The Space I'm In

While I was in London, there was much ado about the Stone Roses reforming.  In my listening world, they were among several late 80s early 90s bands I loved, which also included the Candy Skins, who did a great version of "For What It's Worth" and had a minor hit with "Space I'm In."

Today I put on my headphones and started a mix I call "Pillar to Post," and the Candy Skins came up to make me smile and dance and, now, to think about the space I'm in.

Over the weekend, waterspots formed on the living room ceiling after I showered upstairs.  Bad.  Major bad.  Now, on Monday, I'm trying to figure out what part of my retirement savings to cash in to pay for a major bathroom repair.  I have a couch on the porch I haven't been able to find a home for, and baskets of books fill my hall since I committed to having no bookshelves in the living room. 

My house is overwhelming me.  Even more than usual.

But I kinda can't focus on the financial precipice I am on, because I am so consumed by the clearing out that must be done and maintained.   Obviously, I don't just mean boxes of stuff.  What is this space I have opened inside in the last few months, and how do I keep it from closing around the frustrations of everyday life, the slights and disappointments that inevitably are part of living in the world with, you know, OTHER PEOPLE?  How do I open to more and more newness in the midst of the dully familiar?

[now the La's are singing "There She Goes" in my happy little mix]

I did not leave the house yesterday, not for a minute.  I didn't read a book, I didn't clean off the Dining Room Table.  I didn't learn a new song on the guitar.  I took a nap on my new couch and I cleared some stuff from my DVR.  I played iPad games.  It was actually a pretty enjoyable day, but how many more days do I have to waste like this?  I don't want to open a space in my days only to fill them with more detritus.

[and now it is the Stone Roses "I Wanna Be Adored,"  but that would be another post entirely]

Why Norway. An attempt to explain myself.

Debbie said to me two months ago that because I was beginning my trip in kindness, it would be successful.  She also used the word "pilgrimage" to describe it, and I think that was fair, at least for the trip to Norway.

I hear some of you saying huh.  So I'm going to try to describe the Norway thing a bit, but for the full skinny, you will have to wait for my book.

It started with a picture in a social studies book in grade school of a fjord.  I thought it was the most beautiful place I had ever seen.  I love the word and its odd conjunction of an F and a J.  I had never heard of Norway before and didn't know anyone who was Norwegian (or so I thought).  I would turn back to that page in class and stare at it whenever I could.

I was lonely as a kid.  I didn't fit.  I think most of us feel that way, but that feeling went from embarrassment (which I could handle) to despair (which I could not).  As adolescence approached, I started to care less about being the smartest kid in the class (my compensation for loneliness in grade school), and began to actually worry about being alone.  This, even as I was, in fact, beginning to have more good friends, some of whom I still call my friends.  I became scared of the future, and I got more scared with the growing realization I wasn't straight.  I had a good family, parents who adored me, a pretty good mind, and, in high school, wonderful friends.  But the loneliness was deeper, and it was connected to knowing I would have to leave all of that if I wanted to find any happiness or fulfillment in the world.  And I didn't think I could do it.  All the yearnings I had to act and write, to find a place and people who could see me unmasked and love me, to figure out what I believed and not what I thought I should believe, to find love--they all spelled isolation and terror to me.

Then I read Fear of Flying.  While my friends and I giggled over the notion of a "zipless fuck," I started looking up some of the people quoted in the chapter headings in the book:  Colette, Sylvia Plath, Simone deBeauvoir.  I memorized poems by Plath, and one of my first published poems was an homage to her poem "Ariel."  Through my intellectual curiosity, I began to discover that wider world in terms I could control--through my intelligence and my imagination.

Then, somehow, Liv Ullmann came into my consciousness.  I suppose, to be honest, it was that "funny feeling" I got but knew I shouldn't talk about when I saw her photo on the cover of the script to Face to Face at B. Dalton Booksellers in the mall.  When her autobiography Changing came out I bought it.  I don't know where I got the money.  I don't know how, in a town without movie theatres and with a library that mostly stocked children's books and mystery novels I even recognized her name, but I bought the book and I found my lifeline.  The way she talked about the need to be recognized seared me, exposed me, and reassured me that the longings I felt weren't crazy, that loneliness was not to be feared, but to be incorporated as one aspect of learning to be at all, and that being different or, even "cast out" (as I began to feel about my relationship to my home) was an opportunity of unknown proportion, not a death sentence.  One could be sad, and find joy.  One could be unlike others, but still be worthwhile as a human.

