Zen Bender

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Zen Bender Page 9

by Stephanie Krikorian


  The Dove knew so much about Martha, quite random details, it was jaw-dropping. Even if I had known the details about Martha that the Dove did, which I did not, I pointed out that I hadn’t spent my two hundred dollars talking about, or even mentioning, Martha. But the Dove knew the kind of detail that makes you a believer.

  And I think that’s the crux of some of these things: take the thread you want to believe and, instead of living in a state of skepticism, live in a state of hope. Did I ever imagine I’d be world famous? Only the last time someone told me I would be. Did it make me feel optimistic about doing something significant in my life? Sure. Did I spend fewer hours watching Scandal to make that mark on the world? No.

  Between Doves and Rainbows, I peppered my days with small, mind-clearing, soul-cleansing activities, in part because my list was snowballing with every person I spoke with. If I told one person about the sound bath effect, they countered with the sensory bath that changed their life; for every hyperventilation-inducing Rainbow Healing session, I was one-upped with a cryogenic pod story.

  Which is how I learned I was supposed to find a labyrinth to walk. There were many in the city. Like, I literally Googled labyrinths in LA and was amazed by the choices. Supposedly, walking a labyrinth was a decision-making, head-clearing exercise, and coincidentally (or not) I needed to decide whether to pass or accept a project I had been mulling.

  Undecided on which labyrinth to walk to decide on something else, fortunately, I stumbled across one near Electric Avenue in Venice while I was out for a regular walk. Serendipitous for certain. Without much thought, I entered the very basic maze mapped out in the grass with rocks. As I walked, I concentrated on the decision at hand. It was a quick walk, only a few minutes, but it gave me enough time to do some pros and cons.

  The book in question was one I wanted to write. It sounded exciting, and it was for a celebrity I’d been a fan of. But the negotiations had gotten complicated and, for that matter, expensive too, as my lawyer was involved in the discussions. Never mind the labyrinth, my lawyer Liz had told me at the start to consider walking away from this potential deal. And she told me again in the middle. And she told me as it was all looking dire too, that maybe it wasn’t going to work out. Still, I placed my decision-making in the labyrinth’s hands, not my ass-kicking lawyer Liz who had always steered me right.

  By the end of my quick walk, it appeared as though Liz and the labyrinth were on the same page. I decided to pass on the project, even though when I entered the labyrinth, I had really wanted to exit certain I should say yes to it. I also realized it would have been cheaper to have walked the labyrinth in the first place.

  Not until much later did I notice a pattern had slowly been emerging. The more deeply I embraced the fixes offered up, the less I listened to my gut (and my lawyer). The labyrinth had helped me figure something out, but it was possibly something that I already knew.

  Still, I was deep in by this point—any crutch, any guru. I wanted to relinquish my decision-making to those people and methods that surely had to be wiser than I.

  Parched and decided, I continued on foot from the labyrinth to get juiced—Moon Juice, of course, on Rose Avenue, which is ground zero for serious juicers. Many people had told me to try it, so of course I did. I spent an hour choosing which twelve-dollar juice to buy. I went for an anxiety-reducing, calming one made with rose water and strawberries. But then I doubled down and got an energy-boosting, thyroid-bolstering one with carrot. I drank them both, back to back. I felt like Elvis, using uppers and downers all at once.

  As a last-minute cram, before leaving LA that trip, I bought myself a set of Osho Zen Tarot cards, which I’ve pulled maybe five times in five years, and some dried sage. And while the card habit didn’t stick, and I resumed my I don’t drink juice policy (as per a nutritionist), I do sage my space with great regularity.

  I even started calling my home “my space.” How New Age was that?

  Bottom line: I soaked up my healers’ wisdom like a sponge. Only, looking back, I can admit it was too much all at once. But the energy work and the sound bath and the labyrinth, well, they were all meditation in one form or another. Thai massage, twice-a-week energy movement. And there was yoga that I went to on a regular schedule too, and that helped. Here’s the other thing: I had created, in that short period of time, a routine. Routine can lull a crazy mind. Empty, unscheduled space in a day can make the head stir in wild ways.

