La-Z boy

"Could you... - would you... - in a recliner?" she asked with a smile that was bursting with an adventurous tale.

Her friend raised her eyebrows, simultaneously surprised and impressed.

"Yes, as a matter of fact, I can." she winked assuredly. "Twas fun. He's nice. Kind of a nerd tho... It was his old recliner from home. Totally doesn't match his cute little place, but he couldn't get rid of it. So when things got frisky, I asked him if it's ever been christened. He said never, so we proceeded to turn it into a La-Z boy with benefits."

On vibrate mode

"OMFG, My phone won't stop vibrating!" she exclaimed, a bit frustrated.

"Just stick it in your pants, you'll love it." her friend winked.

Bedtimes character

"Now I'm giving up on them if I can't get off within the first three encounters of the sexual kind. I mean, if they don't take any interest to put me first, or even second, after three times, then they obviously aren't attentive about how I really feel..." she said.

The key to never-lasting

"I was reading about this study that predicted the longevity of a marriage after watching a couple interact for just 15 minutes, and do you know what the number one indicator was for a doomed outcome?" she asked her freshly divorcing friend in the seat next to her as they drove along. "Contempt."

"So is that like bitterness and resentment?" the divorcee asked.

"No, it's worse. It's the feeling that you are better than the other person."

"OMG." she looked at her friend admittedly, her eyes wide, and laughed, knowing that sentiment all too well.

"I do it too, and although it's not one of my finer traits, I just can't help it. I don't demean him, but the thoughts I have towards him... I feel like I have to lower myself to his level all the time. And, that's so draining. I want to be with someone who's on my wavelength..."

Crushed

She smiled to herself at her latest resolution - the resolve of her latest crush. Her mind reeled in rewind through all the crushes she's had since she started noticing that boys existed. There was Tim, Scotty, the 3 Dans, India Boy, the cute waiter at her favorite restaurant, her bodyworker. The way all the stories unfolded, though different in details, all had the same outcome: they were all unrequited. That realization made her laugh. But they were such priceless memories...

Due by Wednesday

"... So, now I'm trying to figure out if there's a correlation between kissing skill and horizontal tussle skills," she said. "I'm thinking that they are not correlated, but I encourage you to do your own research. I want to hear a boy story from you by Wednesday."

"Did I just get a homework assignment?!" her friend's attention piqued. "By Wednesday!? Does this mean that I have to leave the house...?"

"Yes."

"I can't just petition the universe for Orlando Bloom?"

"Nope."

"I'll see what I can come up with by then..." her friend whined with reluctance. Yet, she knew that New Year's was just around the corner and that night had to be good for something.

Toolkit

"It's not the size of the tool. It's how they use it. Good things can come in small packages," she said wryly.

Nothing to sneeze at

"I'm going to see him later," she said. "He mentioned that he was over his cold."

"You know what that means... " her friend insinuated.

"Uh huh. Maybe his kissing will improve..."

Bestselling daydreams

It's bound to be a memoir one day, she thought. And then, a movie with Johnny Depp as the lead male actor...

Good for sumthin'

She connected with her co-conspirator after a long (two-week) hiatus. The exchange of holiday wishes, what's-ups and what-nots went something like this:

"Yeah, so I think I've finally given up on this one. I mean, I've really let go of the idea that anything romantical will happen. I've been pretty clear about where I'm at, and he never has been uber clear about where he's at after any of my confessions. I guess, I could read into covert things he's said, but then again, what do I choose to read into? Do I ignore the lines that seem to be incinerating something else? Wth, right? I mean we've been plenty close - with nothin."

"In my experience, I've pretty much gathered that if a guy is into me after one or two dates, he makes no hesitation to kiss me and proceed to take my clothes off. I'll report back with more definitive conclusions in about one week. I'm working on another experiment."

"Wow, you think that's really it? the fast and furious? Is that all we can expect from them?"

"Men can give you so many disheartening insights..."

Once when you were

"So yesterday while I was running errands, I heard this song by the Moody Blues," she said as they walked her dog down the canyon road. "I can't remember the name but it went something like: "... I wonder where you are, I wonder if you think about me, la la la la la, in your wildest dreams...la la la."

"Oh, yeah! I know that one," her little friend said, recognizing the trademark "la la la's."

"... And, for whatever reason, the song got me thinking about my ex-husband. So, then I went into the store to pick up some stuff on my list, and who do I see? Him. He was there with his fiance on the day before their wedding."

"Wow. It was cool, tho?"

"Oh yeah. But it was curious - the whole encounter and the soundtrack and the day before their wedding."

"Curious indeed," the little one concurred. "You know, I hear about this stuff a lot -- how before someone gets married they run into or hear from all their exes, or at least, some of them. Isn't that wild? I mean, what kind of hallmark card is the universe saying in those moments?" She paused before continuing another train of thought: "... And, why is it that the guys end up remarrying so much sooner after a divorce than the women do? I really don't get it..."

A good hair day

Her day was decorated with pleasantries. It was an extra ordinary day from her usual warm shower, to donning her superhero belt, packing her normal fare for lunch and heading to the office to start the week of work. The day felt clear, her subtle ways were heard and she was full of purpose.

For whatever reason, her light reflected back to her by others and warmed the sub-freezing temps that made her breath visible: the guys at the customer service desk greeted her at the bank; there was nothing but season's greetings in the mailbox; a random act of kindness was given in the busy parking lot of the grocers, and when she was done bagging her edible delights for the week, the grocery clerk leaned over and said, "By the way, your hair looks great today."

The brightside

Whilst she was diligently typing her work day away, her cell phone chimed a classic indie tune. The number on the screen was an old friend from many great adventures past.

They greeted each other on the line as if no time had lapsed between them. The last time they had seen each other was a year ago after Thanksgiving when they caught up on the milestones in each other's lives that had passed over 4 years. She only had the long term relationship, house purchase, domestication and marriage news. Her friend was toting around her news with similar headlines, as well as an accessory in diapers.

This time, however, she could deliver the latest on the dissolution of all she had spoken of just a year prior. How the process was mutual and mature, everyone was fine, the house was sold and they were ahead despite the market, how the final parts were almost over, how she felt a bit like she was on vacation.

"I just wanted to call you and see how you've been," her friend said as she drove her babe around town. "Things have gotten more stressful here as the baby's health has taken a downturn, and his daddy still can't hold a job. I can't even remember the last time we had sex..." she paused before continuing. "I think I stopped telling you how everything was going for me, because I knew all I wanted to really say was that sometimes I'm so jealous of you!"

If not, winter

She had always wanted a garden in the whole backyard, to have the tools for self-sustainability and nourishment just a backdoor thresh hold away. He seemed reluctant to indulge the idea, thinking of resale value not arable land at their fingertips.

That spring, they worked on it together, building a foundation primed for new growth. He was reluctant, still. She wondered what the fuss was about. She planted the seeds and awaited the fresh nourishment, the fruits of their labor.

Her garden was abundant with momentary delectables and freshness and contemplation. It was the grounding in her summer days as she cultivated that space as it cycled through harvesting and new starts. She savored every moment, every bite, allowing it to fill her up with its vibrant lessons. He wondered what the fuss was about.

By the first freeze, the fall harvest, the gourds and squashes, had been piled up by the back door, ready for the oven. The beds had been covered and tucked in with debris from the summer. By snowfall, she barely went back there. The back door stayed locked, even though there were still some winter squash piled near the door, what remains of the summer garden.

Progressive

"What do you mean 'nothing'...?" she inquisitively raised an eyebrow.

"I mean 'nothing' as in I've got nothing." her friend answered. "No physical boundaries have been crossed, if you catch my drift."

"And you've been hanging out this long? And, you've told him everything?" her eyebrow still raised in questioning disbelief.

Her friend looked back at her wide-eyed, nodding slightly, fully knowing the duration of the meet-cute continuum. "I don't really feel like I need to make the proverbial "moves" - it's pretty obvious at this point. I mean, maybe he's just not into me like that...? I can live with that. Maybe I just need to let go of this and move on to more consummate delicacies on the horizon?"

"You know what I'd do? I'd just say: "Hey, I want to kiss you." And then do it. I did that once to a guy, and he thanked me for being so forward."

Intention & attention

"Hey, where's your boy?" the hostess asked. "You should have brought him."

"Working," she said. And, in a second breath added: "I don't really know what we are anyway..."

"What do you mean?" another woman asked.

"Well, at what point do you consider spending a metric ton of time together as BFF-hood or dating? Do weekends together with no horizontal tussles count as dating? I mean, we spend a lot of quality time together. What is dating these days?"

