Monthly Archives: December 2011

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…..it’s christmas…

Well my dears, another year has passed, and here we are at this festive family day.  I am waiting for my grandchildren to knock at my door, to lead me back to the family tree, piles of presents, and cappuccino…

This afternoon we travel to my brother’s where his girlfriend is holding an open house, and we all sit down to a grand dinner they have planned…  we are bringing Caesar Salad, to go with the Steak and Potatoes and Green Beans with Almonds……and there will be how many of us?  Shana and her family…. 4…. Tod and his family….4…. Chris and Cynthia and Me…. that makes 11.  Add a few of their close friends, and what a gathering!

I send you all Dear and Merry Thoughts of Times of Yore, and also of the New Year soon to be upon us.   May it bring Joy and Light to this wonderful Planet, and to all who sit upon it.  We are so blessed with so many Creatures of Delight, waterways and skies, forests and woodlands, canyons and deserts, and our own little nests and homes that hold what is dear to us.

May there be Peace…. Love…. and Light… Enfolding this Miracle that is Life.

 

 

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….. in a Rio cafe…

As I proof read these pages, I think to myself that no one will actually believe this is real.  I know, it sounds like a movie.  And I’m not even referring back to my journals right now, because somehow as I take it step by step, it all comes back in its most minute details, and I can hear his voice, and know exactly the words he chose, and when a word isn’t quite right, I just know it.  That’s how deep the cut was…

Many years later, as we sat drinking ice cold beer in the little café bar with one side open to the wandering street, the cobblestone street, the one that winds up the hill to one of the oldest districts in Rio, the one that, as the story goes, that woman came down after the wild party, walking on her hands, to save the precious nectar inside her.  Later she would produce a child who sprang from the loins of the king of Rock n Roll… Mick the man.

Yes indeedy, sprang from a party up that hill, in some luxurious mansion, and now whenever the Stones play Rio, he visits the kid at his exclusive school.  And she?  She now has a talk show, and is an edgy bitchy and rich celebrity with very stripey like a zebra, highlighted hair.

Go figure.

Anyways, so he’s telling me these tales of Rio and streets and the kids at his school, and it’s hot and steamy, and the beer is so cold it’s almost a slushy, and it feels like we could be anywhere right now.  There are these darling young women sitting nearby, they have accents,  obviously European, and now and then they glance at us and smile.  Alcir of course thinks it’s because he’s so cute ….  Soon they join us at the table, and they are tittering away with soft giggles, telling us that they are on a journey from Germany, and staying in Brasil for a couple weeks.  They are intelligent, well educated, and speak very good English.  We begin to  answer their questions of who and why We are…..how an American comes to be here with a Brasilian in Rio, and I mention that it is all a movie, that it needs to Be a movie, and then of course, Alcir smiles and asks…

”So….. who weeell play Meee?”  ……and we all laugh.

“Benicio del Toro” return the girls, and there is a pause… Alcir obviously approves, smiles, nods his head, and the chatter turns to travels and more stories.

That was his edgy side, the side those girls picked up on.  The side that was more than a little dangerous, mysterious, thrilling and scarey…… and scarred.  He loved danger.  Craved it.

His family was an old aristocratic group that had pretty much lost it all.  They lived in a multi level home, with rooms and shuttered windows, each staying away from the other, hate and disgust seething from every floor.  The house was unkempt, and slowly melting away, but at one time exemplified class and grandeur.

A karmic layer cake, I used to call it.

When he was 14, he and his buddies used to steal cars and drive them to Uruguay to sell.  He didn’t need the money, just the thrills, the bad boy thrills.  His dad paid the tab at the local bar, but he needed more.  Defiant, he was beaten continually as a child until he stood up one day at 15 and announced to his father that right now,  if he laid a hand on him, he would beat the holy crap out of him.  And he never touched him again, not physically anyway.

But cruelty ran in the group, a very convoluted history that went back generations.

