Just Life


surreal / mindful / beliefs
Sunday July 13, 2014

Right now I'm perfectly happy, but I've found that I have reached an unsettling - and somewhat surreal time - time in my life. I get the feeling that being in this space, much like many other aspects of getting older is something I'll get better with in time. The world has changed. Life has changed. I have changed. I am having one of those twisty conversations with myself that covers a million topics, to trace back how I got to talk about my life would require flow charts and recording devices, so I will just mosey onward with things I believe in. 

I believe in kindness, goodness, luck, and the importance of good juju. I believe in the Muppets, gene Kelley, Fred Astaire, and Hallelujah, and that Leonard Cohen, is indeed, one of our greatest poets. I believe in long walks, morning runs, holding hands, and keeping the thermostat low enough to still cuddle under the blankets. I believe in hand - written letters whenever possible, music, roses, and doing more kissing, than actually just thinking about it. I believe in the occasional drink, especially while discussing / pondering plot points and characters of life. 

I believe in love. I believe marriage isn't for everyone, but that everyone should consider the option. I believe in laughing every day, wiping away tears, trusting the universe (and oneself), marching to my own drummer, and appreciating the rain, cold and wet, and muddy as it may be. It cleanses. I believe dark chocolate is a birth right, I believe in back roads, forward glances, sunsets, sunrises, and stopping to both smell, and then to pick the roses. I believe in coffee, girlish glamour, great shoes, and turning to check out the man you just passed on the corner (the one with the great rear view). I believe happiness is just as worthy a goal as a corner office. I believe in saying " I love you" (I believe in meaning it as well). I believe that time spent together is never wasted. I believe being alone means having the freedom to daydream, while in your underwear, or nude, out on your back patio, and writing by lamplight until 3 a.m., singing along to embarrassing music that anyone in their right mind would turn off if they were there with you. But, they are not, so you can play it loudly, and often. I believe in living full - throated, all - encompassing and unadorned. 

I believe in the journey of life, each day blowing through your reserve, then, next day, refueling. I believe in reaching beyond your reach, where it cannot be quantified or contained. I believe in never forgetting, not the bigger things like birthdays, or even the smaller things, like the color of the dress you wore on that first date. I believe in 'quarter - life - crises' rather than 'mid - life crises'. I believe in finding someone to be your daily lifeline, and keeper of your secrets. Someone to hold you up, and right your footing, repeatedly, throughout life. I believe everyone feels adrift, confused, about what their purpose in life was, or what their next step should be. I believe the markers our society uses to define success -a degree, a job, children, leads to much unneeded soul searching. I believe in finding someone to be the reason you are not hiking by yourself somewhere, lost.

 I believe in giving the best and the worst of yourself. It makes you, more or less, normal. I believe in the moment of realization - the - light bulb instant when you realize just how much purpose can be found in neglected phrases, unsolved problems, moments of guilt, despair, and long nights of feeling worthless and obsolete. Those moments make you go after things with energy and zeal. I believe to - do lists are always bigger than what is logical and practical. 

I believe we are the people we meet, the dreams we have, and the conversations we engage in. That we take from these. That we are each the brightest light and the darkest corner. I believe that we are a collective of every experience we have had in life. We are every single day, as existence and words run through our veins and fill our minds. I believe in letting go, and holding on, and when to know the difference. I believe everyone has their own truth, their own journey, and their own source of joy(I believe in finding my own personal source) I believe the questions of life linger like a tiny splinter lodged under my skin, unnoticed when touched and then the annoyance lingers past the pain...have I finally found what I have been looking for?Monday, June 23, 2014

dear lover/ dream/ sensual

Dear Lover,
 I have dreamed of you in the past few days, as I have dreamed of ice cream melting down my fingers on a hot July evening. Like a tide, you continuously wash over me. You are wearing a blue suit, white shirt, navy blue & yellow tie, and tasseled loafers. I feel the gentle caress of your gloveless hand, as my trembling hand slowly observes, and then creeps over yours. Overcome by a frozen loneliness that eats at me, I frantically grasp at every memory I conjure of you.

 The little hotel in Paris where we made love with a mad frenzy. The burdening of the hardness beneath the sheets as I tried to tame you. Our mouths so dry, we wet each other’s with champagne. You pulled off my white sweater and jeans, holding them to your face just to breath in my perfume. Drawing yourself up into me, not immersing yourself into intellectual exertion, you glided right into foreplay. I can almost hear you still purring, as you drew the breath from me. Your eyes taking photographs as I stood in front of the full-length mirror, posed for you in all my nakedness. 