I followed Liv Ullmann and my curiosity to Bergman, then Strindberg, then Ibsen.  I learned how to use the library at Valpo University.  I ordered books like Son of a Servant and Madman's Defense and Bergman on Bergman from interlibrary loan.  I'm pretty sure I saw every image from Persona that ever found print long before I saw the movie in college.  Burrowing into these Scandinavian cultural giants and my own insatiable intellect I believe quite literally saved my life.

I suppose the fact that Liv Ullmann was Norwegian was incidental, really, to what her words and following her career (especially her humanitarian work) meant to me in the ensuing years, but somehow her nationality enhanced the picture I had of Norway, which by then had become the land of my imagination.  In my small world, Norway was my secret destination, "Liv Ullmann" the promise that I could, indeed, someday find someone who would "recognize" me (I still love how Liv says that word!).  I held my imaginary country, my stranger-friend, close in my mind with my other secrets, and began to fear what was within me and where those feelings would lead me in the world less and less.

I could not explain to my friends why I had to go to Norway any more than I can explain why I am a lesbian.  I had to, and I am, and somehow knowing the one was out there made the other easier to embrace 30-odd years ago.  Of course, who I am is much more complicated than that one bit of my identity which loomed so large as an adolescent, but there is still much in me that is unsettled, "unrecognized."  I think often of the line from Housekeeping, "hers was a soul all unaccompanied, like his own."

I did find a peaceful spot in Flåm at the edge of fjord.  I expected to be hit with some lightning bolt revelation, and I was not.  Instead, I watched clouds move across a patch of sky and find their more vibrant reflection in the water.  I jumped out of bed in the morning, not because I had an appointment to make, but because I didn't want to miss a moment of the morning color.  I was unknown and alone in a red cabin in a tiny town, and every minute of every day was mine alone.

"You found your true home," Pauline said when she looked at the pictures I had taken from my window on the Aurlandsfjord.

Kindness glides about the house

In Trømso, I admired a Sammi-crafted bracelet in leather and sterling wire, but I had an attack of panic about the expenses ahead, and I left it in the case.  Later Ann presented me with the bracelet as a gift--totally bought the thing without my knowing it.  I've worn it every day since she got it for me.  In Trondheim, with her encouragement, I bought a scarf that has been part of my daily uniform too. Small changes to may daily uniform of a sports watch and a peace sign on a leather strip with some rings around it.

In Bath Cheryl and I stopped in a shop that had loads of handmade jewelry, some scarves, and some tchotchkes.  I picked out some earrings in amber and in amethyst, and pointed to them for Cheryl's opinion.  Of course I was looking at the tinier, more delicate earrings, but Cheryl said absolutely not--bigger and bolder.

WTF, I bought the bigger and bolder earrings.  B&B then became my mantra for the rest of the trip.

I do love small and delicate things, but the truth is, I am neither small nor delicate.  I tend to buy jewelry to go unnoticed and clothes to hide behind. I realized when I took this photo of myself outside the store that Cheryl wasn't just telling me the bigger earrings look better, but that embracing B&B was psychologically the right move.

So the two pairs of pants and two shirts I have been wearing since Sept. 8 were at this point in Bath dressed up with a swell, but still modest, scarf from Trondheim, a messenger bag from Flåm, and these sterling and amethyst earrings from Bath.  A little bigger, a little bolder, but still well within hippy-dom.

I have already told you about the magic scarf I didn't know how to wear, but which brought me good things on Wednesday night.  I did not mention that there were other purchases before that of satin and silk jackets and a couple of other shiny scarves.  Fancier than my usual strictly Kmart or Flax wear, but still in browns and blacks.  Cheryl suggested some BIG necklaces to go with them, but I revolted.  Still clutching my peace sign on a leather strap, I did not want and could not imagine such a weight around my neck.

On Friday, I decided to return to the vendor in Covent Garden where I got the shiny stuff and get another jacket in a bolder color.  On my way, I came across a jewelry maker to whom I really took a liking.  He makes jewelry out of sterling silverware, and I was immediately struck by a bracelet from a fork in which the tines curled and spread across the wrist.  Before I was done, I purchased this wild bracelet, a pinky ring from a coffeespoon, and a really large ring for my middle finger made from a teaspoon.  Not like me at all, and especially not when worn all at once.  I kept the pinky ring and the bracelet on, but I put the other ring in a bag--it was going to take some time to get used to that one.  These things still may be a little funky, but we are drifting away from dime store hippy.

