Jessi Klein's NotBlog

One of my absolute favorite things about the holidays in New York is the smell of Christmas trees for sale lining the sidewalk.  As a Jew I didn’t grow up with a Christmas tree.  As a Jew I still don’t have a Christmas tree.  But as a Jew, I fucking love Christmas trees, and my main experience of them is that walk-by smell.  The goy whiff.  Yum.

So that’s one thing.

In the wake of the horror that just happened in India, the last few days I’ve felt more appreciative of the little everyday nicenesses I see in my neighborhood.  The tidbits of kindness and friendliness.  I see these and imagine all the basic human goodness in the world being piled onto a giant golden scale, one act by one act, and measuring against the terribleness.  At my cafe this morning a young man sits down to read the paper next to an older man and they stop to chat.  The young man inquires about where the old man lives, shows curiosity about his life.  The old man is happy to talk.  One little kindness.  The place gets crowded and a family pulls chairs around the table next to me, a bit squished.  I decide to get up to reduce their squishness (I was kinda done anyway) and the dad thanks me.  I say you’re welcome.  He asks me if there’s any good news in the paper?  Is it worth reading today?  I smile and say you gotta go pretty deep in.  (The paper seems increasingly to be lots of pictures of fire).  Maybe Sports?  He smiles.  I get my scarf on.  He tells me to have a nice day.  The scale tips the tiniest fraction of an inch.  I go to my local magazine shop and buy Real Simple (something I always feel like I should read and then do absolutely nothing recommended on any of the pages.)  The magazine guy says hi how are you.  Good I say.  How are you?  Good he says.  Have a nice day we say.  Little acts of peace, tipping the scale fractions more.  All over the world, I hope, these moments of copacetic decency add up to something. 

Speaking of which:

Happy Go Lucky is such an amazing movie.  I think my favorite of the year.  I saw it a few days ago and I’m still thinking about it all the time.  Sally Hawkins makes this Poppy character into something special, something meaningful and complicated.  I have always wanted to be that kind of person, a happy go lucky person, and this story is about what that really takes, how to be buoyant without being ignorant, how to appreciate other people’s pain, stop to help them and feel their sadness, but still glide forward like you have big sails.  It’s about how to have faith.  How to believe in people.  Her wardrobe is a beautiful expression of the movie’s whole philosophy.  Silly colored sweaters, funny fishnets, a rainbow necklace.  Top to bottom joie de vivre. 

Happy Thanksgiving!

I just watched CNN Heroes.  Wept.  A lot.  Felt inspired to help people but have been having a hard time thinking about how I can, since I’m afraid I’m a highly useless person, skill-wise.  But I’m researching…

Really, the show was amazing.  It’s a little rough that they have to have celebrities on at all, but I suppose it boosts eyeball tune-in.  Like listening to Jessica Biel always makes me feel a bit of a yawn, but so be it.  Every single one of the people covered in their stories was amazing.  I think I liked best the Cambodian woman who helped kids who pick through landfills go to school, and the guy who makes prosthetic limbs for poor people in Mexico.  Holy shit, these are very good people.  All of them.

I’ve been thinking.

I’ve been thinking about what it takes for two people to love each other.  In the real way.  The unpeeling the onion way.  The deep diver way.

I have a theory about one part of it.

I think it takes the same level of sadness. 

Not temporary sadness, not the sadness of an ice cream cone falling to the ground or discovering there’s no toilet paper left.  I mean climate sadness, ingrained sadness, the sadness of all your days added up and averaged into this day sadness.  The sadness that comes from how many disappointments your father had, from not knowing how to not be shy when you were young, from the choices you wished you could make all along the way but couldn’t.  From the sadness of never having kissed so and so, the sadness of hearing people yell, the sadness of the stillness in your house.

Just because it takes the same level of sadness for two people to connect doesn’t mean they have to have the same kinds of sadness.  Maybe one person had a sibling die and will always have a little hole, and maybe the other person is just genetically a cloudy amalgam of their ancestors’ sadnesses; they’re more inclined to feel sad when they see a person sleeping on the street, less able to shake off the thought of someone else’s roughly dealt hand.  Empathetic sadness. 

 But at the end of the day, for two people to feel pulled together on a long term basis, to feel like you can go underneath and see the bottom of the other person’s mind-pond,  you just have to possess the same size slice of the sad soul pie chart.

And two people with the same level of sadness may not appear to be so.  Two people who are 5′s on the sadness scale might seem to have entirely different dispositions.  One 5 might seem like a curmudgeon, while the 5′s wife might seem sunny and amiable.  But her 5ness is more of an indoor 5ness while his 5ness is more outdoor.  When they’re home, he cheers up, happy just to be with her.  But when they’re home she doesn’t have the distraction of stores and friends, and so her sadnesses are more apt to bubble up.   

