September 3, 2012 Alexander Technique And Addiction Luke Ford No sacred cows.

Alexander Technique And Addiction

Posted on September 3, 2012 by Luke Ford

When I walk into a 12-step room, I can tell at a glance who’s in the throes of addiction and who’s in recovery.

Active addicts are usually pulled down and in on themselves. They stare at the ground. They have all sorts of interfering tension patterns. They’re slumped over. They’re depressed.

Those in recovery are usually buoyant. They have upward direction. They’re light.

I’m listening to this great podcast interview with Alexander Technique teacher Amira Glaser.

She says: “One of the ways that F.M. Alexander described the Alexander Technique was as the study of human reaction. What we’re looking at in the Alexander Technique are our mental, physical and emotional habits and how they come out when we’re confronted with a stimulus. The Technique teaches us how to get into that moment between the stimulus and how we respond.”

FM discussed people arguing about free trade, and how they were stuck in their habitual ways of thinking and couldn’t transcend that.

I haven’t noticed a more elevated way of discussing religion, politics or anything controversial in the Alexander Technique teaching world. People seem just as habitual as any other group when it comes to ideas. Alexander teachers seem just as easily triggered, and just as nasty and petty as any other group, they just do it with less body tension. Am I missing something? I know I have faulty perceptions and a predisposition towards debunking.

Let me think about my own journey. When I started taking Alexander Technique lessons, I’d say things that were inappropriate frequently. As my training went along, I did this less and less. Despite years of Alexander lessons, however, I never eliminated my inappropriate streak, but I made it more appropriate.

I still get into trouble for things I say, but one-tenth as often as I did four years ago when I started my lessons.

Posted in Addiction, Alexander Technique | Comments Off

The Upward Sloping Elevator

Posted on September 3, 2012 by Luke Ford

I was 22 years old and on a downward slide (sunk in sex and love addiction without even having sex or love) when I first heard Dennis Prager talk about Judaism in August 1988. As the months went by, my life got worse, more disconnected, and more defeated.

After listening to Dennis for 15 months, I decided to join the tribe. I hoped that by so doing, I’d leave the downward slide and step on to a rising escalator leading to the promised land. I hoped that just by attaching myself to this better way, things would get better without my having to do a lot of painful work.

I realize now that no escalator can take you anywhere you’re not equipped to go.

According to Woody Allen, “Ninety percent of life is just showing up.” I loved that statement. I kept telling it to myself for years as I struggled on with my Jewish journey. Only after a couple of decades of failure, did I accept that Woody was wrong.

Let’s say you start dating a famous writer. You dream that through your relationship, through just showing up, you’ll transform your writing career, but if you don’t have the right stuff, this won’t work.

If you join a good shul and attach yourself to a good rabbi, you’re going to be on an upward escalator. You’re headed for greater and greater holiness and connection. You’ll end up spending most of your spare time with your shul community. And you’ll slowly become like them unless you’re stuck on another elevator going down in some other parts of your life. Such downward sloping elevators include addiction, psychological baggage and character defects.

Joining a good shul is not a cure for your addictions, psychological baggage and character defects. In all likelihood, it won’t even affect them. What will happen is that you’ll start leading a double life. You’ll play out your addictions in private while struggling to keep up a good front in the community, but this doesn’t work. You’ll soon be revealed for who you really are.

You can join a good shul and attach yourself to a good rabbi, but if you have isolating tendencies like I have, you’ll find ways to prevent yourself from attaching normally. You’ll find means for alienating yourself from your community. You’ll find ways of destroying your relationship with your rabbi.

You can join a good shul and attach yourself to a good rabbi, but if you don’t earn enough money to keep up with your shul, you’re going to feel like a loser. You’re not going to be happy being the poorest member of your shul. Your peers will be doing things that you can’t and this will sting.

From my experience, however, this statement is not true. If you’re not competent at your work, you’re going to get fired, even if you show up every day on time. If you can’t master Geometry, just showing up to class on time every day won’t mean a thing. If you’re dating someone out of your league, just showing up to all your dates won’t be much good. If you don’t have the right stuff to fit in with your shul, just showing up every day won’t help.

