til Autumn falls away

in dismal days of almost-gray and latent suns i dream of dapper loves; of thicker arms enveloping my slighter frame and rendering me a child again, an eager-eyed believer in such churlish fancies as nights in white satin or white knights in night satin or even something far simpler (a whispered breath meant solely for my ears; a smile spelling out my name in pearls & stars).

but this is yet-autumn, and i’ve such youth in me still bursting at my golden seams to side-step into despair’s foreplay and give way to sillyhazed daydreams born of darkened hours and snow-strewn silences. that rooms may fill with longer shadows and midnight’s gloved hands may weigh against my chest in days to come, i have no doubt, but then is never now and fret breeds only ragged nails and thinner promises.

i will fall in love with this littered season each day, until it bleeds its last.

 

rebirth.

*smh*

 

love, frozen.

so in the fashion of embracing contraction (i am a gemini, and such a fickle soul can never wholly know herself), i do believe i feel the need to fall back on my ever-so-trusty and quite overused four-letter friend “l-o-v-e” and slap it onto my newest worldly obsession: Pinkberry.

for those of you who know me even passingly, the fact that i’ll dedicate an entire blog as homage to the fabulous nature of this unduplicate-able form of frozen yogurt really should come as no head-turner. after all, a favorite food can be quite a marked personality indicator, and a great conversation starter to boot. ever notice how often we talk about food? i’m sure i say the words “frozen yogurt” more than anyone else i know…probably right on the heels of my usage of “love.”

before i ever tried it, i was sure pinkberry would serve as a turning point in my life. everything about it held the utmost appeal for me. let me explain:

• it was born in California. i do believe that i, too, should have been born in California.
• the very word itself is comprised of 2 words that just exude goodness and happiness.
• fruit + real frozen yogurt = shawna’s idea of heaven in a cup.
• the store is the cutest little shop imaginable.
• i do not have one easily accessible, thus the basis of its luxury appeal

i watched people eat it on TV and heard from my most luckiest of friends just how fabulous this treat was, and on my trip to California last December, one of my main goals was to lose myself in a Pinkberry and emerge from the store forever altered. to my tremendous disappointment, the shop in Santa Monica was closed due to electrical issues, and i had to settle for taking a photograph outside of its happy little windows that just couldn’t welcome me. i was crushed, and California paled just a little for me as i had to come home with the knowledge that i was THISCLOSE to experiencing something i’d so desperately wanted. and i really hate being told “no.”

but then, i discovered NYC Pinkberry, and on my last 2 trips there i finally achieved the glorious status of  first-hand, honest-to-goodness Pinkberry fanatic, with stories of its delicacy grounded in the fact that i can still remember how sweetly-perfect that first bite tasted. when i got off the train this weekend to visit Erin, we immediately bee-lined for the closest shop (within walking distance from her apartment!), and i now know that if/when i ever move to the city, there will be one sure stipulation for any apartment or location in which i evaluate:

Pinkberry must be nearby. noquestionsasked. i must continue the infatuation.

it’s like summer, light and sweet and lingeringly delicate, each little taste leaving you craving for more. and it isn’t even bad for you, as long as you’re careful with your toppings.

i will never look at food the same again.

 

the white routine

i love weddings. i really do. everything about them appeals to my somewhat-latent-in-regards-to-love romantic side: the opportunity to get entirely dolled up and don a special-occasion, instantly-make-me-feel-like-a-princess dress and favorite heels; the way everyone seems indelibly happy, as if such a rare day were an unexpected gift from the gods, covered in pixie dust and oozing champagne-bubbled euphoria; the tingling, warm buzz lingering just overhead, caught in the crystal shimmers of the chandeliers and the coy smiles of flirtation that suddenly turns the whole atmosphere electric with the possibility that tonight might just stand frozen in time, a non-continuum of an evening stolen from outside the realm of concrete and physics.

and then there are the other perks as well, venturing into the very unromantic yet entirely appreciated category of the practical reasons to enjoy weddings: dancing. open bar. pictures of when you dressed to impress. champagne flutes begging for refills and dapper dates always aiming to please, one hand on the small of your back as they guide you across a crowded room and hope everyone thinks they’ve brought quite the prize. i won’t pretend i don’t enjoy these part-and-parcel moments as well. for me, therein lies the essence of a frozen moment: a dose of Magic veneering the quite-real with all the gravity of layered satin, while the familiarity of  common elements hold you grounded in what’s true about the world – the chip of a freshly painted fingernail, the mis-step of a first dance, the sugary-burst of too-sweet icing from a rather unextraordinary yet highly fretted-over wedding cake.

