Stay

I am always so wordy in this blog. I am tired of being wordy. It is boring. I am sitting here on my bed in my 1 bedroom apartment in the east village writing. about myself, what i want, what i wished for, what i wish for, what i have and what i don't have.

I HAVE a dog.
He is NOT mine.

I HAVE an apartment.
It's rented. NOT mine.

I HAVE a headache.
Too much booze, will be gone by tomorrow.

I HAVE Ray Lamontagne playing on my Itunes.
It keeps disappearing everytime I restart my computer.

I HAVE a voice.
Not the one I had last year.

Nothing is permanent.

I would LOVE to find something permanent.

Right now my plan is to sit here on my bed and wait for something permanent to find me.

when somebody leaves

...it's easy to think that it might be you.

--amber rubarth www.myspace.com/amberrubarth

hi!

Hi! Forever ago was the last I posted....and I am back. I am back. I am back. And I am not going to try and fill in the blanks here, let's start from scratch.

First off. Dean. Out of the picture. After all the religious back and forth, a nasty break up and the discovery that the last two months of our relationship had been spent in another woman's bed, I gave up. We parted ways on Rebel Spirit (which for the record, has become a GREAT success, sponsorship, national exposure, etc.) and have somehow managed good terms after months of spiteful hatred.

So.

I am single. Single and STILL Jewish ;) Still in love with music. Still. Me.

I read back over a few entries, about dean and I. How harsh, how strong I was with him. Not sure it was all a great thing to be that way. Not sure why I felt so comfortable trying to change someone. He did want it, too. Don't get me wrong. But I do see how it sent him running. To another. Girl. Younger. And on Gossip Girl.

GO FIGURE.

And no, I am not bitter. Because he writes me letters every day asking for me back. And while deep down I wish i could, yet again, jump in, I know its sealed and wrong.

And PLUS.

I've moved on ;)

xRed Out Loud

almost 3 months later.....

Lord. I don't even know the last time I wrote to you all or to myself or to anyone for that matter. It has been a long time and I can not even remember the last item I ranted about. But man, I have missed it. I have missed you. I have missed me a bit.

My, my. What has happened. I have changed. My voice has returned after hard months of therapy and trying to get life back before my body was ready. It is strange when your b ody just cuts out on you and literally tells you to STOP DOING WHAT YOU ARE DOING.

My voice came back, edgy and stringy and strange. It was quiet, without power, people had to say, "what?" when I said something. That is RARE when you are Deena Goodman. RARE. It was painful, not physically, but emotionally. No control over a bodily function as necessary as speaking.

I got stronger, weaker, stronger. Got confident, went out, talked in loud rooms, sang here and there, regretted it, got tired, got sick and got healthy. I got my voice back.

I have it. It is in there. It is different and so am I.

To be continued.

ps Dean got me roses today- his first flower purchase ever. wow.

P.S.

You may be wondering how my voice is, since, after all, that is the intention of this bloggidy blog.

Well- it is still present. Tried, but 6 weeks later my speaking voice is quite strong, I sound like I did years back, no hoarseness and I think in 2 weeks I will be able to set up my first show!!!!

SCARY!!!!!!!

What I will say is this has been quite a ride and it has forced me to change direction in a major way. I don't know if I will find my way back or if i will continue to move forward, but I am not sure how I will shape up now that I have "healed." Who ever knows what they'll do next? I am starting to realize that thinking big may not be as efficient or even as meaningful as thinking small, step by step and letting the wind carry you a bit....

Who knows where it will take me....

Faith, continued....

Soooooo......

Dean and his technical Jew status threw him for a loop and I suppose he could not handle it. And to be perfectly honest I was quite unsympathetic to the whole plight. I am not the best person to, say, teach a person something. You certainly would not find a photograph of me next to the word patient in the dictionary, no sir.

