On The Passing Of Time

I took this picture on Monday afternoon. 

I had just gotten off the train and instead of turning left to go to my parking lot, I turned right to go pick up my car from the dealership conveniently located right next to the train station where my car was waiting for me after an oil change.

This is a picture I quite like, so I have looked at it a lot since Monday. I guess it must have been cloudy for most of the day in White Plains, but just as the sun started to set the clouds started to burn away and for a few minutes the sky looked like this. It was breathtaking, and the picture doesn't nearly do it justice.

But this post isn't about a beautiful sunset dotted with storm clouds. Not really, anyway. 

It's about time.

Because the first thing I thought after taking the picture was that for the first time since we turned the clocks forward in March, the sun was starting to set before my regular train pulled into the station. For the first time in six months, I needed my headlights to drive home. For the first time since spring, the air is chilly when I leave my house in the morning and on my way home, and a few enterprising leaves have already started their turn towards the wild colors that mark the changing of the season.

School buses are driving the streets of my neighborhood again and pumpkin donuts are back. I just got a coupon in the mail for 99 cent apple cider and the candy aisle of my grocery store has taken on a distinctive orange and yellow hue. And probably most glaringly, two weeks from tonight I will be sitting around the dinner table with my family in Pittsburgh to celebrate Rosh Hashanah.

And despite all that, it kind of still feels like summer just started. Like two minutes ago we were driving with the top down, headed to Washington for our Memorial Day celebrations.

Time is a funny thing.

Because way back in April, time seemed to stop. The days felt like years - every moment an eternity -  and I thought that maybe I was destined to live in April for the rest of my life. But I wasn't, of course. Because time moves on, and time heals, and April became May and as the world came back alive after a frigid winter and a spring too cold for all of winter's ice to melt, so did I.

And summer started with its sweaty days and balmy nights and I felt better than I had in months, and I had summer to thank for that. And even though summer seemed to fly, I tried to be present in my moments and in my days. To make memories of the season that brought me back to life; that made me laugh and smile and appreciate the place where I was, where I live my life and the people I have chosen to live it with. And I was. And I did. 

But time marches on.

So here we are. Moving into the season where the world turns golden brown, the air is spicy, football is back, and jackets are necessary, even though it feels like summer just started yesterday. But today, I feel ok about that. Because for the first time in a long time, I am happy and healthy and focused on what is happening right now; not what I want to happen or wish would happen or what might happen at some point in the future, but right now.

Like a picture of storm-clouds on sunset.

So the sun can set as early as it wants and I'll even open my coat closet for the first time in months. I'll wear a sweatshirt when I sit outside, and switch my Saturday morning coffee from iced to hot. I'll pull out my long-sleeved running shirts and watch as my gardener switches from lawn mower to rake.

And these things are ok. These things are good.

Because this is where I am right now. And these are the moments that matter.

Summer's Last Nights

The last addition to the Merel outdoor summer of fun.

Tiki torches to light our way through summer's last nights.

"...I want to be buried in a Valentino gown and I want Harry Winston to make me a toe tag."

“When I die, I want my funeral to be a huge show biz affair with lights, cameras, action. I want craft services. I want paparazzi. I want publicists making a scene! I want it to be Hollywood all the way. I don’t want some rabbi rambling on; I want Meryl Streep crying, in five different accents. I don’t want a eulogy; I want Bobby Vinton to pick up my head and sing “Mr. Lonely. I want to look gorgeous, better dead than I do alive. I want to be buried in a Valentino gown and I want Harry Winston to make me a toe tag. And I want a wind machine so that even in the casket my hair is blowing like Beyonce’s.”                                                            

                                          - Joan Rivers                                                                                              June 8, 1933 - September 4, 2014

Throwback Thursday: Memorial Day and Our Summer Home

Our first summer weekend hanging out on our new summer home.

Hoping for a few more good ones before the seasons change.

Naked Pictures, A Hack and Rape Culture

I saw something on Facebook yesterday. Actually, many somethings, but all shades of the same.

More than a few people I'm "friends" with over there, in reference to the now infamous weekend hacking of the iCloud accounts of, among (many) others, Jennifer Lawrence, posted something along the lines of "if celebrities don't want their nude pictures shared, they shouldn't take nude pictures."

In other words, if you don't want people to see you naked, you sure as hell better never be naked.

I sat with this for awhile, trying to figure out why it made me so uncomfortable. Because it did. Really uncomfortable.

And then I saw something else on Facebook. I saw that Emma Sulcowicz, a Columbia University student who filed a Title IX complaint alleging that the University mishandled her rape and the subsequent investigation, was carrying the mattress from her dorm room bed wherever she went on campus in protest of Columbia's failure to take action against her rapist, and would continue to do so until he was no longer on campus because, she says, "Every day, I am afraid to leave my room."