we take what’s real and turn it into something more, something that transcends, by merely adding a little jewelry or slipping a little shimmy into our steps and readjusting our eyes into Romance mode. and it’s okay to fall in love with the world a little at a time; these things need not be rushed.

this weekend, i will wear black lace and pray my fingernails don’t chip (as they always do). i will smile over the rim of my champagne flute and turn my head from side to side to feel my earrings dangle lightly against my cheek. and i will kiss the bride and tell her how happy i am to be part of her beautiful day. my date will look and behave like a perfect gentleman and i’ll skim along happily, twinkling and sparkling in the charm of it all.

and on saturday, when i wake with mascara still blackening my eyelids, i’ll have yet another wedding tucked beneath my skin to remind myself exactly why i love to attend but have no desire to rush into a white gown of my own.

 

what unexpected luck such unlucky things might bring…

i had my purse stolen a little over a week ago, which was a rather annoying and encumbering experience to muddle through on a friday night. not that a monday or tuesday would have been preferable, but really…fridays are designed for fun. friday funday, free from frets day.
not so much, that night.
i have to say, however, that i handled it unbelievably well; no tears or yelling or any explosive, pity-me antics ensued, and i quite calmly and instantly accepted the reality of the situation and set about making necessary arrangements with my bank, 2 different police departments and the dmv. a week later, aside from the fact that i’m still minus the possession of one adorably irreplaceable Urban Outfitters silver wristlet (you’ll be forever missed, my cute little purse), everything else has been rectified and no long-term negative implications seem to be awaiting.
and yesterday, in the aftermath of such an annoyance, i received such an unexpected jolt of a silver lining that i’m almost not adverse to the fact that i had to undergo this experience:
my new license picture is really quite adorable.
in and of itself, this would be a nice surprise, but combined with the facts that: 1. i really hated my last picture, and 2. i absolutely never foresaw something as smile-worthy as this coming from a felony, i’m really quite tickled pink.
just goes to show – you never know what surprises each day might bring, or how something seemingly so irrevocably terrible might bring about a surprisingly pleasant return.

 

a few thoughts

last night, my brother and i went for a short run together and then cooked dinner and took a salsa lesson in my living room from one of our friends (who happens to be an incredible salsa dancer, thanks to her El Salvadorian heritage and feet that just won’t stop moving). somewhere between getting caught in the rain during our jog and our impromptu, laugh-riddled lesson to Maria’s fabulous Latin CD’s, i realized that i wouldn’t have changed a single thing about my life that night. here’s what i learned:

• my brother will always be my best friend – and for that, i’m beyond lucky
• sometimes, when he says crushed cereal makes a delectable chicken coating, he may know what he’s talking about
• going out is overrated when you can dance salsa w/ people you love right in your own home, no make-up or heels required
• new friends make me smile, and new friends who can teach me new fabulous things make me smile a whoooole lot
• i’m really, really blessed – and i don’t seem to take that into account nearly as much as i should
• there’s just never enough time in a day to accomplish everything you want to do
• i wish i knew how to speak Spanish so i could sing along and understand the words

 

the best things aren’t things

i’m an over-eager love-r.

rephrase: i’m one of those hyperbolic overenthusiasts who constantly spit out the word “love” like a baseball pitching machine that always delivers an identical throw.

chalk it up to the ease in which i’m made excitable over little things, like completing a salsa step without faltering for the first time or hearing a new song that i rush to download, or winning American Idol tickets (yes, I have my guilty teeny-bopper pleasures) from a radio station, or discovering that the Only 8 flavors of the week are my favorite combination. for all of these things, i just might drop the “L” word, and in different forms, i probably mean it each time.

i’ve been called out on this many-a times. it’s always, “wait, Shawna, isn’t this song your favorite song this week?”, or “do you love that? like, really love it?” and it’s all in good fun, and i’m completely comfortable with my enthusiastic and sometimes over-eager lust for every day occurrences (like the very best shoes ever that i found shopping with Molly in Lee, Mass.). but it’s gotten me thinking…

do i really love these things, or do i focus this form of excitable appreciation onto material possessions and social outings more fervently and frequently than i show my true gratitude and love for the people in my life? apparently i’ve conditioned myself to throw “love” around ever-so-lightly, so that in its assumption of the trite, i’ve really invented a hundred little loves around which my life is constructed. and how do you know what you really love, when you seem to love it all differently?

i should enjoy doing things because i love the people with whom i’m doing them. after all, i would still get an incredible adrenalin rush from snowboarding if i went alone, but it’s more fun to share the experience of a beautiful powder day with someone else who can exclaim about the conditions and laugh beside me on the lift. i’ve recently become border-line consumed with the desire to become an overnight salsa prodigy (which i am not, unfortunately), but would i enjoy salsa half as much if i was dancing alone? it’s the person leading me through the dance and the rush of others swirling around me to the beat of the music that thrills and entices me to want to move my feet as much as the actual steps themselves. do i love the jewelry my parents give me? not in the same way i love them.

i should re-think my verb scattering, really, and save my loves for those shining things. perhaps everything else i can learn to simply cherish, or enjoy, or really, really like. i don’t want to love everything just a little and then nothing quite enough to draw a golden line of distinction and separate those truly precious things in my life from those around which i’ve formed infatuations.

how i love words.

