Uncategorized Posts

Summer / solace / meditation / yoga

So, here it is, ending of August, and summer is fading fast. This is the time I get lost, want to stop the clock, stop fall from ever arriving at all. I am the summer girl, never have I ever been much more than that. In my teen years it meant pretty clothes, flowers, suntan lines, bikinis and salads. In my adult married years it meant the ending of yet another unforgiving winter spent in a house where the walls always shook with my husband's rage.

When the kids went off to college, it meant, them coming home again, or myself, driving to them. It meant writing and poetry, music and dancing, and the warmth of the sun rolling off of my back, as my painted red toenails played peek - a - boo amid the straps of my sandals.

 Even later on than that, it meant watching my roses bloom, morning glory vines draped across a self made fence, the quartz of rocks in my garden sparkling amid the midday sun. It meant peace, solace, solitude and comfort all in the same breath.

It meant sweat dripping down my arms, as my sneakers hit the pavement just at the cusp of dawn.  It meant yoga on my patio or deck, in undies, where always birds in flight gave a come hither look as they flew by.  I already miss the summer, and it has not even evaporated yet from my doorstep. I miss the simplicity it stands for, and the joy it brings to my life.

I miss the shells I have gathered, as they perch themselves on a shelf, waiting for their placement in a glass bowl they will soon call their own. I miss the blooming of flowers, that will soon draw themselves back and inward, dropping petals to the ground as a bed for the leaves soon to be falling atop of them. I miss the shelter of sun that drives my thoughts and my physical.

I want of a fairytale I have envisioned since childhood, where the lemonade keeps flowing and periwinkles keep rolling over my toes amid the crashing of the shoreline. I miss my flip-flops, the black, the pink, and the silver ones, that will soon be up on a shelf in darkness. Each year I almost forget how sad the ending of summer feels, until, once again, I am reminded, as it once again, draws near. I think we all have our particular season of life, a season we cherish for this reason or that, a season we flourish in, for this reason or that...watermelon was always my season...the season I thrived in...

Thursday July 24, 2014
From my desk...........navigating the territory between my heart and my head, even if the assumption is dangerous, as the clock ticks against the future, and beads of sweat form in my navel, and my indelible ink, for the moment, remains wet........ 

Clean slates allow you to make something from nothing, from just scrapes of nothingness at all. An epiphany of sorts, a renaissance - an explanation mark at the end of your paper.

I'm standing alone waiting for the train, alone on the platform, as I see it moving towards me, barreling forward down the tracks. Then it's sound rushes over me, deafening me - and I am committed and ready when it gets here. It's wind blowing, tossing up the dormant riches that have been gathering dust on the floor of me.

The archaic need to wrestle just enough, to finally grab hold of something without indecisive decision having me, yet again, back peddling, I jump over the place between the locomotive and the platform, the one the conductor has always warned me about. The jumping has had to be learned, as I have never mastered the jumping into anything, easily. I do now know, that you need to take that jump, with no guarantee of a parachute landing. Letting old skin open, new skin in, and the wrestling of a failed convection of past history fall to the way - side.

July 25, 2014

answer / waiting / 

The answer never arrives, unless you open the door and go looking for it. Yesterday's news, last week's novel, scattered across my 

June 23, 2014

monday/ heat/ manhattan

People everywhere. Horns blaring, the bulk of my briefcase pulling me even faster into the crowd now crossing Fifth Avenue, my feet landing soundlessly on the sidewalk. Amid one of the busiest intersections in Manhattan everyone seems to hurl in direction, as the faces of strangers begin to now part like the widening waters of the Red Sea. My arms swing, urging me forward in delicate purpose. The stone perched lions are having trouble keeping pace with my stride, as they guild the entrance to the New York City Library. My hand over my briefcase, my face, wearing a symbol of content. 

