Love in the present, and The Velveteen Rabbit

“The present moment is really all that we have. The only place you can really love another person is in the present. Love in the past is a memory. Love in the future is a fantasy. To be really alive, love – or any other experience – must take place in the present.”
— Jack Kornfield­­­

Three months away from my home base in the United States has taught me precisely who will make an effort to maintain connection, the same is true here in Croatia, people I swore would make the time to be part of my experience here have ‘been too busy’, whereas others have delightfully surprised me in the dynamic of friendship (shout out to Ivica, Carmen and Daša).

I genuinely appreciate Jack Kornfield’s words because I have, like so many, at certain times held onto a memory (or established an illusion of parity) as a dynamic experience when I should have let go – long ago. Why? I assure you I am not delusional but as an eternal optimist I suppose each of these events in my past come down to hope… that if you respect space, focus intention, believe sufficiently in the connection or your actions or messages received through the 3^rd Eye, or Heart Chakra to the vibrational energy  given and received then it must be real. Bonnie Raitt had a very popular song as I was going through my divorce in 1991 (Adele’s cover is stunning) I can remember hearing over, and over, and over again while learning to sail that summer to mitigate the pain of loss, to process who I would be next. But it was the husband and wife that I was sailing with for whom it was more resonate – but neither knew the truth of their loss, they held onto the marriage like people cling to part of the helm of their destroyed boat. I never cried about this for myself in hearing the wife play it on the boat’s sound system, but for them – always.

Ah, love. Like living well, treating it as the miracle it is to be elevated and cherished requires the same active engagement as your exercise régime. There cannot be indifference, there cannot be procrastination, to have an intimate relationship (of any kind) means to participate and practice at it – daily, hourly, and sometimes in the space of a breath.  Not because you ‘have to’ but because you recognise that if you don’t you will both loose an essential aspect of yourself and the person who loves you will take to higher ground (or grasses greener on the other side of the fence).

And so, The Velveteen Rabbit and what can be real, even when it isn’t.

When we are most able to be “real” is as Margery Williams nearly a hundred years ago wrote – we are shabby and have loose joints but we are are most beautiful to those who love us, and whom we love.  When we are most real, when we are truly worthy of love, outward appearances matter not.  Five or thirty extra pounds, failed hearing or eyesight, peculiar habits are ignored because the authenticity of loving is sitting right beside us.  When we are real, and not an illusion, we reach for our others, we call, we send postcards above and beyond social media (although how easy that is you would think more people would actually bother to connect in this manner), we engage and make our lives meaningful in the reality found in laughing loudly, hugging tightly, crying softly, sharing life and all the joys and sorrows that accompany our journey.

“Each day is a miracle that intoxicates me. I want more. I greet every morning like a new pleasure.”
Malika Oufkir

More so, I want to share that miracle with you…everyday. When I reach for you – reach back for me.

If you enjoy my blog please consider ‘buying me a cup of tea’ in your currency via PayPal to livelikeadog@gmail.com and then, please do share the blog with your friends on Facebook, Google+ and Twitter – I am @TeresaFritschi. To order my book, please click on the cover art of my book below, thank you! 

Dalmatian Echoes

rain drops, sun-bleached stone

darkened seas tossed in violence

terrifying gods ignite the sky, scream angry words in unknown languages

windows shuttered, stories bidden

flickering light, something held at distance, now in proximity 

decay, renewal, one – or both

kneel, clutch, embrace, drowning that rescues

her shuddering response beneath his surrounding, burrowing warmth

discovery of self in the other

parched. hungry. greedy – like the earth

primal continuation, cognitive exploration, Tantric at-one-ment

in waves, nourishment came – yet again and again

fingering Spanish chords, his thoughts echoed through her body

a thousand years of her words stilled, caught, unexpressed

fingers entwined

racing hearts in syncopation, quieting to soft harmonies

with hair like Samson, he anointed himself with their sex

If you enjoy my blog please consider ‘buying me a cup of tea’ in your currency via PayPal to livelikeadog@gmail.com and then, please do share the blog with your friends on Facebook, Google+ and Twitter – I am @TeresaFritschi. To order my book, please click on the cover art of my book below, thank you! 

