For the love of Kisses

I have a holiday ritual. It starts with me packing myself off to San Francisco a few days before Christmas. It

is followed by a simple Christmas dinner with my family. Then my gulosity for unapologetic sleep is immediately satisfied, only to be broken by exciting trips to a local Walgreens. And just before New Year I go to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and sit in front of their Rothko and wait for it to tell me something.

I’m not a Rothko fan. Yet this piece — a furious vermillion sky suspended over an opaque cobalt blue pool — has become my guru. Mark Rothko’s “No. 14” became The One for me. Several ekphrasis attempts were made to establish a spiritual connection between the artist and color. So maybe that’s where it gets its voodoo. Actually, I don’t care. 

It’s like Taylor Swift and Jake Gyllenhall: odd, unexpected, but it is what it is.

Just staring at it and not caring what it means, gives me the time to think through the year’s burning topics. It has been there for me as I made career decisions, launched new relationships and ended bad habits. I stare at it (record: two hours in 2007) sitting on the floor of the museum. What this painting gives me is the precious gift of alone time. No phones, no conversation, nothing. Nothing, in this moment, means everything to me.

My Rothko this year gave me time to think about the major changes 2011 would bring. I have now slobbered myself into two dress sizes larger (yay!), have long Japanese horror movie hair and sleep before midnight. I am basically a different person. So with this alien shell I have to fill it with a new life.

I know what to look forward to. I know what I should avoid. I know what dreams will soon be my reality. Yet, in the middle of making all these choices, I needed to know what kind of person I will be as I’m making them.

This is what “No.14” is telling me this year.

A year ago I was a depressive, Facebooking champ who had a shopping problem. I had lost all nerve to design and the muscle to write. You’d think I’d have everything together since I had my Saturn Returns moment (turning 30). Yet, I have never felt so fractured despite all my years of yips. Maybe it’s the 30-something pressure. Maybe it was because I was in a serious relationship that would soon change my life permanently. Maybe it’s because I decided to move permanently to Manila, ditching Boston. Maybe it was because I was toilet training a new dog.

The year 2009 was a tough and significant one. 

There were issues that I had to face and questions that I had to answer for the things that happened this year to actually take place.

This year it’s not about what happens but what kind of person I want to be.

I have been reading all the January issues of those demonic women’s magazines that are actually hypnotic shopping catalogues that force you into being a size zero. There are no food ads!

“Find your lasting body.”

“Change your life, change your size.”

“No sex? Check that dress size before undressing.” (No lawsuit for this headline?)

“The diet that will stick.” (It’s a crazy-looking powder that you sprinkle over food so you’ll feel fuller quickly. I have another idea for this one: salt!)

December issues were about resisting the charms of the buffet table. January issues are filled with diet tips that fall just short of suggesting bulimia. I mean, there is nothing wrong with being healthy. The Fiancé has introduced me to the great outdoors where I run and walk every day and has certainly inspired me to do more physical activity. This single change (First 5K: Jan. 6) has in many ways made me a different person. I get it. I’m all for doing Slim-At-Home, Marie France and waist-whittling Lymphatic massages. But I’m bigger on eating organic produce and centering certain hours of my day on exercising. Yes, I’ll never fit into my 2004 Rhett Eala’s as my thighs can’t even get through them anymore (I have to ask how scarily thin was I?). 

I was reading those success articles in Shape magazine and it was amazing to see people dissolve a hundred pounds in a year. Life changing for the good, I’m sure, but there was a creepy undercurrent to their enthusiastic diet tips. “I have two straws of low fat cheese as a snack and half a can of tuna for lunch. For dinner I’ll have a slice of fish with lemon juice,” said one success story. “I just don’t understand how I found happiness eating Kisses.”

“How I found happiness eating Kisses”!?

If you can’t enjoy a morsel of chocolate, then what is life for? Sure, I have that double chin vertigo after a rough night at Sonja’s Cupcakes. I feel guilty, but chit, it was worth it! You are in your 20’s, not diabetic, and you see chocolate as a sin. It’s all just shades of sad. Okay, for non-chocolate lovers let this be a symbolic statement. You can substitute for chocolates kittens, Real Housewives or Black Eyed Peas songs. If you can’t enjoy little pleasures, your only pleasure is pressure.

So I’ve decided to be the person who will find happiness in Kisses. It will make everything easier. When you find your happiness in small things, not even the biggest Delilahs will seem big enough for you to lose sleep over.

This is what Mark Rothko’s “No. 14” told me this year.