My thirst turns to something more, a dry heaviness lodged in the center of my throat. I sit down on the steps so deliberately; the lions lend a muffled roar. Fending my water bottle to my lips, I satisfy the monster of my heat exhaustion. Condensation now saturates my light green chiffon blouse as it drips profusely from my water bottle, running down my arm, wetting my exposed fingers. I dab the wet on the area between my breasts. 

The iron gate of heat works it's way methodically back into my throat, as I sip water, just to further oblige the throngs of it all, tossing it to peril. I hold my scarf; wipe my forehead, then fold it carefully backs to the inner of my briefcase. If I could, I would wantonly lie down in the fountain baring my naked flesh under streams of cool water. Faces starring back at me, as intersections all cross my path. The stagnant late June air of Manhattan hangs over all of us, polluting out skin and out thoughts. 

Every ounce of who we each are has now been made palpable by the cause and effect of why we are each here. At the corner of fifth avenue a woman's wrinkles augment the authority she holds in the lessons of life on the street, as rivets of water drip from her underarms. I take out my notebook, and with slanted handwriting, I date my journal page, observations, June 23, 2014....

Sunday, June 15, 2014

confessions / sunday / love

Sunday’s Confession:

I have drawn much criticism and have felt abandoned by some who once promised they would always be there for me, yet I learned my own strength, my drive. My need to always want warm weather, bottles of perfume, music floating from every room, and the safeness of that one person to call my own, and snuggle up to, separates me from the norm. It leaves the indelible line drawn in the sand, with myself on one side, and everyone else on the other.  I believe in falling in love...I believed it at fifteen, as I still believe it at 52. I tend to find myself, once again, explaining my beliefs, my notations on what my life should be, and, exactly what it should be rid of, once and for all. It is the ‘once and for all” I still struggle with, as small bothersome thoughts creep in from around some crazy little corner of my mind. I think brokenness still bleeds a bit, even when we think we have gotten past the haunt of it. This is the reason nature grows roses, perfect and beautiful.... so that once again, we can begin to believe in the good of it all. This is why they fill my gardens, to teach me to once again believe in something, in someone....go out and find what you believe in, the things that make you smile past the pain, of something, or someone, of a moment in time you wish you could simply forget...Sunday, May 25, 2014

editing / emotions / life wounds

Dear Younger Version of Me,
I forgive you. Darn-it, sometimes I really wish you hadn't started me on certain paths that I am still trying to rid myself of. I realize now that you did that because of ____________and____________ and though that was really f***** up, I have compassion for you now. I do not see you as broken or wrong, just human. I love your humanity, I cherish your imperfections, and I want to accept you fully, so that I can feel like a whole person, rather than this self with a shadow I'm trying to shake. Currently, I am a little afraid of you. I've worked hard not to let the choices you made back then dictate the rest of my life.


I guess there comes a point in our lives when we realize that everything we own, every emotion we hold close, tells our story. There maybe sometimes comes yet another moment when we can’t look at all of our stuff (emotions included) without feeling all of our yesterdays puddle and threaten... to flood if we dare look down. For me, I have tried not to look down the best that I can, but my eyes seem to still sneak peeks downward at times.
I’m packing up my emotions again, putting them into the box I bought to store them in, in the back of my closet, and I’m struggling with all of them. I’ve too many emotions held onto, for way too long, and too big a tale to tell and some very sad chapters that I don’t want to remember, and yet, can't seem to  forget.  Which emotions do we hold on to, and which ones just dig deeper into our wounds?
 ........ a trail of footprints behind me.....

Friday, April 11, 2014

Life Revisions

 Up since 5'o'clock. Carving away the things in life that need to be revised. See, I know most of you simply clear out your closets, and while, yes, I do that too, and do that often, not often enough do I clear out my life. Today, I perform the task of clearing, mentally, of all the waste, which I have accumulated.

 This could very well be summed up by overrated melodrama, created by, you guessed it, other people intrusively stampeding my life with it, to ridiculous worries and obsolete mundane daily withering of things which have no place taking up space in my life, to the broken coffee cup on the kitchen counter I can't seem to throw away.