What lovers do

“White Lace” – Jeremy Mann, oil on panel

I have been lending a new girlfriend here in Croatia the collection of books about love, famous lovers, courtesans, geisha, and, of course, seducers I brought here as reference materials for my second book. She is engaged to marry a lovely Dalmatian man in his mid-fifties. Evidently the content, shared, is producing some much appreciated surprises, (for both of them), in the bedroom; exchanged words have always been powerful aphrodisiacs. I hope all my writing efforts have the same net effect on all its future readers.

I don’t think romance is necessarily about seduction, I believe romance is about bringing ourselves and our partner delight; a heightened state of anticipation of mutual pleasure.  Small things not grand expressions – just as it is the small things that build up unchecked will also destroy love. When? why? did we stop being ‘romantic’?

“It isn’t possible to love and part. You will wish that it was. You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. I know by experience that the poets are right: love is eternal.”                                                        ― E.M. Forster, A Room with a View

I recently discovered Billet Doux because of Musetouch on Facebook and I do not mean the French lingerie company nor from the “1670s, “love letter,” French, literally “sweet note,” from billet “document, note” (14c., diminutive of bille; see bill (n.1)) + doux “sweet,”. Rather the small exquisite masterpieces of handwork used to transport the letters which lovers used to write to one another. I am charmed. At some point, the right man, will understand that his words tucked into one of these would make me swoon more effectively than any diamond worth a hundred times what the average price of these archaic treasures sell for.  Let us consider, for a moment, the circumstance of receiving such in an age before telephone, television, the Internet and all of the immediacy offered to lovers today… the anticipation of waiting for words, the promise of reuniting or escape to be carried by a courier (a stage coach or private hired rider) or, even left at a point of rendezvous frequented by lovers and unknown to others. A touch point of words, scrawled upon a small piece of paper with a fountain pen – or quill, perhaps scented, sanded, sealed and rolled into the carrying tube represented by the billet doux – private words, words that excite. Franz Liszt (1811-1886) sent Europe ablaze with his love letters – to a great many women – but, for example, I think none finer of precise use of language (as well as his music) to create longing and desire, to mark his lovers’ heart as his own (for however long or short).

Thursday morning 1834

My heart overflows with emotion and joy! I do not know what heavenly languor, what infinite pleasure permeates it and burns me up. It is as if I had never loved!!! Tell me whence these uncanny disturbances spring, these inexpressible foretastes  of delight, these divine, tremors of love. […]

This is to be — to be!

Marie! Marie!

Oh let me repeat that name a hundred times, a thousand times over; for three days now it has lived within me, oppressed me, set me afire. I am not writing to you, no, I am close beside you. I see you, I hear you. Eternity in your arms… Heaven, Hell, everything, all is within you, redoubled… Oh! Leave me free to rave in my delirium. Drab, tame, constricting reality is no longer enough for me. We must live our lives to the full, loving and suffering to extremes!…

Franz

One does not ‘need’ a billet doux to make your lovers’ heart race – one needs to actively contemplate the path to ‘un-doing’. None of us could actually use language like this today and be taken seriously. But the intent, the intent is something anyone can put into action.

If you enjoy my blog please consider ‘buying me a cup of tea’ in your currency via PayPal to livelikeadog@gmail.com and then, please do share the blog with your friends on Facebook, Google+ and Twitter – I am @TeresaFritschi. To order my book, please click on the cover art of my book below, thank you! 

Unconditional love, be part of the stars

Sometimes writing feels like a moral imperative. It wakes you in the middle of the night. Beckons you from sleep, and your dreams, to rise, dress and pull a ‘blank sheet of paper’ from your computer and capture the ephemeral. I am in that state now. You could argue this makes no sense – couldn’t it wait until the morning? Technically it is morning, it’s 2AM as I start this. I was soundly, peacefully asleep after two nights of dousing rains, lightning and thunder; the unique acoustics of the Adriatic and the surrounding islands and mainland of this peninsula of Croatia where I am living terrorizing me and playing my vibrational energy like a drumbeat. Everything has a reason.

