A Better Season

You feel it, walking down the street. There's a buzz. Everyone's out. Café terraces are packed with people. All of Paris has moved outside. It's warm enough to wear a light jacket, or even just a sweater. The light lingers later into the evening. Summer is close. Sure, it's just the start of spring. There's time yet for a brief but brutal reprise of winter. But I don't think it'll happen.

But the real clue is this: Sebastian's opened up the front doors. There's an unhindered view of the street. The better season is upon us.

Hurry back.

.

Fully Integrated

I'm participating in Reverb10, and this post is in response to a prompt from author Patrick Reynolds: Body integration. This year, when did you feel the most integrated with your body? Did you have a moment where there wasn't mind and body, but simply a cohesive YOU, alive and present?

I could tell you about my increased pilates training, and how a dedicated effort to strengthen my core has done just that, strengthen my core. About how after a 50-minute work-out with my rock-star trainer, I put my legs up against the wall for the cool-down meditation and because my mind and body are probably so integrated my thoughts are crystal clear, my emotions quickly channeled. I could tell you about long runs in the country, lost in thoughts that empty themselves out, crossing the threshold and letting the endorphins drive.  I could.

The author of this prompt submits a smokin’ hot shirtless photograph of himself for this reflective end-of-year exercise and I think, well yeah, that’ll put me in my body. I’m not sure that this is what the prompt is meant to evoke, although if you snoop around long enough on this guy’s website you'll see that indeed he does use sex to sell his health regime. It must work.

It does.

I’ve been considering this prompt all day and I can’t think of any better way to get to a more cohesive me, alive and present than a first class orgasm.  Of course there's the physical release, but this catalyzes the letting go of something else that seemed so necessary to harbor, except once released, it heightens the pleasure.  Briefly, I touch it: a clarity creeping dangerously close to some kind of universal memory, experienced only in such private passages, a vulnerable stretch of glistening moments that lasts forever in the moment, but is still, in retrospect, fleeting.

.

After the Boys of Summer Have Gone

Sadly, the summer season comes around to a close. It flew by too fast, but all the good summery things that are part of our Paris summer came to pass. Rituals were re-enacted, like champagne on the Big Roue at sunset, followed by the wild ride on the swings and a late dinner at Pipos. Kirs were ordered. Leffes were replenished. Once there were even Coca-Colas commanded from those corner bar stools, in homage to the previous day's activity. A weekend brunch stretched from just after noon until nearly midnight, on more than one occasion.

There were pheromones and trains. Navel to Spine. A perplexing bench, finally removed. Pedro Páramo. An American was coming to dinner. Dunk and Squat. A room full of kittens. Whites were washed and worn and washed again. Renovation scheduled and unscheduled and rescheduled. Memories were made and lost. An American came to dinner. Did I mention that?

Okay we had to endure a knucklehead or two. A few aches and pains dampened the party - backs and ankles didn't always cooperate - but we kept our good humor and twittered something pithy.

Summer sped by like the TGV. And while I readily welcome the return to more peaceful days of children-at-school, a quick glance back over the shoulder at the last three months of fun, foolishness and fiesta confirms that life could be a whole lot worse. And honestly, it couldn't get much better.

.

Respectability

"Yes. All right--Respectability. That was what did it. I found out some time back that its idleness breeds all our virtues, our most bearable qualities---contemplation, equableness, laziness, letting other people alone; good digestion mental and physical: the wisdom to concentrate on fleshly pleasures---eating and evacuating and fornication and sitting in the sun--than which there is nothing better, nothing to match, nothing else in all this world but to live for the short time you are loaned breath, to be alive and know it--oh yes, she taught me that; she has marked me too forever--nothing, nothing. But it was only recently I have clearly seen, followed out the logical conclusion, that it is one of what we call the prime virtues---thrift, industry, independence--that breeds all the vices--fanaticism, smugness, meddling, fear, and, worst of all, respectability."

I think that this quotation by William Faulkner is the perfect starting point for this blog. And I think it stands alone. And so we begin.