hug.

v., hugged, hug·ging, hugs.

v.tr.

1. To clasp or hold closely, especially in the arms, as in affection; embrace.
2. To hold steadfastly to; cherish.
3. To stay close to.

v.intr.
To embrace or cling together closely.

n.

1. A close, affectionate embrace.
2. A crushing embrace, as in wrestling.

[Probably of Scandinavian origin, akin to Old Norse hugga, to comfort.]

huggable hug'ga·ble adj.
hugger hug'ger n.

Yesterday on my walk I looked over and saw an oddly shaped person. Then I realized it was two people. They were hugging. Then I remembered how sweet hugs are and how much I love them.

I Write My Own Love Songs

When you're young and impressionable, you believe that one of the most romantic things that could happen to you is that your love would inspire a song. Yes, that you will have a romance of bibilcal proportions, that you will be a MUSE (!!!!!!!), that you will inspire poetry and agnst, and large consuptions of alcohol!

Sigh.....

But, honestly, that's never happened to me. I never seem to leave a very large mark on past loves, though most of mine still haunt me in some way. So, when my friend Emily asked me to compose a song for her latest album, I decided that I would take my last love and pretend to write a song that maybe I could have inspired. I know, so pitiful it makes you think I'm a bit off in the head. And if you don't know by now, I'll confess, I'm a bit off in the head.

But this was fun. We'll be putting it to music soon and singing it. Until then, I'd like to know your thoughts on a proper title. I have a few ideas, but want to see what you can come up with:

Slower:
I dreamed a liquid dance
And danced a golden dream
of cherry blossom cheeks
And super nova powers that taste like cream

Digging deep rather than digging wide
our secret confessions and that
stellar explosion inside

woo ooh ooh (or something like it)
woo ooh ooh

Faster:
What a chance for romance, you
Know I like making love.
Like Alobar and Kudra
With the perfume of a jitterbug.
In the light of the dawn, in the
Dawn of the day we'd still
have secrets to spare,
and skin to skin shows how much we care.
Holding your hand with the palm staring up at me.
The lines run deep like stellar streams,
They tell tales of cherry blossom cheeks,
And super nova powers that taste like cream

This is the song you'd write me
If you wrote songs
These are the words you'd say
If words came that way
This is the life you'd paint
if living were art, but your colors
have faded from my redblue heart

A guilty god watches over me,
And the Paris wind freezes our liquid dream,
But I have the cherry blossom cheeks
And I'm the super nova that tastes like cream.

Seeing With Eyes of Love

How do you see yourself? How do you love yourself? How do you feel about your body? Did you know that the relationship between you and your body can become one of the most beautiful relationships of your life? Our minds can be so cruel to our bodies, can't they? The mind usually says things like, "No, I don't like this part of my body. Look at my nose; I don't like my nose. My ears--they are too large. My legs are too short, or too long, or too whatever. But the secret is, your body is perfect the way it is. We all have some crazy misconceptions about what is right and wrong, what is good or bad, what is beautiful and ugly. They are just concepts, but we believe them, and we judge ourselves by them. We have an image of perfection in our mind and we expect our bodies to somehow try to meet this image and be a certain way...if it is not that way, then we think we are ugly and imperfect.

Look at what you think about your own body, do you love it and accept it, or do you hate it and reject it? If you accept your own body, than I think you can accept almost everyone, almost everything. If you reject your own body, what can people expect from you? Do you inwardly criticize others to make yourself feel better? I think accepting your own body is very important in your relationships with others. If you reject your own body, when you are sharing your love with your partner, you become shy. You think, "Look at my body. how can he love me when I have a body like this?" And in the process, you kind of reject yourself, and you assume that everyone else will reject you too for the same reasons.

To create a relationship that stands happily on solid ground, you have to love your body. You have to respect your body. You have to let your body be free to give, free to receive, without being shy, because shyness is nothing but fear.

You know, there is really no problem with being gorgeous. With thinking that you are the cat's meow. If you walk through a crowd of people (especially a crowd of Italian men in Florence) and they tell you, "Oh, you are beautiful!" and you can say, "Thank you, I know," and keep going- (which sounds really arrogant, but I am thinking more about the thoughts you have in your head when someone compliments you). Their compliments don't really make a difference in how you see yourself. However, it will make a difference if you don't believe that you are special and beautiful and wonderful. If you don't believe that and someone tells you you are beautiful, then you are going to say, "Am I really?" Their opinions can impress you, and draw you to them, and yes, in a street full of Italians, make you easy prey. You feel that you get worth from their words, instead of finding the worth inside yourself. You are going to believe that they are responsible for making you happy, which is a big-BIG relationship no-no.

