a bit of a daredevil

Couple of year ago I found a picture of a 3-year-old child in my mothers collection of old photos. In this photo, the child was being held by her mother in front of a roller-coster ride at an amusement park. The child was dressed very much like a girl but her facial features can pass for a boy. She had a few strands of hair on her head and her facial features were not very well defined. It was obvious that she was not a pretty child but there was something very endearing still in her ugliness. Her mother held her up as she eagerly pointed at this what appeared to be a colossal roller-coaster ride. Her eyes filled with admiration, interest, and joy. She wanted to go on it. As I looked over to her mother in the photo, it was suddenly clear to me, the woman in the photo was my mother twenty-four years ago and the little girl was me.

I was a not a pretty little girl, so homely that my mother had to dress me my in pink or red...or purple, especially in public so people can tell that I was not a boy. I have heard of this story from my family over and over again when I was growing up. They joked about it when I got out of the very ugly phase of my life and joked about it again when I no longer resembled my baby looks. I realize now looking back, I may have grown out of out my ugly looks, but I don't think I have ever grown out of my daredevil nature. I am still that child, easily stroked by amazement and wonder. It cannot be helped, she cannot be stopped.

People have asked me for "life" advice sometimes, not sure why.  I'm beginning to think that I should just stop giving them all together.

My hidden message will always be, you either go big or go home.

when it is time to let Alby go

Yesterday was the ending of something beautiful. It was a certain kind of love between a man and a woman that has left me unfulfilled and unhappy for a year and a half. Looking back, I'm wondering if it was mostly self inflicted -- a choice I made to suffer because I was in desperate need to connection. Brene Brown penned it beautifully in her new book Daring Greatly that human beings are design to make connections. If no connection, we suffer greatly. I realized that no matter how good and charming of a person he was, these past years my thoughts about who he can be for me had been in most part a figment of my imagination. An imaginary man, a hope, for a future romantic interest awaits me in the while I go through a time of trials. However, as "nice and real" as I made it out to be, I became a prisoner of those thoughts. I wasn't able to fully enjoy moments that I have with other people because he didn't show up. I began to do things in hopes of seeing him. I found myself more engaged when he was around. I found myself more worthy of love when he contacted me. Those contacts were so desperately few that though I still had the capacity to live freely but I was not entirely free.

dear alby

By SH and SC


So long, fair Alby. Godspeed.
I will cherish our moments of honesty and truth.
May your road be safe from thorns.
May the wind be always under your sail.

Your heart belongs to someone else.
Indeed, your heart does not belong to me.
She is your true north and not I.
May you find favor in the eyes of your true love, Alby.
May the stars witness your union and be glad.

You bewitched me but for a moment
I now let you go.

I surrender any claim on you
"Why do the white doves call?”
They call for their long lost lover.

Dear Alby, the moments will not be forgotten,
they will be cherished.
On that mist-filled night, when we prayed,
I sensed a connection
And the heavens affirm with sounds of trumpets.
And the angels laugh
With glee and benevolence
A cherub sat on your shoulder and gave his best
but alas, that connection was not meant to be.

Oh how cruel a life when he, almost a lover, finds you a friend.
How cruel indeed. Cherubs know not such wicked sadness.

Your heart will be averted to another dear one.
But not without breaking a little and without a few tears wetting your pillow.
Hope will rise up in the morning
Like wings of eagles
But, at night, tears
Oh, that I could forsake the memory of you.
That I could carve out the place you have made in my heart.

Adieu, Alby
goodnight you lovely one, goodnight you fair one.
Adieu Alby
Adieu...

Quintessential Mom

Quintessential: representing the most perfect or typical example of quality of class - and that is who she is, my mother.

  Gardening the front yard at my apt in Israel. 

April was a big month for me and my mother was there with, for, me all the way. Moms, you got to give them credit for their wisdom, experience and adaptability. They seem to become more beautiful every year. Have you noticed? After every cold and stormy season, they come back even more alive and more vibrant than the year before. You see it in their smiles and you hear in their laughters. 

There is something every special about mothers, the glue that holds the world together. My mother, the one person I know who took life as it is and lived it freely and daringly - with style. My role model and my best friend. Thank you for your profound dedication and love for your children.  