 

best things (and so i dream…)

i don’t always remember my dreams. in fact, i’m sure i remember only a tiny fraction of them, shards of my fantastical midnight wanderings flashing back like stolen mirrors held up to the nature of my subconscious. if i looked at myself through the lens of my dreams, would i recognize my own reflection surfacing amidst the filmy haze?

i’ve often considered recording those dreams i do happen to remember, as i’m sure many people do, and using them as inspiration for my writing (or perhaps as scintilating conversation pieces for the more mundane of my first dates). i’ve yet to focus my diligence toward a dream journal, but maybe one day. i’ll file this away in my overflowing pile of “but i should really dos” and move on…

about a month ago, i awoke with a near tangible fragment of an unexpected dream nearly begging me to write it down and remember it as a stolen moment. it was of him, a him i once knew and don’t at all anymore, and all i recall is the gravity of his dark eyes upon me as we fell into words in ways only he and i could:

“tell me about your faith and your hair,” he said, holding my gaze across the space between us.
“three years, and you instinctively ask that?” i couldn’t feign my surprise.
“they always were your best things,” he said.

and even in my dream, i knew it was the truth.

 

for the love of all things latin.

i have a natural propensity to create an endless barrage of lives for myself, a habit i began forming at a young age. my family traveled a lot (for which i consider myself very blessed), and i never lost time inventing a life for myself everywhere we went. in hawaii, i took hula lessons from a professional dancer at our hotel and decided i really had quite the lei-and-luau future beckoning me; in Aruba, i was sure i had the knack to pad around barefoot on the beaches all day and deftly weave intricate braids into little girls’ hair; on multiple occasions, i regained my sealegs and was sure i’d make a fabulous catamaran driver/lifeguard/snorkel instructor/cocktail waitress/tour guide. a cross country trip at age 14 that landed me in a resilient raft on the Salmon River braving white water and enjoying gourmet meals cooked by our raft guides more than convinced me that the wilderness was my playground and yes, i was absolutely meant to be a raft guide somewhere out west. Colorado turned me into a snowboard bum, and California convinced me i’d make a perfect surfer.

and in Punta Cana, i learned once-and-for-all that my destiny somehow involves salsa dancing. i’ve become somewhat of a broken record over the past couple years in my empty claims that i will learn to salsa, that i must learn to salsa, that i’m DYING to learn to salsa…and then never acting upon it and seeking out lessons or buying Salsa for Dummies DVDs or investing in a Latin music collection that would inevitably spur me to move my feet.

until last night. finally, i made it to a salsa social (at my brother’s suggestion – we’ve decided to learn together, comforted by the fact that we can laugh at each other and not have to look like amazing dancers for strangers who are just dying to twirl us around the dance floor without being hindered by our lack of salsa savvy-ness).

and i loved every second of it. sure, i wasn’t great, and that’s a big pride issue for me — i have to overcome the fact that people are much better than i am in a lot of areas in which i’d love to excel, and force myself to simply take baby-steps toward achieving goals i’d like to tuck beneath my skin. yes, i want to be a salsa dancer, but wanting it is never enough, and i actually had a blast laughing at myself and trying again and again to get down a few basic steps (while other Latino and not-so-Latino experienced salsa dancers shook their hips and spun around the dance floor like their feet owned the night). i won’t always be the best at everything, and i certainly won’t do everything well the first time — but that’s okay. and i’ll keep trying.

and i will learn to salsa, thankyouverymuch. and i’ll love learning to laugh at myself as i get through this whole process of chewing on my humility and stepping on other people’s feet along the way.

 

let’s go play outside.

it’s a shame, really, the way we drop words
like loose change
and collect dust
with frenetic fear
(oh what a paradox and OH,
i’m just one pair of eyes)
& i’m not saying i’ve found the cure
for the sensible life
but geeze
i’d rather burn out bright
and wear my best shoes
through brambled fields
than save my silly pennies and
best hair days
for a whistle and a
sunny spell.