mi intimo secreto

I have fallen ass over teakettle in love . . . with tango.

And, no, I do not feel that this qualifies as infidelity on my part. There are those—who admittedly will never be privy to this little exculpatory exercise—who have accused me of ugly motives and, while I feel the need to defend myself here, I must say I find them crass and wanting imagination.

So what if I dance four nights a week and wish it were more? So what if I come home at one in the morning with busted feet? I am happy. I am assertive in ways I never knew to be, acquiescent in others, and—goddamnit—I'm happy. For the first time in my life, I feel like I have done something right. No matter what decisions I have made, what time I have wasted, what bruises I have borne, I have succeeded at finding this.

Tango for me is one part performance, one part meditation, one part . . . je ne sais quoi. And I needed a little je ne sais quoi in my life, let's face it; I did.

So, to those who would begrudge me this infatuation: desist. No, I am not eloping with my teacher. I am an adult and I know perfectly well how to resist the temptations of transference; I can tango with a fifty-year-old master dancer without losing my panties or my cool. No, I am not cheating on my boyfriend (nor do I intend to). Yes, I am abandoning him to his own devices on these evenings out, but he is a big boy and ought to stretch the legs of his own interests before they wither in atrophy. I have asked him (read: begged him) to come along on this lark and he has declined. If anyone is rejecting the other, it is he. So I will not say no to myself. I will not shut up about molinetes and volcadas. I will not stop practicing ochos at the LaserJet. I simply will not, so back off.

He visto mi allegría y la voy a lograr.

what are the odds

It's official. I am obsessed with poop. Or rather, I am now officially hostage to the colon police.

Either way, I've become "that girl" at the office who discusses the benefits of digestive enzymes and the various properties of juiced parsley. I'm now the odd man out on cake day. I'm everyone's least favorite lunch date and you should see the looks on their faces when I waltz by with a bowl of marinated kale.

On Saturday I caught up with a friend I had not seen in eight years and I dragged the poor bastard to a Vegan raw bar for lunch, all the while extolling the virtues of ginger and coconut water as he nibbled on his "nut meat" with patience and grace... or something akin to grace, if such a thing is possible with poorly wrapped nori and julienned beet. I must have seemed insane.

I'll say this: I was not dull. He won't have to report to mutual friends somewhere down the line that I got hit by the boring bus. I can take comfort in knowing that my life choices so far, while somewhat unorthodox, have at least managed to be interesting.

To tell the truth, this January detox regimen—the juicing, the raw food, the yoga and yes, even the Colonic—has really changed me. I've never felt better.

I have the following ringing endorsements to offer: LYT (for the hose!) and Pure Food and Wine (for the "cheese" plate). Both have contributed to my little renaissance. Although, I warn you, place but a toe in this current and you'll find yourself surrendering whole hog. Next thing you know, you'll be on a soap box too...

The only downside: I've so thoroughly purified my system that those three glasses of wine from last night have been recognized by my cells as the poison they probably are and as a result I feel terrible...

displaced housewife seeks a kinder, simpler age

Last night I made meatloaf. Granted, this was meatloaf made of ground turkey and a host of other similarly modified healthy ingredients, but it was meatloaf nevertheless. And meatloaf is the provenance of housewives the world over, a Depression era staple, a Midwestern culinary rallying point (voted Good Housekeeping's seventh favorite food in 2007!); it is surely not the meal a twenty-something New Yorker makes for her boyfriend after boxing practice. Right?

I've always been a product of the wrong decade. If I had my druthers (see? I use words like "druthers"), I'd wear nothing but t-straps and pleated skirts, ride around with notebooks and loaves of bread stashed in my bicycle basket. I'd write letters. I'd keep a trousseau. I'd misbehave famously. This anachronistic fantasy of mine harvests the better parts of womanhood—subject to personal taste of course—and splices them together in defiance of their generational relevance. This works for me.

So I go to Whole Foods as if it were a market in the town square. I lovingly select vegetables I cannot afford, take them home, and mutilate them. I rattle about the kitchen listening to WCBSfm because they play songs I recognize from a time when I thought listening to Simon and Garfunkel made me "edgy." And I make things.

