Morning Snuggle…

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Morning Snuggle

© Pia Ulin

Body of a woman, white hills, white thighs,
when you surrender, you stretch out like the world.

Cuerpo de mujer, blancas colinas, muslos blancos,
te pareces al mundo en tu actitud de entrega.

Pablo Neruda

One of the things I loved most about being married was snuggling in bed wrapped in the arms of my beloved in the early hours of the morning.  It was during those precious moments under warm layers of an eiderdown and cotton sheets, with our bodies intertwined as one, that we shared our innermost thoughts, hopes, and dreams.

Forsaking all others, we talked in hushed tones and tenderly stroked each other’s heads and soft spots until dawn’s first light.  I savored and luxuriated in those moments of reverie and touch before we would reluctantly break away to begin the morning routine.  Building a few minutes of intimacy and pleasure into the start of the day can make all the difference to a relationship and the quality of your life.  You may come to treasure and yearn for more of those tender times, too.

© Tom Shannon

Engaging in Life…

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© Jesper Brandt

Sometimes we have love and sometimes we lose love. Sometimes love can hurt terribly like a deep wound. In our world we have lots of ups and down, pleasures and pains. But that’s life and we learn to accept the bad with the good. Without the bad times we wouldn’t appreciate the good times. Life is precious and I cherish ever single moment. – Sailor Moon

A newly married woman I know worried that her husband was going to leave her because there was so much drama in her life. Family and friends were constantly asking for her help with serious issues and there seemed to be no end in sight to the bad tidings.

It turned out that she did not have to fret for one moment about her husband’s commitment to the marriage. It was her way of engaging in the messiness of life and not turning away from helping others – getting her hands dirty as it were, that he adored and loved about her most. He knew also that if the time were to come when he needed help, she would be right there at his side.

Consider a mosaic: shards of glass, stone or tile are set together in such a way as to form an image. If all the pieces are white – no picture is evident. Add a few fragments of light yellow or beige and perhaps the beginning of an image appears. But add some black and glittery gold to the work and now you start to have definition from the contrast between the light and the dark. Further, when you add shards from the entire color palette, a vision emerges that has depth, intensity, and profundity. We have only one chance to create the image that is our life. It can be shallow or it can have depth. The choice is ours!

© Jesper Brandt

On Recognizing Love…

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© Pia Ulin

Beauty is not caused. It is.
Emily Dickinson

Prompted by a discussion about the female romantic poets’ lives, my English professor told the class about an offer of marriage that she had received some years earlier. Her suitor had sworn his undying love and devotion  – saying she was the first woman he had ever truly loved. He was utterly devastated when she said she could not marry someone with such a limited capacity for love.

I wondered why she dismissed him on a quantitative versus qualitative measure? A person may fall in and out of love all the time – does that make him more predisposed to form a lasting relationship? I think not. Surely the depth of a love, the recognition that the person you love is the one is some predictor for a lasting relationship, I just do not know how one would measure it.

© Pia Ulin

Singer – Frederik Rubin

Belly Dancing…

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© Joan Currie

Great dancers are not great because of their technique;
they are great because of their passion.
Martha Graham

Classical Egyptian belly dancing is an activity that I have embraced for the music, choreography, tradition, community of women, and the costumes. It is important to shake and listen before choosing a hip scarf as each one makes a different sound depending on the number and characteristics of the individual coins and other embellishments. The black scarf has a heavier sound and is better suited to more percussive, tribal rhythms.

© Joan Currie

Model – Lauren Currie

Beautification…

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© Lauren DiMarco

Beauty is about perception, not about make-up. I think the beginning of all beauty is knowing and liking oneself. You can’t put on make-up, or dress yourself, or do your hair with any sort of fun or joy if you’re doing it from a position of correction. – Kevyn Aucoin

I spotted a construction sign that read, Beautification in progress. Thank you for your patience! Although I know we are in a constant state of beautification both inside and out, I thought it would be a good idea to make a similar sign to carry with me when I go about my activities of daily living. It could explain, for example, why I do not look my best when I roll out of bed and dash into Starbucks at 6:30 for my morning latte in track pants and a T-shirt, tousled hair, and no make-up.

