Plumerias & Dancing Down 71st Where?

So last night (really very early in the a.m.) was a terrific storm. Sheet lightning with rollicking thunder, the oak's limbs swaying very scarily in the ferocious winds, and lashes of rain. To wake up to clear, brilliant, blinding light coming from the sun through the windows. Nothing like a little drama to shake the rafters and cobwebs from your brain.

Makes me almost feel lazy for just sitting with coffee in front of my computer screen. Of course I do have the onerous [;-)] task of looking up places to go dancing for my birthday, which is one week from today!!!! YAY!!!!!! I may be the only person I know who is thrilled about turning forty! I can't wait. I want to have a blast dancing with friends and family.

My thirtieth wasn't much fun. I had to work (long-term sub for middle school at the time) and my ex-husband, try as valiantly as he did, just didn't understand that for my birthday I wanted to do something frivolous. I am a very responsible person generally; but for my birthday I want that kick up your heels for existing feeling that you always have as a kid. Well, for nice, well-brought up middle-class kids like me anyway.

So seven days and counting! In honor of my upcoming, still to be decided festivity I will post some things that people may not know about me.

1. Plumerias are my favorite scented flower. I love roses in people's gardens and tulips in arrangements. I love the delicacy of orchids & the overflowing richness of bougainevilla. Yet it is the simple and fragile plumeria whose fragrance steals my breath away. They are so easily bruised, turning brown almost immediately
when touched, yet they still exude an exotic sweetness. I want my life to be like that. Maybe darkened from overuse but still able to emit beauty.

2. My favorite song of all time is Silent Night. It is not my favorite Christmas song. That belongs to Carol of the Bells. There is something that is haunting to me about Silent Night. The first funeral I ever attended was in the Cathedral of the Annunciation here in Stockton. I was lucky enough to get a seat. The cathedral was overflowing for the unexpected death of a seventeen year old girl that was a year behind me in high school. I had seen her last after a show I was doing in college (my first and for a long time last sexy role ever). She didn't commit suicide, she didn't o.d. it was literally dying in her sleep and they never were able to figure out why. Anyway, at the funeral for Jennifer I just kept hearing Silent Night over and over in my head. From that day on I knew that at my funeral I wanted it sung.

3. I believe in God. But not your anthropomorphic built in our image God. It's hard to explain but George Lucas made it easier with his term The Force. I feel a force in everything. I feel that everything is blessed. And that we create our own heavens and hells. I don't talk about my spriritual beliefs because it is so intensely personal that I can't...no, I take that back....I'm not willing to share it with people who are unwilling to hear me out. I was raised without a religion but not without morals. My parents were very strict about how to treat others and oneself. I have not always lived up to their teachings but I strive daily to do so.

4. Dancing Down 71st Street, the address of this blog, is what I would have titled a book on my life in New York. I wrote to my parents frequently during that time. My mom, as I probably have stated elsewhere, keeps almost all of my writings and if I'm ever published anywhere it will be because she gave it to someone who'll do something with it. I don't have that ambition strangely enough. I find writing very easy but I don't always burn with the need to get my words out. That happens rarely and when it does I write, get it over with and move on. Nevertheless, if any of my musings were put together in anthology it would have to be titled Dancing Down 71st Street after where I lived. Many times coming back from the train after work the streets would be slick with the remnants of a recent rain. They would glisten with flecks in the tarmac that always made me think of the immigrants' belief that the streets of America were paved with gold. I lived at the end of 71st street where it dead ended into the Hudson river. I would come to the crest of the hill, near 71st and Broadway/Amsterdam where they cross eachother and switch places, and look down to the Hudson and literally dance my way down past West End Avenue to my home. It was on occasions like this that I felt that I was destined to be doing what I was doing. Which was just your normal, basic everyday eating, bathing, working and living!

5. Most people who've read only one post will probably notice my love for dancing. For me dancing is foreplay. There is something purely elemental about music and how it courses through one's body. I cannot exist without that feeling. It is essential to my being. I have always danced. Not as a trained dancer but as a person enchanted with how music makes me feel. Whole and unfettered and free!

So hope you find something like that that makes your soul sing! Until my next post....adieu!