  Maybe suddenly working from home, after so many years in an often raucous, social, and buzzy newsroom, played a role in my off-the-rails spiritual pursuit as well, because it took me a while to figure out how to manage the endless sea of unbooked time that only I could schedule.

  To fill the new slate of time I had open in front of me, I tackled a lot of non-work projects and replaced the social aspect of life that I was missing from working in a newsroom with…well, anything I could find. In Venice Beach, I liked the appointments. They gave me a schedule to stick to.

  Did it all reduce my anxiety? Well, yes, absolutely, for a short time while I was there, but it also caused some. I spent close to $1,800 on all my advisors and elixirs.

  That part actually stressed me out and made me wonder if, in fact, I did have more money than brains. But despite the drain on my bank account, I felt clearer, sharper, lighter, and maybe more laid-back. I’m not super easy-going, as most people who know me can attest, so that was a plus.

  Did the sun shining brightly on that coast help? Most certainly. Was the slow pace and hippie vibe of Venice contagious? Absolutely.

  My Rainbow Healer told me, in the future, when I got distracted or anxious or whatever, to remember my intention: finding peace. I felt peaceful. Would it last? I pondered that as I put on my black jeans, black boots, black sweater, and black leather jacket and headed out to catch a plane, back to the chaos I loved.

  Amid that black shell, I tucked a red piece of crystal one healer had given me into my pocket as I traveled. It was a security blanket—a tiny takeaway from a rapid-fire, accelerated journey to an enlightened state. Would it work? To find our own internal strength and power and clear out the cobwebs, maybe we just have to believe it is possible. I learned that you have to weed out the crazy stuff, and listen to what’s positive and resonates for you. A healthy dose of spirituality, reflection, and looking inward stills my mind. That I can take with me anywhere, for free, any time.

  Plus, my Rainbow Healer assured me that, if I slipped up, she could always do energy work over Skype.

  Chapter 6

  The Melrose Place of It All

  anxiety

  When I first moved to Harlem, I was walking uptown to see a friend who lived about twenty blocks north of me. It was a clear and sunny but brisk winter day, so I was moving quickly up a bustling avenue. A guy passing by said, “What up, Snowflake?”

  I slowed to look back at him, but he was continuing and didn’t look back at all. I mulled his words as I continued my trip, not sure I’d heard him correctly, and not sure what he’d said was actually directed toward me. But then, not a block later, another guy said the exact same thing—“What up, Snowflake?”—and this time, clearly it was said to me. I was stopped at the light, waiting to walk across, and so was he. Eye contact was made.

  I was Snowflake.

  Why was everybody calling me Snowflake? I truly had no idea.

  Could it have been because everyone somehow knew I was from Canada? That was my initial thought. It had to have been that. But how could anyone know I was Canadian? I quickly scanned my outfit, felt my hat to see which one I was wearing, and checked the bag I was carrying to see if anywhere on me was a flag or a maple leaf or some indication that I liked Tim Hortons. Nothing. I was perplexed.

  Eventually, as I continued on my way, I decided that I was being called “snowflake” because I was wearing a super bright pink puffy coat with a faux-fur collar. It had to be that. These gu
ys were making fun of my bright outerwear. It made perfect sense. It wasn’t snowing at the time, so maybe the implication was that I was overdressed and waiting for snowflakes. That made the most sense.

  When I got home, still pondering my experience, I Googled “snowflake” to learn that it wasn’t at all about my puffy pink jacket, but rather my pale white skin.

  Fascinated and fully entertained, I had a good chuckle at both my complete lack of knowledge and my total un-cool-ness, as well as at how amusing the experience had been. But it also reinforced for me something that had originally caused me some grief when I first closed on my apartment. I was an evil gentrifier, and that didn’t feel good.