What is important are not all those opinions from others, but your own opinions. You are beautiful no matter what your mind tells you. That is a fact. You don't have to do anything because you already have the beauty you need. To be beautiful you don't have any obligation to anyone. Others are free to see what they want to see. If others see you and judge you beautiful or not, if you are aware of your own beauty and accept your own beauty, their opinion doesn't affect you at all.

Beauty is really nothing but a concept, nothing but a belief. It can get to the point, which I sadly think that it is in our plastic-beauty-world, where you may base your power on that beauty. Time passes, and you see yourself getting old. Perhaps you are not as beautiful as you were from your point of view, and a younger woman comes along who is now the one who is "beautiful". Time for plastic surgery, to try and keep the power because we believe that our beauty is our power. Our own aging starts to hurt us. "My beauty is going away!! Will my man still love me if I am not as attractive? Now he can see other women who are more attractive than me."

We resist aging; we believe that because someone is old, it means she is not beautiful. This belief is so wrong. If you see a newborn baby, it is beautiful, perfect. An old person is also beautiful, every stage of life is precious and beautiful. The problem is the emotion we have in our eyes to perceive what is and what is not beautiful. We have all these judgments, all these programs that put limits on our own happiness, that push us to self-rejection and to reject other people also. Can you see how we play the drama? How we kind of set ourselves up for failure with all these beliefs?


Aging is something beautiful. Growing up is beautiful. You are what you believe you are. You are beautiful.

Do We Hoard Our Words?

Wedding season is upon me, I took these engagement pics on Saturday, see my photo blog for full, fun coverage.

I adore you, you're amazing, you delight me, I can't get enough of your company, wow, you are wearing those specs, your smile is radiant, you're hot, I cherish your friendship, I wish we could talk all night long, and most importantly.....I love you.


When was the last time you said these words without expecting anything in return?

When was the first time you told someone you loved them?

When was the last time you told someone you loved them?

When you say, "I love you" do you expect something in return? Can you love someone without them loving you back? And without feeling bad about it? (and not in the teenage, unrequited love idea, because you are ALWAYS expecting something back...one day) If you are secure enough in your love for yourself, should you shout it to the world when you love someone? But we don't, at least, I don't. Not at all. I have NEVER told someone who I felt romantic feelings of love for that I "loved" them.....the closest I came was "liked"...and that's lame, because I did love him.

Here's a story:

I want you to imagine that you live on a planet where everyone has a skin disease. For two or three thousand years, the people on your planet have suffered the same disease: Their entire bodies are covered by wounds that are infected, and those wounds really hurt when you touch them. Of course, they believe this is a normal physiology of the skin. Even the medical books describe this disease as a normal condition. When the people are born, their skin is healthy, but around three or four years of age, the first wounds start to appear. By the time they are teenagers, there are wounds all over their bodies.

Can you imagine how these people are going to treat each other? In order to relate with one another, they have to protect their wounds. They hardly ever touch each other's skin because it is too painful. If by accident you touch someone's skin, it is so painful that right away she gets angry and touches your skin, just to get even. Still, the instinct to love is so strong that you pay a high price to have relationships with others.

Well, imagine that a miracle occurs one day. You awake and your skin is completely healed. There are no wounds anymore, and it doesn't hurt to be touched. Healthy skin you can touch feels wonderful because the skin was made for perception. Can you imagine yourself with healthy skin in a world where everyone has a skin disease? You cannot touch others because it hurts them, and no one touches you because they make the assumption that it will hurt you.

If you can imagine this, perhaps you can understand that someone from another planet who came to visit us would have a similar experience with humans. But it isn't our skin that is full of wounds. What the visitor would discover is that the human mind is sick with a disease called fear. Just like the description of the infected skin, the emotional body is full of wounds. The manifestation of the disease of fear is anger, hate, sadness, envy, and hypocrisy.

Humans live in a continuous fear of being hurt. Even saying "I love you" can be frightening. WHY???



Discussion on Love Number One (Steph, I am sorry all my post are about love, it can get icky, I get it!)

LOVE HAS NO EXPECTATIONS--FEAR IS FULL OF EXPECTATIONS

With fear we do things because we expect that we have to, and we expect that others are going to do the same. That is why fear hurts and love doesn't hurt. We expect something and if it doesn't happen, we feel hurt--it isn't fair. We blame others for not fulfilling our expectations. When we love, we don't have expectations; we do it because we want to. When we don't expect something to happen, if nothing happens, it's not important. We don't feel hurt, because whatever happens is okay. That is why hardly anything hurts us when we are in love; we aren't expecting that our lover will do something, and we have no obligations.

This is where I have always run into trouble, I think, when I start to fall in love with someone, and they present a certain side to me, I create other things that naturally would go with that person, and I almost create that person a little bit to fit my needs. Then I expect that person to meet the expectations that I have created, when it is not in that person at all to meet those needs.