Sometimes I think I'd be perfectly happy like this: separating the whites from the darks, folding shirts, making beds, writing grocery lists, planning parties, planting flowers...provided there were some other element to my life to keep me engaged—no one wants to go out with their head in an oven. But I want to learn to properly fold the bottom sheet, how to mold marzipan, how to keep my plants alive. Perhaps it can be so simply explained as the need for control in my home, but what does that word even mean nowadays? Do we still hold by those needs or have we outgrown them?

It has occurred to me that these simple skills should not number among my goals and aspirations. Sure, everyone wants to write mystery novels in a cottage by the sea, labrador retreivers underfoot, whole bean coffee brewed at sunrise, but the pursuit of domestic happiness seems to have been rendered irrelevant to our postmodern lives. We are conditioned to want something else, something faster, especially us girls. Women in the wake of feminism are no longer presented with two equally valid choices: to stay at home or to go out into the workplace and seek our fortunes alongside the menfolk. We are now expected to do the latter and are judged only by our fellow seedbearers when we fail to also accomplish the former.

Many women have suffered and sacrificed for this to be the case. It is on their shoulders that we wear pants and vote and even burn our bras in protest. But sometimes I wonder if we haven't backed ourselves into an even trickier corner by disregarding some of the finer points of our natures. Listen, ladies, I have every respect for those of you who would rather eat mulch than bear children, wear a dress, or bake a pie. It should be your choice. I just wonder if that choice isn't being made for us?

I probably ask too much of the world. Because I want to wear pants. I want to curse and drink grown men under the table. I want to be a high-powered career woman just like everyone else. I just also want to wear lace every once in a while and be appreciated for the antiquated rituals I keep alive on special occasions. And someday, if I have babies and I want to stay home and actually watch them grow up, I want to do that too.

and I quote

Our country is: "bigger than the sum of our individual ambitions; greater than all the differences of birth or wealth or faction..."

This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed — why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent Mall, and why a man whose father less than sixty years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.

So let us mark this day with remembrance, of who we are and how far we have traveled. In the year of America's birth, in the coldest of months, a small band of patriots huddled by dying campfires on the shores of an icy river. The capital was abandoned. The enemy was advancing. The snow was stained with blood. At a moment when the outcome of our revolution was most in doubt, the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people:

"Let it be told to the future world ... that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive...that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet (it)."

America, in the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words. With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come. Let it be said by our children's children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.

President Barack Obama, January 20, 2009.

And probably will be for life

Never have I felt so adrift.

I look at this picture and I ask myself, "What the fuck?" Mostly I wish I lived there: closer to my mother, further from this icy tundra, and able to stretch to my full wingspan in the grocery store without decapitating the elderly. But part of me is convinced that if only I could cut the mustard here, where I am now, I would not need so desperately to escape.

Somewhere along the line I must have gone incredibly, irrevocably wrong.

I hate my job. I'm cold. I'm claustrophobic. I want to change directions, but I'm exhausted. And I know that I'm going to have to make a running leap at something soon, but what...

post mortem

So Christmas is over. We've covered that. But now there appears to be some kind of hooligan marauding about greater SoHo attaching these snarky tags to all the abandoned Christmas trees waiting on the curb for the Sanitation Man. Son of a bitch.

now I lay me down to dream of Spring

In this weird hinterland between Christmas and New Years everything is possible and yet there is nothing to do. I'm at work because I have to be, perched at my desk feeling leftover queasy from my holiday bug, but I may as well be anywhere else for all the work I'm doing.

Being this idle leaves scads of time to sit in the bathtub of myself until pruny, just thinking. This week is always a good—albeit obvious—time to redress the vagaries in my life, to do a systems check, plug up the holes, and recite to myself a little State of the Union address slash pep-talk. For the most part, I think I have 'me' under control, but I can't seem to shake this omnipresent feeling that something is wrong.

And life is too short for that feeling.

So I've set a few Plan Bs to boil on my back burners. And while they bubble, I'll start taking my own advice. Today is all I've got.

2008, I wish you farewell. You were a lousy mistress, but you weren't all that unkind, and for that I am grateful.