 Let the purging begin of obstacles, fears, friends / relationships gone sour, cracked coffee mug, furniture on Craig's list (so I can begin to downsize), clothes to goodwill, old makeup (need new anyway), piles of papers on my desk (not meant for any literary use), emptying my briefcase and purse (of stuff), clearing out my in - box, my out - box, my draft box, my word file (put it all on a flash drive), pictures, photographs, trumpets, foghorns, sirens, longings, needs, wants (kept all the good ones, not necessarily the practical good ones, however) piles of books on my desk, (they just get organized into a more attractive looking pile), love letters, hate mail, proposals ( business and otherwise), 

and, oh my gosh, I already feel so much lighter......still time for a blog, an ample walk, a shower, a manicure, a new spring dress (and yes, always buy the shoes too), and, finally, a dinner date with my husband at Hudson House (on the water) in Cold Spring, NY! 

Yippee, I have completed 2014 spring cleaning of MY LIFE..........

Wednesday, April 9, 2014

NYC Homeless

The homeless man arched in the doorway of the building, he bears the only witness to conversations in my mind. The heated smoke of the subway floats up through the street grates. Counting ever so softly his breath as it heaves in and out with my thoughts. On the threshold of barely caring, his pale fingers reach for the remnants of a cigarette lain in the street. 

He reaches for the taste of nicotine, noting every detail of his urine soaked trousers, his mind destroying all he had committed to life’s memory. Discarding the useless ashes of the cigarette, the ache of his life, dyeing down, in the blink of his eye a thousand stories are being told, choking back on his own sobs, that no one else ever seems to take notice of. The selling of his soul, tortured death of his dreams, the downtown dive he use to frequent.

 What is left now is the decay of a life, a condom in his pocket, tossed cigarettes, and a stick of mint gum he uses as a toothbrush. The urine is the river of pain he will eventually die in..... no one seems to see or care, even take notice. Tracing the echo that I heard, to the silencing of his heart. When asked who kills him, the answer is, we all do. 

I mark my calendar by the closing of his eyes, the seeping of his body fluids leaving stains on the fabric of my face. I knew of a man, though he was not my friend, whom perished in a life of will, recoiled in the disgust of mankind, until his body wrapped so tight became breathless, in a river of his own urine. Weaved within the fabric of NYC, a city where language is never spoken and hypocrisy breeds within, where a thousand pieces of life fall from the sky, his corpse left wide open, to walk all over him, and then, we do.

Saturday March 30, 2014
Life's Changing

My thought of the day is that; life is about changing. The what, the when, the where, the who, even with all of my so-called ‘Zen,' I find my emotion wildly unsympathetic at times. Whether good change or bad change, I think leaning into the change is the tipping point, which rocks the boat over. 

I learned to swim ancient years ago, at times with the tide, more times than I care to admit, against the tide. I always swam though, and safely made it to the opposing shore of somewhere, someone, and something that I had been reaching for. So, today, my thought is on yet another swim, another tide, another change I have been reaching for. Days like this I want nothing more than to just be with the change. Is it ever okay to be in a countdown of your life? if so, then admit-tingly, I am already there. 

I am counting down such a vast bucket list of ideals, a repeat visitor to this bucket daily, ducking into quiet space, just to empty my bucket onto the floor, marbles of transition and change rolling in round circle dots of color across the wood floor. Some of life changes roll further along the floorboards than others do; perhaps, they are the ones that are just still a bit out of my reach. The closer marbles I grab and roll within my fingers, touching these closest life changes, make them ever more real to me, ever more solid, as I stand firm footed alongside each of them.

 A giant question mark as to who I now am, sits right at the tip of my nose. I’ll let you know when I have the answer, when I find the answer, as to who I now am, from what I once was.