The melting of the ice cube in my mouth kind of reminds me of you, soft clay of your hands on my body never felt so good. 
Then I open my eyes...darkness dims, morning has come, my dream dashes forward, and there you are, still asleep, right next to me....your cheek resting on my pillow, your breathing, faintly falling onto the bareness of my back.......I love you all over again, with eyes wide open!
CK


 Monday, June 2, 2014

grief / love / loss / life




As far as thieves go, grief is the greatest one. She robs us of the people we love, but—perhaps most achingly—she zaps our ability to imagine the future, without someone, or something, no longer in it. Lose a place, a person, or a love and, suddenly, measurements of time become irrelevant. Grief warps time; she renders our plans for next week and dreams for the next vacation incongruous. When we mourn our losses we also mourn, for better or for worse, ourselves. As we were. As we are no longer. As our life once was. As our life is no longer. As we will one day not be at all. 

My discontent with grief comes from its blocking my boundless want. By drawing strict lines between my living and those whom I have lost, places and moments I have lost, grief casts the world in harsh light. She makes it impossible to believe in forever. Instead, she injects a heinous pragmatism into sentiments that would rather be unadulterated by it. The triumph of love over loss, of affection over grief, of dreaming over pain is a learned ability for me. I grieve the moments in life which pass through me, the moments that break my heart...leaving me momentarily stunned, unable to utter a word.... leaving me in solitude, complete silence...I'm not so far removed that I have forgotten, that grief is a scary place. 
Chills prickle down my arms.
My throat becomes stifled with nameless emotion.
Do you ever catch the scent of a memory?

I do that too.


One of the most poetic, spiritual, and general positive threads of spring is working in my garden. Rebuilding of the old, planting of the new, moving rocks, sculptures, birdhouses, and redesigning all of the land that I claim as my own. The first picture of a first rose this year will be on this blog faster than the rose can prick and bleed.

 A moment of truth......I sound disjointed and hesitant to my own ears today, but I know you'll understand me just the same, a moment just between friends.
 Go out and find your friend, the one who totally, bashfully, understands, and nothing else ever needs to be said.........chasing Wednesday 

May 14, 2014
summer / seasalt / air 





Winter never has been my season of color; it has always been my reason to cover, my season of waiting, for.
Spring has always been, my season of hope, my season of entry, back in.
Summer has always been my rhythm and reason, my season of budding, my growing...
Waves appearing out of nowhere suddenly licking at me in startling embrace, stripping daringly; flinging myself into the sea. Breathing in worshipful gulps of sea air as salt spray caresses the pinks of my cheeks. Like the tide, I surrender again and again, as my writing sets me alive on the shores of distant places. One day in Paris, next in Rome, next standing curbside in New York City, and finally, today, on the outlay of a beach watching a horseshoe crab battle amongst the seaweed. Awaiting the heat of, yet, another summer.
     When I have finally succumb to parts of my life once shrouded in taboo, I become imposingly bare in being able to change everything in my present, as truth stares back hard in the coarseness of sea salt touching my delicate face, the heat of summer sun washing over me.
Memories come tumbling in, and that is when, I remember, how and why I am here. Summer, will always be, for me, my reason of reckoning...my roses in bloom !







.

This hutch of old china, just because, I like it!






Monday, April 28, 2014


rasberry green tea / serenity

 The warm weather of early spring must just be answer in itself for my getting up this morning. Pursing my lips on an ice-cold glass of raspberry green tea, scrubbing off my bull’s-eye, moving on with my life. I turn my face towards the sun, letting it spill back over me, harnessing the calm, serene, blissful even, sentiments of the morning. Not withstanding any reason to disengage from this enchantment any time soon. I chose to just languish in the beauty of the calmness.........

Typing away, with unsure fingers, I begin to understand. I thrive in the silence; my pen sweaty in my palm, as blood pulsates faster, recovering to my calm.



Sunday April 27, 2014
yup


yup, that's all I got on this Sunday morning
Isn't there someone you wish to pose this question to?

Monday, April 21, 2014
Rawness/Teardrop
Even in the murk of emotional scab pulling that I have been so entwined with recently, letting go of the past, well, it damn near hurts......like someone carving out a piece of my flesh........and there I then remain, open, and raw....without an audience or an ending, I write.....

A teardrop on the cork floor, I smeared it with my thumb......


April, 2014



Little Black Dresses


The Little Black Dress in the closet: always appropriate, never gaudy, and equally capable of motion towards the simple or the ornate. In other words, Little Black Dresses can sustain the weight of the moment, any moment. They wear well. Go out today and buy yourself a 'Little Black Dress', hell, buy yourself two..........and for all general purposes, get one that's a little bit more seductive then the other.