With the differences in time zones between where I am, and where I am from, there is a duality to my existence at present – frustrating though it might be at times. To date I realise that I am neither fully here emotionally and spiritually, nor am I physically there. Resolution, I think, of this conflict inexplicably came at 1:35 AM in ‘just for a moment’ turning on my phone to check messages and Facebook in the place I left behind. Two things stood out in my newsfeed. First my friend Amy’s quoting Wayne Dyer:

“The highest form of ignorance is when you reject something you don’t know anything about.”

I won’t even comment but leave you to consider how frequently our egos get in the way of truly understanding the full spectrum of information and interactions with other people we encounter each day.

The second was a blog posting, the blog being used by its author, Don Shapiro, to frame his forthcoming book entitled Life Is a Fork in The Road. There’s a lot to take away from this piece I ‘woke to’ and might have missed (had I not done as bidden) as I do not stalk my friends online presence. I highly encourage not only a thorough read but for you to bookmark the page and come back to it because what Shapiro writes of, unconditional love, is important to everyone.

“True unconditional love is not a choice.”

Shapiro’s story is one I have lived – the one “released” and the one releasing. My love remains unconditional for both men. I know the truth of this writing and the bitter-sweetness of knowing that these loves (and all our human life connections) are impermanent. Here’s something else I just realised in the middle of the night – both men have been ‘body guards’ to me. They have protected my physical being as well as my energetic one. Their connection to me, and mine to them, allows me (still) to ascend to my fullest potential. You MUST release attachments, you must grieve, but the truest path to our own heightened soul comes from embracing the gift of love as it touches us and as we gift it. Over, and over, and over again I am reminded of the charming French film starring Omar Sharif as Monsieur Ibrahim (from the French play Mr. Ibrahim and the Flowers of the Koran written by Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt) and Pierre Boulanger; not the least is the life lesson Sharif’s character imparts to his protégé played by Boulanger about the value of loving being a gift you give yourself whether or not the other person accepts that love. Our vibrational energy must be higher than our ego, our being must at least attempt to attain awareness beyond our physical wants so that we elevate in the state of loving – in spite of pain, in spite of human desire – that is unconditional.

Convegno by Antonio Ambrogio Alciati, 1918

And when, by the mere chance that the universe conspires to provide a connection so powerful energetically between yourself and another that you would travel to the ends of the Earth to test the connection, the reality of it, physically then you must also do this. You must explore and define the ‘star crossed’ aspect of such energy, take and give to it liberally and with every fiber of your being and then gift it back. Treasure what remains.  As human beings it is all too easy to cling desperately to the idea that we can alter the predestination of certain elements of our lives. We (as I am most likely to express) “hold the bouquet of flowers too tightly” and it withers and dies as result. To ‘love’ in such an environment is not love, it is fear. Love cannot flourish in the space where fear reigns. Love, the highest form, the universal love from which we are created, which we will return to when our physical being is no longer capable of sustaining (or containing) our souls, needs room – lots of it. When you connect energetically to another human being their presence in the same room isn’t necessary – although it is preferable from a human desire perspective to be sure. Our energetic connections are something truly magical. They transcend our limited physical existence and allow us, if only briefly, to reconnect with something higher than either party involved. We can give and receive pleasure as if the person were in the same room with us, even before we ever experience meeting them. And when we release, or are released, that universal love is part of us, it never dies, it goes on and on without the physical connection. It can nourish and sustain us, as well as provide for the other when you remain attuned to them.

Be part of the stars. Love as one ever-expanding cosmic force and do so without hesitation, without encumbrance or tether, oh, do love unconditionally.
Namaste.

If you enjoy my blog please consider sending me the price of a cup of tea in your currency via PayPal to livelikeadog@gmail.com and then, please do share the blog with your friends on Facebook, Google+ and Twitter – I am @TeresaFritschi. To order my book, please click on the cover art of my book below, thank you! 

