Musings and Ruminations

It was so cold. Like every day. Grey and cold and if you turned the wrong way, a vicious slash would slap you across the face. But she went out without a hat because it was now April. It was her first year in Berlin. So many things here were a first. The roommates. The language. The change in her career. But she was fine with it all, nomadic and adapting. The only thing that rankled was the lack of a man. The cold weather was bringing it on, this need for a warm body to press up and into. She was exploring streets. She’d heard of a café and found it quite near to where she liked to go. It was small and the coffee was as good as they’d said. She sat facing the wall near the door, reading.  Two women and a man entered. One woman was older, perhaps her age. The other, young, and the man was probably hers. He was lovely and they spoke French. She observed, as she does, rating his beauty over her coffee and book. He didn’t appear to notice. T...

heavy... she weighs something yet floats buoyed by the water swimming she quests.. moving around rocks and carried by currents at times she rests unbothered on the ocean floor as fish scurry by, busy she loves the manta rays the octopi the bigger breeds... they go on their way in a certain rhythm balanced by their arms, wings... these appendages that make them as amphibious as she even when they don't arrive on shore on the sand out of water she is not as convinced... she feels vulnerable more apt to pull her head into her shell and wait until the tide of voluntude pulls her back in to her element

speak the truth... say the simple thing don't say something else  just because you're shy about  the real expression experiment with honesty and innocense give others permission to do the same say the first thing that comes to heart,  not mind...

It was a very hot night and I couldn’t sleep. I hadn’t seen my boyfriend in several weeks, as we had decided to take a break after a bad fight. I was in a strange town, feeling lonely in the efforts to regain my self again, not being able to shake the strange sensation of singleness after being a part of a couple for so long. I had work to do in this town, which was strong and good medicine for me, as it always is. Physical and engaging, teaching dance has always helped me focus and find my way back to center, corporally, psychologically, and spiritually. My days healed me, but the nights left me raw.  Just before dawn I decided to leave my hotel to walk, to feel my body in space, to try to stop my thoughts and the constant beat of my heartache. There was a sliver moon still,  and I took to the street, not knowing where I was going but needing to wander. A church spire was there for the orienting if I needed it, and the town was small enough to keep me contained. I wanted t...

In Berlin you earn the summer....

She had no idea that she was beautiful.  Ripe, with the glow from twenty-three year old hormones that were swirling and dancing throughout her system like dust caught in a golden sun.  She was taking the train from London to Paris after arriving from New York.  It was 1973 and the fast train was in the planning stage, still not built and not to be built until 1986.  She was off to Paris to meet her lover whom she had met through a college friend.  Her lover had moved to Paris to set up a life for them there.  He had left the year before and they had sent fervent telegrams back and forth, long distance calls that couldn’t end, and numerous trips back and forth when the yearning became too much.  She was coming to him against her father, liberated and flying forward in a rebellious ecstasy.  They had money.  Her lover’s dead father had left him a small inheritance that they would consume in a year.  She was guided onto the train ...

Its always the beginning that is different, and even when disguised by excitement of the new and fresh, it challenges. Adjustments to having no root, even in the face of being the Turtle, where everything I need is here, beneath my shell. And this shell, not hard to penetrate, but instead welcoming, inviting new friends in, new loves, new sensations. But I am the newcomer and even if the people around seem welcoming, there is history to be made here, and this comes to haunt late at night when alone in a tiny bedroom in a house that isn't mine and in a land where there are no known references to pull from. And so a sudden nostalgia. Things back home look delicious and much more favorable. That little brownstone pad in Brooklyn with a local cafe around the corner, and good friends just a phone call or a subway ride away. This, even knowing that I'm going to give this new city in another country a real shot. Plans. Not just to find another place to live here, one whe...

I can't be sincerely playful with someone I'm not deep with first....

What a test it is always, to love another, especially when so many influences abound. From the moment we are born, we are completely taken over by society's definition of what love should be, affecting us on a visceral level as it often confuses us with its norms.  Society says that we need one mate, that once we have this person we must be with him or her all the time, that space and mystery cannot possibly be a necessary ingredient to preserving love’s power, and that certainly love of one’s self must remain a secondary thing.  Add to these already confusing mandates our personal questions and limitations, and love gets all tangled up in a wild and unforeseen web that manhandles and distorts it into something altogether unrecognizable. Finding the Balance How is it that this most precious thing has the power to torment us at the extreme? It holds us in the palm of ecstasy, keeps us awake at night wondering about it’s contradictory facets, and roots itself...

