauna) and cloudy in an overwhelming way, as if there’s a huge fire a few miles back, blowing in, or maybe a tornado. The weather is upon us. The electricity went out for a few minutes about an hour ago, and my neighbors called me from vacation to go remove whatever was blowing against their alarm sensors, which kept becoming alarmed. (I brought the pruning shears just in case I needed to fend off an actual intruder, but ended up trimming their errant roses.)

This, in short, is a desert storm (aka sandstorm), or Khamsin (Arabic); in Hebrew it’s called a Sharav, which is my favorite term for it. It is not at all uncommon to have one of these at the beginning of May, as spring turns to summer – - and I’m guessing there’s a meteorological explanation for that.

But what I know is that later on the skies will be yellowish-orange (or bright, eerie, end-of-days white) as the sun sets, as if the world was finally imploding from the economic crisis and the swine flu (Happy Windsday, Piglet!) and the Iranian menace; as if the pit in my stomach was finally expanding to envelop all of you.

I also know that I had better keep all of the windows closed if I don’t want a fine layer of orange dust all over the beds and sinks and floors.

I know that I feel longing and upheaval although it is not clear for what. And that what happens in vagus stays in vagus.

Check out a poem I wrote back in my roaring 20′s. (Suburbia still hasn’t managed to kill it for us):

Sharav (Desert Storm)

Can you show me beauty?
Nights so thick
the air suspends
the future in its teeth
ripping fleshy suburbs
from the bones of lazy poets
lovers kissing extra,
with their noses – -
slow hands;
an urgency in it
the stars are hazy fuzzy
drunken dots of fate so far away
they bear no witness
to the rhythmic frenzy
on neighborhood streets
Just tonight:
the stodgy oaks are palm trees
and boxy sidewalks turn to sand.

- SKE, March 1998

PS -By the time my host came back up in time to load this post, written yesterday, the skies have partially cleared, the wind has calmed, and the air is cool. Such is the nature of storms, I guess.

photo by: la_febbra

…I wrote the following back in early 2000 as part of a (unpublished) novel about a writer. I tell you this because: a. the essay includes no mention of social media and I didn’t want you to think, God forbid, that I was living in a cave; and b. I’m trying to brag, in subtle fashion, that I observed this whole intimacy with strangers dynamic looooong ago, before everyone else was writing about this stuff… also that I wrote a novel at 27; and c. I’m kind of sad that it never got published so I plan on chopping it up and publishing on here. Just saying…

Today there are no signatures. I sign all my e-mails “S”, and it seems to be good enough. I have corresponded for months with people whose voices I have never heard. I do not know if they have a quick East Coast way of catching your sentences before you say them, or if they’re Midwesterners who listen until you’re well past done, and you’re waiting and waiting for them to say something.

I do not know these things because all the lines and words and sentences come out the same in my inbox, with no spaces or pauses or interrupted syllables, no heavy smoker’s timbre, no just-out-of-grad-school deliberateness. I cannot hear or feel. I know only what passes through the spell check.

Now it’s all in the imagining, and in the censorship. The ability to be anyone we chose to be, very carefully, and to be with anyone we can conjecture. In fact, it doesn’t matter who the “letter” is from, just who we think it could be from, and what we think they think of us.

*****************

In cyberspace, there is nothing as personal as, for example, finding someone’s hair on your jacket when you come home from meeting with him or her over lunch. You cannot smell anyone’s cologne hastily dashed on; you cannot feel their foot accidentally knock yours under the table. It is hospital sterile in here.

And at the same time, it is violently intimate.

In cyberspace, there is nothing as mundane, as subtle, as finding someone else’s hair on your jacket. The conversation is somehow more open, more daring, more immediately personal, even with people you know in real life. Sometimes I wonder what happens to people online, what chemical changes are taking place as the modem comes alive. We type in things we would never say. We confide and advise and allude and become a sort of ghost accomplice, a sudden Times New Roman best friend.

When we meet again, in person, we often do not speak of the e-mail. We must start over. No-fair cyber, we’d say, if we wanted to talk about it.

But we don’t. In fact, in person, there is often very little to talk about.

*****************

We seem to be living in a post-human time, one degree away from life. Seeking some self-knowledge by machinated expressions, by echo – - like Narcissus, by reflection.

This, too, is a pool we can fall into as we look, but the drowning feels much better than we’d imagined.

(…an excerpt from an unpublished novel, about a writer…but that’s another story…)

Back in the day, before we were virtual, we used to keep postcards and letters in shoeboxes. The girls would write on stationery, cool yellow sheets about the size of a paperback. Sometimes cute white dots would frame the page, matching in a profound way the very round, bubbly handwriting of the girls whose notes you copied.

The boys scribbled and drew cartoons right in the middle of sentences. They were Vonnegut-style letters, before any of us had ever read Vonnegut, disjointed and scrawled and somehow fitting together into a personality, if not a coherent series of thoughts.

We sent these to each other during the summer, when one of us was away at camp, the other bored to death at home. We equaled roughly the sum of the letters we received, how many people missed us enough to write us doodle-y notes about nothing.

And we kept them. In shoeboxes that some of us are just now collecting from our mothers, who are unexpectedly sick of playing hostess to our childhoods. We sometimes read these letters now and we are shocked, not at how far away it all seems, but at how close, how similar.

We are sweetly familiar to ourselves, and it dawns on us that perhaps we always have been.

…And now, the letters somehow mean something more than the friend or more-than-friend ever did; the admirer who saw fit to imagine us once is today the same as the ink. Incubating in those shoeboxes are echoes of us, chaotic scraps of becoming something.