DRIP

Los Angeles, California

I write in two or more places. While I don't write daily in my journal, it is my go-to to work through thoughts and images and the issues connected with them. My method is to meditate first thing each morning, then write in my journal. Tea comes before both and it is the only consistent thing about my mornings. While I try to stay on this meditation/journaling regimen, it is more of a goal than a daily commitment.

And sometimes the intimacy of journal-writing spills over into blog writing. Or rather, the line between the two becomes blurred. Even more so thoughout the pandemic, as I was reeling from isolation, and had a more primitive urge to reach out from under the surface of my now-reduced daily life. That may be apparent in my blogposts. I write posts over a period of time, letting them marinate as I reread and edit. But once posted, I move on and have never looked at all of the posts I put up over the course of the pandemic.

So maybe the posts will become less confessional going forward. But, in a way, I hope not. I feel we are all too guarded in too many ways. Our homes are less open to each other, and certainly we hypervigilantly protect our hearts and to some extent, our minds. I have emerged from these two years with a greater sense of wanting to share. To share my home, my thoughts, my fears. And while I won't be sharing my home with readers, my internal life is becoming more accessible. It is something writers can provide. While it might seem like oversharing or too much information, it might also help people to identify with thoughts and the processing of issues that could help them to feel less alone with their own conflicts and travails.

In a recent email exchange with my friend, Max, I confessed that I was struggling with acceptance of my life for what it is. Simply put, I am not living the life I planned. But in a lot of ways, my life is better. I look at my friends who are in longtime marriages with extended families including grandchildren, and I feel they have satisfaction and contentment in their lives. But I also see some resignation to the routine in their lives. Maybe their partners have no interest in any passion in the relationship, which can certainly happen as time goes by. Maybe many have traded spontaneity for security. And I get that. I just don't have that. So when I recently looked at what I did have in my life, I came up with a list comprised of romance, independence, and passion. And a lot of that shows up in dancing. Max put it together into the acronym DRIP. I wonder if a life consisting of these attributes is enviable. If I didn't have them in my life, I know I would envy someone who did. My problem has been in feeling the lack of those other things: family, security, and a place to go for the holidays. But a recent epiphany led me to taking a step back and really looking at my life. All of what DRIP provides for me has often been pushed aside as I focused on all that I don't have. Perhaps this could be seen as a classic half-empty, half-full glass conundrum. Only recently, after I recognized and acknowledged that I was longing for the red lollipop which I was never going to have, did I suddenly see the kaleidoscope of colors in the lollipop I had been given.

Remember in Cabaret when Sally Bowles sang about her friend Elsie? When I die, I'm goin' like Elsie? Well, I don't want to live and die like life is a cabaret. But, in some ways, my life is like a cabaret. When I go out to dance at 9:00 on a weeknight, I know many of my friends are in bed. And on some of those nights, I go out the door with a wish that I was staying home. But once we get to the club and I hear the music accented with the clave, my heart speeds up. As it has for almost two decades from the very beginning when I walked up to the door at my first club, Rio, and heard DJ Robby's timba music getting louder as I approached. And once on the dance floor, the narcotic quality of movement lifts me out of my day and my life and to a completely different and blissful place.

I drink tequila when I am dancing. Only one. Solamente. More than one, or if I drink it too fast, my balance gets off and my turns get sloppy. But with my one tequila, a great band or DJ, and a dance floor where I can watch my salsero amigos dancing when I am not on the floor, there is bliss. Maybe the B for bliss is the thing missing from Max's created acronym. DRIBP? BRIPD? Ok, this is getting a little too much like Wordle. But it is all there. The bliss. And the passion. And the romance. And the dancing. I worked for the independence, and that is no small thing. But I also worked hard at the other life. The one that got away. And maybe the epiphany of realization is that it was not meant to be. And as I turn and spin in my salsa life, with my salsa guy, I should let the other one go in order to fully embrace all that I have. Something to think about the next time I slip into my dancing shoes.