The Strangeness of Kindness

Lordy hon, when it gets this hot out I start getting all BD-y, wantin' to slouch around in ivory lingerie and hang out in the bathtub, doing nothing more than leaning over to trace absent-minded swirls on the condensation of my long, tall, frosted, adult beverage glassware. Or maybe just drink gin, hallucinate, and contemplate smoking opium in a dark, velvet-curtained room with some dark stranger. Whew it is hot out, n'est ce pas?!

Weird thing is, everytime I get to feelin' this way, strange stuff starts happening... tsunamis, Class IV's, planes down, assorted global freakishness. My, my, my...

Ladies' Retreat

Headed north, to Western NC. Another trip sans any menfolk along. The older I get, the more men I seem to jettison along the way. They seem to have faded from my life. By design? By accident? Lack of due diligence? The ones I know well, family members, are no longer interested in much that I am, and vice versa. We all consciously avoid one another for the most part.

I think that the more financially independent women become, then the more superfluous men become. Once the messy biology of reproduction has been achieved that is. A natural selection segregation of gender? Honestly, at this point in time, I don't really miss men in my life, unless I make a conscious effort to do so.

No small irony, this may have something to do with why I continue to thoroughly enjoy the company of men when the occasion arises; rarity invites a greater appreciation, n'est ce pas?

On Pine Trees In The Winter Wind...

There is given an assurance of gardenias come spring.

The women of Tres Chicas will play you a redolent, harmonized world you'd find, perhaps by invitation only, in a garden obscured with vines of jasmine and ivy, worn stones and brick. Their deliberate, blended voices lure you into a feminine place lush with longing and lust and heartbreak and love, always love, mesmerizing you with a wave here and there of salt air from the ocean to remind you of how you will walk alone and onward, no matter how overgrown the darker path might be.

For the Chicas' womanly path is always strewn with broken dreams and promises never made, and leads to a garden of solitude and fortitude fragrant with tea olive and live oaks in silvery moonlight, glints of renewed dreams and senses and pools of Carolina light to waken to. A clink of the finest crystal by the fountain when you turn to see who might have joined you there inside the garden walls under the moon.

The Chicas, now on tour with their new album, Bloom Red and The Ordinary Girl, are a sound of Southern womanhood. Their strong, lingering harmonizing wafts and colors a room as dingy dark and stinking of disgusting bathroom deodorizer as even the hideous Smith's bar tonight in Atlanta, turning your head, if not the room, into a faded rose-patterned wallpaper tangle of memories and meadows of a North Carolina summer valley. They can play you into your heritage, your hopes, your summers. But mostly your longing. So walk clearly down to the river and renew your southern goth ways with some ivory lingerie, a bottle of champagne and a listen to Bloom Red and The Ordinary Girl.