And maybe you want to stand up right now and tell me that these two incidents are completely different. Completely unconnected. Maybe you want to tell me that no one touched Jennifer Lawrence. Maybe you want to tell me that being raped is nothing like having nude pictures of yourself posted onto the internet. Maybe you want to tell me that posting naked pictures isn't the same thing as sexual assault.

But what I want to tell you is, you're wrong.

Sexual assault doesn't have to be physical to exist. Sexual assault deals with consent, and particularly the lack thereof, in a sexual act. In Emma's case, a man forced her to have sex without her consent. And in Jennifer Lawrence's case, hackers shared nude pictures of her with the entire world, and I'm relatively certain she didn't give her consent for that. Or to the millions of people who have looked at the pictures since Saturday. 

And instead of talking about how she was violated, how sharing these pictures was a crime and how everyone who looks at them is complicit in that crime, people decide it's better to lecture her about how if she would just never have taken these pictures in the first place, this never would have happened. As if she and the other women involved in the leak are somehow at fault for these private pictures finding their way to the internet.

Sorry, but fuck that.

The hackers didn't find these pictures and publish them on the internet because a bunch of famous women had nude pictures on their phones or stored in their iCloud accounts, because they had bad passwords, because they took the pictures in the first place, or because they just weren't careful enough. It happened because people committed a crime by hacking into iCloud, stealing personal property and publishing it on the internet. 

And the public came flocking because, naked women y'all. And what do naked female bodies exist for, if not to entertain the men of the internet, of the world, right?

Wrong. So very, very wrong. It doesn't matter that these women are hot or rich, or that people feel that they are somehow entitled to them because they are famous and put themselves into the public eye. None of these things give anyone the right to violate their privacy. These women are people. They are human beings with the right to a personal life and to pieces of themselves that are not available for public consumption.

The kind of victim blaming that has ensued in the wake of Saturday's hack isn't any different from the victim blaming that nearly always follows rape allegations made by women against men. It is just as horrifying as when we chastise a rape victim for what she was wearing, saying, drinking. Or for not saying no loud enough. Or for not going to the police fast enough.

This is rape culture.

And don't you dare tell me that men get raped and sexually assaulted too and use that as some kind of excuse to close your ears and cover your eyes and ignore what is really going on here. Because how many men are afraid to walk down a street alone at night because a woman might jump out and attack them? How many men do you think worry about getting raped by a woman during an early morning run? And do you honestly think that the hackers who published the nude pictures of Jennifer Lawrence didn't find any nude pictures of men? Of course they did, but they didn't publish those all over the internet because men don't do that to other men.

We live in a world where universities, my very own Brandeis University included, hand out rape whistles to girls during freshman orientation and give them the locations of the emergency phones on campus, instead of telling the boys that rape is wrong. We live in a world where girls are taught to protect themselves but boys are rarely taught not to do the things that the girls would need to protect themselves from. We live in a world where companies are spending money developing nail polish that will change colors if dipped in a drink that contains a date-rape drug because money is not being spent teaching boys not to rape. We live in a world where in a poll of high school students, a large percentage of both girls and boys really and truly believe that it's not rape if she's drunk, if her skirt is short, or if she paid for dinner. We live in a world where a brilliant and accomplished female Senator is called "porky" by her male colleagues. And we live in a world where too much unacceptable behavior is ignored or pushed aside or even laughed at because boys will be boys, amiright?

And it's sad and terrifying and not at all the kind of world that I would like my children to grow up in.

So what do we do? Where do we go from here? Do we stop taking any pictures of ourselves that we wouldn't want posted on the internet for the entire world to see? Do we all buy a bottle of the date-rape drug detecting nail polish? Do we buy pepper spray for our purses and hold our keys between our fingers if we should ever have the audacity to walk alone at night? Do we stop wearing short skirts and red dresses and high heels?

I just don't know. I'm not sure anyone does.

I don't know if it will get better, or if maybe it will just keep getting worse.

And that might be the scariest thing of all.

Sometimes When It's Raining We Sit Outside Anyway

I really don't want this summer to end.

Seeing as my love of fall and winter has been well documented in these pages, that's kind of a strange thing for me to say, but that doesn't make it any less true.

Because this summer has been magic.

After a tough spring, these past three months have been exactly what I needed. Three months of good weather, family time, and reading books on my outdoor couch. Of barbecues, friends, and quiet time. Of enjoying the home that we have worked so hard to build. Of getting happy again. Of finding myself after months of feeling a little lost.

And this past weekend, we bid farewell to summer. It will still be pretty hot for the next couple of weeks, and there is plenty of outside time left before the leave fall and the first snowflakes make their appearance, but the abundance of "back to school" pictures on Facebook today tell me that the season is well and truly over.

So, you may ask how I spent the last three days of summer. I spent it at home, outside, in the living room we built on our yard; alone, with David, with family and with friends. Day and night. In sunshine and in rain.

And it was just absolutely perfect.