What Came Out of the Cocoon

Listening to Setembro by Quincy Jones

I absolutely love Dancing Naked at the Edge of Dawn by Kris Radish. Truly one of those novels where you feel blessed for reading it. I am not providing any spoilers but the ending was completely satisfying. Meg Fratano blossomed into womanhood. She already experienced the responsibilities of adulthood: marriage, kids and a house note. But after witnessing her husband's infidelity in their bed, she was stimulated for a change. Even more, she abandons the staid suburbia life for a vibrant stamp in Chicago and on the Yucatan Peninsula.

update April 2, 2010: This novel was fantastic! I urge all women to read it and be blessed!

The Edge of Heaven

Listening to Lady in Satin by Billie Holiday

The Edge of Heaven is a film I purchased today from Amoeba Records on Sunset and Ivar. Directed by Fatih Akin, it interweaves six people who are connected by spirit and love. (It is delivered in German, Turkish and English.) If you like foreign cinema, then this is a fascinating jewel.I won't spoil it any further. Watch it.

A word to the wise

Books invite all, they constrain none.

Today as I waded in the bath, enjoying solitude and the sonorous raindrops, I decided to get some reading done. After all, I will be resuming my studies in another month. So, I may well prepare my brain for the tasks of cognition. The literature selected? Dancing Naked at the Edge of Dawn by Kris Radish. 327 pages of (I have devoured 62) a woman’s journey from misery into enlightenment. What provokes it? She decides to witness her husband making love to another woman in her bed after coming home unexpectedly. She does not watch out of merely voyeurism. She, in her words, is curious. Curious of what, I do not know. Curious of the passion that no longer consumes her equates as my guess. All fiction roots from fact. Even if the author did not experience this, she is telling the story of someone who has lived it. Isabel Allende recounted that after she wrote Of Love and Shadows, a man approached her and shared the identical details of his life to the story. I am nowhere near finished with the book but I hope that I will be as satisfied with the ending as I am with the beginning.

Dreamer or Master ?

The imagination is the source for all action. I must visualize anything before I

actually accomplish it. When does a dreamer become a master? I participate on a particular site which I will not name. Upon joining the site, an individual has the option to take one of the staff tests. In spite of no dating experience, I decided I would take a quiz just for fun. I selected one which analyzed your psyche towards dating . None of the questions were outlandish, just the names accorded to the result.( It tested several aspects of personality.) My score : the Priss. Allow me to share the details:

Deliberate Brutal Love Dreamer (DBLD)

Mature. Responsible. Aristocratic. Excuse me. The Priss.

Prisses are the smartest of all female types. You’re highly perceptive, and confident in your judgements. You’d take brutal honesty over superficiality any time—your friends always know where they stand with you. You’re completely unfake. Don’t tell me that’s not a word. You’re also excellent at redirecting internal negative energy.

These facts indicate people are often intimidated by you. They also fall for you, hard. You have a distant, composed allure that many find irresistible. If only more of them lived up to your standards.

You were probably the last among your friends to have sex. And the first to pretend that you’re pregnant. LOL. Though you’re inclined to use sex as weapon, at least it’s not as one of mass destruction. You’re choosier than most about your partners. A supportive relationship is what you’re really after. Whether you know it or not, you need something steady & long-term. And soothing.

Now, much of this result does contain truth considering that it was only one time test. I will not retake it just to get a more erotic answer. Some of the results for experienced women were called: Genghis Khunt, the Stiletto, the Peach or another favorite, the Battleaxe ! ( I am not making this up.)

But I guess my real concern is: Will the woman that I so clearly see in my mind ever materialize?

My answer : she's coming but in her due time.

Two Decades and a Score

INVICTUS

by William Ernest Henley

Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the Pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance

My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

Looms but the Horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the
scroll.

I am the master of my fate:

I am the captain of my soul.

This poem, Invictus, is the poem that helped Nelson Mandela to persevere during his tribulation in prison. For those of you who don't know, Nelson Mandela survived for two decades and a score on Robben Island.

Faraway Lands

Brasil.
Zanzibar.
Japan.
Fiji.

These are countries who fascinate me by name alone. Faraway lands, whose soil I have not yet touched. What enters my mind when I see these countries on paper:

Brasil- vast. All things can be positive or negative can be found in this nation.

Zanzibar- color and harmony. I don't think I have ever seen this country on the news but it deserves mention for its intense beauty.

Japan- serenity. One of the world's nucleuses for Buddhism, I envision Mt. Fuji with the peak shrouded in mist. Did you know it is a dormant volcano?

Fiji: blue. I thought it was next door to Australia but apparently I stand corrected because of research. It is an archipelago of 322 islands in the South Pacific.