His mother never wanted a child, tried to rid herself of this creature inside her that would ruin her life and her figure, was unsuccessful, and never stopped reminding him of that.  Once while I was there, she came beating on his door at 6 am, screaming that she should have killed him then, she wished she had, and now she hated him, that he was ruining her life.

His grandmother had been his salvation….. his mother’s mother.  She adored him, somehow instinctively understood him, and from the pictures I’ve seen, she was a very sad woman later in life.  But absolutely Gorgeous as a young Indian woman.  Haunting…And that is another chapter in itself, the story of the young Indian girl, and the man who waited and watched for two years, until her father gave permission for him to marry her….  that was one set of grandparents.

When she died, Alcir was the one to wash her body, dress her, and make her ready to be laid down.  She had given him his haunting, dark slanting eyes, and his ferocious spirit, wild and untamable.  She had loved him singularly, and was quite alone in her understanding.

See?  That’s what I mean.  So many facets to this man, so much anger and pain, so much tenderness and depth, so much beauty.  It was a puzzlement that I had to unwind.

 

 

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… the first time….

It was so Almost There….

Almost……achingly Almost totally….. It.

Icons meet and clash, like warriors that bend and dance…

The depth of passion, in this life, I will not experience again,

Unless it’s at the birth of my child’s child…

Or the birth of my own.

Is there much more than birth, death and the deepest love.

And what is love? Does anyone know.

But crazy indeniably irresistibly magnetic to the point of

Insanity might begin to describe….

And isn’t that what we all crave somewhere…?

Oblivion…..the Somewhere Else place, where self and other

Blends and melt-melds into the great glorious mysterious All.

Yes, love and great sex can indeed, like fresh mushrooms,

And fresh homegrown…and the oldtyme LSD, the real sacrament.

they can take you to paradise, goneness,

Oblivion, out of here man, and I don’t care and I don’t know

And it’s all just OK.

OK… so….. This man has just given me the most perfect kiss ever… in my life anywhere.   It embodied the most pure, the most innocent…. And moved thru all the punches………To complete sexually blended bliss.  How can this be with just lips?

For the next week, I literally ran away from him.   He showed up the next morning, because ‘he’d left his watch’, that multi-hundreds state-of-the-arts at-the-time divers’ watch.

Oh, wait…….. I forgot to tell you about the rest of the evening…..                                                     (she sighs and drifts….)

So supposedly he’s too drunk to drive home, and can he camp on the couch.  Ok, whatever.  The couch is in my studio, below where I sleep.  He snores.  I sleep well in my king size, Steven joining me as cuddle buddy….  He leaves early for some new job on the wharf.

And then….. Someone knocks at the ladder….

Are you surprised, dear reader?  Oh I hope so….

“Hello?  Can I come up and see the view in the light?…”  and before I can answer, this head appears just above the floor…  and he says something, and he’s here next to me, and……he pulls back the covers and climbs in….

I’m half asleep, and say ineffectual words about Steven, and wait, and……. He’s inside me….. with full kisses and legs surrounding me.   And before I’ve caught my breath,….. he comes.

I instinctively draw in my breath ……………He sits up.

“Oh I did not expect That…”…. And he holds his head.  The white sheet falls around his brown skin…  I start to laugh…

“Oh, I hope I have not given you a bad impression of Brasilians .”                                      …..and I laugh again… damn, how adorable Is he….

And I softly say…”No…. actually it’s sort of flattering..”

And “Oh yah, flattering…very funny…” ….comes back, nervously.

Then he was bustling, getting dressed, off to work, gathering his wits, ready-ing for the cove and the guys and the dive.  Off to jump in the ocean, and away from whateverthefuck this is.

Late that day, he returned for his pride and joy, his divers’ watch, and I remember holding the door in front of me, a shield from his shine, because I felt so naked and vulnerable and it all scared the shit out of me, and…                     I was totally swept away.