The shifting trajectory of kisses

“You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart.”
— Louise Erdrich

For the first time since 2005 I am dating again. No, I wasn’t in a long term relationship. No, I didn’t have a traumatic (or tragic) experience. And no, I don’t hate men. I have been on OKCupid for a bit shy of two years now. But in the last two weeks, finally being in Croatia after a year of deliberation, I have migrated from online and video Skype conversations to actually sitting with a man face-to-face over hot chocolate, over dinner, and going for walks.  I have kissed all four of these men. Nine years is an awfully long time to have not done so, some I wanted much more with, with some, perhaps the kisses were actually too much to have shared.

This morning the (very loving) husband of a dear girlfriend, in the most subtle way imaginable, expressed his energetic protection for me. In my new life’s chapter, taking place far from practical intervention and rescue should such be necessary, David’s love is not the kind of love I am unaccustomed to having in my life; at first I was puzzled by why he would choose to Tweet the content and Cc me on such.  This dating thing is fraught with perils that every woman experiences, even when you are in a committed relationship rape happens. David’s genuine concern expressed for both myself and my best friend (as we were both mentioned in the Tweet and are both now actively dating again for the first time in many years) is soft focused and filled with light in a world with harsh realities. So David, I am sending you a huge hug, and a slightly insufficient thank you – message received.

Back to the dating thing.

In the last year a very wise man, and an equally wise woman, have both expressed the same thought about applying caution to sharing our physical space, and (any kind of) our energy with others. Every encounter with another (physically and energetically) leaves residue on the participants and in the domain of space inhabited, as such it’s incredibly important to understand this before sharing either with another. I suppose, if I am truly honest, protecting myself from giving too much of myself away, harming another against their future or having the negative energies of others zap me has kept me from dating, and eventually becoming intimate, for so long. Because I noticed, boy-oh-boy have I noticed, how I have felt after each encounter with these four very different Croatian men. Not that it is all important but it is of merit to note that each of these men is at least 14 years younger than I am.

With the first man it was like ‘coming home’. Safe, protected, a sense of continuity that felt ancient, comfortable in both silence and in conversation, with him (and this is hard to explain) I felt an extension of my greatest self, perhaps, because in many regards we are both rather unconventional. And when it came to expressions of passion, the kiss I will remember and draw energy from for the rest of my life seemed ripped from a romance novel. The second man to win my kisses had, by his own admission over the Thanksgiving dinner table, not kissed (or done anything else with) a woman in six years. There was considerable alcohol involved and some energetic ‘egging on’ because another man nearby was being dismissive of the former man’s rationale and (what I sensed) deep pain and his own admitted fear on behalf of his son. And so, initially I shared three, not passionate, kisses with him to remind him of the pleasure that can be had from such. He seem both confused, delighted and ‘warmed’ by this – eventually taking the initiative and seemed to enjoy himself to the point that he asked to have me spend the night with him. (um, no.) Man number three, one of my two dates yesterday, is exactly half my age – still a man in chronological years, and sufficiently so to have actively pursued a date with me. We had fun. Enjoyed amazing hot chocolate together on the Riva in Grad Trogir. He (easily) agreed to my request to rescue the remaining pomegranates on the tree in front of the abandoned house in Trogir in which I have fallen in love.  I now have a lovely bag full of these jewels which otherwise would have found themselves rotting on the ground as a result of yesterday’s Bura and todays’ rain storm.  He is very sweet, and earnest, but in many ways he really is too young in terms of life experience for this to be ‘anything’.  My second date yesterday is 18 years my junior, but sufficient experience to not feel any lacking. His candor and overt sexual interest in me was palpable from moment one.  He kissed me within 15 minutes of our meeting (and he was really very good at it). The best kiss of the evening took place against a 400 year old stone wall in a narrow alley of Seget Donji – his hands both cupping my face and then in my hair (where, as a great many terrific lovers know the nerve endings in our scalp make us particularly sensitive to erotic stimulation). His sexual energy is very much like that of Mickey Rourke in this scene from 9 1/2 weeks too dangerous to maintain one’s sanity and certainly not sustainable.