Last weekend, I expected a definite answer from myself on just exactly who I now am, because I have been quite confused: I had given up so many things in life, to do what? Wrestle hopelessly with missed decisions, and a very failed convection of past history. The answer, as you might has guessed, has yet to arrive. I am hoping this weekend's end will find itself more advantageous in the release of the finding, and find me, in a better acceptance of it all.

This small blue bottle seems very appoint today, perhaps it is the sunlight, perhaps it is simply the blue that I cling to.... 

Courage of Change

I have always nested myself between places, which is increasingly where I think I live. Between two different worlds of heartbreak and solitary immersion into the place that makes me come alive. There is a certain level of experience that comes with floating in this in - between place, and it comes, for me, with a dance of transition, reflection, and anticipation. There is exhilaration to living in the privileged overlap between the lives you imagined and the life you inhabit. And so, I think, what if enamored as you are with your current life, grateful as you are for it, you also harbor a parallel imagination of a different life? In that life, you wake up on a Greek Island. Your hair smells of salt, your eyes breathe the sea. Your days are sun and waves, white washed and bright. Your breaths are deeper, and seaweed tangles from your hair. What if, this different life wakes from imagination? How many of us would have the courage to grab hold of it

Wednesday, March 26, 2014

To My Dog

I miss you dearly Lexi . . . I still think about you every day. I hope you are running and playing on a beach up in heaven somewhere. One of these days, when I close my eyes for the last time . . . I really hope you come and tackle me with kisses. Call me crazy I don’t care. I thought about you the other day, while walking in the cold.

 Crumbled leaves rustled under my feet, and I thought about your snoot playfully tossing in the leaves, tugging the leash from my hand. You always loved the fallen leaves, and the winter snow, I always hated both (in case you never knew, I always stood in either, just a bit longer, just for you) you never said a word, but, really, we had the deepest of conversations, you and I. It has taken me a bit to even get to the place where I can write about this without completely losing it. But, finally I am almost there. It’s been a year already since you left us. You became a 'mamma's girl' very quickly. Just as quickly, I began making you home cooked food, that canned dog food chicken really never smelled very good to me, and you so loved London broil, anyway. Lying down, on the bed, in the sun, was probably your most favorite place in the world, until I would come home, and catch you. (You would still somewhere 'work' me back, to get that darn London broil by suppertime).

 You were spoiled all right, but you were one of the best relationships that I have ever experienced and if I could do it all over again, I would in a heartbeat. Just because, I miss you, and when you passed, you took a part of me with you. I hope they are serving you Filet Mignon up in heaven! You so deserve it!

I'll probably end up writing to you again (eventually), as the snowflakes of winter have passed, and I hold, still, blurry memories of your paw prints all over the front yard...you never did quite master the whole lying in the snow to make a 'snow angel' thing...but you always tried...and, now, as the warmth of, yet, another Spring since your passing is upon me, I grin at the thought of you stretched out on the patio, soaking up the rays, as you mastered the lazy hazy crazy days of summer so effortlessly.......you always put all of us to shame, you tamed life, rather than it ever taming you.....I learned my most valuable life lesson from you........"soak up the sun and just let things be"

Mental Health

So, today my grown daughter was diagnosed with moderate to severe anxiety, and mild symptoms of slight bipolar disorder. Admittedly, my first reaction was to not even blink, or breath. The stigma we as a society have attached to mental illness (myself included) is almost as bad as the plague, or aids. I worry about a lifetime of daily medication, but everything is a trade off of sorts. Is it better to be on medication, which enables you to have a happy healthy productive life of some normalcy, or, is it better to be medication free with the reality of never being able to have a complete full life at all? 

I have always been an advocate of not supporting the pharmaceutical companies who have turned us into a generation of pill addicts. Drugs are altering our lives, minds, and bodies. A number of years back I suffered tremendous physical trauma which lead to mental trauma after a severe accident left me the prospect of multiple years of reconstructive surgeries to the repair damage in small doses. At said time, I had to be kept calm, so, lawyers and doctors had me on a regimen of 'off - label' use pain management, which also had the 'on label use' of calming me down.