"I was just reading an article in the New York Times that said the old ways of dating are gone or, at least, reversed," the woman said over a plate of party aperitifs. "Nowadays, people have quick hook ups and then decide if they want to date someone."

"I realize my current state of affairs is against the norm, and I like it better that way. But, sometimes it's kinda ambiguous. What is the difference between 'hanging out' and 'dating'?" she asked intently, ready for the woman's response. "I feel like it has something to do with intention..."

"Yes. It's a matter of focus," the woman replied. "Attention with intention."

Platomance

"How's your platomance? You know, your platonic - romance." her friend teased with a wink, trying to get the latest of juicy stories capturing how 'nothing happened'.

By chance

"Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance." - Jane Austen

Man pattern

"I love knitting mittens," she said. "I have a man mitten pattern at home I need to try. I almost said that as a man pattern. Imagine if we could knit our own man!"

Her fellow knitter laughed. "Knitting your own man sounds like the yarn of a GREAT story. A novella stitching together myth and fairy tale and the course of desire through the most toilsome journey of all: the quest for the perfect man..."

G(love)s

They posed her with a question, a proposition summoning her knitting skills: "Can you make a set of 3 gloves? So that the middle one is big enough for two hands? You know, mittens for handholding lovers. We like to think of it as the g(love)."

Layering

"You must wear a lot of layers when you go to parties," she said. "Because you never know how many layers you'll be taking off."

Peace & spankings

They walked briskly back down the trail, on their way home to lunch. A beautiful couple with a cute shepard puppy walked by.

As they hiked pass the trio, oogled and cooed at the puppiness, and wished the picture-perfect couple a good hike, she said to her cohort: "She had great hair. Shiny, good highlights, great cut."

"Yeah." he concurred. "She had great spankability."

(I'm)perfect

She contemplated her most recent horoscope with intrigue:

"After meditating on how best to energize your love life, I decided to direct you to this passage from John Welwood's book *Perfect Love, Imperfect Relationships: Healing the Wound of the Heart*: "Everyone knows perfect love in their heart, for the human heart is a direct channel through which absolute love pours into this world. At the same time, human relationships are imperfect expressions of that love. This creates a painful gap between the perfect love we know in our hearts and the imperfect, incomplete ways it is expressed in our relationships. When we imagine that relative human love should be something it is not -- absolutely unconditional -- we suffer disappointment and wind up distrusting love itself. We also hold grievances against others for not loving us rightly or against ourselves for not having won that love. This gives rise to a universal human wound -- the sense of not feeling loved for who we are.""

In praise of slowness

"How am I doing?" he asked.

"Go slower," she said.

Unrequited dream

"Did you have naughty dreams?" he asked facetiously.

"No. I don't have naughty dreams." she admitted, sadly and matter of factly and honestly. "I have this recurring dream scape where, no matter who I'm trying to make out with -- Captain Jack Sparrow, Orland Bloom, Pete Yorn -- nothing ever happens. I mean, like nothing happens. It just ends."

"That's a nightmare," he said, surprised.

"I know, right? But what does that mean?" she pondered the missing letter in her alphabet...

Walking confession

"Have you ever wanted to get naked with this girl?" she asked him, not really waiting for his answer. This was the last of her confessions that she just couldn't hold back. She was truly enjoying their BFF-hood and wouldn't want to jeopardize any subsequent moments, dispite her long standing crush. "I only ask because if anything ever did happen, I probably couldn't handle it right now. It would wreck me in the sense that I wouldn't be able to concentrate for like a month."

Fruitful play

The long hike had left them hungry and they found themselves at the little neighborhood grocery store to fill in the gaps for their dinner menu. He grabbed the cart.

He looked at her and smiled playfully. "Look, baby, we're grocery shopping together."

She smiled back and laughed to herself. "How cute is that. We should just get married," she said almost facetiously.

He looked at her as she surveyed a pile of mangoes. "Baby, do you want to move to Brazil?"

She glanced over her shoulder. "Maybe," she shrugged with a wink. "I'd have to check it out first."

Liquid assets

The four lovelies sat at the far end of the back of the Mexican joint, the last table before the stairs to the loft. It was the post-holiday Friday out, a time to catch up on the past months churning events in each of the beautiful lives.

As the stories were dished out over happy hour margaritas, a couple descended the stairs, onto their next venue for the evening. As the man walked past their table at the bottom of the landing, he turned and dropped a $20 on their table. "Just a random act of kindness," he said as he walked away. "Enjoy your evening."

This was a novel experience, even for such a set of extraordinary beauties, in such a grim economic state. They looked across the table at each other, mildly shocked at the moolah from heaven.

"We need to go out together more often," the little one said.

Score

"How would you rate your kissing?" the suave beau asked her as he leaned against the bar.

She was standing close to him and his friend. "I'm a 9.2," she replied confidently.

"Really!?" he exclaimed, a bit surprised at the certainty of her self-assessment.

Her bravado flashed across her face with a smirk and she made her move on his friend, locking lips with her best 9.2.

Personal assistant

"What do you do?" the guy asked over the noise of the bar.

"Oh, I freelance..." she said. "Anything you need, I can do it."

Aspace

There's a line from In the Land of Women uttered by an adorable foreign model to her BF from across the table of a booth at a little cafe that goes a little like this:

"I need some aspace. And I need you to give me that aspace."

Aspace is an important component to a healthy relationship, however this is more than just alone time when there's work to do, etc. Physical space, like separate offices and separate bathrooms, is key to enhancing the duration of any interpersonal journey with another.

BFFAE

"I like the pace this is moving at," she said to her friend as they strode along. "I've known I've wanted this beautiful boy for months, but - for whatever reason - it's been a nice unfolding of get-to-know you. We've established mutual adoration, and I'm pretty convinced we're BFF's."

"Yeah... BBFAE's..." she laughed. "Best Friends Forever (And Ever)."

Persimmons for breakfast

"Are you ready for this?" she asked blithely, despite the inherent weight of the proposition.

"For what...?" he asked.

"For this. For the beginning of an us," she stated intently, her gaze never wandering from his, as if she was calling for a response from his soul. "I'm not looking for a fly-by-night rendezvous. I want the real deal. I want you to want the real deal. I want to experience you as nothing but your most authentic, most present self at every waking moment. I want you to be pure love livin' it up to your true purpose with your focused love light on me. And I want you to have the the same from me. I want something more intense than a blase fling. I want raw and honest, transparent and clear, love and light and fire. I want to be mirrors for each other's growth. I want to be a tangle of lovers filling each other up and emptying each other out.... Are you up for that?"

Her early morning day dream came back to earth, back to the ripe persimmon in her hand. Upon first bite, its consummate flavors left her at a loss as to how she could have not greeted every morning with such succulence and delicious fervor. She devoured it.

You know it's right when...

When your head and your heart agree, say 'YES.'

Effectuate

"Wow," her neighbor exclaimed over a bowl of coconut-squash soup. "I'm so impressed with the way things have been happening for you through all of this."

"It's really how I envisioned it 7 months ago. I guess that's the power of good manifesting," she replied.

"Yes. Clarity. You had amazing clarity -- and follow through. Not many people have follow through..."

"Really?"

"No! Just think of all those people who realize they are in a bad relationship but stay in them!?" her neighbor said between spoonfuls.

She looked at her teacup, considering the unfolding of the past 7 months. Then, the tag from her teabag that dangled just above the table caught her eye. She read its fortune, and smiled, still warmed with happy assurance with the unfurling still before her:

"be happy so long as breath is in you."

Written in the stars

sidereal, adj.: measured or determined by the daily motion of the stars; of or having to do with the stars or constellations

Denouement

In his email the night before, he mentioned something about coming over to pick up his half of the yard tools and to drop off a frame of hers.

She didn't expect him to stop by so early the next morning. He rang the doorbell.

"Why didn't you just come in the garage?" she asked.

He shrugged.

He still barely looked at her, or listened to the answers of the questions he asked her even though it was simply small talk. Among the offerings he had brought with him -- plastic bags for the dog walks and a mis-forwarded internet bill -- was the picture of her with her beloved horse that she had given him when they first became an item. It was in a simple little frame that he had always kept on his desk at work.

She smiled as she recognized the picture, one of her favorite portraits, and then realized the significance of its return path.

Mutual Admiration Society

"The most desired gift of love is not diamonds or roses or chocolate. It is focused attention." - Rick Warren

Turn the pages

"My life is an open book," she said. "And it's not a two-page picture book..."