A person who’s a 6 on the sadness scale can probably not be understood by someone who’s a 4.  A person who’s a 7 will probably feel lonely lying in bed with a 2.  The 2 had a happier upbringing.  Although not necessarily.  Maybe the 2 lived through a nightmarish childhood but can’t access it anymore, has built a wall around it, and now seeks the happier pastures of 2′s and even 1′s.  The 2 might hear the 7 whisper “are you still awake?” late at night, long after the lights have gone out, but the 2 is so tired, and so close to falling asleep, and somewhere in its furthest inner recesses knows that the 7 wants to share a sadness, but the 2 doesn’t want to hear it, so it pretends to be sleeping.  And the 7 knows the 2 is pretending, knows the 2 can’t relate, and so it sinks into it’s 7-ness even more, the sadness of realizing this person is a 2 and not a 7 like it thought it was when they met at that party three weeks ago.

I love Whoopi Goldberg.  I never loved her before she was on The View.  I mean, I liked her, but I didn’t have any special interest in those nun movies. 

But now that she’s at the head of the coffee klatch, I adore her.  Truly, I do.  Everything about her.  I love that she did the week of wearing dresses and hated it.  I love that she dresses sort of lesbianish but is straight.  I love that she’s straight but was out last night protesting for the rights of gay people to marry.  I love that she still does that stupid valley girl voice even though we all know it’s not really funny anymore.  I love that she’s fair.  I love that she believes in what she believes in but doesn’t make a giant deal out of it.  I love her hair and her glasses and her skin and her voice.  She seems calm and happy, and she makes me feel calm and happy.  She’s like the black David Gergen.  Or maybe David Gergen is the white Whoopi Goldberg? 

What do I love the most about her?  She seems to be completely and totally Her Self.  Whoopi’s Inner Self seems to be a king size bed, covered in a giant fluffy comforter and the right number of pillows, upon which she reclines 24-7 in perfect confidence and contentment.  When she talks, you want to snuggle up on that bed, listen to what she says, feel the warmth that’s coming from the crackling fireplace I am almost certain is on the other side of the room.  She doesn’t strike me as afraid of anything, but rather, someone who is working to make people less afraid, as best she can from her little View perch.

This is what I want.  This is where I am headed.  I feel stronger than I ever have, more certain of who I am and what I want.  I seem to have developed a beautiful allergy to bullshit.  And just as people with peanut allergies can’t eat anything that’s been made in a factory where peanuts are around, I have lost my taste for people who still play in the vicinity of bullshit.  My new bullshit allergy makes me sensitive even to the smell of bullshit.  I detect a trace of it and I have to head in the opposite direction to cleaner, bullshit free air.

The freer I get of bullshit, the happier I am.  Real and Unafraid are my new Pringles.  I have popped and now I can’t stop.  I want someone who’s self isn’t defined by the size of the tits on the girl next to them or the velvet ropes they’re crossing (goodbye LA and LA sympathizers!)  I want someone who has built a home inside of himself; he owns that house, it’s paid up, and there’s no mortgage to the Bullshit Bank.  The center of the house is a big clean bed upon which this person’s soul is at rest.  When I knock, no matter where this person is, he will always be home.  Until then – I’m here, in my home, happy and snug as the rain twinkles away outside, and Whoopi’s on TV, wearing a big T shirt and crocs.

PS – Big Ups to Dan Savage, who I have loved for many years, who was on AC 360 last night standing up to some anti-gay-marriage shitbag.  He tried to explain how our Constitution works but this guy just kept yelling.  Dan got the last word (because AC is awesome) and he just said definitively to the shitbag, “I hope you don’t pray to Jesus with that mouth, because you are bearing false witness against your gay and lesbian neighbors, and that is a violation of  one of the Ten Commandments.”  Blogger Andrew Sullivan felt the same way and wrote about it today too.  You can watch the clip HERE.  I highly suggest you watch it and then send Dan a note telling him how awesome he is.  Or better yet, get involved in any way you can to support gay marriage.

Last night.  Wow.  Oh my gosh.  I love everyone.  I want to hug all the black people, but also all the white people.  Isn’t it great? I mean wasn’t that moment when CNN said BREAKING NEWS and then Obama’s picture with the word’s PRESIDENT ELECT…that was magic. 

I wrote this about the aftermath:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2008-11-05/subway-euphoria/ 

I wrote a new piece for The Daily Beast about my crush on NBC White House correspondent David Gregory.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2008-11-03/david-gergen-im-cheating-on-you/

I have mixed feelings about this.  Gergen is my main man.  But the eye wanders.  Ah, just read it.

Meanwhile, have been feeling other things and thinking other things that I will write about here very soon.