Zen Bender

by Stephanie Krikorian

  Another very random person with whom I’d had a drink literally once, and who I only knew through other people, was so buried in a new job that she left me blank checks and had me draw plans for her house on graph paper (FYI: I’m not a builder, nor am I an architect), and stand in line, not once, but twice, to get her house permitted by Town Hall. I did it out of some single-girl sense of obligation and the notion that maybe, one day, I would be this desperate and someone would help me. The entire time I was doing the favor, however, I thought my head was going to explode. I wanted to punch myself in the face for being so dumb.

  It was dumb and a good indication that I had to stop being available at the expense of my own time.

  Before I could change universally and widely, I found success on a more micro level. I started examining my food choices. They had to be joy-filled or I passed on them. For example, did a generic store-bought chocolate bar spark joy? Not really. It entertained me, or filled time, or filled me up. But a single Ferrero Roche, crunchy on the outside, but gooey on the inside, dripping with hazelnut-chocolate sauce—that brought me real joy.

  On occasion, a really good glass of red cabernet or Bordeaux (okay, okay, more than on occasion; okay, a bottle) brought me joy. But a glass of house red at a Chinese restaurant, in fact, brought zero joy into my life.

  The Marie Kondo joy-o-meter became a calorie counter.

  And then, powered by small successes, as Dr. Ramani had promised, it really hit me on an important level. Where I failed at saying no to favors, I started to consider my social and work time as sacred, and then I was able to rein it in.

  No more out-of-obligation plans. Time was tight, time was money, and most importantly, time was valuable.

  Here’s one example: When you’re a single woman with lumpy income (you work for yourself), you have a system for everything. I’m not alone in this thinking. Other women who work for themselves have a system as well. For some, it involves selling items on Poshmark to keep fashion fresh and the bank account fresher. For others, it’s living in a rental but owning a property that generates rental income, making them a landlord who is building equity and future retirement income.

  For a period of time prior to buying a house, my system involved renting a house for the summer to escape the city heat. That meant that I could work there for July and August, which allowed me to take advantage of not having to report to an office every day and max out the joy of working for myself. But as part of that system, I had to rent out my apartment in the city to students each summer to generate the needed beach money. That meant I had to share the summer rental, which was fortunately with Sherri (who was quiet and working during the day as well). That was the system. It was, at the time, a tight squeeze to make a summer away happen. But we both did the same thing with our respective apartments and we both made it work.

  That rental was a beautiful home, owned by two extremely nice people. My interaction with them over the course of four summers amounted to a few emails, a winter negotiation, and some check-writing correspondence. Maybe a hello at the beginning of the summer or a goodbye at the end, rarely both. This house, situated on a quiet, private driveway on a harbor with a few other houses surrounding it, had an outdoor deck where I’d sit on what we called space chairs that we had purchased for summer use. They were lounge chairs on hinges that tilted back and forth. Mount and dismount were always a great challenge, but once in and tilted, life was good.

  Perched in a space chair, I’d read a lot. One summer, long before the iPhone consumed the bulk of my spare time and I lost the ability to concentrate, I read eleven books in sixty days. I’d sit in that space chair and read while I ate my breakfast, comprised of coffee and cereal with blueberries and almonds. There was a farm stand across the street, and at six in the morning they’d have music playing while they set up for the day. I had heard that other neighbors hated that early-morning music. But I loved it. I loved it playing faintly in the background while I started my summer days reading and caffeinating. The sprinklers around the porch would turn on while I was out there and shut off before I finished my morning sunrise ritual. It was joyful.

  As I sat there each day for sixty or so of them, I’d stare through the hydrangea at the somewhat ugly house across the street—a cedar saltbox with a misaligned slab paved driveway, which stood out as an oddity on the stone-and-dirt road that led to it. There were few trees, no landscaping, and not much pizazz to this saltbox, which was perhaps why it sat there for sale. I had no idea at the time I was staring at my future Zen, my future sanctuary. I also had no idea there would be some speed bumps before that ugly house gave me peace.

  Nobody came to buy it. Until randomly, almost a year later, without thinking much about it, I did. When I found myself leaving New York after selling the Harlem home on a whim, I accidentally moved full-time to the hamlet of Springs in New York, on the south fork on Long Island, almost as far east as you could go.

  The landlords were of course disappointed that we wouldn’t be renting for future summers. We had been good tenants, but they seemed happy that I would be a neighbor.

  I was happy to have neighbors I knew after all the infighting in Harlem.

  At the same time, I’d moved from New York, where it was entirely possible to live in complete anonymity. I liked that. In Casa Loco, we had a strict code of calling or texting before knocking on someone’s door, and we respected each other’s privacy and personal space.

  Also, since I’d finally found a home that felt calm and peaceful, where I was less stressed, I was enjoying the serenity of it all, getting used to the quiet, and finding the solitude both pleasant and good for work.

  Most of my friends arrived at their Hamptons homes on weekends, especially as the weather warmed, and then during the summer it was full-on social interaction, so when I was home during the week on my own, I wanted to enjoy being home. And I was selective about using my time to socialize during the week.