Recharged batteries

While it's true that batteries can only do so much... there's nothing like a little electric buddy with fresh juice to make a girl happy.

A question of semantics

"If you say, I love you, then you have already fallen in love with language, which is already a form of break up and infidelity." - Jean Baudrillard

Love, and other disasters

From the movie, Love and Other Disasters:

Emily 'Jacks' Jackson: Stop living your life like you're in some kind of movie.

Peter Simon: Excuse me?

Emily 'Jacks' Jackson: Stop trying to cast your love instead of just meeting him.

Peter Simon: When I meet him, I'll know.

Emily 'Jacks' Jackson: I'm not so sure. Love isn't always a lightning bolt, you know? Maybe sometimes it's just a choice.

Peter Simon: Well, that's easy for you to say! You're flying to Argentina to meet the love of your life!

Emily 'Jacks' Jackson: That's just it. I don't know that Paolo's the love of my life, but I've decided to give him the chance to be. Maybe true love is a decision. You know, a decision to take a chance with somebody. To give to somebody. Without worrying wether they'll give anything back. Or if they're gonna hurt you, or if they really are the one. Maybe love isn't something that happens to you. Maybe it's something you have to choose.

Peter Simon: So what do I do?

Emily 'Jacks' Jackson: Well, you could start by putting all of those fantasies of true love where they belong, into your work of fiction.

Your mission

"Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all of the barriers within yourself that you have built against it."

3 AM truth serum

Their bodies were warm in the near-freezing chill of the post-party early morning air as the stars fell above them on the stroll home down the middle of the city's neighborhood back roads.

"I really enjoy your company," he said. "It's nice to be around smart people - not just intellectual, but smart people."

"Aww, I love you too." She uttered in return, as if she had read through some inherent depth of his words. (Did she just say that so shamelessly? So loosely? And, she hadn't even had the veritas serum...)

"Ah, that's what I meant to say..."

Name calling

"I think I want to get a Subaru," the car less chic said.

"Ah, yes. But let me warn you: as a single female, you'll be perpetually mistaken for a lesbian," the savvy single Subaru-owning woman noted.

"I'm quite used to that mistake in sexual identity. Besides, I'd rather be called a lesbian than a republican."

That person

To her he was that person. The one she couldn't stop watching when he was in the room. The one who occupied her thoughts. The presence she felt when he was nearby, and when he wasn't. The one who had more than a cameo in her day dreams and manifestations.

I can feel your frequency (inside of me)

"Hey, come check this one out," my roommate called from the couch. She had been looking at Match.com. Window shopping.

"Oh, he's kinda cute..." I agreed.

"Yeah, listen to this..." she began reading his semi-impressive profile outloud.

"What an advertisement." I said. "This is like marketing...and hard personal stats."

"...but you can't tell anything really deep, like ...does this person have interpersonal skills, ...a sense of sensuality, ...a spark..."

"...you can't feel their vibration. Frequency is so important. Far more important than dating resumes."

Thank you very little

Have you ever wondered how you can spend so much time with someone, good times of enjoying each other's company - or so you thought - planning things for the immediate future, only to be left in the dust of no follow through? Have you ever kept your schedule open based on a past discussion (on a date) and then found yourself waiting for a phone call, a return text or ... some follow through?

"I mean, when I say I'm going to call, I usually call. It's pretty simple," my recently left in the dust friend vented. "Why was it so hard for what's-his-face to call?! It's the dawning of the age of the iPhone. The tele isn't new technology. Shit, he could have txt'd. Emailed. Geezus H..."

It's about congruity: when you say you're going to do something, do it. The favorable pieces of you match up. Otherwise, you risk the terrible label of "flaky."

The Undercovers Vixen

Fresh from the front lines of the dating scene, researching the state of courtship in America, our saucy, savvy field analyst reports back the searing insights on (what else?) men, etc., and the burning questions that arise therefrom.

Stay tuned for the juicy bites from the other side of the table as she goes face to face with seemingly "together" guys, not afraid to be a straight shooter with her penetrating, no nonsense questions as she probes the depths of the male psyche.

Tautological

"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result each time." - Einstein

How many friends do you see commit the same mistakes, or have the same tragic relationships over and over and over without end?

Each encounter with love, each relationship, no matter how trivial, is a lesson meeting you, waiting to happen. Each ounce of present is a moment ripe for growth and revelation.

If you fail to learn the lessons along your path the first time around, you'll meet them again and again.

Carpe Diem, baby. Time to end the tail-chase.

Spontaneous O

Have someone say this to you, and see what happens:

chocolate fudge brownie cake with hot caramel and peanut butter toffee chunk ice cream

Giddyupityness

Don't you just love that feeling you get when your crushing on someone? That crazy feeling of aliveness that zaps through your nerves like quicksilver on speed? That perpetual feeling of butterflies that renders you shaky, yet making you so high you need something to bring you down, to dull the tinglies, because it's just too much? But meanwhile you're just giddy with energy and smiles like light and happiness are seeping through your cellular walls like something heavenly?

The body electric

Excerpt from I Sing the Body Electric, by Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass:

This is the female form;
A divine nimbus exhales from it from head to foot;
It attracts with fierce undeniable attraction! ...

The great work of the noble warrior

In the name of the healthy masculine, Matthew Fox asks the men among us to step up and wake up to the big shift that's happening (and necessary) for the (spiritual) evolution our our species and for the sake of the planet in this article in ODE Magazine.

He writes:

"Women have been recovering their stories and their archetypes. Where are the men in the awakening our species needs so badly? Where is the healthy masculine in men and in women?

"Our culture has latched onto images of God as male and then defined for us what male means. Male means winning (being No. 1 in sports, business, politics, academia), going to war (“kill or be killed”), being rational, not emotional (“boys don’t cry”) and embracing homophobia (fear of male affection). Male means domination, lording over others—whether nature, one’s own body, women or others.

"Thomas Berry, a Catholic priest of the Passionist Order and an eco-theologian, talks about the need for “The Great Work.” What is this Great Work? It’s “the task of moving modern industrial civilization from its present devastating influence on the Earth to a more benign mode of presence.” Such a great work will require great spirits, real warriors, and it will require steering our moral outrage and our powers of competition in more positive directions.

"The Great Work is “not a role that we have chosen. It is a role given to us, beyond any consultation with ourselves. ... We are, as it were, thrown into existence with a challenge and a role that is beyond any personal choice. The nobility of our lives, however, depends upon the manner in which we come to understand and fulfill our assigned role.” Noble warriors are called for."

The one after the first

"Oh I'm intrigued," she smiled as she heard the girl's story. "This sounds so much like "The One Before THE ONE." Have you heard of that? Where the person you think is "the one" turns out to not be it, but really helps you realize what you really want... And the next One is the one that really hits it home."

Shin splints

"I heard The Shins today," she said to her roommate. "Do you like The Shins?"

"Not really," her roommate replied.

"They kinda remind me of ..." she started, with that reminiscent look on her face.

"... Of which one? 'What's-His-Face'? Or, 'He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named'?" her roommate replied dryly.

A wry smile crept over her face as she laughed at herself. "Yeah, that one..."

i(heart)him

She: I (heart) him

Chorus: Uh-oh, she (hearts) him.

Great expectations

She listened to the giddy gaggle of her friend carry on about his abstract finer points, the attractive ones, the ones that would translate into what makes a great lover. All those little things that built up the pillar upon which this semi-fantastic boy was erected.

"You know, I hate to burst your bubble," she smiled honestly, smelling the smelly smell of great sexpectations, "regardless of who you think he is, he still puts his pants on one leg at a time. I just hope it's not a let down for you if it ever comes to fruition."

Her friend's dreamy smile barely faded, her hope hardly cracked. "The bar's been set pretty low," she admitted. "It won't take much to surpass what's come before..."

The tell-tale dance

"Dancing is a vertical expression of a horizontal desire."

It's been said that you can learn a lot about how a man performs the horizontal tango by how he busts-a-move on the dance floor.

"We saw some great dancers up in Breckenridge," she said about the latest sociological research on her most recent night out in the mountain town. "There was this one guy who was a really great dancer. ...But amazingly, he was even better by himself." [insert laughter here]

Dancing is more than a memorized set of footsteps. It's about the sensuous, the feel and the rhythm of the moment, no worries about text-book choreography - as any good horizontal tussle should be.

Take note at the next club or wedding and do some guesswork. Report back if the rule holds true.

Waiting on her world to change

"How are things going with him?" her mother asked, again.

She sighed, empty of emotion, not sure how to really answer that, again. "Fine," she muttered.