I used to play on the BITS (Boyne Island, Tannum Sands) soccer team in Australia in 1984. I always showed up to practice. As a result, I always played in the games. But I wasn’t very good. Just showing up to practice and just showing up to the games didn’t much improve my soccer skills.

I’ve made most of my living from blogging over the past 15 years. Just showing up has rarely been good enough. I’ve had to charm the people I was talking to get them to give me information. If they didn’t like me or didn’t think they could use me, they weren’t going to talk, so I had balance on a high wire between competing parties to get as many people as possible confiding in me. It was exhausting and dangerous. Showing up didn’t mean much. I had to show up and to connect.

I’ve never had a relationship where just showing up meant much. I’ve never dated a girl whereby her just showing up satisfied me. If she showed up withdrawn or in a foul mood, I’d rather she didn’t show up at all.

I would say 20% of life is just showing up, just attaching yourself to the upward sloping elevators of elevating influences such as friends, community, hobbies, learning, etc.

Posted in Orthodoxy, Personal | Comments Off

‘We Just Want Different Things’

Posted on September 3, 2012 by Luke Ford

More than a decade ago, I met this girl Jana*, a former cheerleader, who was out of my league. She worked for a major studio while I was an independent blogger. She had degrees from Harvard and Stanford while I failed to graduate from UCLA. She paid $2,500 a month for her Beverly Hills apartment while I paid about $600 a month for my Pico-Robertson hovel. She had a nice car while I had a bomb.

We met at Friday Night Live at Sinai Temple and immediately felt an attraction. Soon after, however, when she mentioned my name, her friends warned her against me.

Jana and I were friends for months and then one Friday night after dinner, we wandered into a bar. She ordered a cocktail. I ordered nothing. It was Shabbos.

When it came time to pay for her cocktail, she asked me if I had money. I didn’t. I didn’t carry money on Shabbos. Luckily, the bar took her credit card.

We wandered on to the beach and held hands as we strolled along the water. Finally, I pulled her on to a deck chair and we made out.

I asked her to come back to my room. She said no.

The next morning, we met at breakfast. There were a group of us. I was asked for my plans. “I’m going with her,” I said, pointing at Jana.

We went to the beach and slathered the sunscreen on each other.

I was concerned. I was already one-down in this relationship. I was following Jana around. I knew she moved on a higher plane than I did and I felt insecure. Could I pull this off?

I had a big problem. I earned my living blogging about the porn industry while Jana worked for Disney. She probably already knew this about me, but I had to tell her what I did for a living without using the word porn. So I told her I wrote about the entertainment industry and the sex industry and I’d published a book on sex in film.

I never learned whether or not she ever read my website. On there, I wrote deliriously about being in love without mentioning any details about her.

I think she took the attitude, “the less I know the better.”

I never said the word “porn” to her.

She liked that I was religious and we went to temple together. Once she even came to Beth Jacob with me. It was her first time in an Orthodox shul. She couldn’t stand to pray with a mechitza so she came late for the Shabbat dinner.

Afterward, we went back to my place for the first time. She was appalled at how small it was but she tried not to show her disapproval.

I attempted to make out with her but she stopped that, using the excuse, “It feels sacrilegious.” That was a new excuse. Women often had them for not getting close to me.

Jana beat a hasty retreat from my hovel that night. She wasn’t the first or the last girl to do that, though most of the women I dated made peace with its weird comforts. If they couldn’t, it would’ve been hard for us to spend time together. One girlfriend lived a few miles away and we spent most of our time at her place and virtually no time at my place. She absolutely refused to have sex there.

I didn’t have a bed. I slept on the floor, on top of a sheet and under a duve.

I regularly emailed my Advisory Committee (four male friends around the country) every detail of our ups and downs. I was besotted. All I talked about in therapy for weeks was my relationship with Jana.