I left the shopping and went to Notes for a latte and a light supper and a some writing.  Once back at my hotel, I realized I had lost the big ring.  Panic.  And a bit of anger--why didn't I just wear the damned thing like all the rest of the jewelry?

The next day, happily, the same shop was open (they are not necessarily the same from day to day), and I reported the missing ring.  The jewelry maker had a butter knife from 1912 he was going to bend later, and he said if I wanted to come back, he'd give it to me for a substantially reduced price.  So I headed off for some breakfast and a couple of cups of coffee before coming back to find this most stunning ring waiting for me.  It was much cooler than the ring I had lost, and I would not have purchased it if I had not lost the other. 

New jewelry, pre-butter spreader

I have since realized that making jewelry from old silverware is kind of a thing, but these pieces are quite attractive, I think, they feel GREAT, they are definitely B&B.  When I wear them, I feel bolder.  I remember the fun of indulging myself in their purpose, and I think of the knife ring as the one I was supposed to have.  There is probably some magic left to be discovered in it too.

Today, my last full day on my reinvention tour, I got up for some breakfast, then wandered over to the Jubilee market, which I hadn't really investigated before.  There was a booth filled with the softest velvety scarves I had seen.  Muted colors, bold colors.  I reached, of course, for something brown and a gorgeous teal scarf, and the young becapped woman running the stall said hello and encouraged me to try on the scarves.  "You have to see them on to decide."  I just wanted to feel them, but okay.  She shook her head.  "With your beautiful eyes you have to wear something that brings them out" and she reached for a mossy green, then a brighter green."  I took them, oddly shy because this suddenly felt girly and she looked me so squarely in the face and it was no longer just about the material but about how *I* looked in the scarves.  At the moment I was becoming shy, she said "open your eyes and look at yourself" and moved me toward the mirror. 

I changed my mind 10 times, I bought bright scarves and muted ones, I bought scarves for Michelle and scarves for myself.  I laughed.  I took pictures.

I delivered my booty directly to my hotel room in order to avoid the mishap like the ring, and I took the tube to Tate Britain for my dose of Turner and Constable, with just a touch of Blake thrown in.  When I came back, I realized I still had about 20£ on my Oyster card, which I would surely misplace before I got back to Britain.  I went back to the scarf place where Kim was having a sandwich as she continued to fold and move scarves around.  I handed her the Oyster card, explaining I'd just taken my last ride, hadn't registered the card, so she still could.  "For your kindness this morning." 

Hallelujah

I rarely passed a busker on this trip to whom I did not contribute, from the guy with the piano in Dublin to the three piece band in Galway to the guitarist in Oslo.  But staying in Covent Garden in London emptied my pockets.

I admire the guts it takes to perform for the generally disinterested, and I figure anyone trying to earn some money from music is worthy of my small contribution, but in Covent Garden there were plenty of folks who had clearly spent years of classical training, and whatever their ultimate achievement, those years of lessons and recitals and practice time impress me.

When I was in New York a couple of years ago, I gave some cash to a guy in Stamford who told me some long story about losing his wallet.  I knew it was a scam, but, frankly, he entertained me.  It was a good story he told, with just the right amount of detail, not too much pathos.  My friend Debbie is still shaking her head at me, and this incident assured her I could not be left alone on the train or in the city.  But I was happy, I was seeing friends, and he made me smile.  Why not.  In the moment I had the thought "choose to be generous," so I opened my wallet.

There were musicians on this trip who genuinely delighted me, like the band in Galway.  There was one guy with a guitar who was pretty good in Covent Garden, mixing cover songs with original material.  For those of you following me on Facebook, it was he who was playing when I saw the little girls dancing.  I listened to him for a long time that day; his voice was okay, his guitar playing better than average, but there was such sweetness and a sincerity about him that I understood why the children wanted to dance around him.   One of my last evenings in London, I walked back through the plaza and he was there again, and through the sound of laughter around the knife throwing dude and the jugglers, I heard the strains of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" from the corner of the square by the Royal Opera.  It was my guy singing fully that powerful song, filled with the sorrow of it, but also with the joy of his voice going out into the night.

I thought of the candlelight concert in Iowa City when Laurie, Tess, and Barbara performed and invited me up on stage to sing "Passionate Kisses."  My home, my friends, my own little voice under the stars...and I thought of Tess singing "Geography," which has more or less been my theme song for this trip:

I left the heartland too old for the highway...

Unsure, uncertain but I don't regret it,

'Cause I've got my life in my hands.

Voices ringing out in the night.  Nothing better. 