  Fire Escape in My Igloo

  While my Harlem time was filled with many only-in-Harlem happenings, and some exceptional and lifelong friendships were formed, a lot of soul-searching and Zen Bendering went down while I lived there. Mostly because, for me, living there represented the Great Recession. That’s where I was when I lost my job. In fact, I vividly remember, just before the layoff, mentioning at a building board meeting that I had been reading about people getting laid off and not being able to pay their condo and co-op fees, and that buildings, as a result, were going bankrupt. I said that someone in our building could indeed find themselves unemployed, so we should keep our reserves flush.

  It didn’t strike me that I’d be first to find myself in that situation.

  I was the first and, for a while, only, until eventually there were four of us in the building who had lost our jobs. Strangely, that turned out to be a positive in a messy situation. Later, when I collaborated on The Loving Diet, by Jessica Flanigan, the main premise of her book (though it referred to illness) was that we should love our way through adversity and find an upside to help us heal. The four of us at Casa Loma (the strange name for our building, which we edited in conversations to Casa Loco) who were home all day began to do potluck, rooftop lunches. I was too deep in it to see it at the time, but those group lunches were uplifting. They were the upside. They were an amazing break from rocking back and forth in a ball in tears on the floor of my apartment, and it was nice to have some similarly troubled people to commiserate with.

  When I lived there, a lot of new construction was happening all around, much of which had begun in the optimistic boom years of 2006 and 2007, and some of it was halted completely or slowed. Along with everybody in my building on West 116th Street, I had bought in 2007—right at the height of the market. That was in part because a fancy condo building on Central Park North had just fetched the highest price per square foot above 96th Street (even though it was a few doors down from a prison, albeit a prison with a view of the park), and that set the tone for neighborhood pricing to follow.

  Pricing to follow before the real estate market nearly plunged into the abyss one year later. Translation: Everyone in my building paid the maximum possible dollar per square foot to live in our little five-story, sixteen-apartment complex—we all bought right at the apex—so, that was super good fortune. And then for a long time, despite job loss and career change, selling wasn’t an option without a loss. And I wasn’t taking a loss.

  I had bought and sold real estate before, just not in New York City. But in some sort of momentary lapse in judgment, I made a hasty purchase. Owning in New York comes with a long list of challenges unique to the city, and to shared living in general.

  Plus, I hadn’t really looked around too much to investigate various neighborhoods. I had checked out an apartment here or there, three tops, altogether. So, while I was renting in a rather convenient neighborhood at 59th and Columbus and loving it, I somehow felt I was built and fully equipped for owning an apartment in New York and all the stress that came along with it.

  As such, I viewed the apartment once for about fifteen minutes, then, when I got home, I put in a bid to buy it. And that bid was accepted. And that was it.

  To put this in perspective, I spent six days researching what type of television to buy. And six to twelve minutes debating a Manhattan real-estate transaction.

  There were multiple challenges I hadn’t considered, including distance from a lot of my usual New York action. When I had to go to a midtown office, it was a thirty-minute subway ride (compared to my previous ten-minute walk), but if I was going to the gym and then out for the evening, I felt compelled to lug bags of costume changes around the city with me, rather than waste thirty minutes going uptown to change and thirty minutes or more to head back down. And when I came home late at night, I quickly learned that a taxi to 116th Street cost substantially more than one to 59th street. Uptown felt very far and out of the way and therefore very inconvenient.

  Additionally, I loved to walk at night in New York. It’s still one of my favorite things to do. But not knowing the area well, and perhaps being nervous about the emptiness and the quietness of the streets, plus what I had read about the crime rate (which in fairness was not much different from most neighborhoods in New York), I stopped doing my all-time favorite activity.

  To add to that, while there was an initial dorm-room feel to living in that building, and we all got to know one another as neighbors by socializing on the roof and visiting one another’s apartments with regularity (a very un-New-York-like practice), eventually there was a lot of infighting. That’s because owning in New York meant co-owning public space. Co-owning space meant co-making decisions about that space. We all owned a piece of the hallways, and the stairs, and the rooftop, which, as it turned out at Casa Loco, meant that when a group decision needed to be made, war often ensued.