I was always one down. I always felt like a shmuck but never wanted to blame Jana for this. In truth, the problem wasn’t so much things I was doing but who I was and where I was in life. I didn’t match up. I knew this and it made the pain worse.

We never did the ultimate deed, which exacerbated my insecurity. I’d hoped that I could hook her with the hot sex and that would enable us to coast for months.

Driving back from a party Saturday night, our first trip in my rusting old van, she said, “Next time we’ll take my car.”

We stopped by Jerry’s Deli. At the end of the meal, she opened up, “I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but after I met you at synagogue, I told two other women about you. They were happy until I said your name. They thought you were a loose cannon.”

“Yeah, it’s true,” I sighed. “I’m in therapy. I’m working on it.”

“This is something that concerns me,” she said. I’d like to bring you to my uncle’s barbeque this afternoon, but I’m concerned about your sense of propriety. You have a tendency to say really inappropriate things.”

I nodded and paid the bill. As we walked, I heard a familiar voice calling my name. I turned around and saw porn star Ron Jeremy at a booth with four sluts. I paused and then stepped forward to my Uncle Ron, leaving Jana behind. She waited for me to introduce her, but when I didn’t, she skipped off to the bathroom.

Ron regaled me for a few minutes with his latest accomplishments, including a public introduction at a Chris Rock performance.

After a few minutes, I said goobye and found Jana outside.

“Who was your friend?” she asked.

“A B actor,” I said.

“Why didn’t you introduce me?”

“He’s kinda sleazy.”

I tried to keep my life neatly separated. There was a compartment for work, a compartment for love, a compartment for religion. When I hit a bump in the road the contents of my life spilled together, I felt uneasy.

I never did get an invite to her uncle’s barbeque.

One Sunday evening a week or two later, we bought dinner at the market and then ate it at her place. Afterward, she said we should talk about the relationship. “We just want different things,” she said.

I nodded. I knew I wasn’t in her league. I couldn’t keep up with her. She spoke so fast, lived so fast, spent so much.

We kept seeing each other intermittently. Jana moved to San Francisco.

One day about a month later, I called her and when she didn’t get back to me within 48 hours, I sent her an email breaking up.

An hour later, she called me. She hadn’t seen my email. She invited me to come to a wedding with her the next weekend. “This will be the first time we’ll spend the night together,” she noted.

I was dying on the other end of the phone. What I wanted had arrived but it was too late. “Umm, I sent you an email,” I said. “I think you should read it first.”

“Oh, OK,” she said.

I hoped she’d read my email and then ask if that was really what I wanted to do and we’d just talk everything out and go on better than ever.

However, she read my email and agreed it was best that we broke up.

So I never did get to spend the night with her.

I often date women out of my league. I can’t afford to keep up with them. I don’t have the energy and I don’t have the money.

While we go out, however, I love the borrowed functioning. I love moving on a higher plane. I meet great people and imagine I can leverage the connections into a better life.

The end always comes quickly and it’s usually in the form of “We just want different things.” Women are nice. They rarely tell me directly, “You can’t keep up.” I appreciate their kindness.

So do we really want different things? I want money and prestige as much as they do. So I don’t think our differences are so much a result of wanting different things but of rather attaining different things at this point in life.

Am I not capable of keeping up? I’m not sure. I have a lifelong habit of only doing what I want and that has never made for monetary success (I’ve never earned over $50,000 in a year). I’ve always chosen time and space to write over more lucrative endeavors, hoping that my dedication to my craft will one day pay off financially.

And how have things turned out for these high-powered women I’ve loved? None of them have married. I sometimes think that with their guidance, I could’ve kicked things up a notch and everything could’ve worked out.

A few years ago, Sandra Tsing Lo had a garden party for some fabulous women around 40 years of age. These ladies appeared to have it all. They were well put together. They were successful in their careers. They had gorgeous lives. And they learned over the course of the afternoon that they had something else in common — they had all dated Luke Ford. He had seemed like such a catch. A good looking erudite man with a charming accent. And then they Googled him. Oy!