Sunday, April 6, 2014

the...Art of Caring


Feel like I should be playing a piano every time I begin to blog. Every word I speak opens my wingspan, hollows me, just a little more, so I can reset my life, scouring for answers in the rubble of my interior.

Observing the world today with a calibrated need of disinterest, wafting esoterically into someone else, some other time and place, joyfully fulfilling my romantic tragic role in my own screenplay. Consciously aware of my nakedness in the breeze, pausing at details in my shadow, reabsorbed by the notion of my own body, no one knows of the thought I am drinking from. Raucous and wild, breaking near pandemonium, recognizing a primacy to my own need, want and desire.

An alien in the fog ponders the wonders of life. Bartering with herself and god, turning tempest thought into justification. Wondering if sweat left on the pavement isn't just a bit of bleed from old wounds, a sacrificial offering as legs lean forward against her own sea of ritual awakening. Convincing self of something so much more, as secrets hold tight within her lips.

Don’t we all just bleed a little from other people’s wounds? Is that not then, the art of human caring?


Saturday, March 29, 2014

Open Air Market

My Saturday at the Open Air Market in NYC. The only negative was an abashedly rude male individual, smoking a cigarette and then blowing the smoke in the air around our faces. If his attitude had had a price tag on it, I am quite sure none of us would have been able to afford it.
a bit zingy for my pleasure
my choice of the day
another well thought purchase of mine
the pumpkin butter was a favorite
tastings were great at this stand, and the addend humor of the man who handed the fine samples to us, made the purchase all the more necessary then for us. The laughter definitely scored him points towards the final sale.
always looking at the feet
it is usually where all new beginnings make their start, placing one foot in front of the over...and GO 



Friday, March 28, 2014

Wordy Advice

If you ever find yourself narrating your life, you might consider writing, also if you make up stories about strangers in the car next to you in traffic, I suggest journaling or therapy (because we all need to vent our crazy and it's a best practice to do it artistically and with non-violence).

I believe in love, I've seen it. It looks like two people grumbling around a house with a mischievous twinkle in their eye for one another. It looks like a smile when you walk in from a long day away. It looks like a wink across the table at a very bad joke. It looks like pictures displayed and stories told with the greatest pride for a lover. It looks like chocolate mint chip ice cream in the freezer. It smells like strawberry shortcake, and tastes like lushious whipped cream. 



Monday, March 24, 2014

Truths












Truth always has this little habit of whispering back to me from the grave I put it in. Truth is, of all the things I could have been, I am still unsure the one that I am destined for.














The poet, the painter, the sculptured, the philosopher, the lover, the crier, the wounded, the healer, the loner, the forgiver, the runner, the yogist, the singer, the dancer, the ranter, the optimistic, the pessimist, the holy veil and the undertaker, the thinker, the creator, the eccentric, writing allows me to be all these things without ever having to leave the comfort zone of my keyboard. 

Fiction becomes non - fiction, non - fiction becomes, well, my genre of real life, and poems become the underlayer of my platform , as I carve out my next life. Cats have nine lives, but I, I am very self assured that I have even more than that!

I could not have a more different view of life today,than the one I started with years ago. I never realized early on how much I stifled my own ambition, how much I had withdrawn from my own courage, until  I began to write. Emotional holes are hard to fill. A piece here, a thread there, every piece in my colorful collage is an ensemble of the
bigger story of my life.



Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Adding Compost to Life

Sitting down in the chair beside my desk, taking a deep breath, staring at the dry teabags, wrapper remnants of 85% dark chocolate, last night's organic white wine dried in a stem glass, staring at a passion on the verge of obsession, yes, this is definitely the desk of a writer. All of my words in a collection, I am saving a place for the one that states how it all ends. As god was stunned at the blood covering his palms, so was I, and if I could stash away and rewrite my life story, I probably would, with the wisdom of silence and absolute of concrete, with the black and blue of where it hurts mosts.

 A large area of dry dusty earth is always felt beneath my feet, it is the place where wild flowers push up, filling in for me, the sometimes devoid of life.
My life, the one I keep adding compost to, watering feverishly, forcing out of the house into early morning air, where the world is still quiet, where I can feel the damp of dew on my legs, and hug the sun not yet warming my face, as I escape under a canopy of branches, yes, the sometimes devoid of, THAT LIFE!

I can tell you with absolute certainly that every day I wake up, I look for answers. It is only today that I have come to realize that the answer, the one I have been waiting for, isn't nearly as important as the question ever was.

Life is about starting over, one day at a time!










