Upside Down Kris

Inner Smile I had forgotten my inner smile. You know, the one that shines through the eyes and makes people glow. I don't know exactly where it went, but I do know it was lost for many years. I think it all started when I moved to Italy. At some point my brain molecules took to running, then colliding, and my smile was no longer true. I realize as my mind flips through snapshots of my life that I've been trying to put my smile back into it since those first years of bewilderment–with yoga, meditation, Feldenkrais, dance, biodanza...the list goes on and on, all in the name of a fleeting smile.  Now that I've moved again, I want to move my molecules in the right direction.  I refound my smile thanks to the lack of it in my singing last Sunday. During rehearsals I just couldn't keep my intonation up: the sound was bringing me down. After racking my brain for the why behind it and finding no cure to my conundrum, I really focused on the sound of the tenor I was listening to

The Small Things  The little things pull life like the magnetic force of the moon on the tide. Only the magnet is sucked into a moment, an almost nothing that you tuck into the back of your brain. Maybe it moves the tide of your whole life without you knowing it. Those tiny, monumental things...the visible micro-movements in a cheek after two years of paralysis, soaking in the red from the brick buildings while revisiting a city you once loved, playing board games on a warm July night in front of an open window with your old roommates, the zest of coming up with a word that uses most of your letters in Scrabble...lazy yet true talks and simple evenings...collections of calm moments and rare flashes of truly being there. Instead the flashiness of florescent fruit drinks and cocktail dresses, of all night dancing and filling the role of the charmer...of "your moment on stage" (whatever it may be) and the rush that accompanies it–gone as the liquid adrenaline gets absorbed and c