 After nearly two and a half years I took myself off of the medications through a matriculation of three months of withdrawal from any and all drugs from my body. It was against doctors orders, lawyers orders, so I got rid of all of them too, while I was at it. I figured doctors and lawyers would be easy enough to replace, and I was right, they were. There was a whole line of them waiting in the wings to jump in to my case. The thought of being on medication for the rest of my life scared the fuck out of me. I had previously been the poster child for health, fitness, and yoga and running, so this reversal was really screwing me up. It turns out; it was the best decision I ever made, that, and leaving my first husband. 

Perhaps, I have become jaded from my own personal experiences with "head doctors,” as they held me over medicated,and, at times. zombie - like, instead of allowing me to go back to my usual method of dealing with stress or pain (which was to run, walk, and perform yoga). On legal paper turns out, a client reduced to drug therapy earns you more rewards in a courtroom, then a healthy fit, I can handle this type of female. SO, they had their interest at heart, not really mine. Thus, in becoming jaded, maybe I need to step back a bit, and realize, not everyone is of the same make - up.  Some of us need the help of the professional world to help us get through, either because our brain's chemical levels are unbalanced, our mood swings are chemical, not always female hormone based...or maybe, our sadness and instability is not something we can just jump hurdle over ourselves.

 All of us are entitled to be happy and living complete full lives...in saying that, maybe I need to accept the fact that my daughter is one such person...she needs the help of a daily medication to keep her life on track....but, admittedly,  when it touches so close to home, it alters you. I hope in two weeks or three weeks, she finds herself to be a new person, the person she had always dreamed she could be.... leading a productive happy life...even, if it means, two small daily pills helps her to get there. A complete happy full life beats the alternative hands down. I just hope the psychiatrist she is seeing does not turn out to be the pill pushing therapist/ doctors I had in the past...I hope they are minimalists, giving only the amount needed to her to get her over the hurdles of her diagnosis. 

Thursday, February 27, 2014

On Pre - Marriage Dating my Husband

Further provoking desire, lips barely brushing skin, as gently I lent down, my cinnamon lipstick leading a certain marked trail along his thigh. Instead of a hapless lover, a goddess of erotica freed herself from inside of me, and in insurmountable contradiction lead me to the wanting more of him. I had not touched him yet, as he expertly navigated his way down my torso, at first drawing nothing but breath, but then pressing so hard into me, leaving me in a hypnotic trance that cemented to my memory.

In the morning, he left one final abstract kiss painted on my breast, and I slipped a door key into his pant's pocket as he took a shower. He headed off, and I continued to smile, both of us became predictable. Left feeling a bit light headed from the passion and the heat, and the consideration of what was still, yet to come. 

Leaning out my window, I remember letting the rain fall on my face...summer rain always feels intixicating against summer's heat.......

In Awe Of Life
If you have ever had a broken heart, if you have ever suffered a human loss, if you have ever felt alone and afraid, you are not the only one, if you have ever danced naked when no one was looking, I am going to tell you, so have most of us, repeatedly,

if you have ever gotten so lost in a song that it became your life, learn to sing that melody and memorize those words. Picking up life ceaselessly until you are in awe of it,

until it transforms you with just enough echo to grope at you in the darkness, peer at you through random glass, reconstruct you in language of bewilderment. It is only then that life leaves you in awe of possibilities, of what tomorrow may bring.

 A Stranger's Tears

Eyes downcast in subtle gentle movement, theatrically paused, pondering, tottering on my high heels, leafless trees giving way to feng shui surroundings. 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. A woman starring out the window, in a far away dismal look, then the gushing of her streams of tears. I cannot make the words, so I offer her a tissue to wipe the darkened rings of mascara dripping down her cheek, in a need to abolish them to the nearest graveyard. The doors once again open, commuters in eager rush to get on with their day, their work, and their ornate lives.