A therapist comments on my FB: “Even better, be the person you want to find. That doesn’t mean become a black Jewish New York woman, it means be your own boss. Look after your own interests. Tell yourself what to do, and don’t let yourself get away with anything.”

Posted in Dating, Personal | Comments Off

New York Girls

Posted on September 2, 2012 by Luke Ford

I never thought much about New York until I got into Judaism. Then I discovered that New York was the center of Jewish life (at least outside of Israel).

From 1989-1993, I was largely bedridden by Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and living at my parents house in Newcastle, CA. I reached out to synagogues in Sacramento and Helene Mathias, the educational director at the Reform temple began calling me once a week to tutor me. She eventually bought me a subscription to the New York Jewish Week (this was before Gary Rosenblatt took charge).

The paper had a particular smell that I associated with New York. Foreign. Sophisticated. Intimidating. The newspaper itself was unimpressive but it was a taste of higher quality Jewish life.

In August 1993, I moved to Orlando. In early 1994, I answered a singles ad that a Jewish woman about 30 years of age, Rina*, had placed for her friend. Rina forwarded all of the responses to her friend but mine.

I started talking to Rina regularly. She lived in New York but had a parent in Orlando.

After a few conversation, Rina revealed she had trouble sleeping. I said that sex usually fixes that problem for me. Rina agreed.

I moved to Los Angeles March 31, 1994 and Rina flew out to visit me Memorial Day weekend. We got along fine. We made arrangements for me to stay with her in Manhattan (around 77th Street and Broadway on the Upper West Side). Rina paid for my ticket. She was an heiress. She had two graduate degrees (one from YU and one from JTS). She was a social worker.

She had a big apartment with two levels on about the 20th floor. She had her cleaning lady in just before I arrived and the place looked spotless.

Rina took a few days off work to show me around the city. On our first day, I found her too bossy. I shut down emotionally and decided that she was not for me.

I went to some acting auditions. I got some modeling photos taken. I borrowed $500 from Rina and bought two hours of some acting manager’s time. He was featured in Life magazine so I figured he had to be good.

I went to the 42nd Street Public Library. I sat in one of the reading rooms and looked at this attractive woman on the other side of the room. I imagined that she was particularly educated and sophisticated and that I didn’t have a chance with her. So I just looked and fantasized and never approached her.

Every morning, the New York Times was delivered to Rina’s door. We’d read it over breakfast. And then she’d give me spending money and I’d go do my own thing.

I had fantasies about booking acting and modeling work and becoming bicoastal but that never happened. I placed a singles ad in the Village Voice but Rina found it, called it, heard my voice, and flipped out.

I had no interest in Rina, but I liked the things she gave me.

After I returned to LA, she said her therapist had convinced her that I was exploiting her and we stopped talking.

I often think about New York. That was my only visit. I always thought I’d become famous and people would fly me around the world. That hasn’t happened as much as I’d like.

Here I am the greatest writer of my generation and I’ve only been to New York once and had to sing for my supper every night at that. This country has its priorities all screwed up. I wish she’d stop persecuting artists like me. Los Angeles is about to get its own poet laureate but do you think I’ll be selected? No. I’m too dirty. Too unconventional. No wonder Karen Carpenter starved herself to death.

I sometimes drift back to my afternoon in the Public Library wondering if I had a chance with that spectacled, particularly smart, presumably Jewish woman with long dark curls on the other side of the room. Perhaps I am capable of a relationship? Perhaps if I met the right woman? There was that PhD in Chemistry I met via a singles ad. She lived in Massachusetts. She was drawing up plans for me to live with her. I’d sit in her home in the snow and write and she’d pay for everything.

Then I was a little clumsy with some of my wording, made some joke about her getting fat like the rest of the women in her family, and she went off and married a real man.

I just Googled her name. She’s published some distinguished book on electro-chemical combinations.

I remember when she used to call me at my parents home. I liked how solid she was. How much commonsense she possessed. She had no problem calling me on my bad behavior, like the time I published a letter in Spectrum (the Seventh-Day Adventist intellectual magazine) critical of my father. She read me the riot act for that.

