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