Walk through beauty

Do you dance, my friends? I've done a bit of ballroom stuff, zydeco, swing, things like that. And I love to waltz and two-step and can do two versions of true Viennese Waltz, not to mention Baroque dance (and read some notation!) as well. I'm not such an imaginative lead, but I'm a great follower. (The dance version of being a bottom?) I have a very fond memory of a year and a half ago two-stepping with my D.C. friends at the Hippo in Baltimore on a Sunday night. My favorite dance partner of the whole bunch of my friends was Chris, now single, who was leading as I was following. It was as if we were one dancer and one body; from the minute he took me in his arms we fit together like nothing I've experienced before or since. I literally was just filled with love for him and was taken to a different realm while we danced; like your "dual conversation" you mentioned having with the gentleman. I dream and daydream about it sometimes because it was so wonderful :-) Dancing together might be a lovely way to get to know each other.

Favorite foods? Smells? Things to do to amuse onesself?

Me? All food is good food :-) With the exception of beef tongue. The idea of that makes me, shudder, not want to eat! Carbs, especially breads make me blow up like a balloon, so I try and avoid those these days. For many reasons, I didn't cook much during my partnership with my Former, and now I'm learning the fun and joy of making good food. And the humor that is to be found in a kitchen disaster, too. I don't burn water anymore and am actually making some right good things to eat in my little kitchen. But again, ingenuity is sometimes lacking for me there. But I can wash a pot and a dish with the best of them.

When I was a kid growing up in Asheville, sometimes mom and dad would just take us up on the Parkway for a short way, especially when we were going home from church. I still love to do that kind of thing on occasion, just take a back road in a pretty section of the world and see where it takes me. I did that today after the interview and before going to see my friend David for lunch. I need more connection to the beautiful stuff around us. We walk through beauty with the eyes of our souls closed most days. Time to open those soul-eyes :-)

I love the smell of my beloved Blue Ridge mountains, especially when it is damp, cool and foggy. The smell of a dog, especially their earthy paws. The scent of a cat right after a sunny nap. The lingering smell of a loved one on a chair, in the bed, on the coat he was wearing this morning out in the cold. The perfume of an old-fashioned rose. The aroma of baking bread and the yeasty smell while it rises. Halloween :-) The insides of carved pumpkins as they char from the candle lighting them from within. Skunk (!!) Stones on a mountain. The heady whiff of healthy loam. Leather ;-) The smell of the sea, clouds above the treeline, the spray of a mountain stream as it laughs its way down a hill. The odor of growing things. My slight synesthesia gives me mixed-sense input sometimes: the symphony of a slowly swelling water droplet, and the tense expectant chord of its detaching and the in-my-head percussion of its final splat. The aria sung when a cat springs from the floor and lands with perfect ballistic grace, economy of style and no motion wasted. I never before really realized what all that was. Now, I watch a sunset, day turning into dusk and night as the grand music plays on in my head, the perfect soundtrack.

I think some of my favorite things right now consist of making new mistakes. I've made the old ones so many times; at least when I make new ones I know that I've moved territories a bit and I'm no longer stuck where I was.

P.S.

Sometimes I write a post that's really a love letter to you, in disguise. Yes, you.

In beauty may I walk.
All day long may I walk.
Through the returning seasons may I walk.

Beautifully will I possess again.
Beautifully birds . . .
Beautifully joyful birds.

On the trail marked with pollen may I walk.
With grasshoppers about my feet may I walk.
With dew about my feet may I walk.

With beauty may I walk.
With beauty before me, may I walk.
With beauty behind me, may I walk.
With beauty above me, may I walk.
With beauty below me, may I walk.
With beauty all around me, may I walk.

In old age wandering on a trail of beauty, lively, may I walk.
In old age wandering on a trail of beauty, living again, may I walk.

It is finished in beauty.
It is finished in beauty.

~ A Navajo Indian Prayer of the Second Day of the Night Chant (anonymous).

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