She said I should wait at least two dates before I jump people with ethical monotheism.

I like solid women. I like women who don’t let me get away with anything. I like women who have their act together. I like women who take charge. I don’t like bossy. Bossy means to me trying to force me to do stupid things that are not in my interest. Taking charge means directing me to do things that are in my interest.

I’m condemned to spend my life leaching off women.

Posted in New York, Personal | Comments Off

Child Molester Posters All Over LINK

Posted on September 2, 2012 by Luke Ford

There are posters all over the LINK shul today warning about some alleged child molester named “Eli XXXXX”, and then listing “lukeford.com” as the source for more information.

I haven’t had anything to do with lukeford.com since 2001 and I have no information on this man. Neither does Lukeford.com.

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Eating Between Meals

Posted on September 2, 2012 by Luke Ford

When it comes to looking at religions different from your own, remember that what matters to you is usually peripheral to others.

For Christians, Jesus Christ is central but nobody else cares who he was. For Jews, Torah is central, but nobody else cares much (with the exception of some Christians).

Salvation to the next world is a particularly Christian obsession. No other religion cares much about this.

No other religion has as much focus on sin as Christianity and therefore no other religion worries about salvation. In Judaism, for instance, I never hear rabbis talk about the next life and I never hear them talk about the great burden of sin. Even in Orthodox Judaism, there’s very little talk about sin. And certainly none about salvation through faith.

For the believing Christian, however, sin isn’t as much something you do but what you are, and for that ill, for that contaminated self, the only remedy is faith in the Heavenly Savior.

I’ve never known a Christian who believes that God is happy with how he leads his life. Rather, every believing Christian knows himself to be a big sinner.

I grew up a Seventh-Day Adventist, which has more focus on minute behaviors than other Protestants.

One of the big sins I was warned about as a child was eating between meals.

As Gary D. Strunk wrote in the October 1981 issue of Ministry (magazine for Adventist pastors): “…eating between meals can have as dire a consequence to the quality of health and the length of life as smoking. That’s why God in His mercy, His kindness, and His efforts to heal us before we get sick has told us that “never should a morsel of food pass the lips between meals,” “not even an apple, a nut, or any kind of fruit” (Counsels on Diet and Foods, pp. 181, 182). These practices depress the spirits, demoralize the attitude, and contribute to early death.”

Other Adventist sins included:

* Playing cards or chess or checkers
* Movies
* Plays
* Pop music
* Cities
* Caffeine
* Nicoteine
* Meat
* Candy

I was always pretty skeptical of the divinity of these commandments. They seemed extreme to me. Extremely stupid.

I don’t think I had much trouble as a child seeing the world differently from my family (meaning my father, the Seventh-Day Adventist theologian). What I’m still trying to sort out through psycho-therapy are those reflexive unthinking habits I took on as a child that don’t serve me.

When I was a year old, my mother was diagnosed with bone cancer and over the next three years, she withered away and died. During that time, the three kids got farmed out so my dad could properly care for his wife and for his work.

While I was living with different people for those three years, some of them bloody awful, I learned to survive and to see the world my own way.

When the family got back together in 1970, I didn’t just snap back to the Ford way of doing things. I didn’t want to get exiled again, so I learned to conform behaviorally, but from my earliest memories, I always did what I wanted when I could get away with it.

In those earliest years, I wasn’t particularly good at getting away with it.

I remember going to kindergarten when I was about five, and on the ride home, all the kids were given cookies. I ate some.

When it was found out (I had committed two sins — eating between meals and eating cookies), I got a beating I’ve never forgotten.

It wasn’t the last time I got hit for eating between meals.

As a preacher’s kid, people in my Adventist community would often rush to tell on me for my sins. It seemed like I couldn’t do anything publicly without my parents finding out. If I was disruptive in Sabbath School, my parents found out. If I cursed, my parents found out. If I ate between meals, my parents found out.