 

Tell Me What Love Is

Wednesday 26 October

I went back for a second dose of The Marriage of Figaro at the London Coliseum tonight.  I haven't been able to get Cherubino's arias out of my head, and I wanted to see the show from the stalls where I could see the faces of the singers.  I had been in touch with one of the singers who had invited me to "come round" after the show on Friday, but it didn't seem a thing Cheryl would have enjoyed, and I wanted to talk with her after the show that first time around. I planned to go back to say hello tonight, but my mood at show's end didn't make room for that.

Earlier in the day, I bought a silk shawl that had some magic in it I think.  It is soft and lush and quite a contrast to these clothes I have been wearing for seven weeks.  My jeans were clean, though the hems have become frayed from too much hiking, and my shirt I have only worn for two days, so I was about as spiffed up as I could manage so long away from home.

Of course I arrived at the Coliseum way too early, but I thought I would settle in with a drink and do some people watching.  My mistake.  Each area of the theatre has its own bar, creating a kind of class system in drinking.  Since I was sitting in the stalls tonight, I thought I would be in the coolest bar, but no, there are private bars beyond even the stall patrons' reach.  I went up to what I believed to be the appropriate bar and, noting there was no Bombay Sapphire on the shelf, asked for a Tangueray and tonic.  Blank stare.  I repeated myself.  Blink.  What? I repeated myself a third time and pointed to the green bottle.  The bartender's hand hovered over the bottles as he asked a fourth time.  I said "the green bottle right under your hand."  He: "why didn't you say a gin and tonic?" I had a brief moment of feeling stupid, but recovered surprisingly quickly and said "because Tangueray is better than most well gins."  He pours me--no kidding--about half a drink, takes my six or seven pounds, and says "really?   Is it better than Beefeaters?"  I don't know still if he was trying to recover from a bad moment himself, or if he was giving me the business, but by this time the seats around me were filled with people who were not alone and who actually looked like they belonged there, so I wandered over to another bar where no one was sitting.  Suddenly I was struck with panic that I was not allowed in this area (oh no, only people with tickets in the center section go here or something), so, like a child, I asked if this area was open to the likes of me or if it was reserved.  The (rather sexy) woman behind the bar spread her arms and her smile wide and said "It's all for you."

Wish I could have felt that way about the whole evening.

As I settled in for some people watching and eavesdropping on different accents, I was soon surrounded by about 8 American college students, like, you know, so, like wondering where they were going to, you know, party after the show.  I gulped the last of my half drink, forwent getting a second from the sexy bartender, and went to my seat.

One of the differences in theatre audiences in London is that they are very mixed in terms of ages.  I know ENO has great prices for young people, but even the Donmar and the other theatres I visited had lots of young people mixed in with the bluehairs.  Another thing that is striking to me is that there is considerably lower quotient of pinched and pulled women with older, disinterested men.  In my row was an elderly couple, a couple of people my age, and some folks I would say were in their late 20s.  All dressed better than I, but I touched my shawl periodically for reassurance (and because I had no idea how to wear such a thing and keep it on my shoulders).  I was on the end, and everytime someone wanted to enter or leave their seat, they apologized profusely.  This, in a country where I never once heard anyone say excuse me for bumping me on the street or pushing past me to exit the tube.

I love the time in the theatre before a show.   The place is buzzing with excitement, and you can feel the happiness in people all around you.  I like going to the theatre alone so I can just listen and absorb that.

I realized a few minutes before curtain that the director Fiona Shaw was in a box just a few feet away.  Fortunately it was just enough behind me that I couldn't stare, but occasionally I heard her voice or her laugh, so I allowed myself to think "I am about to watch an opera with Fiona Shaw" as I sat in my magic shawl.

From the stalls, the opera had a completely different effect on me.  The video projections, which were too dominant from the balcony, in their blurred slow motion provided relief to the business of the household and the sharp angles of the maze in which the characters were caught.  I think there were some problems with the revolve that night, but the singers moved through them with ease, and their voices were so clear and strong from that closer distance that their bodies just seemed to flow with them.  Kate Valentine as the Countess was glorious; I know to a singer it is the voice and the music that carry the fulness of expression, but for me, faces and movement and bodies in space matter too, and being able to see her face, the slowness of her step relative to those around her made me feel the character's sorrow in a way I had not a few nights earlier.  Opera works better for me if it knows it is theatre too.

