Upside Down Kris

Holiday Spirit Where does the spirit of Christmas lie? Is it in the aftermath, as we take in torn, jolly paper and wipe off chocolate moustaches? Is it during the Christmas doing, wrapped in the holiday grins and encircling arms of family? Or is it in the preparations, the tingling of the fingers in the crossing of a bow or the throwing of silver tinsel on the tree? Nay, my friends, nay. Christmas resides inside a globe that echos "Santa Claus is Coming to Town". I may not think of it for most of the year, but when December rolls around (or even the end of November!) it comes out of its storage box. I shake the glass dome and wind up the incorporated music box. Christmas lives in those sparkly flakes swimming around the globe–suspended memories that touch me before settling on the sphere's floor again. The song plays slowly, skipping so many beats that leaves me wondering if the globe has forgotten, yet it always tinkles out some notes. I jiggle the dome again and again, ...

The Bed Keeper The Bed Keeper looked down at me from her pillow throne. Slate gray   and serene, she observed me silently. She was sizing me up, trying to decide if I was friend or foe. In the cat kingdom as with all kingdoms, this is first and foremost.  Seeing as how I bowed below her immediately, I seem to have made a favorable impression. However, she followed me with her eyes as I executed the bed ritual: the changing of the day costume to night, the stripping off of any dayness paramount to approaching her throne yet again. When I had finished with the cleansing bathroom ritual, I returned to ask permission to ascend her throne. She gazed at me with her gold eyes but said nothing. How was I supposed to know if this was an assent or refusal? I moved toward her cautiously, inching toward the prized throne. It was true that I was there to overthrow her, although I wished it to be as pacific as possible.  She made no comment as I nudged her slightly, but she refused to ...

    Make-Up Meditation I have started to prefer my own face to the china doll look that I used to have when I was made up. In thinking about it, made-up means "invented" or not real, right? So, I was inventing my face. If you're really good at putting on make-up you can be almost anything you want...even unrecognizable... While I don't think I was ever unrecognizable in the past, I do remember having fun with creating a persona with my look when I sang at restaurants. Every week, I was someone different...an Ice Princess with shimmery white eye-shadow or Miss Moody with shades of dark blue. I could be whoever I wanted to be. Now I just kind of want to be myself. I went through "natural" phases in the past, too: particularly during Covid. I used to ask myself what the point was in making myself up. Who for? It made me realize that I was using make-up to impress everyone else or to be someone else...the "me" in me didn't care. But is being natura...

Thanksgiving Thanksgiving. To give thanks. To be thankful. To be full of thanks, to let it infuse you until it becomes your fuse and lights up the day. That's what today is all about.  It's so simple yet so profound. Am I thankful? Truly thankful? Yes. For the fact that I'm here, that I'm alive. That I have been given this chance to experience life, whether my recollections are positive or negative. That I have been given the opportunity to travel through three lives: one in the US, another in Italy, and the latest in Spain. How many people have had this fortuity? Or who choose to take it? I am grateful to be on this trip called life. To have traveled much and to continue to travel. To have experienced many cultures and adventures, weaving them into the tales I tell.  I am thankful that I have created the stories of my life, and that I am conscious of it. That I will go on generating chapters, molding them and then letting go when the happening is out of my description....

Balance I've been weighing balance for years but it never truly made sense until I took yoga. It's the center of yoga, really–not just in the poses, but in the things you do (and don't do), the way you think...all intertwined and interwoven into an intricate stability. Maybe you have been there, tried standing on one leg, the other pressed in a triangle to your thigh or at a 90° angle in the air, hands poised above like a dancer's or floating by your side...It all works magically, and there you are in perfect balance. Or, are you? How long does the "stableness" last? A second, a minute? For some longer, for others shorter. That's not the point. The point is, there comes a moment in which the imbalance enters in: you wobble and try to find your center of gravity again. You could say it depends on your sense of balance. I would add that it depends on your support points–how you decide to distribute your balance. But even if it's all perfect–you've pr...

New Slate   Bam–t here it was: the decision to break my face right. Bone shattering teeth chattering my head in splinters. Yes, there it was: my second 20 years  on a clean plate/slate. Before, it had always been draped with some tantalizing tidbit. The slate was steely clear like surgical knife to jaw. A medical cut was needed  in my second life to graft a third one. God, it was freeing_ God, it was ghastly_ no jaw, no country, no limits. The rawness was real: I was moving on. I smelled alcohol  antiseptic, dust from cleaning... the exhaustion of healing, packing, giving away, and the sweetness  of anticipation. I relive the stickiness  of duck tape on my fingers while watching the reflection of lopsided lips in the mirror. But I am here, whole. The change is made and the plate is slatey like the sea. Foto: <a href="https://pixabay.com/it/users/flyupmike-5768/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=516...

  The Art of Living The art of living is painting your words and actions the right color before your brush touches someone else. It's so hard to get the shade right: the one that the other person will like or at least understand. The truth is that everyone sees the world in different colors–some in gray tones, some in florescent lights, some with an impressionistic blending or muting, and others in loud, vivid scenes. Just like we don't agree on what is beautiful or what we want to look at, we also don't see (accept) the color of words in the same way. Art has as many nuances as our perception of it.  The same is true of our perception of other people, which are tainted by our own experiences, words, as well as other people's words. So, getting down to the nitty gritty of it, what is the Art of Living? I define it as learning how to slip slide through human interactions so they go as smoothly as possible. This doesn't mean avoiding confrontations or conversations. I...