And when it comes to Judaism, for me, it all seems just so obvious. I have been bred this way and I have been bred around other people who have been bred the same way. There was no teaching involved. My understanding of God came at such a young age that I no longer had to understand God in order to understand the rules I lived by, the practices I kept, the practices I chose not to keep, that tendencies my family had that were typically "jewish," the holidays I celebrated and the life I intended to lead in the future. God had been buried deep under that. God had also been buried deep under the tribulations my almost immediate family had experienced historically due to their religion. In no way did my grandparents walk around putting down or pushing up God for being a part of their experience or survival of the Holocaust. The experience simply reinforced their identity as Jews, defining their place in the world and therefore their responsibility to impart that place unto their children.

All of this has shaped me, with little explanation, more build up of experience in my surroundings, oh and of course, 18 years of formal Jewish education.

Though the Holocaust directly influenced Dean's history and directly influenced his destiny it was so buried that it really had nothing to do with his identity, not as a Jew and not as a human being. Also- though born Jewish he was no tied to any practice in any way and for the most part had no idea it was part of who he was until I told him so. The discovery came as a shock to both of us, him because it meant he was tied to a religion that simply scared him and me because, well, it meant I could LEGALLY date him :-). Still it meant a major project ahead of us and while it was an inherent connection it also became an inherent disconnect. I had experienced Judaism, I never thought I would have to explain it. He had never experienced Judaism, let alone religion in any capacity. For him religion meant conforming, it meant rules and it meant GOD. This freaks the hell out of him. Religion also meant the key to success for our relationship. And that freaked him out too.

And I had the hardest time abutting his nerves. How was it possible for me a believer/non believer/god fearing/god rebelling Jew supposed to explain in all my conflict that Judaism was great, that he should recognize that and that without that realization there would be no future for us.

I couldn't, I could not be the teacher. All I could do was give him books, hope he would take to them and hope that he would, himself, fall for the whole life style choice as opposed to it being me who forced him into it. The books did not work, the plea for him to recognize that my history was his history did not help either. None of it worked and it put a weight so heavy on the back of our newfound love that it broke.

And Dean broke up with me.

Did it last? You might ask, because here I am irresponsibly writing to you 5 weeks post break up (6 weeks post operation) and things have changed.

In fact Dean and I could not stay apart from each other, we tried a couple of times over the course of the month but realizing that we were utterly failing at the plight Dean decided on his own volition to reach out to some "Jewish sources" of his own. He set up meetings, began e mailing people, posting comments and questions on message boards and the likes. I convinced him he needed to do this on his own, that I did not want to be to blame for his one day accepting this way of life as his own, that he needed to pursue this as an individual. A female rabbi at the 92nd street Y convinced him otherwise. SO- I went with him all the way up to the upper east side for his big introduction.

Now this was not his first introduction to a Rabbi, this was his 2nd or 3rd. I had dragged him to synagogue on the high holidays, invited him to festive meals, introduced him to Jewish friends and so on....

But this 92nd Street Y visit was the first encounter out of his own volition.

It was not the regular for me....first off, I went to yeshiva high school and while my family is conservative and from an egalitarian background, meeting a female Rabbi was NOT what I had in mind, not at all. But here we were sitting face to face with a soon to be female Jewish Rabbi who had a past career in the music business working at Arista records. Irony or ironies.

For the first time, though I saw Dean for who he was, for what he was going through, for all of his questions, thoughts and considerations. This woman handled it beautifully and I listened. This is not to say that I completely understood everything he had to say, it is also not to say that I saw some sort of light or that he saw some sort of light. But we were both suddenly in it together. Whether this pushes us back to each other too soon, whether this religious conflict is present to simply cover up other issues we had been having for some time, we have decided to stay with each other for the time being.

So, as they say, faith brought us together....at least for now. I'll keep ya posted......

xRed Out Loud

Have Faith

and it may very well be tonight that Dean broke up with me. Even though it was three weeks ago yesterday that he made the fateful decision. We have continued to see each other and so in a way the last three weeks don't count. Every couple of days we would end up together and two days later we'd look at each other in bed at his apartment and say "what are we doing?" Two days without each other pass and we say to each other on the phone "what are we doing?" and tonight after lots of two day intervals we said to each other "what ARE WE REALLY DOING HERE?" and he decided that had to draw the line (though I did point out he had tried to draw the line weeks ago).