When I moved with my parents to Pacific Union College in the Napa Valley at age 11 in 1977, I noticed that fewer people told on me. Maybe this was a healthier community than Avondale College, where I grew up? Or maybe I just got better at hiding what I did from those who’d tell on me?

I started reading books at age eight, many of them recommended by my dad. I had no problem telling him about the ones I loved and the ones I didn’t care for. I developed a worldview different my father’s. I cared primarily about this world, not the next. I cared about Western civilization. I thought it was superior to the alternatives. My heroes were George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill, worldly men, not Christian missionaries.

As Desmond Ford‘s son, I got more religion than I wanted growing up, and so as my life went along and I got more control of my own time, the less religion I practiced. I never got out of the house just so I could be alone with my Maker. Rather, I’d tell my parents I was going to a Bible study on a Friday night and go to a basketball game instead.

I always believed in God and the divine inspiration of the Bible (except for a flirtation with atheism from 19-22) but I didn’t take my own religion of Seventh-Day Adventism too seriously. It seemed withdrawn from the world, quiet.

I didn’t see my dad’s way of life as a happy one and I didn’t want to imitate it.

I remember my dad’s students at Avondale College threw a big going away party in our yard in April 1977. It was at night. Even though I wasn’t hungry, I wanted to join in the festivities, and so I ate a piece of bread to fit in. And I freakin’ got caught and punished for eating between meals.

So we moved to PUC in May 1977 and dad introduced me to the library there where I spent that summer. I didn’t know anyone, so I spent my days reading books, mainly on wars and American history. Eventually, I started leafing through every issue of Time, Newsweek, Life and Sports Illustrated magazines.

I memorized jokes without knowing fully what they meant. One was about the wonders of the knight. He could do all sorts of wonderful things, including scaling the walls of nunneries. I remember the ladies, including my mom, were quite appalled at that one. I don’t think I fully got at age 11 that the primary reason men would scale the walls of nunneries was not to eat between meals but rather to rape women.

At that age, I would’ve rather eaten between meals.

I’ve never had a relationship with God. I’d talk to God about what was on my mind at times, but He never talked back. I sometimes got a ghostly sense of His presence. The further I’d try to run from Him, I remember feeling pulled back.

As I got into all sorts of dangerous reporting assignments for my blogs during my 20s and 30s, I kept feeling a force pulling me back from the edge. I had a sense the force was God. Or perhaps it was just my imprinting.

When I started 12-stepping for sex addiction in 2011, I realized I needed to get serious about seeking a relationship with God. That’s been awkward.

I’ve always wanted to do my own thing. I hated the idea of surrendering my life to God. I was attracted to Judaism in my 20s because it seemed like religious humanism, that people had more of a role than in Christianity.

But I won’t cry for yesterday
There’s an ordinary world
Somehow I have to find
And as I try to make my way
To the ordinary world
I will learn to survive

Posted in Adventist, Personal | Comments Off

How Much Crazy Can I Tolerate In A Woman?

Posted on September 2, 2012 by Luke Ford

A friend says: Unless a man is wealthy and or famous, it simply is not rational for a fertile young woman to want to be with him past a certain age.
The question is, what level of crazy can you tolerate in a woman?
Maybe your coworkers can set you up with someone. But there againk you face the same problem. The good ones are taken or not willing to date you.
Maybe your shrink can recommend a mildly crazy woman? Say, someone who is a bit bipolar?

Posted in Dating | Comments Off

We’re All Role Models

Posted on September 2, 2012 by Luke Ford

I remember when I did this weekly Torah Talks show with another bachelor, Rabbi Rabbs.

We had a regular viewer, a college student and Orthodox Jew, who told us once, “When I grow up, I want to be like you guys.”

I was taken aback. I don’t think I’m the worst role model in the world, but I would never wish my life on anyone. I would never wish for anyone to grow up to be like me. I know hundreds of better role models. I wanted to tell him, choose them!

So I understand what Charles Barkley meant when he said, “Athletes shouldn’t be role models.”

