Woke this morning to the wonderful pouring down rain and lingered in bed to enjoy a sleepy start to Sunday. I’m leaving tomorrow for five weeks in Eastern Europe and I know that pretty soon, it will seem like that time passed in the blink of an eye. Oh if there were world enough and time.
Got my haircut after waiting too long and again have to say Scott @ Jupiter is fantastic! Gee my hair looks terrific.
I’ve had people comment on my dancing before – one big black man I was dancing with at 2 in the morning in Curacao said I dance like a country girl, my brother told me one time that I have no rhythm, and of course, there are always the comments, that I’m wild. My favorite comment was when a co-worker started her own company and I was buying one of her products online, she package arrived with a handwritten note on the invoice that said, “I miss you dancing on tables.”
When I was listening to Bryan Lynch the other night, he was talking about when he was just getting started playing the trumpet, and he was trying to play with big guys, one of them walked over and said, “Just dance like you want to.”
And that my dear is the true essence of dancing – just dance like you want to – and that is how I dance – I may not hear the same beat as you, and I may not glide across the floor, but when you see me dancing, I can abso-fucking-lutely tell you that I am having the time of my life.
When I heard that Russert had collapsed in the newsroom, I had a sympathy with him that runs deep. I’m passionate about my job and love what I do, but when your lower back is stiff from sitting at a desk too long, when your ophthalmologist almost falls on the floor when you say you stare at a computer screen 10 hours a day, and when you find yourself anxious about not working – hey, seems to me there is no better time to check out.
Croatia won – the only reason we know this in this house is Fatma text us and people congratulated T. Who knew? Meanwhile, Poland lost – how did I know, S told me and said he had heard the same way. Sports – you’ve all seen the Sports Encyclopedia of Jewish Athletes – right? – It’s filled with blank pages.
Standing on the corner by Cafe Brazil listening to the youngsters play I’ll Fly Away and I questioned the leaving and staying – leaving let’s you come back with a different perspective – staying means you don’t miss even the rustle of the leaves that are so familiar. Embrace new things.
We went to Snug Harbor last night to see Bryan Lynch and he and the other musicians (Donald Harrison) were fabulous!! We kept calling him a Cuban trumpeter but he’s from Illinois, but he plays a lot of Latin jazz. The tempo was so upbeat that I got up and danced (rare in a jazz club).
While we were listening, I was reminded of Eudora Welty’s short story, Powerhouse, where Welty was so inspired by a jazz musician, she came home and wrote this story. It is truly one of the greatest accounts of “listening” – “hearing” – music that I have ever come across in my reading. And that is how good Bryan Lynch was last night along with the musicians who played with him – Donald Harrison joined him on stage and was fabulous as well.
Both Lynch and Harrison were magical. When we left Snug, we walked down Frenchman Street to hear an Afro-Cuban band, and on the corner playing in the street was an 8-man brass band that T and I had seen practicing in City Park a few mornings ago. Young boys with big sound.
Oh, New Orleans – you are the fabric that draws these Powerhouses together – and how lucky are we to live here?
Ask me if I will miss ten hours in front of my computer while I’m swimming in the Adriatic every day.
Yoga was about flying – and the land of the free that exists within. It also helped my back immensely since I have been perched at my desk in a tight little ball. Expansiveness is a mental trip that manifests in the physical. Now to be mindful and remember this as I fold in upon myself for the next few hours.
Today when my nerves were just about at the thinnest – I just can’t seem to coalesce with the world or the people in it lately – my housekeeper came upstairs and said, “I have good news and bad news.”
The good was that I had packages from Fedex (for someone else), the bad news was that the pouring down rain outside was coming down through my kitchen ceiling and there was now a bucket on the counter to catch the water.
She said in Spanish – look at it this way, you’re here and can take care of it, what if you were already gone? What if, I thought to myself dreamily. No hay mal que por bien no viene – there is nothing bad that is not followed by something good. Thank god for sayings, I told her.