 One emotion at a time!
 One poetic profound verse at a time!
One dry eye at a time!
One very wet tear at a time!
Life is just that, a layering of language! 
 A shortened prayer!
An acknowledgment of all that is!
A finish of all that wasn’t!
Life is just that!


Sunday, March 16, 2014

Tangible Threads of Life


... The threads that hang from my scarves, the threads that I rip from the hem of my skirt, the thread that holds my fingers in place to type on my keyboard, the thread that runs the length of my body to my feet that holds my heart, the thread I need to yank on each time I need to pick my heart up off the ground again, yes, threads, my threads of life. The long thread that attaches me to someone else, somewhere else, some time and place I have yet to be. The threads that run through my soul, wrapping around my thin waist, tiding up the loose ends of things complicated. 








It is these threads I speak of as I grab for my journal book, letting my mind unravels a thousand thoughts. I think on paper, the place I sort out my life. The place I connect all those tiny prism dots, the place with many beginnings, and few endings, the place that often allows me not to speak in tongue at all. 

Wanting very much for the raindrops pelting the window to say something, speak to me in some brilliant philosophical language. Yates or Poe would have had the brilliance to shape the drops into poetic tongue, as I only have the brilliance to watch them drip, emotion by emotion, down my window pane, as I reach to feel the pure wetness of the individual tears.
give me music in places I no longer find air.
Teach me to breath !






Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Death Certificate (of what once was)


I lie naked on my back, my thoughts perched on my stomach, curtains tied back, windows bare, as moonlight still streams in across the flesh of my abdomen, my pearls still loosely draped around my neck. The queen chair in the corner of my bedroom dressed in the scarf and skirt I had previously tossed there.

Later on this morning, when daylight breaks, I will make phone calls, write e-mails, make arrangements for the funeral, sign the death certificate, wipe the tears from beneath my black veil, and put my old life in the coffin just before they lower it into the ground, never wanting it to be rewarded with an eternal life. 

     In between mouthfuls of air, I’ll sip steaming hot French vanilla flavored coffee, and take note of the now unrecognizable mangled corpse of what once was. I will hear the bantering slightly irritated note in the bird's voice outside my window, as he watches yet another drama production of my life pass before him.

Against all good and reasonable judgment, life happens, to all of us. Then you act adult - like, grow up, and move on.........well, eventually you do, anyway. I just wish I had been in the bathroom when it came at me the first time around, toiled blood, sweat and tears, and here I am, ready for round two of whatever life has to offer up.

I hope it comes flavored in sea salt and chili dark chocolate this time around, and surrenders itself to me right at my doorstep. I also hope it brings with it, tulips and the fresh air smell of an early spring.







Friday, February 28, 2014

Good Morning Friday!


My walk is hard, deep, seductive, convicted, as the click of my high heels pronounces the hardened black pavement. I clutch my workbag so tightly it pushes back leaving indents on my fingers. The birds only a whisper now, so faint I no longer hear them. Opening my shoulders, lengthening my back, my heels seductively penetrate the line of ligament running up my calf.

What one can decipher from the nude canvas of my face, is beauty, sudden sadness, gratitude, pain, forbearance, solitude, destiny, awkwardness, calm, panic, love, loss, strength, weakness, emptiness, fulfillment, passion, empathy, discernment. What one can see are the aches of life worn on my sleeve, as my fingers run themselves along the rim of the coffee cup I hold in my cold hand, thoughts already penetrating through the early darkness of the day, poignant, sharp, and repetitive.
 Eyes downcast in subtle gentle movement, theatrically paused, pondering, tottering on my high heels, as I become part of the morning rat race. The churning of the train fills my ears with loudest roar. Stepping from the platform, crossing through the doors, a poignant silence which seems to last forever as I find my seat.

My body is in stronger than usual heat, as I take rest on the smell my own perfume. The frigid negative temperatures felt when I stepped outside my door this morning have finally begun to get to me, get under my skin, and grope at things in the dark which still haunt at me. The coldness of winter, especially winter 2014, still has a habit of zeroing in on things I wish to forget. Faces and scenes I wish to abolish from memory.........the summer is always so much more forgiving than winter will ever be for me.