Her mom wistfully said, "Oh Sweetie, I'm really excited for the day that you're really in love with someone..."

Do you know where he gets off?

She left for work early that morning. Caught the same shuttle-bus that she always rode down the walking mall through the Denver Metroplex. And there he was. Again. The man in the hot suit.

He was the only man in this city of tired casual rustic wear that was tailored to the nines in a double breasted charcoal pinstriped cashmere blend Armani suit with a striped baby blue tie which only accentuated the fine details of his overall ensemble.

The suit makes the man.

She paused her gaze, momentarily breathless and wondering if this beau could pull off jeans with the same suave. He handled his attache case incredible well. She wished she was his briefcase.

She walked passed him on the way out and winked: "I can't wait to see your ascot."

The best way to stay warm

"What are you going to do tonight?" she asked her roommate as she was getting ready for a cold weekend up in the mountains with a handful of girls planning to meet random people and forget about flaky boys.

"I don't know," her roommate said, contemplating the options and wishing she was burrito wrapped in a pile of woolens. "Probably just laundry, watch movies, knit a hat and wait for a hot sexy Latin American man to come over and ravish me in my fresh clean sheets."

She laughed. "Body heat would keep the heating bill down..."

Shiver me timbers

Nora Roberts says that romance novels "are a celebration of relations, finding love, overcoming obstacles, and making commitments. I think that is something very worthy of respect. They're not just about naked pirates, although what's wrong with a naked pirate now and again?"

Bold

The shadow of an autumn butterfly flitted past her afternoon window on it's whimsical trajectory in the sun.

"Maybe I'm just putting out the "I'm here" vibe," she thought to herself as she paused from work. "I need to emanate the "I'm here for the taking" vibe for this one..."

Sweetness & light

"In a third stage moment, you are ready to be worshipped as you are, as the light of love that lives as all life's power. "I am light. Take me, if you dare."

"You are not just a body to be entered or a mind to be shared. You are the very light of life, alive as the love that yearns to open at the heart of all beings.

"You are moved by a force of love much larger than clitoris and career. Your true power isn't limited by your body or created by your mind, but flows open as the force of love, alive and bright as the universe."

David Deida, Dear Lover, p 139.

Mirror, mirror

"Your shells make you the last person able to feel whether your true heart is being expressed through your body to the world. That's why, as you grow more open in two-bodied love, you must choose and inspire a man whose spiritual and sexual direction you trust more than your own. And your man must choose and claim a woman ... whose heart-responsiveness and deep sensitivity he trusts more than what he can see for himself."

David Deida, Dear Lover, p 129.

Man eater

"Is that your boyfriend?" the bartender asked as he looked behind her.

"You mean that short bald guy with the angry look on his face?" she questioned.

He nodded as he mixed her Stoli tonic.

Oh, no!" she laughed, hard, with a big smile on her face: "Come on - I can do better than that."

Just my imagination?

"You should write about us," he said as they climbed onto the rooftop stargazing deck of a charming home in the foothills and sat together.

"Oh, I've written about you," she confessed, staring into the milky way, not sure if he had heard her. Not even sure if he had ever read her blog. Not even sure if he would have recognized himself in it, anyway, since she wrote so covertly (or did she?) so as to not hurt any tender hearts. She wanted to list off the post titles to see if he recognized any of them.

He was certainly the muse behind many posts, and there could have been so many more. It was hard for her to not be so revealing when it came to recounting instances with him, that unless it was many contexts removed, she simply couldn't blog about it.

On the other hand, it was such a great story - at least in her head, as she hung onto every felt nuance that said "wow, this is it schweetie. Run with it" -- that it was difficult not to write it. But the governor on her imagination is what stopped her all along from sharing such sweet tales.

How revealing could she be? Did he already know? He must know...

The cloak of the night air settled on her as stars streamed across the heavens.

Lost in translation?

Is great sex - really powerful, to the core openness, healing, ravishing sex -- a myth?

"You might have better luck with your little electric buddy," a friend IM'd me.

I reassured her that the vibrator can only do so much. There's so much more to expansive sexual experiences than batteries. There's a cosmic powered energy party of two involved.

The mythic realm, like dreams, don't translate well -- as they are free of the limitations of time and space. While ever expanding sexual tussles with an adept partner can warrant the arrest of the space-time continuum in mythic proportions, it is at the same time a lived expression of love felt to the fullest - an experience that may defy the limitations of a lexicon, but not the speechless language of the open heart.

A new first

She received a new body for her 28th birthday, and she wanted to christen it with all she had dreamed of.

Wishful thinkin

It was one of those emailed get to know you questionaires from a friend... 30 questions of get to know you to be exact.

She paused at question 20: 

If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, what would it be?

She thought for a second, fully pondering what the most blissed out thing could be in the next life. And then it hit her.

'the lover of Johnny Depp...' she typed.

Crimson hoody

Before she stepped out for an evening walk, she grabbed her sweatshirt from the chair and pulled it over her head. The familiar feel of her hoody was redolent of the night prior, where he had placed his jacket over it. She breathed in deep and stepped out in the crunchy fall air, walking on cloud nine.

Napkin notes 2.0

"We should make you some dating cards," I said to her. "You know, with your number and stuff on it, and you can hand it out to your potential suitors."

Canoodle

A question arose about the meaning of the word "Canoodle" during a most recent round of Cranium. Since the meaning was tangential to the game, though we all took a guess, it was put on the list of things to Google the following day. So we did.

"Let's look up Canoodle," I said to my internettedly connected roommate.

She typed, clicked and was amazed at the results. Of the guesses from the evening prior, our definitions were not so hot and heavy. This is a word with a span of innuendos:

1. v. (slang) caress, fondle, or pet amorously.
2. v. intr. To engage in caressing, petting, or lovemaking.
3. v. tr. To win over or convince by cajoling or flattering

"Whenever I hear Canoodle, I think of those foam things that you play with in a pool..." she said.

"Those are FUNoodles," I replied.

She raised an eyebrow: "Canoodling is fun too..."

Patience, young grasshopper

My friend Corinne went through a series of relationships with a line up of different men and scenarios of hook-up. Some were the obvious mutual use of each other as sex-objects, others were relationships that started and ended in a relatively short period. Overall, the common thread though the past gamut of beaus was quick romps in the sack. Unfulfilling and limply lasting.

But the recent one was different:

"It's been over 2 months, and I really like him," she told me. "We haven't had sex yet. At first that worried me. I kept thinking something must be wrong, but I still want to get in his pants. I love him."

"Wow." I replied, at once perplexed and impressed. "This seems like such a big non-move for a guy."

"Yes! And believe me, it's been a challenge. I've learned there's a difference between sex and love. You owe it to yourself to figure out the difference."

In need of a Feminine Divine costume

His father and brothers were coming to visit. She wasn't sure how she could handle it. All those boys in one small space, drinking, playing cards, belching and trying to out-fart each other. Why wasn't the house bigger...big enough to handle that with a place to escape? She felt overwhelmed by unaware masculine forces, and it was too much. She went in search of a Feminine Divine costume...

In accordance with the prophecy

He came into the kitchen, fresh from a much-needed massage that he'd scheduled that morning. He didn't get in with a female masseuse, however.

"How was it?" she asked with a grin, half expecting a semi-creeped out, homophobic answer.

"It felt good," he replied with the post rub down chillaxed grog on his visage. "I feel better."

"That's good! What was the massage therapist like? Better than the last one you had?"

"Yes. I think you'd really like him," he paused, looked down into the sink, then added: "I mean, really like him. It's guys like that that make me wonder why you're with someone like me."

Her curiosity perked at this little confession as he got ready to go back to work, on sunny Saturday afternoon.

Energy bodies

“Each memory that has left its trace with me, lingers forever, as if part of me.”
- Nizami, The Story of Layla and Majnun

Two spinning spheres, tied up and twisted and tangled up. We collide, we gravitate towards each other, we are held in some crazy magnetic force of attraction. Sometimes it's a balance of attraction and repulsion.

We are vibrant masses of vibrations - composed of all the parts of physics, chemistry and biology in the universe. Essentially, we are charged energy bodies coming into contact with other energy bodies everyday.

In relationship, this energetic closeness provides quite an exchange that's more than just fluids -- it impacts your mood, your physique, your happiness levels. Good or bad, long or short, a relationship imprints on the energetic field of the body by its impact on the nervous system and how we've processed all that information and happenstance of all those years together. This is how we get tied up emotions, learn habits and ways of reacting from being with someone over time, have trouble letting go.

