Dance, dance otherwise we are lost*

The Big Chill is upon us and  I  a m  f r e e z i n g  so it's best to keep moving. Plus the deathly pallor of our barren scenery is making me a bit ... melancholy. Nature is a study in the beauty of simplicity, silence and serenity right now, but it's hard not to overdose on melatonin during the dark winter days so you gotta fight it, sweetie darlings, and dancing ... dancing makes everything better. Take it from someone for whom dancing once was, still is, always will be a system of survival. But that's just how I feel. That's just how I feel, that's just how I feel, trying to reach the things that I can't see.

Come on, you need a break. Oh yes you do. We both do. Come here. Don't look at your feet, don't look at the ceiling, or the walls, look at me.  That's it. Shall we dance?

ENVY - AM I WRONG from Kavar Singh on Vimeo.

*Pina Bausch

Jeanne d'Arctique

Temperature: a sunny -15/5 (we had some 20 sunny hrs in December. In Dec 2012? 24 minutes.)

Eating: as long as it's heated, anything goes

Drinking: as long as it's heated, anything goes

Watching: travel dreams, like every other night

Listening: to Hubby using power tools. It's the new season of our personal Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. Oh, I'll do my share.

Reading: what needs to be read

Writing: what needs to be written

Feeling: Of winter's lifeless world each tree

Now seems a perfect part; 

Yet each one holds summer's secret

Deep down within its heart. 

~Charles G. Stater

Eleison

Happy New Year, dearest denizens! Everyone accounted for? Are you glad or sad to see the holiday season go? How was yours anyway?

Mine tasted of dates, gingerbread and smoked salmon, of figs, butter fudge and port, of glögg, ham and wine. It smelled of pine needles and hyacinths, of burning wood and endless rain, meaning it looked quite bleak outside but chummy and yummy indoors. The soundtrack was a cacophonic symphony of languages and laughter, of playful slash bickering kids, of carols and classics and rock and pop. And it felt like a change of pace with a pinch of bittersweetness for all the loved ones I couldn't talk to or touch, only think about this holiday season.

Many look back, take stock and plan ahead around New Year's, make promises, make demands. This year I'll do more, be more. Reach higher, go faster, be stronger. Nothing wrong with that, I guess, if it really keeps you going where you're headed, if it actually helps. I see no shame in taking the long and winding road, though, as long as you don't stop. Be as kaizen as you dare, just please don't be too hard on yourself.

Maybe this year you'll speak a little softer, be a little kinder, more forgiving and merciful. Yes, especially to yourself. In this world that so greatly values independence, moxie and self-reliance, I wish everyone would find the strength to admit to themselves and say it to others that "I need you." Those seem to be the hardest words. Not I'm sorry or Thank you or even I love you but I need you.

OK. Up and at it, sweetie darlings. We have all year to get this right. Let's not waste a single day.

Mistletoe

Sitting under the mistletoe
(Pale-green, fairy mistletoe),
One last candle burning low,
All the sleepy dancers gone,
Just one candle burning on,
Shadows lurking everywhere:
Some one came, and kissed me there.

Tired I was; my head would go
Nodding under the mistletoe
(Pale-green, fairy mistletoe),
No footsteps came, no voice, but only,
Just as I sat there, sleepy, lonely,
Stooped in the still and shadowy air
Lips unseen—and kissed me there.

(Walter de la Mare, 1913)

Happy holidays, sweetie darlings, and a smooch on top,

D.

Running in the family

My aunt contacted me. She said she'd found something among my paternal grandmother's belongings I'd want to see. That my aunt had unearthed whatever it was I knew nothing about didn't surprise me. Geography and the uneasy rapport my mother had with her in-laws in general and her mother-in-law in particular resulted in my never being close to my father's side of the family as a child, a gap we've done our best to bridge in my adulthood.

My paternal grandmother was a complex woman who'd lived through happy and hard times alike. She was immensely grateful for all the good in her life but forgiveness was not her first impulse. In good and bad, her memory was infallible. She would recite lengthy poems, and often did on someone's special occasion, and when she spoke you got the impression she'd thoroughly thought through what she wanted to say before she uttered a single syllable. And you got the impression you weren't hearing the half of it.

What my aunt sent me only cemented that impression. My grandmother knew I wrote. I never knew so did she. Pages upon pages upon pages of thoroughly thought out lines I never knew existed. And here I thought that I was the black sheep, right-handed with some of the athletic and artistic inclinations running in both sides of the family but someone who'd rather be writing.

I don't know why she chose not to tell me. Was writing just a pastime? A private passion? A shattered or buried dream, just one of the things countless women of her generation couldn't cultivate because it simply wasn't an option, profession-wise? Where did all those lines come from? What was she thinking and how did she feel and did she have someone to share those words with, a reader, another writer? 

I stare at those pages and she's with me, breathing in every word. And then I lose her all over again. We'll never talk about this. I'll never get to ask all I badly want to ask and it makes me sad and it makes me angry and it makes me ashamed of myself because it's a selfish, childish wish. If she'd wanted to share she could have. It also gives me solace and satisfaction of the mischievous kind to think that maybe this was too important, too personal to share. My writing life was mine and mine alone. And hers was obviously none of my business. That is so true to character my first impulse is to forgive even when my gut reaction is anger and a vague sense of disappointment and regret. We had this in common and we never got to share it. And that's how she wanted it.

I hope she found what she was looking for when she sat down to write. I hope she dreamed and soared and reveled, lost in those innermost thoughts, that inner life that was hers and hers alone, that immovable, unshakable core we all possess. It's beautiful and it's powerful and I've witnessed people pull through the most awful of events and circumstances without losing their minds, hope, integrity or dignity because they never lost touch with it even if it seemed they'd lost everything else. Promise me you'll cherish and nurture yours, whether you're sharing it with all of humanity or never telling a soul, whether you call it soul, heart, spirit, grit... Whatever you call it, you know what I'm talking about. So promise me. Promise.