Dress Sizes

Before I deemed myself an artist, I was a Stepford Wife.  I put everything and everyone before me.  In my pre-artist world, I didn’t grant myself privileges of indulgence or excess.  It’s odd to admit that to myself because I have always been employed and capable of supporting myself without any help.  Referring to myself as a Stepford Wife is my metaphor for assimilating into a catatonic mental state and denying my own self a full existence.   (For the record, I have never been tall, blonde, anorexic  looking, and although once coveted, physical perfection isn’t me, and is not what my past lovers would say about me if interviewed by Barbara Walters.  They’d say, almost dazed and in a whispered voice, ’she slips into your skin’, and then they’d look down at their hands maybe touch a forearm, and then finish by saying, ’she never really leaves’.  But they wouldn’t say I was Stepford type material-physically anyway, I’m not a beauty.)
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I can still taste the inside of your kiss, even now.

I’ve thought at length about his kiss, the first one most especially, even more than all the rest, although they were equally brilliant.  That first one because it was a walapalooooza, there was nothing like it before and nothing after—not everything in life is reproducible, there are acceptable compromises and decent knock offs, but some moments are truly unique. 
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Lover, mine is a cursed heart~

A hobby of mine is writing love letters.  Some I send, and others never see the light of day or the intended’s inbox.  It’s one of my passions, like writing, listening to music, reading a good book or sitting in a broken down beach chair on the edge of the shore scrunching my toes in the sand as the waves break over my feet.  I’d always enjoyed writing letters, now emails, to friends, but it wasn’t until I had the good fortune of living and breathing romantic love that I discovered my passion for writing love letters. 

I was a firm non-believer in loving and longing, enduring passion and electricity, between two people, until I felt his touch.  From the instant, he kissed me until our last kiss it was always the same for me, like the first time. My skin tingled, little tremors exploded throughout my body, how well our hands fit together, a glove over hand, second skin, and knowing his hands belonged on my body.  It was that sort of fit; we were waiting for that moment of connection.  My heart swelled until it bursted. During our affair—romantic love would only ever be an affair of the heart—I wrote pages, if not volumes of love letters. 

I know that if a heart bursts a person dies, but having lived romantic love up close and personal and having first had knowledge of what it feels like when your brain is hooked on love, then bursting is what a heart does.  I’ve felt my skin tingle at the brush of hand, and that damn heart of mine—burst, more like my chest cracked open.   If love were a liquid, mine gushed out and filled the bubble that I inhabit.  I troll through my old letters as often as my heart allows.  It’s gooey for certain, but it’s a writer’s treasure strove.  As I read my letters to him last night my skin grew hot, smoldering, and eventually my humiliation burned the skin right off my body as I read every single pathetic word.  My soul howled “HOW COULD YOU?”  I myself wondered  the same, and thought perhaps someone had stolen my identity and written those letters, using my voice, my font, and my email address because surely I would never do anything so utterly stupid as to write someone all those inside thoughts that I keep tethered tightly to my soul. I hoped for half a second it wasn’t me (as I always do after I read those letters), but it was, and after an hour of reading I staggered to the kitchen for a filled to the rim, glass of wine.

I read an article a few years back in the Los Angeles times about the brain hooked on love.  It stood me still, at last a name for my illness, I remember reading.  Be still my beating heart, all good things come to those who wait, I said to myself.  I read with haste, devouring each word, one by one, then two by two, and then full sentences in one inhale, greed replaced patience.  I reached the end of the article disappointed to find there was no known cure, no studies at the Mayo Clinic, no clinical trials to volunteer for.  It was early days in the study.     I smiled knowingly, and whisper to the wind; absence of evidence does not mean evidence of absence. 

My love story includes all the juicy scenes a reader finds in a Harlequin novel:

 In less than ten seconds, his hands had my bra unfastened and his month was full with my breast.  His geeky façade melted around him the instant my left leg wrapped around his waist, is an overt invitation for his expertly skilled hand to travel in the direction of my panties.

But as my story is missing the ‘happily ever after’ chapter it’s not Harlequin, it’s  a woman’s story with the heroine growing as a result of the passionate romance, but knowing that life is a climb, my heroine moves forward, alone and wounded, but still standing, and smiling because there are no regrets.  I remain in stasis, hooked on love and continue to write love letters. 

Yours, until there is a cure for hearts such as mine.