Thursday, February 20, 2014

Memories in a Shoebox

I am far from the floor I collapsed on in Connecticut, reliving memories, mulling over evil, discontent, pain, and healing. A place I spent many candle – lit hours writing and sunrise filled mornings looking out over the water processing life’s journeys.
The memories that fall out of boxes now, are those of times before, making them feel so far away. They are other lives, past lives.  Photos are spread across my memory waiting for a decision on which ones I will choose to keep, and which ones I will let go of. Which memories belong on the wall of my new life and which ones will go back into the shoe  - boxes they emerged from?
I’d like to feel safe, to build a home, to watch as the next chapter of my life unfolds. It all begins with adjusting to these old memories, and leaving room for the new ones, which are yet to arrive, and where to place them all for now.
I wonder, in my new life, what I will experience in the confines of my new walls. Will I whisper words of love? Will I grieve a loss I haven’t yet fathomed? Will I conquer self-doubt? Will I struggle? Will I embrace self-love? Will I accomplish goals I haven’t yet set my mind to? Will I mourn my transient self? Will I long for my gone now beach - side property, or house with a view? Will I feel at home?
 I am accepting of clearing my mind, for new moments, new memories, and a brand new chapter of life to unfold.
I just do not relish the process of it all!


Friday, February 14, 2014

Mid - Life Crisis
Rightfully assuring myself that I am entitled to a mid-life crisis like everyone else, I am spending my day in the ice and snow here on the eastcoast plotting and designing it. Perhaps, my writing, is my mid - life crisis, or, perhaps, it is more lewdly suggestive of impulsive narrative just before I design my mid - life crisis. 

You know the one, where I slip out in the mid of the night, drive to JFK airport, catch a flight to Paris, and live on the Riviera for a year writing in behavior lewdly suggestive of mania, dancing all night and skinny-dipping at dawn. Taking up suit with a very handsome, perfectly poised, dimple laden man, whom wants nothing more than to serve me. 

I have a zillion plausible ideas for my mid - life crisis. I think it to be every women's right to a mid - life crisis, after the toll of the years we spend taking care of, and nurturing, everyone else's wants and needs. The right to a mid - life crisis should come in the form of a giftcard, a very large giftcard, a very very large giftcard, to use as we choose.......and squander at will, on bad decisions, and seven hundred dollar Jimmy Choo shoes, and, perhaps, the attractive shoe salesman who sold us those same shoes, who gets off at 7, and only fancies fine dining establishments. The snow is making me delirious it would appear!




















Monday, January 27, 2014

Missing Spring Completely!

I already miss the smell of spring, when wild blooms catch up close to the edge of my nostrils, as beyond anyone's common knowledge I lay in the stark silence of winter, hibernating and waiting. Waiting for dormancy to end, the earth to warm, and nocturnal songs of crickets to drift in through my window.

Waiting, for the cold vapor of my mouth to suspend, and I, to turn to a purple haze frenzy of saluted heated passion. Waiting, to loose myself in the rise and fall of waves of rapture. Yes, I simply cannot wait for spring, to forget the gloomy gray fog of winter that holds me like a cage, implied but left unspoken. 

Yes, yet another declaration from me, on just how intrusive I find winter. I never was a girl of “all seasons”, I was the bare legged and mini skirt kind of girl...my mid - life years are proving no different.




















Friday, January 24, 2014


I Do

Do you like the company you keep when you are alone?
i do

Do you like perfect, but are willing to twirk it a bit, so some flaws remain?
i do

Do you leave imperfections in your character?
i do

Do you enjoy chivalry?
i do

Do you confess ?
i do

Do you sin? ( the question really is, according to who's rules?)
i do

Do you want more, than at times, one person has to give?
i do

Do you grieve for the starfish you left on the beach...in your childhood plastic bucket?
i do

Do you miss, when no one else ever does?
i do

Do you wish to be in a bubble bath for two, where the foam of bubbles is all that separates the both of you?
i do

Do you posture for more than pretense?
i do

Do you hold the key to someone's heart?
i do

Do you forgive when you have to (or, only when someone is watching)?
i do

Do you know yourself better than none (or hold only the parts of you, that you like)?
i do

Do you think tomorrow can ever be, as good as your 'best' today?
i do

Do you believe in someone else's truth?
i do

Did you ever think there would come a day, when you would have to alter your thought on what 'living' actuallly is? where the blacks and blues become a color you no longer can describe? where the arc of your being is held so fragile, that the lightest of breeze topples you over? where you are so in -  love, that nothing else will ever matter? and you then realize, that the meaning of your whole life, can be found in the gentleness of that one kiss.........

did you?
did you ever think?


Winter 
is so theatrical as it throws back nine-degree temperatures today in absence of yesterday's negative numbers and nonbearing forceful gusts of wind. My teeth, a bit more unclenched today, my fingers, a bit more undrawn into the sleeves of my shirt, as warm blood surges through my body. The goose bumps on my legs are still there though, enough of a sacrifice to the gods of winter, my legs, so far from the life of summer that it's hardly even recognizable in the rear view mirror.
































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