After six months of online dating, here are some of my key findings…

Finding #1: Men in Arizona are a gun-toting bunch. We’re talking arsenals of 15 +  firearms. When I asked several men why so many (a typical California-liberal chick question), I was told that every gun is for a different purpose. One guy, a real sweetheart and a self-described libertarian, insisted the democrats most definitely want to take away his guns. He also wasn’t keen on the COVID-19 vaccine, fearing his DNA would be forever altered.   

Finding #2: We are chemical beings, and also spiritual beings, which may or may not be one and the same, considering the universe is made up of, well, chemicals. And, our brains deliver dopamine (a chemical compound) at seemingly breakneck speed when we’re “attracted” to someone. Attraction is not grounds for healthy romance. It’s a start, but not a “sign.” A better sign, if there is such a thing, (I prefer to call it intuition), might be one’s waking and nighttime dreams. 

To wit: The man who elicits a waking dream of you, a mermaid trying to swim away, but she can’t because she and her gorgeous, blue fin and tail are wrapped tightly in his net. The unseen fisherman (he lives two hours away in the desert) is attempting to haul you into his port or onto his dry-land boat, or whatever.  

Or: the dream you have about another guy after your first phone conversation, suddenly appearing in your studio apartment and rearranging your furniture while you try not to sleep with him on the first date. This dream probably says more about my libido and attempt to manage it early in the dating process, than about the guy.

Finding #3 Long-distance dating isn’t for me.      

I had been told this was a tough road to hoe, by people much wiser than I, but I got to experience it firsthand.  I’d get super-excited about a new person — their laugh, their New York accent (I’m a sucker for people from Buffalo and Long Island), their hot-dude-gym-rat, physique, the wall-to-wall books behind them on FaceTime calls (yes, books are hot).  But then, before even meeting the person in the flesh, and communicating virtually for a couple of weeks (what a frustrating experience), or meeting them once, it became abundantly clear this person wasn’t for me.  

Finding #4: Follow my intuition, even when it’s telling me things I don’t want to hear, like “this situation and person are a repeat performance your x’s.”  I think it’s more a matter of what my body is telling me about whether or not this thing will “work,” and me, listening. And listen, I have.  I’m here to tell you, it’s not always easy.  Because it means practicing patience and trust (not exactly exciting), and entertaining the possibility that a healthy romantic partnership may not be in the cards for me right now.        

I’ve dumped bumble and the site is leaving me alone. Match.com refuses to take “no more, thank you,” for an answer.  I’ve turned off my profile, ticked all the boxes to quit sending me alerts, and still, they email and email me with all the amazing possibilities for the perfect match. Their persistence reminds me of the Scientologists I met on the street when I was seventeen, who were still mailing me fliers ten years after I’d decided not to join their cult.  Maybe that’s commitment? I doubt it. Match probably just wants to keep the net ready, so they can haul me in and we can start the dating game all over again.      

There is nothing wrong. There is nothing to fix or figure, or render more than what it already is, although mind tells me, tells you, do not rest but rather, run. Do not celebrate, but rather, worry. Mind is diversion, to this, to that. And it does not mean to lie to us; it does not mean for me and you to abandon our love, ourselves. It simply knows struggle far too well to risk letting go.

That is why from time to time, I close my eyes (and why you must, too) and say to God and Life (they are one and the same, you know) not in words but in your own version of surrender to the cacophony and ritual of thoughts, “Take me home.”

All of my life (like you), I have pushed, prodded, and performed in roles no one but me (in the end) assigned. But what if, what if, a cup of tea, a pen, a bird’s call, the rub of breath against empty space, and the gathering day, were enough? What then?

The celebration is this: the sound of your heartbeat in the cavern of everything you think you know, tossed into the fire. Watch all of this burn. Be warm. Be home.

Alice Walker relies on the feminine, creative energy of “Mother” to paint a striking picture of not only what her characters look like — but how their physical features and personality traits inform the story. A close read of both her fiction and essays reveals this as one of the most moving aspects of her work

In her much-studied short story “Everyday Use,” Mama, Walker’s narrator, describes herself as “large big-boned woman with rough man-working hands,” who “wears flannels nightgowns to bed and overalls during the day… and [who] can kill and clean a hog as mercilessly as a man.”  The reader understands immediately this is a woman of grit, a survivalist, and a matriarch who knows who she is, and is not. In this instance, the woman her daughter Dee wants her to be, “a hundred pounds lighter, my skin like an uncooked barley pancake…” 

Walker’s description of both of Mama’s daughters, through her observant narrator, creates a powerful juxtaposition between them, and establishes the complexity of the two worlds (embodied by Dee’s visit) in collision. We first meet Maggie as the narrator imagines she will appear until Dee leaves: “She will stand hopelessly in corners, homely and ashamed of the burn scars down her arms and legs, eying her sister with a mix of envy and awe.”  This imagining stirs the reader’s curiosity about the fire, as well builds tension around Dee and her visit. 

The comparison of Maggie to a lame animal and the way Maggie carries herself, is a full tableau of Maggie’s physicality — and more importantly, conveys the psychological effects of the fire and the subsequent family dynamic.  Dee has been untouched by this, and during the fire the narrator describes her “standing off under the sweet gum tree… a look of concentration about her…” 

Dee’s visiting-day dress of “yellows and oranges enough to throw back the light of the sun,” recalls the earlier image of Maggie’s dress “falling off of her in little black papery flakes.”  The image of Dee’s hair, “two pigtails that rope about like small lizards,” is somehow primal and sinister, and perhaps evocative of Dee’s motives. 

Walker captures Dee’s boyfriend, whom the narrator has never met, with a few, simple, yet telling details. He is “short, stocky fellow with hair to his navel is all grinning,” suggested a more “cultured” urban life Dee is leading, which the narrator doesn’t trust; and Dee’s attempt to cast off her past, and still grab those parts of it that please her.  

In her essays, Walker is equally skillful. For the lesser figures, it’s as if she snaps a Polaroid or applies the exact, light brush strokes. Her companion Charlotte Hunt in “In Search of Zora Neale Hurston” is “a large pleasant-faced white woman in dark glasses.” Mrs. Patterson is a handsome, red-haired woman in her late forties, wearing orange slacks and gold earrings,” and has “penny-brown” eyes.  We meet Rosalee, “a stocky black-skinned woman in her thirties, wearing a green polo shirt and white jeans cut off at the knee.” As Walker interacts with her, we hear her voice, too: “Rough, pleasant, as if she is a singer who also smokes a lot.”

Walker’s more detailed portraits of Mrs. Moseley and Dr. Benton in this essay serve a dual purpose: Spark our curiosity about Hurston along with Walker’s, as well pay homage to the people in Hurston’s world, before she died.   The image of Mrs. Moseley is one of my favorites.

Initially, Walker uses light brush strokes: A neat lady in a purple dress and white hair, frowning. Mrs. Moseley gets out of the car, and it’s here that the full image unfolds. We are seeing Mrs. Moseley as Walker does in real time: “A thin, sprightly woman with nice, gold-studded false teeth, uppers and lowers.” The use of italics with “straight” and hand on her hip, in addition to the “well-shaped legs,” tell the reader this woman is not your average “old lady.” Rather, she’s a force. 

To describe her own mother, Walker relies primarily on her mother’s garden in In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens. In the one mention of her mother’s character, Walker concedes her she may not even appear as such: “She seemed a large, soft, loving-eyed woman who was rarely impatient…”

For Walker, the garden is mother as artist: “…so brilliant with colors, so original in its design so magnificent with live and creativity…”