It's a full moon, any kind of madness is permissible

...by Saturday evening, the emotional turbulence was too much to hold back. She plopped the laundry on the bed and fell into a pillow as the flood gates opened. So did the convulsive sobs from deep within. She was certain that the neighbors could hear her wails through the open windows. The deluge didn't stop for 30 minutes. It left her with a stitch in her side and quiet relief from the edginess.

The hole in my heart that can only be filled by you

Perhaps Eros is an interlocutor in the space between, drumming up desire at the edges of flesh and reason. Anne Carson writes that Eros gives notice to edges, to boundaries. Between those boundaries, desire is born:

"Eros is an issue of boundaries. He exists because certain boundaries do. In the interval between reach and grasp, between glance and counterglance, between ‘I love you’ and ‘I love you too,’ the absent presence of desire comes alive. But the boundaries of time and glance and I love you are only aftershocks of the main, inevitable boundary that creates Eros: the boundary of flesh and self between you and me. And it is only, suddenly, at the moment when I would dissolve that boundary, I realize I never can….

"If we follow the trajectory of eros we consistently find it tracing out this same route: it moves out from the lover toward the beloved, then ricochets back to the lover himself and the hole in him, unnoticed before. Who is the real subject of most love poems? Not the beloved. It is that hole.”

Crazy women, stupid men & the feminine principle

It takes two to shovel

elevision - ROBERT MASTERS: IS MONOGAMY WORTH IT? from alex king on Vimeo.

I want you to want me

"Are you happy?" he asked coolly, after a long day of packing and preparing the house.

"About what?" she said lightly.

"About how everything happened. Is this what you wanted?"

"Well, I can't say that I totally wanted a divorce. But something needed to be different. If this is the way it needed to work out..." she shrugged. "What about you? Are you OK? Do your people call to check up on you?"

"Like who?!" he looked at her incredulously.

"...family, friends, you know - your tribe." She looked at him, searching his face for a sign he was really OK. "Do you wish I had called you more?"

"No..." he started. "But that's just it. You didn't call."

"Well, we were separated, I figured you didn't want to hear from me. So, I gave you your space," she said, surprised.

"But if you wanted me, if you really wanted to hear from me, you would have been calling, emailing. Through this whole thing I never felt like you even wanted me. It's been like that for a while. And when it came down to it, that was a deciding factor for me. I didn't want to be with someone who doesn't want to be with me. Deida writes that the feminine must want her man more than he wants her... I never felt that."

She was taken aback. Deida also writes that a needy masculine is a big turnoff for the feminine. She wants a man who knows what he wants. Decisive. On task. Directed. The Yang to her Yin.

Apparently, in this case, they both missed each other's boat in terms of meeting needs and setting into practice an up spiraling dynamic of zesty l-o-v-e and healthy desire. They both seemed to hit the turned-off switch.

But, did they drop the ball? She considered this cycle: The feminine wants a man who knows what he wants and meets her desire. Man wants a woman who wants him (and perhaps to hotly get in his pants) and who meets his desire. Man who wavers on his direction makes woman test him. Man needs to reassure woman's testing to maintain his authenticity in her eyes. Without reassurance, woman will continue to test man out of his mind until he questions his every move and is rendered helpless by her puzzle (this eternal mystery of woman?) - disabling him to go in any direction. Yet, woman is still turned off by this weak Yang of a male -- and this off switch stays on lock down until he gets moving again. Once he motivates, then she's on to him like flies to a ... well, you get the picture. That swarming Desire is alive again as long as the dynamic energy between the two is flowing. Without that, nothing moves in this tennis match.

Afterglow

"She packed up her potential and all she had learned, grabbed a Cute pair of shoes and headed out to change a few things. Her heart glowed with a degree of happy assurance."

by Leslie Standley, Curly Girl Design

Potential energy

"He had so much potential as a person, and us together, and all that energy was just wasted after 3 years." she said to me on the phone.

"It's just like Kyle and I," I shared. "We had such great potential as an 'us,' and are such great people as individuals, but we just lost our forward motion together and came to a standstill where things coagulated..."

"... and just think of all that time spent trying to direct that energy somewhere, and to end up going nowhere after 6 years..."

"Yeah, I know. We need to find someone who matches our energy and wants to carry it forward with us."

"No more being in love with potential!" she issued.

Happy Anniversary

He sat across from her on the brocade bench by the window on the one-way side street restaurant on the day after their first anniversary, with a full view of the gallery in which they celebrated their marriage.

"I think you probably already know this at this point," he began, " but I decided I want a divorce. I want to be in mediation within the two weeks and put the house up for sale right away..."

In that moment she felt like a newborn giraffe who had just dropped 6 feet to the ground after leaving the cozy safety and comfort of its mother's womb.

She had been waiting for him to make up his mind for himself about what he wanted in the relationship, and only the speed of his delivery came as a surprise. But still, she was speechless considering the juxtaposition of their first anniversary date - not that she had ever been one for such novelties. The only sound that could be heard was the silence of her response and the blink of her eyelids as she stared at him from the other brocade bench across the table. She had a full view of the County Courthouse (across from the gallery), where they would end their legal contract of love. What a triangle. Oh, the irony...

His eyes became a bit watery as he delivered a surrender: "...I tried hard for 3 weeks, thinking of what I could do to save this... I didn't sleep that whole time, and nothing I thought of seemed to work. I really tried, and it makes me mad at myself that I couldn't make it work..."

Blink. Blink.

The space between

It's hard enough to wrap our minds and hearts around our significant others without projections and seeing through our disillusioned visions of them. Talking to him/her still sometimes skirts the subject, or object of our affections, and some things are lost in translation. But what goes on in the space between is the opportunity for a connection that is beyond words, if we give that space the room it needs to flourish.

I read a great article today on the inherent laziness in busy-ness by Dr. Reggie Ray, Buddhist scholar, teacher and practitioner. I most liked his comments in regards to what his wife won't put up with and how she demands his presence:

"My ambition to accomplish things is going to be one of the last things to go. I can’t help it; it’s just the way that I am. I see a pile of leaves that need to be raked up and I start salivating. I love to do things. I love to be active. And you can say, “Well, that’s great.” But there’s neurosis in that. It’s a way of shutting out space. This is another thing my wife has taught me: when there’s no space nothing really happens.

"I had a wonderful quotation by Chögyam Trungpa up on my wall during my [meditation] retreat. It goes something like, “If there isn’t a complete sense of openness and space, then communication between two people can not happen. Period. It’s that simple.” The communication we have with each other is often based on agendas: negotiating with other people to get what we want. That’s not communication.

"My wife taught me that. Insistently. It’s to the point where that busy mind is just not acceptable in our house anymore. It doesn’t matter what’s going on my life. If she comes into my study, I have to be completely there. And that’s fabulous, because I’m never able to get invested in that neurosis. If I do, she’ll let me have it.

"Giving up this state of busy-ness doesn’t mean that we aren’t going to be active, creative people. We’re giving up the mentality where you can’t actually relate to what’s in front of you because you have this mental speed going on. Let it go. I’m saying it to you. This is an issue that we are going to have to address if we want to be any good to anyone."

Read the rest of the article at elephantjournal.com

The saddest part of a broken heart

Let it Die, by Feist

Let it die and get out of my mind
We don't see eye to eye
Or hear ear to ear

Don't you wish that we could forget that kiss
And see this for what it is
That we're not in love

The saddest part of a broken heart
Isn't the ending so much as the start

It was hard to tell just how I felt
To not recognize myself
I started to fade away

And after all it won't take long to fall in love
Now I know what I don't want
I learned that with you

The saddest part of a broken heart
Isn't the ending so much as the start
The tragedy starts from the very first spark
Losing your mind for the sake of your heart
The saddest part of a broken heart
Isn't the ending so much as the start

Contract out

"Do you feel guilt?" the therapist asked from the chair across the room.

"About what?" the client asked for clarity.

"About thinking about someone else, wanting someone else, at this stage of your separation?" the therapist replied.

"Not really." The client continued, "I know I would never act on it until the final line was drawn and the terms between us had changed - I'm not out to hurt anyone in this scenario. That's not fair for any party involved. It should be clear and kind, through and through."

"That's good, as the guilt is unnecessary baggage in the process of letting go," the therapist counseled. "The heart has its own contract. When the heart's not in it anymore, you know that those ties have been cut. The piece of paper is just a piece of paper at that point."

Superfluous, or a necessary flavor?

"when i say you sucked my brain out
the english translation
is i am in love with you"
- Ani Difranco, Dialate

In a most recent discussion re: crushes with a dear pal, the question was posed: So, really, how much of your brain power was spent thinking about this person all day?