The scenes that haunt me, though, are the ones involving Cherubino, who did not for a second convince me she was a boy, but, rather, seemed a tomboy, uncomfortable in dresses, but oddly mismatched to her boy's clothing too.  And when that voice rings out, any belief that she is male is obliterated anyway.  So.  The plaintive "tell me what love is," the pull of desire from one untouchable woman to the next hit rather close to home, and I found the scenes involving the Countess, Suzanna, and Cherubino the most compelling, and far richer than the stuff involving those goofy men trying to one up each other.

These ruminations put me in thoughtful mood, even as the music exhilerated me.  After the final curtain, I looked over at Fiona Shaw and gave her a thumbs up.  She thumbed back, and I walked on.  Out in the hall, I couldn't resist the desire to look her fully in the face, and I turned back to compliment her on the show.  She chuckled a bit, and we had nice chat for a minute or two.  I then, in a rare attack of self control, said my goodbyes without either fawning or demeaning myself or trying to make the moment last longer than it should, and walked in my ragged bottomed jeans and shiny magic shawl back to Covent Garden, past the jugglers and street musicians, to my tiny hotel room.  Alone in a big world.

Theatre in London and Trafalgar Square

par of the National Theatre at night

My primary wish in visiting London was to visit some museums and see some theatre, or, should I say, some theatres.  I knew I wanted to visit the National and the Donmar Warehouse, whatever was playing there, and it was a bonus that a new play, 13, with Geraldine James, was opening at the National Theatre and Douglas Hodge was in an Osborne play at the Donmar.  Since I missed Jerusalem in New York, I was happy to have the chance to see Mark Rylance in it in London, and I thought it was about time I saw War Horse, too.   Initially when I looked at my array of tickets, though, I was a little disappointed:  no Janet McTeer or Fiona Shaw, no Harriet Walter or Vanessa Redgrave, no Juliet Stevenson.  I could have seen VR in Driving Miss Daisy, but seeing that in NY in January was enough, though there were afternoons in London I was tempted to get a ticket just to bask in Redgravosity for 90 minutes, in spite of my general dislike of the play and production.  Fiona Shaw directed Marriage of Figaro, so, much as I wished I could have seen her on stage (preferably in Mother Courage), her attachment to the Mozart opera led me to a wonderful experience I probably would have otherwise passed by.

London Coliseum entrance

London theatre feels very different from NY theatre.  First, though many of the theatres are in the West End, they don't line the streets like they do in NYC, so you don't have that sense on the street that you are among theatre goers or that you might see a performer any time.  In fact, you are mostly around well dressed, but not completely upper end, shoppers.  So the excitement of going to the theatre doesn't start on the street the way it does in NY.  The audiences are quite different too--there are more young people, and it feels like people aren't looking around to make sure they are being seen in London as it can be in NY theatre.

I was in the front row at War Horse bawling my eyes out, only to glance from side to side and see nary a tear on the faces of my fellow audience members.  Standing ovations, which have become de rigeur in NY, don't seem to happen with such regularity.  The only one I experienced was at Jerusalem, and how anyone could stay in their seat after seeing Mark Rylance's performance I couldn't imagine anyway.  Truly, I do not expect to see a more complete, brilliant, energized performance in my lifetime.  I was at a matinee, and I think the audience would have clapped until the evening curtain if they had been allowed.  And it was deserved.  Wow.

I did get to my feet for Douglas Hodge, though the Osborne play was hard to take, as Hodge plays a character bent on self destruction who becomes painful to watch as the play progresses.  His was such a difficult task, I felt it needed honoring, but only a smattering of people stood.

As for the theatres I was so anxious to see, the National Theatre is really quite unattractive--big concrete building that is lit at night, whether to add interest or hide looming blocky ugliness I don't know, to its benefit, but during the day it almost looks like a warehouse.  Comfortable seats with good sightlines though.  The Donmar was thrilling.  I had read it was a tiny space, but I had NO IDEA.  It is a very small theatre with a thrust stage, and the audience seats are benches with cushions.  I really felt like there should be kneelers.  I was so very excited to see the photos of The McTeer from Mary Stuart, Eddie Redmayne, Derek Jacobi---all of these remnants from shows that have come over and wowed Broadway.   Man, I would have killed to see Mary Stuart in that space.  How extraordinary to see world class theatre in a space smaller than the old Allen Theatre here at ISU!

The McTeer as The Stuart

At the end of Inadmissible Evidence, Hodge's character is utterly devastated.  There is no curtain on set, so Hodge must go from lights out to applause, and you could see on his face the discomfort of the transition. 

