Musings and Ruminations

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...