  About a month into my time at the new house, I got an invitation from my former landlords for a drink. I obliged, had a glass of wine and some snacks, and left. It was lovely. Then, a couple of weeks later, a dinner invitation arrived, which I accepted. At that point, I figured once a year I’d have a meal with these folks, leaving me my alone time in my house, and time for my friends and work.

  But things got a little stressful. From there, the invites to get together started coming in with increasing regularity, and for some reason it overwhelmed me. I’d just moved from a place that had overwhelmed me.

  Spending time with these neighbors wasn’t awful, but it didn’t spark joy. It wasn’t them; rather it was my desire to start a new pattern in life, and that meant some quiet time in my home. It had to become my sanctuary.

  And, as I thought about all the clothing I’d tossed, I thought about my home situation, and quickly these invites began to feel like too much attention. More than I wanted. Apparently, I didn’t want to be liked. They were unknowingly creeping into my quiet time and, as such, a much deeper level of familiarity with one another gave them the impression that our time together should be extensive.

  Sometimes I’d pull into my driveway, and, before I could gather my things, one of them would be standing there with an invite to join them for dinner or a drink or a sunset. I always apologized profusely and blamed work for my inability to join. But they were right back there the next day or week with another offer.

  One morning, caffeine- and braless, I stepped out onto my front porch to grab the beach towels that I had hung to dry the afternoon before. I had been there for two seconds when a voice said, “Good morning. We were wondering when we were going to see you.” After gasping in terror from being startled, my first thought was: What the actual fuck is happening here? What are you doing at my house at six in the morning? My response was simply: “I don’t know.” It was the first time I was curt with them, and I felt badly about it.

  It
got to the point where I would strategically park my car behind the only bush in my driveway that gave me cover and then race into my house. I took the garbage out at night, under cover of darkness. Sometimes I would exit my car and go around the side of my house to the back door because they had a clear view of the front door.

  Was it overkill on my part? Maybe. But it was survival by avoidance.

  It wasn’t completely their fault. The Rainbow Healer had said I’d lost my voice. I knew I wanted to explain to my neighbors that I wanted solitude and quiet in my new home after seven years of chaos and action in Harlem, but I didn’t quite know how.

  Evasion techniques seemed easier.

  Things reached a crescendo when excuses stopped working. In fact, it only escalated the situation. Once I got a call from them inviting me for dinner. I didn’t answer. Then I got a text inviting me for dinner. Then they came right to the front door to knock, which, short of diving out a window and fleeing to escape them, left me trapped.

  “I called you and texted to see if you wanted to have dinner tonight,” one of them said at the door during my workday.

  “I know. I’m sorry, I can’t, I’m working. I don’t have time,” I said.

  “How about a glass of wine, then?” he said.

  “I can’t,” I said.

  “How about half a glass of wine?” he said.

  Right then, I channeled Marie Kondo and Sherri’s “No is an answer too” and I simply said, “No, thanks.”

  And “No, thanks” became my go-to answer. No thanks. No explanation. No thanks.

  I bring this story up because I viewed this as a small-ticket item to tackle and work on my saying-no skills.

  And so, on one such occasion, after I had declined approximately and specifically fifty-seven invitations (I counted the mounting evidence in my text stream), it was time to be kind to them by finding my voice and telling them more than just “No.”

  It was time to shoot the horse.

  Text: We’d like to have a dinner sometime in October. Before we invite anybody else, when are you free?

  Text: I wish I could join, but honestly, I don’t have the bandwidth to socialize with you both. I’m so sorry.

  Text: Are you mad at us?

  Text: I’m not mad at all, but it is getting uncomfortable declining the increasingly frequent invitations.

  It was all so un-Canadian, but so very New York. And, as hard as it made walking into my home, the weight of it was lifted immediately. I was lighter just having sent the text. Marie Kondo said I would feel lighter when I tossed my white linen jacket that I never really enjoyed wearing. That did make me feel lighter. But this made me feel downright feathery.

  Suddenly, no wasn’t simply an answer; it was a life preserver.

  Did it create an awkward walk down the street to watch the sun set over the harbor? Sure, but only briefly. They were extremely gracious and, eventually, it became nice to see them at the water and to say hello and catch up. I dealt with my stress issues, and their burden of wondering why I was always saying no was likely lifted.

  And examining this particular situation gave me the oomph to say no to the larger-ticket items that caused me stress.

  It made me realize something else, too: My neighbors weren’t the cause of the stress; anxiety in general was choking me. And when anxiety chokes you, you can’t always see the cause immediately. That had to be fixed.

  And that’s my Kondo takeaway: I’m glad she empowered me to toss those ugly Bally boots I bought in Ireland because they were a good price (but looked ridiculous). But I’m also glad she empowered me to start to decline all the things that didn’t spark joy in my life and to spend more time on the ones that did.

  Also, she helped me drill down on the root cause of my anxiety, and to see more clearly what was causing it. One shot-in-the-dark theory: my age. Pre-menopause and hormones had snuck up on me, and that made me feel anxious. Finally figuring that out was an enormous relief.