 Our neighbor dog, Paco, who visited my mother everyday when she stayed with me in Israel. 

treats and favors

The Cocktail Party (1949)
By TS Eliot

It will do you no harm to find yourself ridiculous.

Resign yourself to be the fool you are.

You will find that you survive humiliation

And that's an experience of incalculable value.

That is the worst moment, when you feel you have lost

The desires for all that was most dersirable,

Before you are contented with what you can desire;

Before you know what is left to be desired;

And you go on wishing that you could desire

What desire has left behind. But you cannot understand.

How could you understand what it is to feel old?

We die to each other daily.

What we know of other people

Is only our memory of the moments

During which we knew them. And they have changed since then.

To pretend that they and we are the same

Is a useful and convenient social convention

Which must sometimes broken. We must also remember

That at every meeting we are meeting a stranger.

What is hell? Hell is oneself.

Hell is alone, the other figures in it

Merely projections. There is nothing to escape from

And nothing to escape to. One is always alone.

Half the harm that is done in this world

Is due to people who want to feel important.

They don't mean to do harm — but the harm does not interest them.

Or they do not see it, or they justify it

Because they are absorbed in the endless struggle

To think well of themselves.

There are several symptoms

Which must occur together, and to a marked degree,

To qualify a patient for my sanitorium:

And one of them is an honest mind. That is one of the causes of their suffering.

To men of a certain type

The suspicion that they are incapable of loving

Is as disturbing to their self-esteem

As, in cruder men, the fear of impotence.

I should really like to think there's something wrong with me —

Because, if there isn't then there's something wrong,

Or at least, very different from what it seemed to be,

With the world itself — and that's much more frightening!

Everyone's alone — or so it seems to me.

They make noises, and think they are talking to each other;

They make faces, and think they understand each other.

And I'm sure they don't. Is that a delusion?

Can we only love

Something created in our own imaginations?

Are we all in fact unloving and unloveable?

Then one is alone, and if one is alone

Then lover and beloved are equally unreal

And the dreamer is no more real than his dreams.

I shall be left with the inconsolable memory

Of the treasure I went into the forest to find

And never found, and which was not there

And is perhaps not anywhere? But if not anywhere

Why do I feel guilty at not having found it?

Disillusion can become itself an illusion

If we rest in it.

Two people who know they do not understand each other,

Breeding children whom they do not understand

And who will never understand them.

There is another way, if you have the courage.

The first I could describe in familiar terms

Because you have seen it, as we all have seen it,

Illustrated, more or less, in lives of those about us.

The second is unknown, and so requires faith —

The kind of faith that issues from despair.

The destination cannot be described;

You will know very little until you get there;

You will journey blind. But the way leads towards possession

Of what you have sought for in the wrong place.

We must always take risks. That is our destiny.

If we all were judged according to the consequences

Of all our words and deeds, beyond the intention

And beyond our limited understanding

Of ourselves and others, we should all be condemned.

Only by acceptance of the past will you alter its meaning.

Every moment is a fresh beginning.

at 3:10am

Sirens, in the dark of the night. I'm reminded of these verses again. Oh how relevant are these words to me.

Keep me safe, O, God, for in you I take refuge.
I said to the LORD, "you are my Lord; apart from you I have no good thing."
As for the saints who are in the land, they are the glorious ones in whom is all my delight.
The sorrows of those will increase who run after other gods.
I will not pour out their libations of blood or take up their names on my lips.
LORD, you have assigned me my portion and my cup; you have made my lot secure.
The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance.

I will praise the LORD, who counsels me; even at night my heart instructs me.
I have set the LORD always before me.
Because he is at my right hand, I will not be shaken.

Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices; my body also will rest secure,
because you will not abandon me to the grave,
nor will you let your Holy One see decay.
You have made known to me the path of life;
you will fill me with joy in your presence,
with eternal pleasures at your right hand.

lost items

to move on is to lose something.
but to not,
surely there will be no gain.
simple is what simple does.

some may say
no pain, no gain.
we are back to the beginning.
does it always have to be a struggle,
always a fight between the dark and the light?

say it ain't so.
say it ain't so.
when is it time to move on?
not just yet.
not just yet.