One thing is for certain, I need to recalibrate as I can tell that my trajectory has been influenced by the sharing of this tender intimacy in ways that are very uncomfortable to who I am. Like a hangover for my energy I have allowed myself to get swept up ‘in the moments’. Making up for lost time? Squandered resources? No, not either. I feel very much like the meme above about kisses being like drinking salt water. I can’t undo this, and some I most certainly would not change because in these experiences have offered me a greater cognition, and with such I come closer to completion. Still, a little discernment going forward would be a very good idea and a practical consideration worth embracing.

If you enjoy my blog please consider ‘buying me a cup of tea’ in your currency via PayPal to livelikeadog@gmail.com and then, please do share the blog with your friends on Facebook, Google+ and Twitter – I am @TeresaFritschi. To order my book, please click on the cover art of my book below, thank you! 

Not sleeping in Buffalo

It’s the second time I have woken this morning – a dream is responsible (more on that below). The first time was around 3AM, Seget Vranjica Croatia time, stars still dazzling the ink blue sky, Venus descending, the moon a silvery white sliver as it completes its latest transit. I drank water, had a piece of spirulina and oat superfood bar and went back to bed to reply to some emails and Facebook posts back in the United States, and then fell back into a soft cocoon of warmth that, unfortunately, did not involve sharing with the right man.

20 November 2014 Buffalo Central Train Terminal in background as record snows are cleared.

In my apartment back in Rochester NY I have a feather bed atop my mattress and box springs. Obviously, no matter how desirous of such comfort, I was not going to haul such a weighty and bulky thing with me, though as regular readers of my blog will recognise I did bring a queen size down comforter and one of my Anichini duvet covers along  with a mohair afghan purchased from Calzeat of Scotland many years ago with me. (Despite the body numbing of swimming in 17C sea water temperatures a pilgrimage of self discovery this might be but I am never going to be an ascetic.)    Thankfully my landlady also had outfitted my bed with a king size down and feather comforter (it weighs nearly as much as my feather bed back ‘home’ (though I am less and less sure about where home is these days). Hers is covered with two layers of satin brocade and then tucked into an equally heavy duvet of thick white cotton embroidered in white long the upper edge. There are matching cases for the dense feather and down filled pillows (which I use as a headboard, while I actually sleep on my own pillows). When I initially arrived two weeks ago I had folded hers in half and slept atop of it.   As those living in Buffalo NY (where I was born and lived for 29 years) know only too well, the weather can change dramatically in two days time. And so with temperatures dropping into the 40s at night (and no heat in the bedroom) I am now tucked inside the white one (sleeping bag style with all the pillows mounded above and around me) with my own down comforter over me and the mohair cloud with the colours of the Scottish Highlands holding my body heat in place. If I soft focus I can almost manifest the sublime joy of resting with “the he” in such an environment and fall asleep with the angels providing protection and sweet dreams.

Yesterday on Facebook an article appeared from  The Independent about how a woman has opened a “cuddling shop”, for $60 USD an hour she will hold your hand, stroke your hair, hug you and talk to you (without implications of sex). I thought about the loneliness so many experience (she received 10,000 emails of enquiry in her first week of business) and think she’s onto something. We, in the west, sleep alone. We do not sleep in a single room choke-a-block with 15 or more relatives. I think our isolation makes us hungry for touch – willing to pay for it to realise even an hours worth of connectedness with a complete stranger. While a tremendous economic opportunity for her what a sad commentary on the state of being in the United States.  I could have, or should have, cried in reading the article but I didn’t. While I might want to share my bed with the ‘right man’ I am not in need of sharing it with just any man. The truth is that I have not found a man I felt sufficiently ‘in comfort with’ to share my bed in more than twenty years. Want implies mutuality and a conscious decision to be vulnerable, to love unconditionally, to trust, to believe in the fullness of being which both partners bring to the intimate sanctuary of sleep. Whereas to need something (or someone) conveys desperation, an unquenchable hunger to possess that will ever leave the person demanding fulfillment void.

And so while nestled in my cocoon of sleep, just before I woke for the second time, a dream. I rarely remember these, I don’t write them down, and do not possess the skill to interpret their meanings, but this morning was different – this dream, ripe with messages stands out because for a couple of reasons.