Pen and paper… the tools of lovers, poets, writers, or anyone valuing the delicacy, seduction, and power inherent in language and expression. Gone are the days when touching pen to paper united sender to receiver, with every letter, a stamp of palpable emotion. With each symbol formed, a reflection of the sender’s soul was imprinted, allowing the receiver to feel all the closer for it. No longer do we feel the character and emotion of the writer through the shape of a word.   Today we text, we email, missing the blemish of a fallen tear, a sinuously formed sentence, or the fury of an irregular slant. In a world where it is easy to misinterpret the message without the assistance of script laden with intangible, yet felt emotion, we need to work all the harder to express our hearts. When writing with pen in hand, there is a sense of limitless time. We luxuriate in the formation of a thought, scribbling it down furiously or painstakingly applying ea...

Gone are the days of private conversations that implied that you were dining with someone special who deserved your full concentration. Instead we are in the constant presence of an aural battlefield that forces even the old guard to lift its voice in defense against public enemy number one: the rising decibel level. As someone who loves to dine, I'm finding it increasingly difficult to eat out in public places. The appalling proliferation of shrill, piercing voices, whose tonality cuts through space like the sharpest knife, puts an immediate stop to any intimacy you wish to have with yourself or your dining partner. Vocal coaches speak of a chest voice and a head voice when training singers, with these vocal paradigms supported by the muscles of the diaphragm. Today, voices seem to come from the adenoids, with the added insult that they are applied to sentences often ending in question marks, even when they are statements. And these voices, li...

Great women listen. They have nothing to prove. They know who they are. Of course, this applies to men as well.  Listening implies not rushing time.   A good listener weighs carefully the response, without directing the conversation back to the self. It is about understanding and respecting the need of the other, allowing the energy to remain there until the subject changes naturally. A listener is a good partner in conversation, keeping the flow where it needs to be from moment to moment. The art of listening has to do with honoring the speaker. It is generous, true, and authentic. It quiets the ego and helps deepen the association, the friendship, the romance. As beauty is said to be in the eye of the beholder, we can also say that one becomes beautiful understanding that the “You” is more important than the “I.” For the Lioness Gazette http://www.lionesswomansclub.com/post/1039

Beneath the coded level Of known things Is the mystery Where we truly reside… Holding the truth Not contained in our daily Language We find ourselves, untended In our raw and pure state Meeting In light

falling into my center finding the flat, strong places inside

the way she nestles and curls folding into all the hollows filling in his space soft and yielding she’s a baby tiger and he… a power point… the axis around which she winds

A Cubist’s dream, with buildings rising willy-nilly, squares and rectangles fitting into each other like a broken puzzle.  But this is only from the balcony, for there are more aesthetic views to be had from my windows. There is the park at the side of the house, with its carousel, the wide expanses of green where people walk their dogs, stroll, and enjoy some ephemeral minutes of city rest. There are the jacaranda trees, blooming a thick purple and shedding their color over the newly placed white tiles that make the pathways.   But it is to the back window that I mostly turn. The Cubist patterns that cut across flaming skies, the antennas making vertical line cuts upwards. The front view is the obvious one, but this one, expanding across my wide balcony allows me to see into others’ lives, placing me in the world of quotidian humanity at its daily tasks.

ArgentinasTravel http://argentinastravel.com/597/tango-feeling-the-metaphor/ http://argentinastravel.com/636/salsa-classes-buenos-aires/ Chefs Without Frontiers www.chefswithoutfrontiers.com

Woodstock Revisited is in the bookstores and doing extremely well. Look for my story entitled, "High Flying Bird." For more information on the book, here is their website. http://www.woodstockstories.com.

Marvelous Night for a Moondance for www.argentinastravel.com So there I was—a more-or-less intermediate level tango dancer, with all the bravura that a lifetime of other dance techniques has given me, which means the tendency to show off when I don’t know what I’m doing. I was in a very popular class of what is conveniently called “ nuevo tango ,” signifying that everyone is young and experimental and in this case, pretty good. We were learning some complicated steps and finding new possibilities with each different partner and I was trying to hold my own along with everybody else. After the teachers demonstrated the next sequence, I looked around for my next partner. I felt someone standing next to me, waiting for me to turn and catch his eye. Dirty nails, fraying socks, greasy hair, bad teeth - there he was, my next potential partner, shooting me a charming, inviting, cocky smile. With a confidence completely unfitting to his appearance, this scruffy mix of pira...