So… for the next week, I avoided him.  He showed up along maybe Wed nite with his diver buddy, and I sat at the far end of the table, engrossed in whatever the what I was engrossed in, just as long as I didn’t have to make eye contact with him.  After lots of laughs and a couple beers, they jolly well leave, and my heart rate slows to near normal.

Once I saw him with a few guys, on the back of a truck in town, and he flashed his trademark wide grin.  Like a hungry animal…..I looked away.

That weekend was the Fourth of July parade and gala… oh yah, a gala in a 3000 people town, back in the backhills hideaway on the NorCal coast.

The parade was classic.  Always the flags, the hippie floats, and the local guns and bad ass boys, a couple horses.  And some pretty girls… lots of creativity everywhere.

So we’re on the street, near the little town store, my girls and I, and along comes Big Alcir, walkin that way he walks, sort of a bad boy walk, like I could Kick your fuckin ass, no problem, walk…. but he’s got long Indian hair, and there’s a style to him that you can’t deny… he’s got class.

“Good Morning Ladies” comes the warm refrain.  Oh god…

He makes pleasantries, and passes.  Damn… he is rather intriguing…ya think?   But what just happened that night, that morning… I still haven’t completely figured it out, but I’m getting close.  Very close.

So I’m there with my two little girls, waiting for the parade to start, and he’s across from me, on the other side of the narrow street, behind someone else sort of, but not, and we eye contact… I make a motion like ‘do you have a light for this thing?’ …. ok, it’s the eighties, and yes, I smoke.

He crosses the street, his Varnets intact, hair beautifully tousled, a neat plaid in soft tans adorns his ever more interesting body.  He walks like a cat.   So…what’s happening today, what’s the deals in this town, (where are you going) blahdeblah ensues.   So he mentions that this whole thing is just too Wholesome for him.  And I say……

“…hmmm… so why don’t you come over sometime, and take me away from all this wholesomeness. ”   ….Really…. No Really, I actually said that.                   And “Really…?” was what He said back to me…

The parade starts, he goes to the store, hands us something as he passes, a candy for the girls, and he’s gone.  The day with its barbeques and sweetness that only a small town can dish up, included a giant picnic at the park, and I was singing in a Blues Band.

I vaguely remember his face in the crowd as I concentrate on my vocals, coming and going, appearing once when I’m out dancing, watching me, offering me a light as I hang with friends.  But he’s etherial, and I’m relieved to see him that way.   I have, in my gut, been keeping him at arm’s length, and he is picking up on that, not pushing me, not rushing it, just being there and waiting…. like that kiss.   I like that.

The proceedings move day to night, and now it’s very dark.

I am sitting on a large log with my girls, facing the sea.

In front of me is a Gaugin painting, a Van Gogh of sand and crashing surf, dark but with well heard drums as background.  A huge bonfire erupts into the sky, and the sparks and stars combine and swirl (starry starry night) with the giant booms and flashes of fireworks, shot out over the ocean, enough to make the world dance forever.

Beautiful happy hairy hippies dancing and meandering round the fire, and I swear at that moment I thought to myself that I was in heaven.  The beauty was beyond any dream…. such sweetness…

And then I swear, I thought………… If only he were here….

And once again, I swear…. I hear over my left shoulder…

“Good Evening Ladies…”… that deep dark voice.

And he sits beside me, all of us hunkered down to warmth, and we talk……                        Like really talk  for the first time.

“So how are you?”

“Oh I’m great, just fine, oh ya….” …he trails off….there’s a wistfulness there…

“Not so great, actually…”

“Why?  What’s happening..?”

“Oh, new kid on the block, I guess…….I don’t know…”

“So… how’s your spiritual life?” I venture, and to this day I don’t know why…

“Oh ya, just great… hahahahaaa, and he nervously fills in the blank air.              I’ve thrown him a curve…

“Hmmm….” I mysteriously hmmmm.  I think now that I wanted to convey to him that there was more to me than the surface that he so enjoyed…                      I also sense he was looking for redemption somewhere, and I wanted to take him somewhere, lead him somewhere else, to some sort of new dawn.