I was sitting at a slatted wooden picnic table.  The light is from a campfire and a nearly set sun. There is a man sitting opposite me, his wife or girlfriend has just sat down in a chair to my right.    On the table before me are silver spoons or slim decorative pieces each about 7″ in length – they are united in having a small scene at the top like old fashioned ‘souvenir of’ spoons.  Two I distinctly recall, one with a three petaled Trillium flower and the other with a group of men in Medieval clothing including chain mail on horses (knights?). The campfire is to the left of me, and a man appears there, speaks and then disappears. The woman gets a call, she has long hair and resembles a backup singer for a rock band the way she is dressed and is suddenly she is gone too. At the left of my hand there is a clutch of folded money, lots of it. The man opposite picks up the silver spoons/ornaments but leaves me with the Trillium and the Medieval men, and the money, saying only at his parting “it was foretold”. In a way that is true, my tarot cards were read on Halloween Eve (All Hallows Eve) my defining card at the centre being the Knight of Cups (more on this later). But in that reading, and as conveyed by three other friends within hours and days following was the same message – verbatim. I am protected by angels and guardians, human and Divine beings, I am surrounded by great love, that I must allow myself to release the energetic block I have toward wealth (rather than the spiritual and emotional abundance I enjoy, embrace and express gratitude for) and once I release the associate fear (of in having it turning into a world class jerk) I would have “all that I need” and more.  The universe is always sending us messages. I acted on a physical realm one this past Monday morning, and this morning, within a matter of two hours of waking, that action appears to be more than a possibility of becoming my new reality – and staying on indefinitely in Croatia (friends in the United States do not panic unduly I should be back by May to pack up and leave for good if this works out).

If you enjoy my blog please consider sending me the value of a cup of tea in your currency via PayPal to livelikeadog@gmail.com and then, please do share the blog with your friends on Facebook, Google+ and Twitter – I am @TeresaFritschi. To order my book, please click on the cover art of my book below, thank you! 

Can a grocery list be erotic?

My friend @KenHerron paid me a backhanded compliment about my writing yesterday. In an exchange about the timing of my publishing he wrote:

“I hope it’s not wrong to eat lunch while reading smut, as your posts always seem to pop up right about lunchtime!”.

And I thought about that because the latest blog posts aren’t erotic at all – at least I don’t view them as such. And responded,

“no smut. Ha. Think of them as dessert. Love you”

To which he replied:

“Oh please. You could write a shopping list, and it would be “smut”!   :)”

So as I made an emergency batch of double chocolate and walnut brownies (sans measuring cups, measuring spoons and no absolute knowledge of just how hot the oven actually is here in the apartment I am renting in Croatia) this morning I thought about attempting to make a grocery list erotic as a writing exercise. This is also for my girlfriend Deborah who affectionately refers to me as a “sexy cupcake”. So here goes (an over-the-top-list to support the most sublime evening of love-making imaginable, select site, add lover, some preparation required).

100 tea-lights, white soy and unscented, in glass votives

2 bottles of Veuve Clicquot Grand Dame Champagne, Moroccan tea glasses for Champagne  

4 dozen, fresh Loch Fyne oysters and antique Majolica oyster plates

For Zabaglione:

1 dozen certified organic, free range, eggs (preferably brown, blue and green shelled)

1 kilo small mill, Fair Trade, organic cane sugar

1 liter of Marsala wine, from Sicily, bearing Denominazione di Origine Controllata designation

1 kilo each of fresh, organic, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries and currants

Lady fingers

Night blooming jasmine, mimosa and peonies

Maybe it isn’t the grocery list itself as the possibilities such a list presents…

How did I do Ken? 😉

If you enjoy my blog please consider sending me the value of a cup of tea in your currency via PayPal to livelikeadog@gmail.com and then, please do share the blog with your friends on Facebook, Google+ and Twitter – I am @TeresaFritschi. To order my book, please click on the cover art of my book below, thank you! 

Intimacy found in fingers entwined

I write this for friends whose lover reaches for them daily and who might take for granted this tiny intimacy – Amy and Chris, Farrah and Abdullah, David and Alison, Deborah and David, Nancy and John, Kanikaa and Anubhav a gift for you.