The answer was scary.

In a very recent movie I watched but can't remember (Dan in Real Life or Charlie Bartlett, maybe?) one of the lines went something like this: "You know that if you think about someone for a total of 20 minutes a day you have a crush on them?" I was sheepishly self conscious after hearing that line echoed from the silver screen, namely because I've blown that number out of the water a few times on fantastic people who barely knew me.

Besides the fact that it's nice to have lovely distractions about a person that may or may not know that you exist, something so removed from reality that it makes your heart flutter with that sweet nectar that feeds the love centers in your brain, why do some of us feel like we need another to the point that it occupies that much brain power?

"If I had a nickel for every time I thought of you..."

In biology courses in undergrad, we learned that the males are dispensable. It only takes one well equipped dude to do the necessary deed with a handful of females to propagate the species. Of course, that's just purely procreation. So what about the recreation part makes this interplay of desire so fixated and paramount? Are we really nothing more than genetically programmed hormones?

In the beginning (and end) of the movie-musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch (highly recommended), there's a tale of a circle that's cut in two and is constantly searching for it's other half. Hedwig has a musical soliloquy at one point that goes like this:

"It is clear that I must find my other half. But is it a he or a she? What does this person look like? Identical to me? Or somehow complimentary? Does my other half have what I don't? Did he get the looks? The luck? The love? Were we really separated forcibly or did he just run off with the good stuff? Or did I? Will this person embarrass me? What about sex? Is that how we put ourselves back together again? Or can two people actually become one again?"

Getting back to the most recent conversation with the dear pal that brought up this blogoriffic rumble-tumble: the other question posed was "What would it take for us to NOT have a desire to find another, or be preoccupied with another? I mean, we're fine alone, etc., but why - what is this...need? Especially, when (as we are well aware) relationships take work and are not easy and no one's perfect and people change and for some reason even if there is enough to build a relationship on it still doesn't always work out, and some of us can't stop thinking about guys who are assholes and have done us wrong, so wrong... [etc. etc. etc.]."

My mind searched the Sex & the City episode catalog with no recollection of this specific question, which seemed unlikely, and (note to self) required further research. But, on this topic: consider for a moment the Carrie and Big plot. In the meantime, it would be nice to have an 'off' switch for those thoughts that play in loops till it's madness in your head.

Is this life ever without a love story? Is bittersweet always the flavor? Desire - Eros - is a verb. It moves. It never stops, and there we are in it's wake.

Four types of relationships

Back when I began to sense that most partnerships seem to have a lifespan of about 6 years and that two people really weren't meant to spend an entire life together 'till death do they part, I learned that there are 4 types of relationships: reason, season, purpose and divine partnership.

Reason: two people come together for a reason, whether it be for growing each other in certain ways, or to learn a valuable lesson.

Season: perhaps you find each other through a brief spell, that turns and changes as soon as the seasons. This can still hold valuable lessons.

Purpose: when two people come together to serve a joint purpose -- and without that purpose, the relationship fades.

Divine Partnership: This is what you think of when you think of finding that one, you know That One. When two souls shine very brightly together and are connected on a level that (I'd hope) we all aspire to experience.

Tenderfooted & toil in love

Tenderfoot: A newcomer or a beginner at something, one not used to hardships.

This dissolving relationship was my very first one. From the outset, it's been a hell of a learning experience. I went into it knowing what I wanted, but thinking that perhaps I was a bit too idealistic and inexperienced once the reality of a real relationship formalized, so I let some things slide. "Maybe this is normal...?" I kept going with the flow - filled with self doubt, feeling like I was wrong in regards to all those things I thought I wanted, even though I got a gut vibe that this wasn't totally what I wanted. Having never been in a relationship before, how was I to know, right? But on paper, it all seemed so right.

As Jack Johnson sings: "You can't always hold your head higher than your heart."

Self doubt in the face of a strong intuition spells trouble for the luminosity of the soul as it tries to shrink into what it's been given to fit into. It just felt like work to stay there - work in terms of all the relationship issues that would arise that just didn't fit me - yet, it all seemed to be status quo. "I'm supposed to what?" Why was this human love business so hard and not always so fun?

Consider the myth of Psyche and Eros. Psyche, a mere mortal, was alienated because of her intense beauty, loved and impregnated by a god whom she had never seen, but one day did and was subsequently put through the ringer: she did away with her jealous sisters, ended up in a most unhelpful temple, was refused sage advice and assistance by the big goddesses Venus and Juno, was ordered to separate a pile of mixed grains - an impossible task - by nightfall (was helped by an ant and spared), was then ordered to gather wool from vicious sheep and get water from the unattainable river and then - THEN! - demanded to venture into the underworld and get a piece of Persephone's beauty creme for Venus's tired and stressed out mother-self. To make a long story shorter, finally Eros rescued Psyche and they got hitched by decree of Jupiter.

PS. Their daughter was Voluptas (meaning: pleasure, or bliss) -- the goddess of sensual pleasures.

Psyche didn't have it easy either, but at least she got to hook up with the immortal hunk of burning love and give birth to bliss.

Perhaps, beyond and in the midst of the human story, the moral of the stories lie in the journey, the lessons from the toil, and perhaps in both cases, it is the story of the soul searching for something more blissful - the divine partner.

Splitsville

"I've got a lot of love and a lot of nerve /
So watch me while I take this curve..."
- Ani Difranco

I think I'm headed for splitsville - yes, the D-word - and I feel fine. I have no regrets. It's mutual and we owe it to each other to dissolve kindly.

In other news, my happiness is slowly creeping back. I've been shrinking for too long, and my soul can't fit this limited span of love-container any more. I need more depth and richness. I deserve more. I want someone to see my soul, to see the sun shine out my ass. And, it will come in due time -- in universal porportions -- I know this.

Hear me roar

I received Robert Master's September Newsletter - the Crucible of Awakening - in my inbox this morning. The essay this month was on Feminine Anger, so I checked it out for his insights on this very powerful matter.

Clear female anger is fierce heart-compassion beckoning her beau (or whomever the anger is directed to) to wake up. I've felt this. I've voiced this. I've roared to my boy. (And, I'm not sure he really got it even then.)

But, it amazes me that it takes that much of a reaction for the female voice to be heard by her male counterpart / consort at times. I mean, really - this rage takes energy. Sometimes it feels like I need to harness my inner-bitch (who is much closer to the surface at certain times of the month) and risk being called such trite labels as 'overactive', 'nag' and 'fun-ruiner' by an unreceptive audience. The ninja-force of a clear-cutting goddess roar should never be missed or leave you unmoved - unless you wanna get booted to the curb or drop kicked into the next universe.

Robert Masters eloquently writes:

"Anger is culturally held as far less legitimate an expression for women than for men. The result is that for many women anger is unavailable as a resource. And a woman marooned from her own anger is very likely going to have a much harder time maintaining healthy boundaries; she will tend to feel more helpless, more fearful, more prone to despair and depression.

"When her anger cannot be depressed — kept or pressed down — its energies may be routed into resentment or bitterness. And what a pity this is, given that anger can be, whatever its degree of fieriness, a form of caring. In my work I have often seen a woman’s anger — full-out clean rage, free of sarcasm, blaming, and shaming — cut through the cognitive muddling and emotional dissociation of her partner or others, waking them up to what they’re actually doing.

[...]
"Yet a woman expressing non-abusive rage is no murderess, psycho, or Medusa gone into isolation, but rather a potent awakener, the power of which is present to varying degrees in “everyday” women whose anger is significantly infused with caring. Wrathful compassion. Anger and love are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Anger can be full-blooded, fierce,and fiery, and still be rooted in compassion. Heart-anger.

"Just because many men fear openly expressed female anger — retreating like frantic sperm from the suddenly engulfing power of the ovum— is not reason enough to slander or suppress it. A woman who is out of touch with her anger is a woman who cannot stand her ground or give full voice to her needs, a woman who cannot sufficiently protect the little girl in her, a woman whose love lacks the guts needed to manifest real integrity."

One fish: Starfish

When you're gone, I sleep in the middle of the bed and starfish.

There is nothing better and more free and sprawling.

This is why I don't really miss you.

Boy talk?

Whenever I came back from a walk or dinner out with my girls, Kyle would always asked if we talked about our men all night. To which I pretty much said: yes.

"I mean, don't guys talk about their girls and relationship issues when they get together?" I asked him.

"No." he replied with a blank look on his face.

"Well, what do you guys talk about then?" I asked.