I remember an Oprah makeover segment in which Gayle King discussed the woes of being single.  She confessed that on Sunday mornings she, too, ran in for coffee and a newspaper in her tracksuit without benefit of makeup or coiffed hair. Oprah and her makeover expert exchanged knowing glances and said, “That’s why you’re still single.” Gayle retorted that if she ran into a potential date, she would simply say, “this isn’t what I really look like!” With a sign, she wouldn’t have had to say a word…

First Cars…

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Mid-60s Ford Thunderbird © Troy Paiva http://www.lostamerica.com

Fun, Fun, Fun
Well she got her daddy’s car and she cruises through the hamburger stand now
See she forgot all about the library like she told her old man now
And with the radio blastin’ goes cruisin’ just as fast as she can now
And she’ll have fun, fun, fun ’til her daddy takes her T’bird away.
Brian Wilson and Mike Love 

The first car I drove with a learner’s permit was my father’s gold Thunderbird (V8 with suicide doors), in the middle of a snowstorm. I hit some black ice and skidded into the intersection just as the light turned red. My mother’s quick reflexes and steering from the passenger seat saved us from certain death.

Next I learned how to drive my best friend’s cherry red Volkswagen Karmann Ghia. It had a great radio and was a dream to speed shift!

The first car I owned was a spiffy silver Camaro with a standard transmission and a very stiff clutch. It did not handle well in the city, but on the highway it could really move and I put a lot of miles on it driving up and down the East Coast from Toronto to Fort Lauderdale. Looking back, I associate that car with being young, free, and fiercely independent – I loved it!

© 1962 Ford Thunderbird - Troy Paiva http://www.lostamerica.com

© 1960 Ford Thunderbird - Troy Paiva http://www.lostamerica.com

Fishing…

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© Joan Currie - Fishing

Many men go fishing all their lives without knowing that it is not the fish that they are after. – Henry David Thoreau

My father loved to fish! At least once a year he ventured into the wilds of Quebec in search of rainbow trout. He always came home with his limit and many a tall tale about the fish that got away.

Dad first taught his two daughters and son to fish in Georgian Bay, Ontario. We learned the finer points of bait selection, casting, and how to remove the hook by holding the fish firmly in one hand and carefully extracting the instrument of death with the other. Often we released the fish back into the water and then worried about the creatures swimming around with holes in their mouths – the fish equivalent of a cleft lip.

Father bought fishing rods for his grandchildren as soon as they could walk. I was amazed to see my three daughters reach for minnows to bait the hook, reel in the catch, and unhook with such confidence and more ease than I ever had.

Bonfire…

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© Joan Currie

Heat cannot be taken from fire, or beauty from the Eternal.
Dante

During the day few people stop to notice this bonfire, but at night it takes center stage for many types of gatherings. This weekend, the annual Burning Man event will take place in the Black Rock Desert, Nevada. The event notice prompted me to think about the bonfires of my youth.

My first exposure to bonfires was at a girls’ summer camp in northern Ontario, Canada. I remember the darkness of the night and being lulled into a dreamy state by the cinders dancing up and around in the hot flames – broken only by the occasional cracking sound, like that of a ringmaster’s whip. The counselors sang and played on their steel string guitars the melancholy tunes of Joni Mitchell, mostly from the Blue album. I’m Leaving on a Jet Plane was also a favorite that they played over and over again. Those sessions were pure magic and the lyrics of the songs are emblazoned in my memory forever.

Just as we are drawn to the bonfire, so are the beasts. There is a certain vulnerability when seated in a ring facing the fire with our backs exposed – an uneasiness about who or what is lurking in the shadows. Ghost storytellers know this and so did an older boy when, at a local bonfire pit, he delighted in recounting a gruesome tale about a green-eyed monster. To this day, the monster has a habit of rearing its ugly head when I am alone at night – walking along deserted streets, in the woods, or going down to the cellar. Sometimes the imagination fuels the fire even more…

Beauty & the Sea Beast…

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© Juan Zambrano

…the unexpected, the surprising, the astonishing, are essential to and characteristic of beauty. – Charles Baudelaire

There is a beauty in the grotesqueness of the octopus draped over the model’s skin – the mythological masculine form juxtaposed with the slimy, fetid mollusc. Both share a damp pallor.

Model – Oleg Galagan