Instructions on the art of disappearing without notice

First, make the decsion and decide to disappear

• The first task is that you must make the conscience decision to fade into air so that you can travel into the greater abyss unnoticed.  After this is decided, the following steps will aid you in your process.

Gradually become neutral

• This is most important because if you are naturally vibrant red, you cannot suddenly become beige.  The greater world in which you inhabit would take note of this change immediately, and if questioned would say… “Yes, she changed radically.  Almost overnight really.”  If your objective is to fade away, your change must be so gradual so that even your closest stalker would fail to notice the changes.
• Begin ever so subtly with your changes, but remember to be consistent.  Start with colors, then clothes.  At the same time, alter the tone of your voice, and the types of comments you make during a conversation.  Passion of any sort must remain buried and never released externally
• The same applies to your physical attributes: hair color, make up, style of shoes.  Nothing must stand at attention or draw unwanted eye activity.
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I am always on the lookout for quick weight-loss-programs that don’t involve me having to change anything in my lifestyle.  I like to eat good food, drink hearty wine, and I although I despise exercise with every ounce of my being, I am at the gym five days a week.  Still, I keep watch for miracle cures because I devoured Cosmo, Glamour, and Teen Beat magazines back in the day, and realize the only way for me to be truly happy, is for my body to be rail thin.  So, if there is a pill that promises to give me a size 9 body—gimmee, gimmee. 
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I use my blog as a writer’s journal.   We writers are supposed to keep track of our thoughts and observations; the annotations in our journal are the fodder for our stories and missives.  If you adhere to the credo on writing, a writer should have at least one journal, but more is better because a writer’s thoughts are diverse, and having more than one allows the writer to catalog and keep track of those diverse thoughts.  Not able to grasp the concept of multiple journals I only kept one, but I ended up writing ‘Dear Diary’ entries, ‘ he loves me, he loves me not’ and  after the first month or so would leave my journal at the bottom on my bag collecting purse crumbs.   Determined to conquer journaling because of the innate benefits the writer yields from the daily practice I started quizzing other writers about their respective writing processes.
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Hellos scare me, but once that two-syllable word passes through my teeth breaking the silence I breathe a sigh of relief knowing the worst is behind me.  Shy isn’t a word the six and no more than ten people I know would use to describe me.  In fact, if I told them I was blogging and they read this post they’d ask me—after giving me grief about having a blog and not telling them— if I had hit my head on the bathroom sink and was I suffering from a concussion.  They’d say you are not shy, anything but. 
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I have a weakness for all three. 

I was seven when I had my first chocolate glazed donut at Ray’s Donut shop (the original Krispy Kremes).  One bite of the fluffy, sweet, creamy, chocolate, pasty and I was borderline addicted.  I didn’t think there could be anything finer, and if asked what I thought was the best moment ever, I would respond, “Eating one of Ray’s donuts.”  At least that was my response until I saw Mario without his Haynes v-neck white shirt the summer before I entered high school.
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Size 1 (daughter) and I took to the open road for a girl’s weekend.  We packed our weekend bags and threw them carelessly in the back seat of the Red Mini Sports Coup.   The trunk of a Mini is too small for luggage; it could however house a small troll if needed, but not two weekend bags, a computer and a cooler.    By midday on Friday, we hit the Interstate and were off for our women-only- celebration.  We left San Francisco at lunchtime and hit Los Angeles in time for cocktails at the shore.

A couple times a year, Size 1 and I go away, and the boys stay home and slave over the hot stove. I am supposed to come home to a man-cooked-meal, but I am still waiting for that one.  Each year they get closer.  They managed Strawberry Short-Cake and bottle of chilled wine this year.  Dinner was on me. 
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When a part of me is hurting, and looking for comfort, or in need of inspiration, I retreat into my music collection and immerse myself in its magical healing powers.  There are as many different songs as there are moods, and depending on my need, I only have to pick.

• In need of romantic love, that is lost and found again and again, or reckless fun – Dwight Yoakam
• In need of fresh insight to the same subject – Rob Thomas
• In need of whimsy and white polyester – ABBA
• In need of love over load – Celine Dion
• In need of boosting my inner-self – ‘I’m Every Woman’ by Chaka Khan
• In need of energy when I up was too late writing – I Gotta Feeling by Black Eyed Peas
• In need of inspiration – Into the Mystic, by Van Morrison 

The mood only need manifest itself.
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