But whether we like it or not, all of us are role models to somebody. Role model is an assignment that life gives us and we can’t avoid it. We can either live up to the task to the best of our ability or we can fail not just ourselves but others.

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It’s A Dirty Old Shame When All You Get From Love Is A Blog Post

Posted on September 2, 2012 by Luke Ford

From Wikipedia:

“All You Get from Love Is a Love Song” is a song composed by Steve Eaton. It was popularized by the Carpenters in 1977. It was released to the public on May 2, 1977. Its B-side was “I Have You”, a song released on the A Kind of Hush album in 1976. The song was also included on their 1977 album, Passage.
In the late seventies, this particular track appeared in a Top 10 of misheard lyrics (and is often on similar forums online).[citation needed] This was complied by Noel Edmonds and the misheard lyric sounds like: “Because the best love songs are written with a broken arm,” as opposed to the correct lyrics “Because the best love songs are written with a broken heart.”

Lyrics:

Like sailin’ on a sailin’ ship to nowhere
Love took over my heart like an ocean breeze
As seagulls fly I knew that I was losin’
Love was washed away with the driftin’ tide
Oh it’s a dirty old shame
When all you get from love is a love song
That’s got you layin’ up nights
Just waitin’ for the music to start
It’s such a dirty old shame
When you got to take the blame for a love song
Because the best love songs are written
With a broken heart
And now the tears in my eyes are ever blinding
The future that lies before me I cannot see
Although tomorrow I know the sun is rising
Lighting up the world for everyone, but not for me

I like The Carpenters, but I really love this particular song.

I’ve been on a Carpenters kick for the past week, watching documentaries and movies about them on Youtube, and listening to many of their songs I never remember hearing before, such as this one.

It’s poignant watching videos of Karen, knowing that a few years later, she was dead from anorexia nervosa.

Her songs — yes, I know they were written by others, but they seem to come straight out of her life and out of her heart. They feel autobiographical.

I know that Karen was never able to sustain a relationship for long.

This song gets me from the first line: “Like sailin’ on a sailin’ ship to nowhere”

I want my life to go forward. I want it to be linear, but I keep feeling like I’m repeating the same mistakes, the same failed relationships. They never last much longer than a year.

It’s a dirty old shame when all you get from love is a blog post.

It’s such a dirty old shame when you got to take the blame for a love song.

I can’t blame my failed relationships on my demanding touring schedule or on the travails of being rich and famous. I can’t identify that deeply with Karen Carpenter. But the more I read about her, the more I watch about her, the more keenly I identify.

When I speak to an audience, I feel like Karen Carpenter singing. I feel we both display that same open-heart in performance.

Among the most self-destructive things you can do is to write about your love life. It makes people pause before considering a relationship with you. Nobody wants to have their love life written up from another’s perspective.

I guess I learned from my dad that you sacrifice everything to be your best from behind the pulpit. My dad has a PhD in Rhetoric and it shows when he gives a speech. He’s magnificent.

To prepare for a talk, you study, you write, you rehearse, and then you assemble your best self and give it to the public.

It’s rare to find a great public speaker who’s equally warm one-on-one. Many are at their most human in front of a crowd.

Karen put all of her love into her singing and she didn’t have much left for real life.

My frustrations with ordinary human connection drive my blogging.

This Carpenters song was released May 2, 1977, the month that I moved to California from Australia. I was eleven years old and determined to build a new life free from frustrations and failures of my first three years in school (2nd – 5th grade), the same length of time that I was interested in girls (but had no success).

I remember the one time I moved in with a woman. It lasted from August to November 1993. I got a call from an Orthodox rabbi at the time. I told him what I was doing. He said, “You’re going about things the wrong way.”

Orthodox rabbis kept telling me this same thing over the past 20 years and judging by the results of my choices, I guess they’re right.

I feel like I’ve missed out on much of life by grasping for things in the wrong order and I’ve ended up with nothing from love but blog posts (and some fancy duds).

