Nuevo Comienzo

Los Angeles, California

While I have no recollection of what that groundhog did last month, I am acutely aware of poking my own head out of the pandemic cave in which I've been living. It has been challenging, and not. Months ago I began meeting friends for lunch and the occasional movie. After a false start prior to Delta and Omicron surges, Joel and I did make it back onto several dance floors over the past two months. Travel is being discussed, Hollywood Bowl season is being perused, Dodgers Opening Day coming in hot.

Does it all feel normal? No. Does the recollection of the last two years feel surreal? Yes. Are we the same people who we were before Covid hobbled us? I don't think so. But life does go on, and so shall we.

I had a recent health episode which was slightly alarming. That, along with the death of my friend and contemporary, Pam, has made me look around at my community and realize that we are now in that place where age-related maladies are hitting us. As if it is not reminder enough that Covid vaccines are targeted for our age-group, other realizations poke at us. As celebrities pass away, I begin to notice their ages and how many are younger, even if slightly, than 70. I ponder if all generations, or just us boomers, come to grips with the stark realization that we can't stay young forever. Immature, yes. Young? Not so much.

And yet, last night at our local salsa club, amazingly back after its pandemic hiatus, I scanned the dance floor when we weren't dancing. It was full of dancers at all levels of competence and talent, but all dancing with the joy of the music and the movement. I felt a spark of real joy as I thought to myself: Que rico! But that thought was followed by the thought: This is a petrie dish!

While I am thrilled to dance and do my pilates and have friends to my home and to not wear a mask through it all; just this past week I encountered two women, my colorist and a salsera friend, who both were diagnosed with Covid after a routine test. Absolutely no symptoms whatsoever in either case. So I tested myself for the first time. Negative. And there was a tiny, little scintilla of disappointment. It somehow seems inevitable, and I think a small part of me just wants to get it over with. Even though it no longer quite feels like that Acme anvil hanging over my head every time I venture out.

Life after lockdown has suddenly become very busy. I had my first dinner party of the year, and am busy planning my Easter menu. Already summer plans are being made and travel plans for 2023 are being discussed. Life and time is moving on, and I feel there is a lot of making up for lost time to be accomplished. And yes, there will be surges and we will need to be cautious again. That Acme anvil is still around and might again hover even more dangerously. But for now, for 2022, it finally feels like a fresh start. A nuevo comienzo as we dance our way into spring and toward our warm summer evenings. Call me crazy, but I'm starting to feel just a little bit joyful and free. Que rico!

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.