There are hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of people whose definition of intimacy is sexual. It’s not. Truly. Real intimacy is won through fingertips touching for the first time. It can be fleeting but in those precious seconds we are offered a union where anything and everything is possible and can be overcome. The spaces between our fingers offer us structure and function, when devoid of anothers fitting into our hand we don’t think about it. Ah, but when laced, entwined, in the simplicity of companionship or the intensity of passion, the gift of renewal, of safety, of promise, of all these and more are, quite literally, in the palm of our hand.

I recently had the opportunity to find my fingers so connected to those of a man. An exquisite, and both ordinary and extraordinary, man. If there is a single regret to have it is that in time the memory I carry in my head will fade to shades of sepia – like a daguerreotype – and then, eventually and sadly, this will only remain something of exquisite beauty existing at a cellular level held by neuron synapses and chemical impulses. It will be one of those things that as my physical being ceases to have purpose will flash before my eyes (if you believe such things happen before we enter into the pure white light) and I will remember how perfect those seconds felt. I write of this experience now, at the distance of a few days, because I fear that if I don’t something important to my life’s journey (and perhaps your own as you read this) will be lost.

There have been in the past men whose hands perspired to a point of being icky who held my hand. There have been crushing hands and wimpy hands clutching my own. There have been hands so exquisitely formed as to be a creation of chiseled of the purest marble come to life that felt inhuman and lifeless. There have been hands that sent shock-waves through my body threatening to destroy every sense of stability I possessed. There were, for nearly seven years, a pair of strong, beautifully masculine hands belonging to my former husband. This man’s hands were none of those. There was no anticipation of it even happening but when it did the nature of my hands being held, and my holding this man’s, could not have been any more perfect (to me). An extension of who I am, who he is, and who we might aspire to be together. Fleeting though it might have been suddenly the world felt ‘more’ of everything precious. There was a physical strength that the slender shape of his fingers did not give a clue to his possessing – his are capable hands, that know both hard work and the ability to express tenderness. If you already know that you love someone for the energy which they share liberally with the world, can you actually fall in love with them because of how your hand feels in theirs? The question of why now echoes in the void between my fingers. The answer hangs both on soft currents of salt air breezes and mountain air crisp with winter offering time to process and decide on a course of action (or inaction). I have no expectations. The memory of these hands is enough. More than enough.

I found a wonderful meme about holding hands, two lines stand out in perfection – I wish I had written them.

“To take a hold of anothers hand is to break from individuality. It is to link yourself to another being, to momentarily entwine your life with anothers, to promise, for a moment, that you need not face the world alone.”

Tonight, if you have neglected this tenderness, or passion, reach for the one you love. Take their hand in yours, entwine your fingers, clutch their hand to your heart as you look into their eyes and know that sense of renewal in possibilities – the perfect intimate gesture.

If you enjoy my blog please consider ‘buying me a cup of tea’ in your currency via PayPal to livelikeadog@gmail.com and then, please do share the blog with your friends on Facebook, Google+ and Twitter – I am @TeresaFritschi. To order my book, please click on the cover art of my book below, thank you! 

Dalmatian Echoes

rain drops, sun-bleached stone

darkened seas tossed in violence

terrifying gods ignite the sky, scream angry words in unknown languages

windows shuttered, stories bidden

flickering light, something held at distance, now in proximity 

decay, renewal, one – or both

kneel, clutch, embrace, drowning that rescues

her shuddering response beneath his surrounding, burrowing warmth

discovery of self in the other

parched. hungry. greedy – like the earth

primal continuation, cognitive exploration, Tantric at-one-ment

in waves, nourishment came – yet again and again

fingering Spanish chords, his thoughts echoed through her body

a thousand years of her words stilled, caught, unexpressed

fingers entwined

racing hearts in syncopation, quieting to soft harmonies

with hair like Samson, he anointed himself with their sex

 

If you enjoy my blog please consider sending me the value of a cup of tea in your currency via PayPal to livelikeadog@gmail.com and then, please do share the blog with your friends on Facebook, Google+ and Twitter – I am @TeresaFritschi. To order my book, please click on the cover art of my book below, thank you!