That's why it is so important to be authentic with people. That's why it is so important to be responsible for your own happiness, your own self-love, and not need to search anywhere else to find it.

However, that being said, it is totally unexpected and delightful and amazing and hot and radiant when you are completely happy on your own, and you aren't needing someone else to fulfill your needs or adore you, but they do anyway.

This Blessed Curse!

You know that scene in On The Waterfront, Terry (Brando) and Edie go on their first walk, the chemistry is thick and vaporous. She drops her glove, he picks it up, and he tries to put it on, but it is so small and delicate it doesn't really fit, because she is dainty? Yes, dainty. What every girl in the 1950s was supposed to be (and what I have always longed for, to be 5'5"!!!). Do you want to know how that scene would have played out if I were in Edie's shoes? Brando would have picked up my glove (which took tons of time to even find one big enough for my hand) and he would put it on, and it would be so big, he would look up and say, "Geez, Dame, how tall are you?" and I would look down on small Brando (who was 5'8" in real life) and I would cry and say, "Six feet tall!" --knowing all the while that Brando would back away and make a run for it.

Yes, the blessed curse of being extremely, viking-warrior tall, with Seinfeld-esque "man hands" is something most of you probably haven't given much thought to. Over the years as I have grown, and grown and, yes, grown...I have tried to appear short. I didn't wear heels much, I didn't stand up so straight, I realized I was destined to continue to fall in love with men who are 5'10" with smaller hands than I have, and it was hard, because, well, you just don't feel much like a demure, pretty girl.

However, the past few years I have said to hell with it all and have embraced my height. Sure, I am 6'2"-6'4" when I wear heels of any merit. Sure I hit my head when I walk through old homes in Europe, sure people can't see when they stand behind me at concerts at The Depot...but you know what, being this tall definitely has it's pros.

~Changing the lightbulb is a snap!
~I can basically have a good view at any movie or concert I go to
~I can look intimidating to my students, even in High School
~I stand out in the crowd--especially when I visit Asia!
~I can use all the storage place in my house, even the really high cupboards
~I'm good at basketball
~I've got really long legs.
~I can walk faster than many people
~I can buy normal pants at old navy and wear them as capris
~When I stand up for myself, I usually get what I want


But it has it's cons as well:

~Inevitably it's the man who is 5'6' that you are in love with.
~You can never find jeans long enough
~The airplane seats never have enough leg room
~You can't hide in a crowd, especially in Asia!
~The only way to feel really "dainty" is to date someone 6'5"
~The taller you get, the harder it is to be really graceful
~ You have farther to fall when you iceskate


Being tall, I have realized that I just might have to break the stereotype of the average relationship, where the man tends to be taller. Thus, when couples get together and the girl is taller, I take notice, and I think to myself...do they look weird together?

You guys be the judge. What do you think about the girl being taller? How tall are each of you? Does height really matter?

Do these people look like freaks? (ok, loaded question with Tom Cruise, I know!)

All You Need is Love

In keeping the love theme going, I captured this image last week...the couple didn't know, but I am so excited to show them this picture. It makes me smile deeply. I love it most especially because the fingers of each hand are outstretched, and one second after I captured the image, the fingers curled around each other in a comfortable way that familiarity gives. That's one reason I love taking pictures, in some small way, as we snap a camera, we are capturing once in a lifetime moments. And looking back on them, at least for me, helps me appreciate life and feel a deep gratitude for all I have been given...even if it's only tiny moments like this.

There is Romance in the Air

I am in a romantic mood. And if you go to youtube and type in "best movie kisses ever" and watch people kissing for a good solid twenty minutes, you will be too.

I remember a line from a movie that my family and I mocked mercilessly, but we still say it all the time....with a southern accent as was said in the movie Twins..."Don't cha just love love?"


So, I would love to hear your top movie kisses! I had to limit mine to 10 (I believe I mentioned earlier that it was 5, but that's almost impossible!!), but didn't want to post them all with video:

1. My Bluberry Nights--Table Kiss
2. Amelie--The Small Kisses
3. From Here to Eternity--Beach Kiss
4. Before Sunrise--Sunset Kiss
5. Some Kind of Wonderful--Friend Kiss
6. A Room With a View--Italian Mountain Stolen Kiss accompanied by his Creedo--Beauty, Truth!!!!
7. Love Actually--The goodnight kiss between Sarah (Laura Linney) and Carl
8. The Last of the Mohicans--Daniel Day Lewis at his finest and most tan!
9. The Mirror Has Two Faces--The dancing/kissing scene at the end, complete with Opera!
10. Inventing the Abbotts--Classic couch kissing scene...boy slides closer...gril slides away...until the both reach the end of the couch. ah-yeah!