Long pause.  We both look at the fire, the trailing sparks, the stars, the dancers….

“So…what are you doing after this?

“Oh, I have to take the girls home soon…. Ya,  pretty soon……”

“Oh really?  So…maybe could I come over later?”

“Umm… ya…. maybe later, maybe like 10 or so?”

“Ok…” and he smiles in the dark… I can feel the smile more than see it.

He says good evening, and wanders off.  My heart is now salsa dancing.

Oh god….what have I done?..

 

 

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….. brasil somemore …..

Well, it’s been how many days, and I have neglected you all, busying myself with…. oh no!… making money.  Yes, it’s true… and this is the time for sure.  Things are flowing, and I’m being a good girl and doing what I need to do right now.

Finding treasures to sell is a job in itself, but of course it’s one of the funnest ones… the other being collecting the money.  In between it’s cleaning up, photographing, writing clever descriptions and posting.  Then there’s answering questions and reminding people to pay.  But really, it’s fun.

So I’ve left you hanging on two counts… the variety of stories left from that dating site that started this whole thing, and…… the continuing saga of the Alcir-Brasil Story.

Last time we talked, he had been giving me the deadly Latin Stare across the room, and I was irritated, but amused.  What a little Brat, how dare he impose his great big eyes into my psyche, and irritate my inners…   the little Punk… We ate our dinner I guess, I can’t really remember much in that arena.  I think it was better than I thought it would be, that’s for sure.

At some point later, he turned to me directly, and asked for a tour.  Now at that time my home was this conglomerate that had evolved through decades of hippies and homesteaders.  Started with an A frame, then extended lengthwise to add a master bedroom-bath, then went up from there, up narrow stairs to create two more rooms, one square with windows, one long with low A frame ceiling, the top floor actually, of that master bedroom.  All very funky, rough wood, makeshift railings, odd stairs, but it all worked to make this really cozy nest, and a great party house.

At the other end was the newest addition, a large high ceiling-ed  get away with polished floors, surround windows and husky ladder leading to my loft bed.  This was my Studio, and since it was at the opposite end from the kids’ and teens areas, I could close its glass doors and have a world of my own.  Lovely.  My favorite house of all times, with odd little decks tucked here and there, and 360 views into the woods.

So we’re all a bit high on probably beer and some greenery, and we’ve been laughing for a couple hours, so I’m fine with this ‘Tour’.  I lead him to the master bedroom, which my oldest daughter had reserved, the upstairs rooms which my two younger girls enjoy, and then it’s the other end…. This place was like a Boat, long and narrow with each room having a different flavor and dimension.  We enter my studio and loft, and he checks out my art.  At that time I was making all sorts of creatures from clay and cloth, and sometimes skulls and bones.

“Oh,”  he says…”I’ve herrrd about weeemen like you…… you do Voodoo?  You do Voodoo forrr meee.  I wan a meeeelion doelars…”

We laugh.  I show him the large deck off one side.  It’s dark, and the lights cast shadows on the huge trees around us.  There are sighs.  It’s quiet.

We go back into the studio, and he looks up to the loft.

“Can I see up dere?” he asks, with tentative confidence.

“Ok, sure…I guess…”

We climb the ladder, he behind me, and I wonder if he’s staring at my ass.      No, actually I don’t wonder at all…

The loft is basically a large bed on the floor, with some space around it.  There are little drawers on each side, and it’s draped with gauzey flow-y stuff like I like.  The ceiling is low and peaked.  We go out on the tiny deck off to the right, and check out the view.   It’s getting intense…

The quiet of the night, the shadows and light of those giant redwoods, the total lack of conversation, all lend this eerie, other feeling to our togetherness.   He’s on my left, our arms almost touching.  Then suddenly, or quite slowly actually, his left hand reaches across and touches the left side of my face.   Gently, so gently, more gently than I could ever imagine this madman could be,  his fingers turn my face to his, and in slow motion, he bends down towards me.  So slowly…. All the while my brain is on fry, I can’t believe he’s doing this, how dare he do this, I don’t even know him, how can this be happening, and then… his lips float to mine.  They touch my lips so softly, and it’s forever a moment.  They just sit there, barely touching, and do not move.  He does not move.   I do not move.  My brain continues its soliloquy, spinning it’s doubts and indignations, the how can he, what is this, what the what….?