"I dunno, but we don't talk about you."

Wow, I thought. I couldn't imagine a conversation with a close friend not covering the current state and status of our relationships. It's how we deal and commiserate and offer advice and wisdom to each other. It's our outlet, release, and way of knowing that we're not alone. In a way, I sometimes feel like we are sharing the story of all women in a fundamentally essential way by sharing our own stories about relational scenes and scenarios.

If men don't seek this outlet with each other, where do they find it?

The guy that cut my hair said to me once: "As a whole, our society doesn't give us or promote the tools to we need to react and grow consciously, in relationships - with lovers and acquaintances."

Another darling male BFF wrote to me on this very issue: "It seems that there's a lot I take for granted about relationships. I wish they were better circumstances that brought about this discussion, but men don't often have this kind of dialog - I mean the kind that goes beyond what's covered in Cosmopolitan. I don't know if women do, but it seems like a lot is lacking the the social knowledge bank."

So, what's lacking in the social knowledge bank? More importantly, WHY?

Ever since Kyle and I started counseling this summer, he's been waking up to a new game plan when it comes to himself and his relationships -- one that squashes the tired, residual fratboy manual of the ol' in and out. The first book that was recommended to him was The Way of the Superior Man, by David Deida. After I read this book, I was doubly impressed and felt it should be required reading in Sex Ed - or future classes I forsee taught in schools of the future on Relationships: the energetic You and the energetic World.

Kyle has bought this book for a handful of his friends, and they now meet to discuss it. Some even bring to the table success stories -- things that worked -- in relating to the essential feminine in their lives. He pitches the book to them as: "If there was one book that would answer all of your questions, would you read it?"

So far, it's been a resounding yes from his circle of friends.

Spanglish

"Even though he's going on the trip, I didn't cancel it because I really want to go to Spain regardless." She admitted, not too bummed about the pending breakup.

"Yes," I said as we walked through the foothills. "And you will find a hot Spaniard named Enrique Alejandro Diaz... he will have dazzling eyes, and a thick head of hair, a warm smile, and a seductive presence... he will teach you to tango and you can make out with him in front of what's-his-name..."

"I can't wait to practice my Spanish..." she gleamed.

What was in that candle's light?

Water from Your Spring

What was in that candle's light
that opened and consumed me so quickly?

Come back my friend! The form of our love
is not a created form.

Nothing can help me but that beauty.
There was a dawn I remember

when my soul heard something
from your soul. I drank water

from your spring and felt
the current take me.

from The Essential Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks

The passion quotient

Is passion really another unquantifiable vapor that everyone wants? A dear pal emailed me pondering this very question. But he arrived at a stellar conclusion:

"... I think that the "passion" most people are looking for is the interest and desire to commit to a person and a relationship. It's the same continued fascination that keeps people driven in a career or a hobby, but instead of being directed towards a project, we want that drive, fascination, inspiration and commitment to be directed at our person."

I followed his train of thought, and I like the station it landed at. It takes something to keep a spark sparky between two people. I envy those for whom the flame always burns intensely. David Deida would suggest that a polarity of the feminine and masculine essences must always be at play to keep this dynamic fire alive.

Paris & bikinis

She strolled along the neighborhood path under a promising late summer sky, morning coffee in hand, and said, "It really sounds like you don't want to be married."

"Yeah, pretty much." I explained: "I mean, I got a student loan to pay a mortgage, not take 3 trips to Europe, ya know? I'm only 28..."

The early sounds of the day filled a brief pause when she mused, "Yes, I see it. I'm seeing this. You're too young to be married. At your age, you should be wearing bikinis in Mexico and gallivanting around Paris - not married."

Something about hearing that made me feel infinitely grand. I laughed and thought about what might lie ahead. "Paris and Bikinis it is..."

My apologies, and that smug look on my face

Ogden Nash wrote:

To keep your marriage brimming,
With love in the loving cup,
Whenever you're wrong, admit it;
Whenever you're right, shut up.

Another day at the office

Written by Nicole Musmanno

“Marriage is hard. Seriously.” This is what people say.

Seriously.

I missed that part between the Disney movies and the English gardens. Know it now. Missed it then.

My father actually once sat across from then boyfriend, now husband, not even engaged at time, and over breakfast informed us that, “The hardest job I have is not the one I go to every day, but the one I come home to every night.”

What is less mentioned is that marriage becomes comfortable. One or both becomes comfortable and if not comfortable then one or both becomes aloof. There is schedule to marriage. And if that schedule is followed then marriage is not really that hard. It is a routine.

The trouble only occurs when someone in the marriage suddenly decides they do not like the schedule anymore. They want to eat dinner 6 instead of 5. They want to have sex in the living room not the master bedroom. They want to be naked outside of the shower. All this bucks the schedule.

Then what?

Marriage becomes hard. Marriage becomes work because someone decides that the schedule no longer works for them. Then the question arises, do you still want the job? Once you see the job description has changed, do you want the job? Do you want to work with the same person, the same pay with no certainty of bonuses? Is the work load worth it?

The best part is it could have all been avoided if both involved had listened in advance and realized that marriage is a hard job. A job that left unattended, with paper piling up on the desk, might one day need two people to take on the back flow. Or, left unattended or only partially cared for, the lights will go out in the office and the job terminated. Done.

No wonder English gardens and Disney exist: for those of us who cannot face the work load and need to escape even if just for the fantasy of a different job.

What I've learned

Written by Nicole Musmanno

What I have learned: I have learned that I need passion in my life. I have learned that my parents have affected my choice on marriage. I have learned they might have been wrong.

Just like they were wrong about college out of high school, that I gave up on a horse too quickly that soon after broke my mother’s neck, and that I would regret my dog. My dog is the least of my regrets as it turns out.

What I regret is that I married a perfectly wonderful man who looks perfect on paper. He is responsible. He has an excellent work ethic. He has a great job and a promising future. He is kind. He loves dogs. He loves me.

I needed passion. I told my brain while it screamed, “no” when he proposed, that I would be fine. That I could not hurt him and actually (verbally) say “no”. That this was what I had been pushing for only to learn that indeed I should be careful what I wish for, that five years of dating does not a reason to marry make. I think maybe I gave up or just gave in.

I wanted to be married. To be someone’s forever. I had that romantic view since I read my first Jane Austin or probably earlier, maybe it was Disney’s fault or musical theatre. Point is: somewhere along the line I created an image of love eternal. Though I know marriage is work. I watched and still watch my parents work at marriage. Maybe I am a product of my generation, but I work at everything else, I am not certain I have the energy or time to work at love and marriage. But would I have the energy if I felt it were worth it?

The horse gets his supplements, the dog gets her run, my client’s get their contracts filled, and my deadlines are met. So it goes without saying that I would work at the marriage if I had to, if I saw an ends to a means. But isn’t that the end, love eternal? Or is that a fairytale? And the truth is people do live together forever, love each other forever, grow comfortable forever. They never ask what if and find the answer.

What if I want to learn the answer? Does that warrant the hurt of another? I don’t know. I have not learned that yet. I fear I might be too afraid to gain an education. So have I learned what matters?

Effulgence, or where the sun does shine

From JUNO:

Juno MacGuff: I'm losing my faith in humanity.

Mac MacGuff: Think you can narrow it down for me?

Juno MacGuff: I guess I wonder sometimes if people ever stay together for good.

Mac MacGuff: You mean like couples?

Juno MacGuff: Yeah, like people in love. [...] I just need to know if it's possible for two people to stay happy together forever, or at least for a few years.

Mac MacGuff: It's not easy, that's for sure. Now, I may not have the best track record in the world, but I have been with your stepmother for 10 years now and I'm proud to say that we're very happy.

[Juno nods]

Mac MacGuff: In my opinion, the best thing you can do is find a person who loves you for exactly what you are. Good mood, bad mood, ugly, pretty, handsome, what have you, the right person will still think the sun shines out your ass. That's the kind of person that's worth sticking with.

On the Richter scale of love

If you were to rate your current relationship on a scale of one to 10, where would you find your self? Where would your partner be?

Consider it your love number: At the low end, one means looking forward to divorce. 10 likens itself to the strong, affirmative desire and intention and excitement (think of the line Mr. Darcy echoed in the best love quote ever: "...I will have to tell you: you have bewitched me, body and soul, and I love, I love, I love you. I never wish to be parted from you from this day on.").

It it difficult to sustain a relationship if there is greater than 2 points difference between each partner's perceived love ranking.

