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I left out of the house this morning to go on our first MS 150 practice ride and my mind was spinning with competing images, thoughts, and musings. Riding to meet a familiar group – we all rode last year together – and yet I’m changed so completely. It was last year at the bike ride that rustlings began – there was the mesmerizing man who was emotionally unavailable – the unavailable but emotionally charged woman – and then there was me. 

When the weekend was over, a friend asked me how it went with the mesmerizer and I said candidly I had never been more myself, more comfortable in my own skin, more true to me than during this bike ride. Why, she asked, what was different? And I told her I was happy where I was in life, I was out in nature, with a bunch of women I loved to hang out with, riding my bike that I love, the weather had been perfect, and that night we had a roaring fire, delicious wines, and conversation beside the lake in the forested primitive campground. I told her if he didn’t fall in love with me that weekend – he never would. 

But I didn’t tell her about what happened on the way home from that weekend – a twist that caught me off guard – I found myself attracted to a woman for the first time in my life – not sexually, I’ve always been bisexual – but attracted from the point where I wanted to spend time with her like you would with a lover and not someone who you considered just a friend. I didn’t tell her about the woman because she was in a relationship and although she seemed to be emotionally available, she was in reality not. 

Flash forward to this morning, leaving my house, a woman I love kissing me good bye as I headed out for my “sporty” ride with the girls and I marveled at how things can change so vastly in less than six months in your life. I went from trying to figure out why the mesmerizer (who had all of these things on my check list) left me emotionally numb, to wondering how I could possibly find myself entangled in another potentially lethal relationship triangle to meeting the love of my life. WOW. Now, that is living – as my friend in SF wrote to me recently.

But what is interesting is that today after the ride – with the same group of people – all of them the same as who they were six months ago – when I said in jest “I am what I am” and the woman asked, “And who is that?” – I said simply “R” – a joke on first gloss, but in reality not – I am that person on the bike ride six months ago – the fiercely independent, passionate, fun loving woman who the man couldn’t see, the woman couldn’t see clearly, and who the love of my life spotted from a crowd of Mardi Gras revelers. 

Now that is living. 

My talented beautiful friend writes me from SF with a big resounding congrats that I have taken life by the horns and found an incredible passion – she’s ready for one she says – (ANYBODY OUT THERE WHO DOESN’T SNATCH HER UP IS OUT OF THEIR FUCKING MIND) – that said, she ends with this quote which I love:

” L’amour est à ceux qui y pensent ” (Love belongs to those who think about it)  Marcel ACHARD

A friend sends photos of herself – she’s an artist so all of her photos are sumptuously wonderful – but I see lines around her mouth and eyes – our age being archived before us – the thing is that she looks so incredibly beautiful, as if the lines are adding rather than subtracting from her beauty – how wonderful to look a someone age and see beauty deepen with time. Fuck a bunch of plastic surgery. 

We went to a lecture the other day at Tulane by Ned Sublette – by way of anecdote, he cited a study that determined Israeli women have more sex when on vacation. Duh! 

Today, as I sat across from T and she was recounting an episode from the night before to J – something about the way she was in that moment – black eyes flashing, her quick foxy smile, the way she gestured with her hands – made my whole being suffuse with warmth – almost chemical in nature – and I couldn’t take my eyes off of her – then suddenly bingo – in a zen master of the obvious moment – I knew right then for certain, even though I knew before, down to my core that I am thoroughly taken by her in every way possible and this feeling wells from deep inside of me – excavates down layer after layer after layer – spreading this unbelievable feeling of joy. Duh!

The sky is grey outside – a light smudged pale bluish grey – but it gives the entire landscape a wintery look when just a few days ago it seemed like spring was in the air (magnolias, red bud, and quince all blooming) – it’s a day to snuggle up to a lover, cozy up to a fire, to lie down with dogs and stroke their fur, to drink warm liquids, to slow down and burn candles. 

I plan on doing all of this after I finish the to do list with 499 entries on it – all listed under urgent. 

We headed to Frenchman Street last night with friends in tow to listen to Gal Holiday at DBA – she was awesome! Her iconic western wear, lithe body and graspable waist, and her darling voice. How cute is she! Anyway, we danced and danced and it felt good to be out and about, particularly after a gnarly day of computer angst that had me pacing around my desk for three hours as R worked furiously to hook up a wireless router that will help me connect to the internet downstairs in the main house. 

A friend of mine told me a year ago that she had learned to surround herself with people she could count on. The conversation came up when she was asking to help me out and I kept saying no, and she said you need to learn to let people do for you too. I said I wasn’t used to having people do for me. But turns out last year I had some incredible friends solidify in my life – J, my neighbor and friend who became someone I could lean on even from my sick bed and B the one who said this to me, as well as others such as R&A next door.  I was always better in the giver role, than in the receiver, but I spent the last year welcoming the giving that my friends were offering. 

Now I’m having a crash course in receiving the gifts a partner has to offer – gestures of kindness, flowers to mark a date on the calendar, remembering my preferences in thought and deed – I’ve entered some new phase of my life where I receive gifts, from my friends, from my lover, from life – and these gifts of time and thought are all so sweet to me that I wonder why I wasn’t more open to them before – it was surely a side of myself that should have been exploited yet wasn’t. 

I know in the first phase of my mid-life crisis, I did start asking to receive – but it took a while to start actually opening myself to the possibilities. 

Reading about why people continue to use Google over other search engines I was struck by how habitual users have an expectation for success every time they search on Google and that they pay attention to information that confirms their use such as others saying, yes I use Google all the time too. I’ve considered myself a person who likes routine in my life – there is something that gives me great joy in making my tea in the same pot, walking Loca on the same route, my scheduled Pilates classes, and folding my clothes in the same manner. These routines give me comfort. But it seems like I’m always breaking routines – flying out and staying at hotels, changing my fitness goals by giving myself a new challenge every year (this year again its the 150 mile bike ride) and hey, my job, seems to be the ever changing, ever in flux, dynamic of how to do this different, better, than last year. 

So while I believe in ritual – the habits that come from extended use of the same thing, and I enjoy routine, there is also spontaneity and curiosity that vies for my attention as well. My success has also been realized in the shock of the new to borrow a great line. A friend of mine calls it mixing things up – you keep what’s best and change the rest – again Fiorina’s line from a few years back when she was the next best thing. 

I spoke to J today about the trip here in a week and caught her up on everything that has happened to me in the last month – she was significantly enthusiastic and said repeatedly “my how things can change in six months. last time we saw you, your goal was to get a man to make dinner for you” – I told her I expect this is the way it goes, one moment you are waking up in your bed wondering how you could possibly ever co-habitate much less fall in love with a person again, and then next you are waking up every morning with someone who you can’t imagine ever not waking up with again. 

In Shanghai back in October, and then again in Phoenix later that same month, friends put wishes into my wish box that prayed for me to find my next big love, to feel secure in my home and work, to have a child, to see my mother healthy – in the span of a few months – all of their wishes for me are unfolding. And oh, what a difference to me.  

In the landscape of love, there are flash fires that extinguish by themselves, there are fires that burn down villages and leave nothing in their wake, there are fires that are lit but never tended, and then there is fire – burning pure and clean – that properly tended has the potential to warm you for love’s eternity. Yesterday, the fires were dotting my landscape – I ran into someone who reminded me of a forest fire that left the earth scorched and destroyed, so much so, I had to reconstruct myself like a Phoenix, then later another person appeared who was drawn to my fire like a moth but who fluttered by afraid to be burned, and at the end of the day, I came home with the one who tends my fire perfectly – regulating my flame with uncanny ease as if she has been doing it all of her life.