When I am in NY, I always go into Times Square after a show.  The odd light, the city sounds, the press of people adapts either to my sense of contemplative loneliness after a show or my exuberance.  I missed that in London, especially after Jerusalem when I wanted to jump and scream and run from the thrill of such a performance.  So Trafalgar became my centering stone.  Busy, peopled, and a place I could actually FIND and get back from, when I needed a pause that was not the loneliness of the hotel, that is where I would go.  I took some obligatory photos of the Dude Nelson, but those soon became the start of a whole series of photos of the changing skies over the Dude's head. A rather different series from my Times Square photos, as you can imagine.

Stonehenge and Bath and Being a Tourist

Cheryl and I have spent two days floating in baths in Bath.   We have been laughing outrageously, I have been coughing obnoxiously, and we have both been indulging ourselves ostentatiously.  This is great.

But let me back up.  I wanted to see Stonehenge, so we made a stop there on the way from Heathrow to Bath.  I learned a lot (good) I saw many many fellow gawkers (bad).  I felt embarrassed there.  I felt ridiculous and naive that I thought I would feel something there that I hadn't felt before.

Unlike the Dolmans and Faerie circles and standing stones we saw in Ireland, all of which just sit in fields with sheep and stone fences and rocky hills, Stonehenge is bordered with an asphalt path, has a souvenir shop, has a major highway running to it, and is blanketed with tourists, many of them teenage gigglers.  As an experience, it was more splash of the cold water of commerce and commercialization, and of mass media creation of a destination.  As an amazing artifact of unclear origin or purpose, I did learn quite a bit from our guide, Nick, and our drive through the area about the various features of a henge, the hillocks and the ditches, that provided enough historical mystery for the day.

But how to see these famous places without feeling like a cruiser through the experience?  I think the time ahead in England is going to be a lot of this, with museums and historical landmarks ahead.  In Norway I had little interest in seeing specific things, rather, I had a keen desire for the landscape, the sky, and the sound of the language.  I could take a thousand photos, and chances are my photos for the most part would NOT be like everyone else's, because they were more about a way I saw things than the things themselves.  When I held up my camera to Stonehenge, I felt ridiculous.  Buy a postcard.  How will it be standing before St. Paul's, Big Ben, the Tower of London, or in the museums?  I am not EVEN going to go see Westminster Palace....

We arrived in Bath at the golden hour, and Nick took us to a park overlooking the city.  He earned his pay with that one stop.  Bath is, quite simply, gorgeous.  Most of the buildings are made of the buttery colored local limestone, and the city from that vantage point seems to ripple into the hills in waves of buildings, with a river (or canal; I couldn't keep them straight) winding through the heart of things. To get to the park we drove through narrow streets named after poets, and I had my first experience of "Milton may well have brought his failing eyes here.  Wordsworth may indeed have taken a cure here on his way to Tintern Abbey," and it was thrilling seeing those streetsigns for those possibilities.  Much is made of Jane Austen's connection to Bath, but it was a destination for those who were able for centuries.

Then Nick pointed out Solisbury Hill, and I couldn't get the damned Peter Gabriel song out of my head for days:

I did not believe the information
I just had to trust imagination
my heart going boom, boom, boom

We wandered around Bath much of the next day before our appointment at the spa.  Yes, Shari spent many hours at the spa, in an fing swimsuit, her hairy legs out for the world to see.  And stare they did, I might add.  The water was delicious.  I don't mean I drank it, but it had a kind of lightness to it.  It seemed it was easier to float than in a lake or a regular pool, and it was pleasantly warm.  The spa also has saunas spewing heat and different essences, and that humidity gave my cough considerable relief.  But it was floating in the water for a couple of hours that seemed to just even me out.

I also had a treatment at the spa called watsu.  Ok, no kidding.  You get in a bath and a woman swishes you around in the water, performing shiatsu while you are in the water.  Yep, I get it.  Back to the womb.  Now I understand why all the Freudians think that's where we all want to get to.  If that's what the womb was like, it was GOOD, my friends. 


Of course I coughed terribly three times and had to stop the treatment to catch my breath.


The spa was so good, we went back for more today.  We spent about four hours floating around, then had a hot dumpling massage.  Cheryl's was great, but mine was pleasant because of the scents and the sensations, but as a massage or as a therapy is was pretty perfunctory.  I could almost see the script in front of my therapist--now we say this, now we plop this dumpling down, now we plop this one, now we ring the bell, now we sell stuff.  I was not exactly upset by this; it was a pleasant experience, but it had the feel of a gimmick.

Unlike the shiatsu in the water with floaties on my legs, of course.