Likewise, if both constituents are sitting mid-range (4-5-6) in mediocrity and ho-hum-ness, they can settle in that rut until the gaps between love numbers increases unsettling, thus tipping the scales to something either more fulfilling and alive or resulting in a breaking free or dissolving of whatever weak bonding mechanism keep things together.

Perhaps we've seen the mediocrity more than the matching high numerical digits from lovers. I think of my parents and grandparents (and other couples from that generation) who stuck it out for the sake of sticking it out, because that's what you did even when your spirit was writhing and withering.

I don't think it's unreal to expect a correlating elevated degree of desire, aliveness and intent (and thusly, passion) between lovers in a committed partnership. If that's not there, what keeps a relationship together in low-gear? If you're not firing on all cylinders, are you doing anyone (self included) any favors?

Snow kissed

He had just dropped me back off at my parent's house. And we were standing outside in the chill of the late night air continuing our conversation from the car which had flowed just as easily and comfortably as the rest of the evening's dialogue of many topics.

We were both home from our respective universities for the holiday break and came into contact pre-Christmas when we both hijacked our respective sister's instant messenger chat. We all went to the same high school. He graduated a year after me. Our younger siblings had been best friends since second grade.

He had always been fabulous in a super cool way -- friendly, approachable, kind -- and we always had much to talk about, not that we had really talked much over the years. So, over IM we decided to go out for late evening chai, board games and people watching at the notorious local coffee house by campus. We closed the place down.

The winter air was nippy, and the fresh loose snow flakes sparkled in the light of the porch lamp. As the talk wound down as if to call it a night and bid adieu, his hands played in his pockets as he looked down at the patterns his shoes were making in the snow. "It was lovely spending time with you," he said.

"I had fun too! Let's do it again before vaca ends." I replied, looking forward to it already.

"Come here and give me a hug."

I stepped towards him and embraced the wool peacoat that covered his tall thin frame.

"Good night, Patrick." I smiled as I turned towards the house.

"Good night, Miss Ali." he lingered briefly. "Wait..., one more thing..." he said as he turned me around and pulled me close.

"Wha..." I uttered, bemused by the moment's flurry.

"I want to kiss you."

I had no time to worry about the syntax of things before his sure hand lifted my chin to his (mighty fine) warm lips. The perfect blend of suave and desire set an electrical storm through my core for days. I could not have imagined a better first kiss.

Nothing has topped it since.

feeling is first

since feeling is first
by e.e. cummings

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a far better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
--the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for eachother: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph
And death i think is no parenthesis

Leave me breathless

Nothing wells me up and takes my breath away more than this quintessential line echoed best by Mr. Darcy in the cinematic depiction of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice:

"...I will have to tell you: you have bewitched me, body and soul, and I love, I love, I love you. I never wish to be parted from you from this day on."

In each other all along

'The minute I heard my first love story
I started looking for you, not knowing
how blind that was.

Lovers don't finally meet somewhere.
They're in each other all along.

- Rumi

the deepest secret nobody knows

i carry your heart with me
by e. e. cummings

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
i fear
no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

Osculations

os·cu·late –verb (used without object)
1. to come into close contact or union.
2. Geometry. (of a curve) to touch another curve or another part of the same curve so as to have the same tangent and curvature at the point of contact.
–verb (used with object)
3. to bring into close contact or union.
4. Geometry. (of a curve) to touch (another curve or another part of the same curve) in osculation.
5. to kiss.

Mmwa.

What I thought you said

A fan of the hilarity of mis-heard lyricism, in which the meaning of songs goes awry, I often find myself mis-hearing comments, especially on road trips. On the wide open spaces of the open road "Did you see this lane is closed?" sounds like "Did you see that lady's clothes?" Where a comment about "getting enough air" morphs into "get an end of the affair." Where something entirely unrelated to food is received as "Did you say you had pumpkin bread?!"

Due to crappy reception, this also happens in dialogue on my cell phone. Case in point: a conversation with a my incredibly loving and fearlessly interrogative friend, Bethy, with whom hard questions are thrown out like cliches and no questions are taboo. I tell her everything.

She called to segue into the current state of my union via a question about basil.

"He left yesterday morning. and I'm kind of in this limbo space. We're still monogamous, but I feel like I'm just waiting... Obviously my homework is on hold..." I said.

"Did you have good-bye sex?" she asked.

"I'm sorry. You cut out. Say it again?" I asked for a repeat.

"Did you have good-bye sex?"

"What?! Could I have good bi sex? In the meantime you mean? Oh, well... I'm not sure that was in the contract or that I'd even be interested..." (Oh my terror. Did she really say that. That was so left-field. I was so confused. Wtf.)

"No no no! [laughs] good-bye sex -- you know, like hello, good-bye, I'm leaving. Sometimes it can be good because you're both so vulnerable..." she clarified.

"[Copious amounts of laughter and audible relief] Oh, god no. None of that. And none of what I thought you said, either."

Fight & flight

"Never go to bed mad. Stay up and fight," said Phyllis Diller.

In the one real intimate relationship I've had thus far, we've never really been the fighting type. We've been calm and cool and level-headed towards each discussion of difference when it would arise. It's my method of choice. The first time we did have a all-out fight, it was instigated by underlying pre-marital stress and someone's desire for me to change my name. It was almost a one-sided fight, as I found myself confronted with a very upset person fighting on what seemed to be the foothold of principle only.

Besides being hurt, alienated and almost dumbfounded that we were actually having an explosive blow up about what I have dubbed "the name change debacle," I found myself at a loss for feeling towards his loss for words as to why this really meant so much to him that he had to pursue it in such a nasty way. To me, his arguments and reasons didn't hold up to why this was suddenly such a make it or break it matter. I found it terribly insensitive and just wanted to leave. I wanted a divorce before we were even married.

Later, I mentioned this first fight scenario to my therapist, as well as my lack of trust for the statements that had then been issued before me. "Feelings don't come from the intellect," he replied. "Feelings can't be rationalized. But it is strange that it meant so much to him then."

I mentioned then that just recently the he that had unleashed the intensity of fight admitted to me that he did it to see what would happen if we actually had a fight.

WTF? Is fighting really necessary in any relationship? Why would anyone want to be in such a volatile space?

When I think of the times when my friends report that "they had another big fight" with their significant other, that never feels right to me. I again asked my therapist for his thoughts on the necessity of fighting, and he agreed that it is superfluous. "Fighting only creates hurt," he said.

Indeed it does. And it sure as hell didn't make me want to change my name, either.

Arguments are won intellectually, not love.
Tallyho,
The Universe
PS. Love is won, with a dash of trust, a smidge of fear, and a pinch of letting go.

Tickle

"Erotica is using a feather, pornography is using the whole chicken." - Isabel Allende

Driven crazy

I just embarked upon Thelma & Louise style road trip to the West Coast via Vegas. As we left colorful Colorado behind and entered the varied landscapes of Utah, I realized that I felt good. I let out a calm breath as I scanned the vista of the place that held so many memories for me. And then it hit me: for over the past half-decade I've always touted and advertised how much I despised driving, but I was having fun on this delightful road trip while feeling at ease. "Why is this so different from all the other road trips I've had with my significant other in which this was not the case?" I asked out loud to my co-pilot.

According to our respective men, neither of us had ever driven for more than an hour on a road trip and on a good day couldn't read a map and were probably not going to make it to our first day destination in the south of Nevada -- oh, and Utah is desolate for miles and miles, by the way, so we should have a back up plan.

We mused what it was like when we would drive and the boys would ride along: constant commentary from the passenger seat, criticisms, demands, abrupt questioning, gripping the 'oh shit' handle.... Egad. Nothing but stress and distraction for someone trying to operate a vehicle from point A to point B safely.

Who would want to share driving responsibilities when scenarios unfold like that?

"Fine." we say, "YOU drive." And we hand over the keys and try to stifle it in the other front seat. And thus, we resort to what my delicate flower of a significant other likes to call Driving Miss Daisy or Driving the Bus.

Stop the bus, stuff it, and move over, Hoke Colburn. We'll take the wheel from here, thanks.

With limited maps, good conversation and a solid sense of direction, we arrived safe, sound, sane and ahead of schedule each day of our 'ill-fated' adventure.

We talked about big things, little things, listened to good music, analyzed lyrics, we advised and questioned each other with grace and kindness with sensitive vulnerable issues and hard questions we faced. We solved the world's problems and drew up a plan for a peaceful world domination and harmony in less time than the current administration. And, we talked about how we dreaded road trips with our past significant others. "How big of a turn on would it be to have a great road trip with a guy? Do they even have any idea?" we mused...