I love the open road. It’s like sailin’ on a sailin’ ship to nowhere, like my relationships. Love took over my heart like an ocean breeze and left just as easily.

There was that Sunday morning one November. I woke her at 4 a.m.. She protested. “You’ve got to be kidding!” I didn’t listen. I picked her up and put her in the shower. “You can sleep in the car,” I said.

I had a rental car for a week because of an obligation (I had crashed a friend’s car and while it was in the shop, I drove him around). It had to be returned the next day. I wanted to see how far we could drive. I had dreams of reaching Big Sur.

We were in Moro Bay by 9 a.m.. She wanted to stop and walk around. We had breakfast. We poked around. By 10 a.m., I was eager to hit the road. She thought three hours of driving was far enough knowing we had to go back the same day.

We asked a guy how far away was Big Sur. “About an hour,” he said.

“That’s too far,” said my girlfriend.

“But how far away does Big Sur actually start? You mean the town is an hour away. But Big Sur starts in 20 minutes drive.”

He agreed. And my girlfriend reluctantly acquiesced to my wishes.

“If we’re going to argue like this, we can’t go on vacations together,” she said.

We stopped on a bluff in Big Sur and carrying a blanket, walked to a secluded spot overlooking the ocean where no one could see us. We took off our clothes and got friendly. The cliff face was just a few feet from where we grappled, falling away 200 yards to the surf below.

The sun shone. The sky was blue. The temperature was about 75 degrees. It was perfect.

We made it to Monterey by 4 p.m. and had an hour to walk around before the sun set. My girlfriend had never been to Monterrey. I felt great that I was taking her to places she’d never been before and making her scream my name.

When we got out of the car, she started making suggestions but I said no. We had to find a coffee shop before anything. I needed a bathroom.

She was surprised at how assertive I was. She liked that. Normally I was passive and supportive and she walked all over me.

Beginning the drive home, I put the Cowboys game on the radio. She felt the loss of my attention. Turning to her phone, she read me a text that she’d gotten from Vicki*, a woman she’d twice left me for.

The text said simply, “Do you want to play?”

The first time my girl left me for this other girl was after we’d gone out for a week in January and had plans to get together that Monday night when she went off the radar and did not pop up for six days to leave me a message that she’d gotten back together with someone.

The second time was in July when she went on a vacation and called me to ask how did I feel about her playing around with Vicki* on her last night in LA.

I was speechless, got off the phone quickly, and cut her out of my life two months.

Now Vicki was popping up again. Driving meant freedom to me, but now I was stuck in a car for at least four hours with somebody taunting me about her lesbian hook-ups.

She’d said that her previous boyfriend would never put up with such behavior but obviously I did. I was a doormat.

I went into shock as I drove the car at about 70 mph along the narrow, twisted and bumpy 101 Freeway South. I needed all of my attention to keep us safe but I felt like I had just been punched in the gut.

“Well, do you?” I kept asking her.

She said no. She apologized for bringing it up. “I just wanted your attention,” she said.

When we stopped for gas, my girlfriend paid for the second time that day. She knew the desperation of my finances.

At the end of the trip, I announced how great it had been. My girl said that she now knew how much I needed reining in. Upon reflection, she should’ve stopped me in Moro Bay. I had no common sense. We’d taken a bridge too far.

“But we didn’t make love in the sun until we got to Big Sur,” I thought. “How could you regret that?”

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FIVE RULES FOR MEN TO FOLLOW FOR A HAPPY LIFE

Posted on September 2, 2012 by Luke Ford

Headstone of Russell J. Larsen in the Logan City Cemetery, Logan, Utah.
FIVE RULES FOR MEN TO FOLLOW FOR A HAPPY LIFE:
1. It’s important to have a woman who helps at home, cooks from time to time, cleans up, and has a job.
2. It’s important to have a woman who can make you laugh.
3. It’s important to have a woman who you can trust, and doesn’t lie to you.
4. It’s important to have a woman who is good in bed, and likes to be with you.
5. It’s very, very important that these four women do not know each other or you could end up dead like me.

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