Yet slowly, ever so slowly, the mind quiets with this gentleness, this soft respect, this non invasive invasion.  Slowly the body relaxes.  And slowly, ever so gradually, I surrender in parts and pieces, tiny sections at a time.  And as I surrender, over what seems like minutes but are likely tens of seconds, my body and his draw together, nano millimeter by nano millimeter.   Slowly his hands touch my waist, slowly his arms begin to surround me.  And at some point far into the night,  in universe time, star time, moon walk time, I have melted into him and he to me, his arms holding me as tightly as he dares, and the kiss has become our entire reality.  Complete and absolute Surrender.  Our oneness hangs in time, the trees the only witness to our only-us, only-now moment.

“Mom…?  are you guys coming down soon…?” and the irridescent bubble breaks, the spirits draw back into corporal reality, and we abruptly part as daughter #2 appears up the ladder.

“Ya, we’re coming” I think I mumble, and we stumble stagger spin away from eachother, and down into the reality we have left.

Heh heh heh…. yes, this is the real story.  Didja like that part?  Hmmmm hmmm ….. so did I.  What a way to start a romance, huh?

 

 

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….it was a very good year….

....it was a very good year....

It’s 1986, and I’m having margaritas with Steven, the one who brought Alcir home with him and a frozen chicken. I cropped this one to send to Alcir, because he hated seeing me with anyone else…. even Steven.   I was 43… he was 33…. at least that’s what he Told me… later I found out he was 29.

 

 

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…….mr brasil comes to town…..

A very old friend, younger by years but plenty of history between us, just Begged me for more stories!  Can you believe it?  It’s Just what I want to hear, my darlings, and it only takes a bit of encouragement for me to shift into gear, drop what I am doing, and prattle on with my memoirs.  Don’t you love what those French words add to your tastebuds…

Must admit, the Brasil saga comes to mind, not just because it was the last real and deeply touching adventure I had, but also because there is something about those people in general, and Alcir in specific, that sticks like gum that has perma dried under the theatre seat.  It’s there for eternity, all its dirty, messy, germ laden mass, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

When I met Alcir, I was definitely in my prime on all counts.  (shall I post pictures sometime?)  I was feelin my power, and was quite attractive.  Now What i attracted was another story, as I have frequently wondered ‘What the What?’, when it comes to that issue…. just What is it that brings in the strange and neurotic, the needy and the distant, and the occaisional unclassifiable ?   He was one of the last.

I had a friend named Steven.  He was relatively new in town, strange and a little Other, yet a Mensa member, and he was entertaining at a time that i had lots of energy for casual entertainment.  I had a great house, kids coming and going, a little cottage industry making jesters and jack in the boxes, and life was quite lovely.

Steven was one of those lost boys, misunderstood, yet not demanding in any unwanted way.  He wasn’t my type as a Guy, but he was amusing.   So after sharing the occasional dinner with him, it was the night He had agreed to cook dinner for Us.  Me and my two younger daughters.  Shana was at college, and Tod was in his own cabin on the acreage I rented.  Sweet.

So it’s nine o’clock, and the door knocks, and there stand two fellows, one i recognize, one i don’t, and they’re both drunk off their jolly well asses.   I neglected to tell you that he Had called from the bar, and asked to bring this new fellow home, and I sort of shrugged an OK.  Whatever, just get over here and do what you’d said you’d do…..