     I think about the woman later on in my day, the mournful face of her tears, I should have asked her, was it death, or a love affair now over? I should have asked her, should have comforted her, and should have offered her something for her fragility, her tiredness, and her pain. Should have told her, that this too shall pass. The salt of her tears rest in the unhurried unanswered questions that still linger through my thoughts, as I believe for some very strange and presumptuous reason, that the weight of the world now rests on the frame of her delicate shoulders.Eyes downcast in subtle gentle movement, theatrically paused, pondering, tottering on my high heels, leafless trees giving way to feng shui surroundings. 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. A woman starring out the window, in a far away dismal look, then the gushing of her streams of tears. I cannot make the words, so I offer her a tissue to wipe the darkened rings of mascara dripping down her cheek, in a need to abolish them to the nearest graveyard. The doors once again open, commuters in eager rush to get on with their day, their work, and their ornate lives.

     I think about the woman later on in my day, the mournful face of her tears, I should have asked her, was it death, or a love affair now over? I should have asked her, should have comforted her, and should have offered her something for her fragility, her tiredness, and her pain. Should have told her, that this too shall pass. The salt of her tears rest in the unhurried unanswered questions that still linger through my thoughts, as I believe for some very strange and presumptuous reason, that the weight of the world now rests on the frame of her delicate shoulders.

 My Place of Contentment
It is my writing, which takes me to this place I find myself today, separate from the bitter cold and snow here in New York, a place other than home, from beneath a cloud of unknowing to copious amounts of light, from opening to closure, recognizing the therapeutic balm incensed in my keyboard. I find myself wanting to stay here the minute I arrive. Stay here, seated and perched at my computer, where my keyboard takes me anywhere I wish to wander.

     Here, I fly to Paris, sip wine in Tuscany, attend mass in Rome, skinny dip on the French Riviera, wrap myself in a torrid love affair in Spain, allowing the music of the sin to sweep through me. Nebulous silence of love, sheets lingering with the forbidden scent of human skin, exuding happiness he leans over hungrily, in a wave of boldness just to get closer to the hunger of my mouth, to my unabashed feminine scent. Like a drowning man I pull him closer to me, until he melts, pressing into me, passion searing through flesh until it scorches my palm, my hand resting on the dampness of his back to ease my fire. 

Yes, it is my writing that brings me to these far away places, enchanting mid life escapades, chance meeting with total strangers. It is my writing that breathes warmth into me on this rather brisk January morning. Apprehension plucks at my fingertips....

(I think I have writer's cramp. If there is such a cause to be called, then I absolutely have it! My fingers churn in twisted spasm as words spill faster than my stemmed fingertips can type. I file my life neatly away back into the pages of my journal......until this blessed curse of spasm releases from my fingertips)

The Hookup
The sex still fresh, yet so are her fears and doubts that this sudden approach to seduction is even attainable. Advancing now, even faster than her heart can understand, allowing the destitute of change to somehow shrink her, as her skin absorbs, then drinks away, the last of any forgotten inhibition. Managing to stay serenely aloft he steers her through this same inhibition, as his hands and fingers navigate her flesh. Expertly slicing through her own self, into this blinding space where she is now orbiting the sun.  Her tongue still lingers, after all, he bought her countless drinks at the bar, paid for the cab ride home to her apt, he climbed six flights up the airless narrow stairwell just to be with her. This must be real, this time. His blood vessels expand, as a howl of alarm now pierces from him, as her tongue glides and rides uncontrollably. Remembering all the while that a man’s standards drop quite a bit when he is horny. Still, she allows the seductiveness of her tongue to linger, approaching and subduing the howls that still escape from him, before ending with a final kiss on his cheek. The end, she knows all too well, is much more abrupt than all the beginnings combined, the intensity of it all makes her shudder.

Days later, she will write him a letter. Without saying good-bye, without a singular word, he will have it returned to her “address unknown.” It was just a "Hook - up" and when will girl's ever learn?