  Not having a steady paycheck, even though I earned a steady and decent income, grew into a new type of anxiety. And don’t get me started about the anxiety of taking care of a house versus an apartment (I got shingles putting in a simple patio). Considering the pressure I used to be under in my TV news days, I should have been able to manage it all better.

  In Marie Kondo I had found a self-help win. Not the obvious one, as stated in the book, but the sidebar spillover of one that made me stop and think, and profoundly changed my life.

  Chapter 8

  Never Judge a Clairvoyant by the Lampshade on Her Head

  certainty

  One spring in LA, my friend Martha told me about a clairvoyant named Mandy that I must absolutely go and see. Some amazing professional success had emerged after some of Martha’s friends had seen this healer.

  With scientific evidence like that, I said: Book it.

  While nothing had really materialized from the wisdom of the Dove to date, I still found psychics strangely comforting. And at the very least, real or not, inspiring enough to keep me striving. For what, I truly wasn’t sure.

  Feeling somewhat settled in other aspects of my life, I did feel that my career was going okay, but certainly not soaring. On some level, with that need for certainty, fueled by the impatience of wanting to know the end of the story, I wanted this psychic to help me make my career soar by helping me figure out where to focus. My desire to see into the future was not based on having glamorous things. I just wanted to know the ending. I wanted to know where I was going, and that I was going to be more happy than I already was.

  And yes, I feel dumb as I write that.

  Tribal Headbands Forever

  Martha set up two appointments for us, hers at five and mine at six. Sidebar worth mentioning here: While Martha had at one point suggested I was driving the Zen Bender train, costing her a fortune every time I came to town, it was fair to say she was an equally enthusiastic joiner, if not instigator. She was boots on the ground in Venice, after all, always had some ideas tucked away for my each of my visits, and was always game for whatever wackiness I wanted to get into. That Zen circuit kind of became our thing.

  When I arrived at Mandy’s, twenty minutes early (as per how I roll), at first, I was unsure what to do. I was at a house in a residential neighborhood. I wasn’t sure I was at the right place because I had mostly been taking in my psychic action at the Mystic Bookstore, not a private residence.

  Standing on the porch, there was another problem, too: I had to pee, badly. And I couldn’t wait. Reluctantly, I decided to enter the home. Once I did, I faintly heard Martha’s voice behind a closed door, which was a relief. At least I wasn’t at the wrong address and breaking and entering unknowingly. I navigated my way through this stranger’s home, used the bathroom, and much to my horror, realized the toilet was plugged and wouldn’t flush.

  Panicked, I ran. I left the bowl full to the brim and went and sat on the colorful patchwork couch in the living room.

  It seemed I had breached psychic in-home protocol by not waiting outside, which prompted the psychic to suggest to Martha, as she later informed me, that someone was chasing her, or was after her, and that maybe it was me. This was prompted by Mandy hearing noise in her house (me peeing).

  Martha laughed and explained that I was obsessively on time and that was more likely what she’d been vibing because I would show up early, eager for my reading. And for everything.

  Martha knew me. If ever I was late, I was likely dead.

  When it was finally my turn, Martha left, and I entered the reading room with Mandy. It was, what I would call, a shamble-shack of a space. It was BoHo, messy, and cluttered but light, with colorful trinkets. Mandy greeted me and asked me to sit cross-legged on a daybed that was tucked in a corner against a wall.

  In her white lacy dress and white tights, she sat cross-legged as well, facing me, our
knees touching.

  Quietly, with her eyes closed, she got started. She asked me to put my hands out, palms up. She took one hand of mine and placed it between both of hers, one of her hands on the bottom of my hand, the other on top, rubbing my palm with her palm. Admittedly, I felt irritated and distracted by the hand rubbing. On the germaphobe scale, I’m a six, so there was something about the palm rubbing that made me edgy. When it started to feel sweaty, I began to think this was going to be a waste of my time, mostly because I couldn’t concentrate on anything but the dampness and hotness of my palm.

  For ten minutes she rubbed in silence. Then she opened her eyes and said, “I might have to send you home. I can’t get a reading.”

  If one could have a resting this-isn’t-worth-my-time face, I suspect I was wearing it and sending the feeling out there at the same time. There wasn’t any particular reason. I was flustered over the toilet not flushing and over the uncertainty of where I was to sit and wait. So maybe I was uncomfortable and closed-off and she knew it.

  “Are you serious?” was all that I could think to say.

  I felt pissed-off that I’d driven so far (almost an hour!), and perhaps because of that, I shut down more. She said she would keep trying but, if I had given her nothing to begin with, I was suddenly giving her even less to work with in the spiritual energy department. It appeared as though this had been a waste of my time.

  My mind wasn’t open enough and my back was getting sore sitting in this strange position.

  Mandy explained that I was the single most “grounded in dirt,” feet-firmly-stuck-to-the-ground person she’d ever encountered. That her job was to grab onto my spirit and float it up in the clouds with her, as if she were holding onto a balloon. Then she could get a read on things on another level, beyond the real world we were in. But with me, she couldn’t get any lift. And this had never happened to her apart from once, years and years before, she said.