So they both do this weird Asian bow, and it was only later that I realized it was because I was wearing a kimono, which I was really into at the time…. kimonos were available by the hundred pound bale out of Honolulu, and I had been buying them for a store I was partners in.   So Ok, these funny giddy fellows tumble in with a Frozen Chicken, and proceed to start dinner.  Oh this is going to be interesting…

I am introduced to this Latin guy, and I really didn’t look at him that much.  It was only later I saw those Eyes, that indian hair, that brown skin and the devastating, white toothed grin.  He was different, but I really didn’t pick up on it til he stood looking at this framed picture i had over my stove.  There was no window there, and I had always gazed at it as I cooked, as tho it were  a portal into another realm.  It was one of those reverse paintings, where they paint on the back of the glass, and then arrange these Irridescent Blue Morpho Butterfly wings, to make the sky and sea.   Gorgeous, and I have a huge collection of them now.

So this fellow, with an unusual accent that I didn’t recognize, stands there and says… in his winsome Desi Arnez way….. “WHAT eeeez  theees wooooman doooing weeeeth theees in her keeetchin?  I have grown up loooooking at theeees very sceeeeene.  WHAT eeeez Theeeees wooooman dooooing weeeeth theeees theeeeng?”  It was a scene of Pao d’Asucar, or Sugar Loaf as we Americans call it.  Palm trees, the rolling hills of Rio, the whole bit….

“Oh!…. you’re a Brasilian? “… came my rather startled response.  I’d never met a Brasilian.

“Yessss…. What ?….. deeed yoouuu theeenk I waz a stoooopid Mexicaaan?   They don eeven care eenuf about theees countreee to learn the language.”

Ouch.  Later I found out that he was frequently mistaken for Mexican, which insulted him… I mean how many Brasilians visit the Mendo Coast?  and oh ya… he spoke Five languages, and came from an old aristocratic family.  He had studied in the most prestigious school in Brasil, in Rio, where when you graduate from High School, you have learned the equivalent of two years of College.  He spoke French, Spanish, English, Brazilian Portuguese, and several Indigenous dialects.

I looked him over a bit more at that point….  High tech expensive sports shoes… Varnet sunglasses…. a very expensive diver’s watch.  His hands were gorgeous.  And his eyes.  Wicked Intelligence sprang out of them, and they were dark, huge and wrap around, with a certain slanted corner to them.   Oh yes, he was different alright.   His voice was deep, and had that sort of powerful texture that Jose Ferrer has…. or some black actors.  Brazil is a combination of the Portuguese sailors who moved on in, the Black Slaves they kidnapped to do their dirty work, and the Indiginous tribes who to this day just want to be left alone.  He seemed Portuguese, with refined European feature, but the skin, hair and eyes seemed Indian, (his Grandmother was Indian, and he had Her eyes)… and somehow I do believe a little of black had slipped in, although the aristocratic families are always in denial.   His eyes…. his voice….

Through the evening, he constantly made us laugh.  He was hip, made lots of puns with a language that wasn’t native to him, double entendres galore.  And…. at times when no one else was looking, he would stare at me across the room.  Staring?  like boring holes in my temples, blasting a message into eyeballs, past the forebrain, and down into lizard brain land.   He was not subtle per se, but in a non verbal sense he was, for there were no gropings or obvious come ons.  Just that deadly stare across the room.
I silently mouthed “…stop that..!”…. and he smiled.

Ok….. back to work.  Mmmmm it’s fun remembering…..  Encourage me, encourage me, and i shall continue my stories for You!

 

 

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…incite…

I was watching 30 Rock last nite…. Great show, actors, writing, fabulous….  anyway… Alec Baldwin’s character said something that so fit into my recent writings, I just Had to share…

“I’m not an Old Dad!” he exclaimed to Liz Lemon, who was questioning the wisdom of having a child this late in life….  “Fifty is the new Forty for men….”, he softly smiled, a wee bit of self satisfied smug mixed in…….then, after a pause, added….” and Fifty is still Sixty for Women…”  Those writers are Deadly.