So I suppose this is it, or it for now, or it until he comes around or I get on with it. It's not as though I didn't know this would happen, I mean it is every day that I live a self fulfilling prophecy that all fails and nothing lasts forever. That is why I date men I can't end up with and talk about a career in music that I'd die for but don't actively pursue, instead putting my energy into more tangible jobs-slash-relationships. I am more comfortable with failure then I am with success. That is what some people tell me. About me. You know, because other people love to tell me about me.

I'm Jewish and though this blog began as an ode to my voice and then a recount of my inability to speak for a time, I probably should say that the truth is, despite my attributing my overall human existence to my voice and to song, really underlying it all is my Jewish identity. I am not saying it is a strong or weak identity, in fact its in constant flux and for the most part fights with itself on a daily basis, but whether i'm up one or down one in the god department (or religion department I should say, because who knows if god as anything to do with religion), the damn thing is always present. My identity that is, my JEWISH identity, that is.

It's not really that I was brought up by two devoted conservative Jewish parents and its not that I diligently attended Jewish Day school and then Yeshiva for elementary school and then high school respectively and it is probably not the predominantly Jewish town I live in (New York City AND Teaneck), not the innumerable amount of Jewish friends I have that solidify my identity as a Jew. It's not even the regularly family attended high holiday meals and synagogue services that really seal the deal for me.

No.

It is the fact that my grandfather and my grandmother, my mothers parents, two successful Jewish Educators are from Czecheslovakia and Romania, respectively and they are each survivors of the Holocaust.

I'd say that is what hits the nail into the coffin of my Jewish identity. There is no escaping it now. Once a family member survives atrocity in the name of their religion there offspring are committed. No other option. And so from a young age I was fascinated by the event, read books about it at 8 years old, dreamt about it froma young age, as though it was my own experience and I asked about it all of the time. Any open project in school I made about the Holocaust.

I also promised myself from a young age that if my grandfather survived auschwitz only to face his religion head on and win, deciding to live his life with religous conviction, depsite the persecution he (and my grandmother) endured, that I would perpetuate the same way. I would marry someone Jewish, teach my children and make sure they taught theirs. That was the only answer and it wouldn't be that hard. I'm around Jews day in and day out, I should fall in love with one of these dudes. Right?

Wrong.

Not as easy as planned and if you think that Dean is my first dabble in difference you would be wrong. Yes, I have learned my lesson before dating men who were not Jewish, who promised to lear, to change, to do anything for me and I naively accepted such weak attempts at romatic gestures, I believed them. Then just when I thought I'd finally given up on the goy toy, romeo and juliet potential love affair, I met Dean.

Complicated, though isn't everything?

Dean is Jewish, TECHNICALLY. What does technically mean? For most Jews Matrilineal descent determines your Jew status. NOT your Jewish identity, that is learned, but your Jew Status. And that is age old....if mom was a jew, if mom's mom was a jew, well then YOU are a jew.

Hitler of course saw it otherwise, if you had an ounce of Jew in you, you were Jewish, you were impure. But in religous terms its mom that is the deciding facotr, whether you like it or not, whether you call yoruself Jewish or not, law states, jewish law that is, that if your mom was a jew by birth. SO ARE YOU.

That is Dean. Actually Dean is the mother's mother's jewish example, a stretch by all means, but true. He knew nothing of it and wanted nothing to do with it.

Until I told him there was no way were dating unless Judaism could be a part of his life.

I did not say worship one god all day every day, I just meant Judaism, practices, language, cultrue had to be a part of his every day life and subsequently our every day lives. Once we had kids. And he was confused by the whole thing. I don't blame him.

So....yawn....yawn....eyes closing.....1:45 am....

I will write the rest tomorrow.......

xred out loud