  So you understand how ugly it got at times: Once, a neighbor referred to me as a “cow” on Facebook for asking them to be quiet, to which someone on the chain commented that my neighbor should “teach that cow a lesson.” This didn’t feel like normal warfare.

  In one battle royal over putting a couch on the roof (which was preceded by wars over dogs on the roof, flowers on the roof, and party hours on the roof), things got particularly ugly. Teams formed. Factions emerged. There was a clear divide between sides. There were no fence-sitters in this particular war and no middle ground. Couch. No couch. Period.

  There was the rational group (no couch) and the irrational one (pro-couch). During Couchgate, names were suddenly being called, and vicious emails were fired off.

  There were many ugly situations, but a crescendo of sorts was reached when someone left a Spanx catalogue at the door of the female board president. Though a breaking point had been coming for a long time, that war and the tactics used to fight it led to utter dead-to-me silence in the hallways or on the roof. Icing the other team, fully and unapologetically, became standard operating procedure. I could very easily walk right by someone from the other side and make no eye contact and not say a word. Zero discomfort. Zero regret. And so could they. Elevator rides weren’t just chilly, they were downright frigid.

  It wasn’t just the fighting that made home not fun; I was stressed-out from the second I moved into Casa Loco, and then, a year later, mega-twisted when I lost my job, which made the infighting, my job circumstance, and the neighborhood merge into one so that, most of the time, almost from the beginning, all I could think of was leaving. The apartment itself became guilty by association. I was one foot out the door, constantly planning an escape or maybe always looking for something better.

  When I was a kid, my dad used to shovel snow into a giant pile and then dig the inside out so we had a snow fort. Wrapped in bright stiff snowsuits, suffocating from tightly tied thick, wide, and colorful scarves my grandmother had knit, we played outside in those forts for hours. It was like having a tree fort, but on the ground in igloo form.

  Each time my dad made us a fort, he would do the strangest thing. He would carve out both a front door and a back door, then he would explain that the back door was a fire escape.

  Keep in mind, none of us played with matches. But then who didn’t remember
that Little House on the Prairie episode in which Mary dropped her glasses in the field after her horse-drawn cart got toppled and the magnification of the lenses lit the grass up in flames? I never did ask about the odds of flames erupting in the cold igloo.

  Once, when my neighbor, also named Stefanie (but with an “f”), and I were young, we were making fun of another kid on the street and his girlfriend. (I’m embarrassed to say, we called her ugly.) That’s what we did back then, I guess (along with singing Anne Murray songs in the rec room). He got so mad he started chasing us down the street. We were in snowsuits and the street was deep in snow and ice, so we ran as fast as we could to get away, but it wasn’t easy to escape. We made it to her backyard and dove into her snow fort. He caught up to us and eventually made his way to the igloo door. He hunched down and started yelling at us for being mean. I was terrified.

  And there was no fire escape in her igloo. We were trapped.

  That’s how I felt in Harlem, thanks to the real estate market and my fellow apartment owners. Trapped.

  Home Was Never My Sanctuary

  Years before moving to Harlem, I injured my arm and shoulder. Physical therapy helped, but acupuncture was the big fix in the end. A referral from a friend led me to a practitioner named Alexis Arvidson. Later, when I couldn’t sleep and was a total stress bag, I read about the calming effects of the ancient Chinese remedy that involved microneedles and pressure points and something called chi, and so I decided to return to Alexis, who had saved my bicep, to see if she could also save my sanity.

  Alexis, like all good healers, had a studio with a feathered dreamcatcher and crystals and oils all around. Calming spa-type music and mood lighting eased my tension upon entering, but not as much as Alexis’ presence did. She’s got a special vibe all her own. As directed, I hopped up on her table and let her do her magic. Despite a paralyzing fear of needles in general, I found acupuncture soothing. And, after learning that chi was energy, and that Alexis was moving mine around, I also discovered that the ritual helped me sleep and chilled me out, even if only for a fleeting moment.

 

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